Week’s Top Picks
Quick Entrepreneurial Tales, Investment Stories, Interesting Stuff & Resources to Spark Your Fire
First up, the most popular news stories and top AI tools to accelerate your entrepreneurial journey:
(1) OpenAI has recently made a disturbing and seemingly problematic discovery, Q*, right before firing its CEO
(2) A 28-year-old mom without a degree is on track to make $180,000 only working 3 hours a day
(3) A 21-year-old spent $300 to start his sticker side hustle and can bring in nearly $38,000 a day
Top AI Tools This Week 🔥
🤖 Claude 2 just got released and is more powerful and useful than ever. With a new 200K context window and improved refining abilities, it’s even better than the previous version of Claude, which was already amazing (link)
🤖 RewindAI is a personalized AI powered by everything you’ve seen, said, or heard. The people around you will wonder how you do so much, but it’s just because of a you-powered personal assistant. (link)
Hey Cashflowers,
This week we’ll be diving into one of the most daunting and common ends to entrepreneurship: Not giving up. Giving up is the reason 99% of people who own, run, or start a business fail, so this week we are going to take a deep dive into what makes you want to quit, why that happens, and how to deal with it so you stick with it.
Let’s get into it!
How it Starts
Why do you want to quit in the first place?
There is no easy answer to why someone quits an entrepreneurial journey, there are too many factors to blanket it.
Some businesses might not be making money, others might be too much work, and some might just not fit the person.
One of the most common reasons you’d quit is the buildup of little short term things. One drink here, skip work for an hour here, play video games tonight instead of working on my business… The list goes on and on.
The reason the short-term “Feel good” things are so distracting and killing to your business is because of your perception of the future.
If you don’t want that long-term success bad enough, skipping the little things now seems like a harmless action, but it’s not.
Just like wasting your time throughout the day, it’s not about losing an entire 8 hours of your day, but rather 20 minutes here, half an hour there, and maybe 5 minutes on top of that. It builds up to be hours a day of distraction.
The same applies to what I’m saying about entrepreneurship.
When you spend a little time each day skipping out on something, not doing the work you should, not analyzing the numbers you should, and not taking the calls with clients that you should, you build it up over time, and it amounts to a lot.
That’s a common reason that can be applied to many because time is valuable to everyone.
In the next section, we’ll talk about why these things are so distracting.
Stay Focused
How do you not waste your time?
Watch a million YouTube videos, read many books, and talk to millions of people, everybody has a different way that works for them.
And that’s exactly it.
It works for THEM.
The best way to learn to limit distractions is to first find what they are. Maybe it’s video games, social media, or even your friends.
Some people have to do exactly 12 pushups, drink a half gallon of water, and then take 12 steps in a circle to get their brain into a focused state.
Okay, maybe not really but you get my point.
Find the things that distract you by brainstorming them or thinking about how you can do the most with your time each day.
Here are some of the most common ways you’re probably wasting your time:
- Excessive Social Media Use: Spending too much time on social media platforms can destroy your time, especially when doom scrolling on short-form content.
- Procrastination: Delaying important tasks is one of the biggest reasons you end up on social media in the first place. Get it done ASAP!
- Multitasking: Juggling multiple tasks simultaneously might seem efficient, but it often leads to reduced productivity and quality of work, as well as increased stress.
- Lack of Prioritization: Failing to prioritize tasks can result in spending time on less important activities at the expense of more crucial ones.
- Overthinking: Ruminating excessively on decisions or situations without taking concrete actions can lead to wasted mental energy and time.
- Failure to Set Goals: Without clear goals, you’ll never be on a determined route throughout your day and will be more likely to lose focus.
- Unstructured Breaks: Taking breaks is important, but unstructured or excessively long breaks can turn into time-wasting activities, and will also leave you out of focus.
Now that you know what distracts you, let’s get into how you’re going to kill them.
The most important thing is your why.
The most successful and determined people in this world have the best reasons as to why they work so hard every day.
If you’re someone just wanting to make money it usually isn’t enough, and once you start making it usually you’ll give up anyways.
Things like making your parents proud, proving to yourself that you can do it, or proving that you’re capable are all great reasons to keep you driven throughout everyday life.
Things that aren’t revolved around you likely won’t help, and rather hinder your success.
For example, getting back at your ex-girlfriend by being successful isn’t a good reason, because your main focus is on someone else, not your success.
You need a good why, and on top of that you also need a solid image in your mind of what the future will look like if you stick with it.
If you have an image in your mind of what success looks like to you, then giving in to those little distractions won’t be so easy.
You’ll constantly be thinking of how that’ll affect that image in your mind, and you’ll likely become afraid to stray off the path.
Positive plus: fear is the best driving factor for humans.
The reality
You wanted this, should it be hard?
To end off the newsletter, let’s face it:
It’s not meant to be easy.
Being successful, creating different sources of cash flow, improving yourself as a person, and proving yourself capable are all extremely hard things.
Wanting to quit is a sign you’re doing things right, and it’s something you should face and learn to overcome.
The life of an entrepreneur isn’t easy and that’s why 99% of people quit, because they can’t handle the hard, or they don’t have a reason why, or an influx of many other things.
But in the end, did you think it was going to be easy? Did you think you’d just think differently and what you wanted to happen would happen?
Of course not! And that’s the best part about it.
Enduring hard things is good, and doing what you know you should to get the results you want is something everyone should chase.
So with that, until next time Cashflowers
Cheers!
Cashflow Chronicles
Tweets of the Week
November 30, 2023
November 30, 2023
In Case You Missed Previous Newsletters:
The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Acquisition Part 2
The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Acquisition
Tom Brickman Real Estate Investing 101 Special
The SaaS Playbook – Navigating from Idea to Six-Figure Months
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