Stay flexy and burn your playbooks
Recipes will only get you so far
You haven’t travelled through time, I’m just behind on the newsletter send outs. As always, I try to focus more on quality than quantity, so if I don’t feel I’m in the right headspace to send out something truly valuable, I don’t send anything.
God, I love that excuse.
I appreciate everyone’s support (and the messages every time I ghost y’all for a while), they help me get back in the game sooner rather than later.
If you haven’t already, it’s always a good idea to:
Now let’s jump into what you’re here for:
The border police receive a tip that a man riding a bike carrying 2 bags of sand is smuggling something over the border.
They quickly find the individual and inspect his bags of sand. They pour them out and carefully search the sand, but there’s nothing there, so they let the man go.
This happens daily for over a month, each time the police inspect his bags of sand, but never find anything. The man was indeed smuggling something.
How was he getting away with it?
An answer, as usual, at the end.
Advice is cheap
Four and a half years ago, when I technically became a fully fledged entrepreneur, I tried to apply playbooks from former jobs - either from my advertising agency age or from my e-commerce stint.
After all, they got me that far and worked quite well there, so why wouldn’t they apply in my own business?
Looking back, boy, was I naive.
Just because something works in one scenario, it rarely means it’ll work in your case. Because every business is different. Because every business stage requires a different set of skills.
Take this into consideration:
People who are successful are rarely aware of the things that made them succeed.
It’s a common survival bias - when someone else has a spectacular win, a lot of people commenting on the other person’s win will attribute that to luck, privilege or shady business practices. But that only applies to other people, right?
However, in your case, if you’re successful, it’s because of your hard work, grit, hustle and generally being better than everyone else.
As you’ve probably guessed by now, that’s your survival bias talking.
It’s why most business coaches are only relevant as an inspirational tool. If you’re feeling down or unmotivated, they might be a great asset.
But if you’re looking for actual advice, you’re mostly wasting time.
If you’re truly lost, look at people that have gone through the exact stage you’re at now. They’re the ones that can actually offer relevant input. Anything else is just noise.
As always, though, the best way forward is to start doing.
Even if you’re clumsy in the beginning, no amount of planning can ever outdo the impact and lessons of actually executing.
Even in this economy.
Otherwise, you might get stuck in an endless loop where you’re just planning and not delivering any actual output. And that’s never good for business.
Answer: The police was so focused on his sand bags that they didn’t notice the man was riding a different bike every time. He was smuggling bikes.
Extra note: I’m looking to get some guest writers involved with Lateral Thinking. If you have a new perspective on an interesting topic and are interested in sharing it with +2.000 like minded individuals (mostly marketers, entrepreneurs and people interested in business), reply to this email and let’s chat.