Hey Reader!

Happy Sunday!

📆Welcome to another week of the newsletter. This week I was able to review another great book, script, shoot, edit, and publish a video and start work on next week’s content. As Ali Abdaal states in **many** of his videos and courses, the first fifty videos are meant for me to learn how to make videos; the following fifty videos are for the audience. During this week, I wanted to improve by actually appearing on-screen.

🌞I found inspiration this week from my family, they are a constant reminder to keep pressing forward despite any challenges. I’m still trying to figure out how to open these newsletters and stay away from a stream of consciousness, but this week I think we are there.

There are links throughout the email to the books and creators that shared this information with me and at this point, nothing is sponsored or affiliate links, so I am just sharing because I thought the content was worth sharing.

🏢The Family First Entrepreneur

This week’s video reviewed a newly released book, The Family First Entrepreneur by Steve Chou, my first introduction to Steve Chou was during Nick Loper’s Side Hustle Show podcast that I have listened to for over five years at this point. Steve is an engineer turned entrepreneur that has crafted several seven-figure businesses that are thriving today.

Chou’s book offers several anecdotes about his entrepreneurial journey and the stress that brought onto his family and other relationships. There are also several actionable tips sprinkled in the text and I wanted to bring those to the surface.

The book is split into two sections starting and sustaining!

⏱️Section 1: Starting

There are countless times that the statistic 9 of 10 businesses fail is reiterated in business texts, and in my opinion that is for two very important reasons. The first is to remind people that failure while not inevitable is common. The second reason is less obvious, if you want to make it there will need to be some sacrifices made to grow into a business that will endure.

Chou opens the Starting section with the analogy of The four burners: Life has 4 primary areas of life, and that can be thought of as burners on a stove.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦Family
❤️‍🩹Health
🤗Friendship
💪🏽Work

Each area of life requires attention and intention to grow. However, everyone has a finite amount of time and energy to give. One of my favorite quotes from The Devil Wears Prada is “Let me know when your whole life goes up in smoke, that means it’s time for a promotion,” hardly a goal of success but it tends to be the gold standard. These four areas are in competition and to succeed in any one of them something needs to be turned down. I am focusing on Work and Family now. I know that I need to work on improving my health with better eating and exercise habits, but this morning I’ll focus on writing this newsletter and blog post, instead of going for a run.

The thought that there is never enough time, I argue is not true. How you prioritize your time is telling of what is important to you.

The Five actionable tips from Starting

💡Chase curiosity, not passion

Pursue something that allows you to maintain your interest and to continually improve. Chasing passion does not always align with a purpose, and a purpose is a north star when things get challenging.

🥠The Fortune Side Bet

Don’t quit your job just yet - A job that you enjoy or don’t hate is a safety net for your side project. If you are adding streams of income, are you ready for the side project to become your primary income stream? Or if your project is creative in nature does making that creative endeavor diminish because you have to do it every day?

🚧Start before you are ready

Don’t wait for a perfect product - As with my last video, there is a time to create something perfect… There are also times when you need to produce something because you may never reach perfection. Producing a product and getting market feedback is invaluable, so start sooner and get feedback. Create a minimum viable product (MVP), that doesn’t have all the bells and whistles but provides some representative value to your customers.

🛒The Art of Niching down

Along the lines of starting before you are ready … Work backward from your customer’s front door — What does the customer need? How can you provide them with value and if there are other things that are already being provided to the market how can you… Make Small tweaks for the win. The goal is moving toward a market fit (unconfirmed but I’ve heard that more pink toolboxes are sold on Amazon than black).

💸Your first $1000

You must validate what you have produced to provide value to others and information about moving forward! This is the easiest way to see if people are willing to buy your product or service is to produce a minimum viable product, create some buzz, and release it into the wild. Reaching your $1000 is enough that you know that people are willing to try your product and enough to validate market interest.

🚗Section 2: Sustaining

Many of you on this newsletter, already know my background, but others may not. Most of my adult life is dedicated to sustaining and maintaining aerospace systems as a Naval Officer, and then as a licensed engineer. This section is not in the video (so bonus content for the newsletter/blog readers). It defines a framework to create sustainable growth and enforces ideas of prioritizing profit over revenue and not giving up too soon.

For as long as I can remember my parents had either multiple jobs, their own business, or multiple businesses. This diligence and sacrifice allowed me to be a kid but also showed me the value of hard work and the thought that if I wanted something I needed to work as hard as I could to earn it.

💡Thanks, Parents!

Compounding that drive with the points from this and many other teachings, I have also started a few side hustles that engage my drive for cultivating something that we own and provide a creative outlet.

This portion of the book is maximizing the time that you have dedicated to growing the business into something sustainable and manageable, offering the ability to prioritize 👆🏽family, friendship, or health instead of blind focus on exponential business growth.

The Seven Actionable Tips from Sustaining

⚙️Systems, Workflows, and Automation

Develop systems, workflows, and automation to remove as much thought and touch time as possible in delivering products and services to your customer. Provide a high level of service, but look for efficiencies - templatizing newsletters for example (tada!!) - allowing people to join and unsubscribe the newsletter without my intervention.

🚦Generating Leads and traffic

Use the minimum viable product from your starting phase to generate traffic and buzz around your products and services. The MVP needs to be representative of your product/ service offered, not the final version. Getting people to your store front is critical in delivering value to them. While the Field of Dreams quote “build it and he will come” does work… sometimes, I rather build the buzz to bring people and have them return for more.

🏦Retention and Return

Now that you build all the buzz and traffic… Keep people coming back by executing! Steve’s book does focus on e-commerce funnels, flywheels, and other methods for having customers return. With our other business we add touch points to the process to build a relationship, keep the connection, and remind people that we are here to provide them a valuable service in the future.

📈Growth is expensive

Growth is expensive period dot. To grow a company bootstraped, using venture capital, or other investments can be expensive. Adding employees adds complexity - providing systems and assets that drive seamless execution is vital to scale any operation. This is why you build those systems early in the sustaining phase of the company. There are a myriad of methods that businesses operate and a ton of goals for the operators. Is your goal to be a multi-million international conglomerate, or comfortably sustain the lives of your family and employees? Chou champions slow and sustainable growth.

⚔️Prioritize Profit, Not Sales

Revenue is great! But simple math if your expenses exceed your revenue then you are working toward a deficit. While this works for nation-states and organizations that are striving for exponential growth, the goal of this author and many readers is to grow in a controlled manner and reap the benefits of flexibility to spend time how you wish. Customer acquisition (finding new customers) can be very expensive, so instead of casting a wide net of customers that may not be interested focus on customers that are within your niche. This is your permission to be frugal, asking to be paid what you are worth, and a reminder that a discount needs to be made up in volume.

🎬Don’t Give Up too Soon

But Cyle, I don’t know how to do this. What is scaling? What happens if I lose everything that I put in? I’ll never get this time back. I’ve worked on this project for so long, it isn’t producing… I’m not getting the traction that I want…

Portions of the above are true, you won’t get the time back, and you may lose everything you put into your business. Another perspective is you have learned everything there is to know about that service or product and you won’t make the same mistake again. A quote I love is “An overnight success was years in the making,” meaning that putting value into the world takes time, and gaining traction will take longer than you want. For example, as of today, this newsletter has 4 (1,2,3,4) not hundred, thousand, or million, 4 very loyal subscribers. This effort is not a waste, it improves my skill, gives me the flexibility to not be perfect, and slowly grow. Two weeks down… A lifetime to go. But if you are reading this please share.

Use the time to build confidence, build experience, and build a community of like-minded people that share your goals and aspirations. Find people that share your interests, and cultivate relationships with them. Don’t be afraid to give up, but make sure that you know that you have given the opportunity a fair shot, and parlay that experience into something new.

⏲️Making the most of your time and freedom

People build companies for many reasons but if you are building a Family-First ideal company, not going after high-risk high-reward venture-backed start-ups that are boom or bust. Your goal is to build a company that affords you the time and flexibility to live the life that you want. So the first step is to think about the life that you want and plan how you want to use your time. Plan to be present at the events of your family and friends. Use the time you set for a purpose to do that thing - eliminate distractions avoid switching what you are working on, don’t reply to that email really quickly, avoid social media, set one or two goals a day, and complete them. Set time to do what you love. Say “no” to the nonessential, someone else’s priorities may not be aligned with your own and be don’t be afraid to delete nonessential tasks.

Attempt to make yourself/ product/ service 1% better every day and you are on a path to success. Re-evaluate your goals routinely to ensure your actions are aligned with your intention. Do you want a burst of growth and need to become a business hermit? Do you want to maintain the status quo?

”You created this business, so you set the rules on how you’re going to run it and manage it for as long as you want.”

What’s next?

👟Keep Going

This week, I’m reading and reviewing Austin Kleon’s third book, Keep Going. I will eventually get to the first installment Steal Like an Artist too, just not in the next few weeks. Also, in the following weeks, I plan on including more business and technical commentary and content. My goal is to keep everything at a digestible level while providing valuable insights.

That wraps up another edition of the weekly newsletter! I hope each of you has a great week, and I look forward to talking with you next week.

💡Until next time, keep creating, keep sharing, and stay inspired.💡

If you like what you are reading, please share. If you have any questions, comments, or complaints, feel free to reach out, I’m pretty sure I know everyone one of the readers at this point so don’t hesitate.

Cyle H.

Cyle Hawkins

Off to Week Two