🏡 Don’t Build A House On Atlantic Avenue
Atlantic Avenue is a really stupid place to build a house.
The rent costs $150 each and the rent with 1 house is only $110.
It’s also a really unlikely place for someone to land on the board, so the opportunities to get rent payments is way lower than other properties.
You can still buy the property and sell it to someone else who wants it, but use it as leverage—don’t invest in it.
What does the game Monopoly have to do with living a happy and productive life?
You have a limited amount of time, energy and resources.
It’s up to you to choose the projects and missions you will spend your time on.
You already have a lot of odds against you.
Building anything is hard enough all by itself.
If you’re going to invest in something, it’s important to increase your probability of success.
Monopoly is pretty straightforward and there are a billion statistical analyses and strategies you can dig up online.
Life and work are less straightforward and they’re up to you.
This isn’t about real estate, business, or board games—this is about focusing on the known game-changing factors that actually matter and increasing your chances of success.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself to get started:
What are other people doing in your industry?
What are the characteristics of the successful big league players?
What might you do differently to stand out?
What is it that you do that is scarce and valuable?
What problem are you actually solving?
(Hint: it’s not that a customer has 4 widgets and they need 5, it’s because they’re lonely, hungry, or they have low self esteem. You need to dig deep into the basic mechanisms of behavior!)
2 Minute Action
Write a new email headline and A/B test it with your audience.
Steal someone else’s marketing concept and test the offer with your customers.
Do the math to figure out how many other competitors you have and look realistically at your chances of success. (FYI, If you’re starting a business in any industry, your odds are 1:10 right out of the gate, on average)
The Most Common Excuses People Make (And How To Get Past a Them)
It helps if you know what to do.
It helps if you know when to do it.
It also helps if you have the skills, abilities, and resources to do it.
Of course, the reality is that you need none of these things to start.
Here is a list of common excuses that many of us constantly use to delay action:
“I don’t have a team.”
“I don’t have the time.”
“I don’t have the capital.”
“I don’t have the expertise.”
“I don’t have the motivation.”
“I don’t know if now is the best time.”
If you’ve ever said these to yourself, now is a good time to look hard and long at those statements.
Fight back.
Make each excuse prove itself why it’s true—because the real truth is that you can figure it out how to get past it.
You don’t have to be a genius and you don’t have to billionaire and you don’t have to be an expert with 20 years of field experience to start.
You just have to prioritize your work, be deliberate about how you spend your time, live within your means, and keep rebounding after you mess up.
That’s it.
Instead of designing your logo and buying the domain for your website, call potential clients.
Instead of browsing Banana Republic’s last sales email, set up a Gmail filter to hide emails like those and go talk to a customer.
Instead of raising money and giving away all your equity, put together a PowerPoint that looks like what the software will look like and get your first customer. (Customers pat you today and you never have to pay them back. Investors will own your business and decisions until you buy them out.)
2 Minute Action
Write a Facebook or LinkedIn post asking your network if they know any experts you’d like to talk to.
Look at your calendar and cut out a little time on one or two days of your week to work on this project. You may have to give up social or TV time.
Define the 3 features of your MVP “minimum viable product.” This is the bare minimum you need to make a sale or get a user. This is derived from Eric Ries’ “Lean Startup.”
Send an email asking your students, clients, patients or customers for feedback.
The One Word That’s Better Than “Productivity.”
When you hear the word “productivity” what do you think?
iOS apps?Being busy?The Industrial Revolution?When I think of productivity, a few things come to mind. Sure, output is one of them. It’s a big one. But output isn’t the same as “more widgets, faster and cheaper.”Output also refers to quality, which is how well your solution (or your widget) solves the problem. Usually, you need less output if the quality is high. On top of that, there’s waste, which is how many additional revolutions per minute your wheels are spinning when they didn’t have to for a comparable result. Overall, it looks like productivity is probably an insufficient word to describe the concept that comes to mind.
So, I need to start using another word.
Social Impact. That’s what I will be using for now. If you can think of another one, please let me know!
2 Minute Action
How are you thinking of your social impact?Satisfied customers?Your Net Promoter Score?GBMs? (Goose Bump Moments)
It’s worth 2 minutes defining the axis on which you’re measuring your productivity/social impact.
Profit margin is one very helpful, unbiased way to measure the health of your project, but it’s just one of other vital signs for sustained social impact.
Reply and let me know how you’re measuring your productivity. I’d love to hear from you.