Noise vs signal
Hey friends!
First of all, a warm welcome to the new people! I hope to share something that’ll help you on your entrepreneurship and/or creative journey!
This week, I want to share a simple yet incredibly important idea I learned from Kevin O'Leary, who also learned it from Steve Jobs during their time working together.
Like many of you, I get very easily distracted — to be honest, this week was terrible; I was averaging up to two hours of screen time daily. Obviously, that’s a huge problem considering that in a few days I’m starting a business on the side of a full-time job.
To achieve my goal of having a $10K-month before the end of the year, I need to do what Steve Jobs did better than most people.
I need to increase my signal-to-noise ratio.
Steve Jobs is known for being rude, but that’s not the end of the story. In an interview with Steven Bartlett, Kevin explained that Jobs’ behavior was mainly because of how extremely direct he was. He didn’t waste time on things that wouldn’t lead him to achieve his goals.
Am I suggesting being rude as the gateway to business success? No. I actually think being kind and nice is the way, especially in the age of AI. But as I embark on my entrepreneurship journey, I’m slowly realizing that I need to give undivided attention to the aspect of the business that moves the needle in order to make significant progress.
That requires being okay with saying no. No to my phone and other distractions, but also declining an invitation to a social plan, replying to a friend a bit late, and making other sacrifices that in the moment might be awkward or not nice.
It’s inevitable.
The discipline should go beyond the day-to-day tasks. It should also apply to the business strategy. Jobs was laser-focused on making products that were not only useful but also beautiful. Because of that, good design is and has been at the core of Apple’s strategy.
If, like me, you’re in the early days of your business, it’s important to be disciplined about the problem you decide to solve, who you solve it for, and how you solve it.
It’s tricky because in the beginning, you still have to experiment with different solutions to see what resonates the most with your avatar, but even then, you can be disciplined about testing one thing at a time.
New ideas are exciting, but most of them are noise. Spending time and attention on the few things that are more likely to get you where you are trying to go is a good strategy.
A little something for you
Song of the week: Nettles - Ethel Cain. Loved it for music nerdy reasons; if you’re into music, you’ll love it.
Book of the week: Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson. Couldn’t read a better book as I navigate how to best position my offer. Russell is arguably one of the best marketers alive, and he shares actionable stuff that is so useful to anyone starting a business.
I recently tried Chablis, a 100% Chardonnay wine from Burgundy, France. I’m not much of a wine connoisseur, but I really liked and would recommend trying it. Chablis is classified into four quality levels, from lowest to highest quality: Petit Chablis, Chablis, Chablis Premier Cru, and Chablis Grand Cru. I tried both Chablis and Grand Cru; weirdly, I liked the Chablis below better. The Grand Cru was a bit too acidic. Hope you like it.
