test first, then commit

Hi {NAME}, I want to share with you the most underrated habit as an entrepreneur. Ready? It's reflective thinking. We're constantly absorbing books, articles, and podcasts to learn. But how often do we make the time to learn from our own decisions and actions? You're not learning much if you're simply bulldozing your way through your to do list. This is a way to get more juice from the lemon, and it's easier than you think. Here's what I usually ask myself after a project: 1. What went well? 2. What didn't go well? 3. What happened that I didn't expect? 4. What will we do differently next time? This creates a tight feedback loop for learning. Add 10 minutes of reflecting time at the end of your day. Spend 30 minutes at the end of each Friday reflecting on the week. Do it after each major project. It'll make a world of difference. Mental Model: Firing Bullets, then Cannonballs This is a mental model that people should use more. It's about testing before committing. The analogy comes from Jim Collins (Author of Good to Great): Imagine you're at sea. You're the captain of a boat and there's an enemy ship nearby. You have a limited amount of gunpowder. What happens if you fire a cannonball with the first shot and miss? You're going to run low on gunpowder. Instead, it's better to fire a bullet. It misses by 40 degrees. You re-adjust. You fire again and it misses by 10 degrees. You re-adjust. You fire and it hits. Now you load up the cannonball and shoot. It hits. Don't have an "all in" mentality. Commit to doing small tests first. Here are a few examples: - Choosing where to live: Should you move to Latin American, Eastern Europe, or Asia? #DigitalNomad problems. Why not rent an airbnb for a month in each country? See which one you enjoy the most, then move there. - Product Packaging: My friends understands that packaging can increase the perceived value of his products. It can be expensive to revamp his products only to see that his customers hate it. Instead, he fires bullets using a service like [PickFu](. He'll have designers come up with different concepts. He'll use the service to validate which ones people like the most. Once he has enough data, then he'll fire the cannonball and create the packaging. - Writing Ideas: I've been writing online for over a decade now. You don't want to spend hours writing an article, and no one reads it. So one easy way for me to fire bullets is to Tweet a lot. I'll tweet on different topics. If a certain tweet gets a lot of engagement, then that's a signal it'd make a great blog post. - Developing a Company: Kettle and Fire is the top bone broth company in the world. The founder Justin felt like it was a solid business idea, but he wasn't ready to go all in yet in 2014. So he decided to fire bullets by conducting a "smoke screen test." He built a landing page talking about the bone broth, and drove traffic using Bing ads. “I figured that I could easily sell bone broth at a profit if I charged $29.99 for 16 ounces, and I’d be able to see how badly people wanted the product. If they were willing to pay nearly $30 for 16 ounces of a product they’d never touched, tasted or smelled, I figured this was a good idea.” He converted 17 customers with only $50 spend. Remember, he did this test without an actual product. So he went ahead and emailed everyone. He could either give them a refund, or he could offer 50% if they were willing to wait a few months. I've seen so many people do things backwards. Imagine someone spending a year formulating the perfect chocolate bar. They'll order thousands of dollars worth of inventory. And it's complete silence when it's time to sell. The #1 reason why companies fail is because people build shit that no one wants to buy. So start by seeing if people want to buy it first! Bonus: His formula for products is strong pain point + high demand + low competition = exponential growth Sometimes you'll hear examples about people who went all in and made it. But understand a few things: 1. Survivorship Bias: The classic example is the struggling actor who moved to Hollywood. Then they became an A list celebrity. You're not going to hear about the thousands of others who failed. 2. History Gets Re-written all the Time: There's a certain "glory" to someone going all-in and succeeding. It's easy to re-write history for PR purposes. Notice how every rich person says "money doesn't matter" and "just follow your passion." It's what people want to hear. People want to hear the underdog story of someone who bet the house on their dreams, and succeeded. No one's writing a movie about a nerd that does A/B split tests and interviews their customers all day. Stuff You Should Read: - [Book] [StoryBrand by Donald Miller.]( The average consumer gets over 3,000+ marketing messages every 24 hours. The secret to standing out is to simplify your message. This book shows you how to incorporate basic storytelling into your brand. This book is a must-read for any marketer. - [Article] [Good Businesses Have Margins](: What do you think of when you hear "Margins?" Most likely profit margins. Margins mean space and breathing room. You can add it to different areas of your business. We were essentially "throwing good effort after bad fundamentals.” Our primary business model was lousy; adding more complexity didn't fix that. And here's the thing about low-margin work: it eventually leads to ruin. The margins rarely get better, but the sunk costs get worse. Every month you dedicate to the bad business reinforces your desire to "make it work." - [Article] [Cognitive Biases and Time Management:]( We're not rational creatures. That's why most people barely have any money saved for retirement. This article goes into some of the psychology that affects our time management. Once you understand the biases we have, then a lot of these "productivity tricks" we use make more sense. Stay focused, Charles p.s. Me and my lady LOVED watching the Queen's Gambit on Net flix. It's fictional story about a female Chess prodigy in the 1960's. Highly recommended if you're looking for something to watch this weekend. I played Chess quite a bit in elementary school, but fell out of touch with it. Started playing again online last week and I'm loving it! The world is becoming more distracted. So I try to add in habits in my life that slow things down. Plants teach me patience. Brazilian Jiujitsu, reading hard books, and chess are activities that train my focus muscle. Marketing is Hard, Some Resources to Make it Easier - [The Lead Gen Engine:]( Are you wondering what the best path in affiliate marketing is in 2020? It's running white-hat, lead generation offers on Facebook. [Sign up]( for my free training to learn some strategies. - [The Best Tools:]( A curated list of the best tools in affiliate marketing. If you were forwarded this email, you can [subscribe]( here. [Unsubscribe]( AFFcelerator, LLC 199 E Flagler St #398 Miami, Florida 33131 United States