Getting 1% better with purpose, funnels and AI

6 min readNov 20, 2023

Useful tools and concepts to get you thinking out of the box!

Announcement!

I’ve started a podcast!

It goes by the same name as this newsletter, Another Excuse, and aims to learn more from people who have been there and done it.

The episodes will come out weekly. I question my guests about how they started, the mental frameworks and hurdles to getting started and interesting things about their industries.

I started for purely selfish reasons, in the hope of learning more from my network.

I’ll post a link to the podcast on my socials and attach the links in next week’s newsletter.

Let me know what you think!

Another Excuse Newsletter

Welcome back to the Another Excuse Newsletter. It isn’t just another excuse, but a reason to start that thing you’ve been putting off.

What to expect this week:
👓Perspective — 1% better
🔨 Tool — Photoshop
🍿Consume — Simon Squibb
📖Concept — Funnels

If you’re getting value from this newsletter, please share it with one person! It helps more than you’d expect!

Perspective

1% Better

We refer to this concept frequently in personal development circles.

It’s a pretty simple concept to grasp, but after reading a full explanation in James Clear’s book Atomic Habits, it really did change my perspective.

Most people want to improve in one or many aspects of their lives. Sometimes these goals can be daunting and seem very far away from the person we are now.

This causes us to become overwhelmed and not do anything about it because the task seems too big.

As the graph above shows, if you commit to that goal for a year and aim to get 1% better each day, you will see a 37X improvement.

Day-to-day 1% seems insignificant and possibly unnoticeable, but it has a compounding effect.

In Clear’s blog, he breaks the 1% rule down into 3 continuous improvement tools:

Step 1: Do more of what already works

Step 2: Avoid tiny losses

Step 3: Measure backward

Each step seems so simple, but when used together, they contribute to that compounding effect.

Clear explains each step and shares many more posts on the topic.

You can find the blog post here if you’re looking for that extra bit of motivation.

His book changed the way I look at habits and how to form them.

Small, less daunting steps are the way to go!

Tool

Photoshop

Yes, Photoshop has been around for ages.

It’s always been that application with a steep learning curve that was reserved for photographers and designers.

That’s how I saw it. Until I started using it, I didn’t really understand its vast use cases and capabilities.

As useful as it may be, it still had that dreaded learning curve that takes ages to get a hang of. And if I’m not using it daily, I constantly search for how to do things on YouTube.

This new AI upgrade seems to get rid of most of those complications.

You can now select a part of an image and simply type what you want to do with that part of the image.

You can add in elements, remove things or completely change the surroundings of your subject or what they’re wearing.

The possibilities are endless, and it’s yet another signal that AI is making the possibility of a one-person business that much cheaper and easier.

You don’t even need to know how to use Photoshop, just the lasso tool.

Adobe is adopting AI fast and I’ll go into their Firefly suite in another newsletter.

Consume (Read / Watch / Listen)

Simon Squibb

Simon Squibb is an entrepreneur who creates content around starting your own business.

He lives by an ethos of give without take and provides as much free value as possible.

He’s a great person to follow on socials. You should check him out if you’re interested in starting your own thing. He speaks about changing your mental models around the fears and complications of starting your own business.

I attended an event he organised where he spoke to founders about starting businesses with purpose. Having purpose drive you can help with determination and motivation when the going gets tough.

He has created a platform called HelpBnk. I’d describe it as a combination of Reddit and LinkedIn, where people ask industry-specific questions and people help where they can.

I’ve mentioned this before, but you’ll never be financially free and truly own your time unless you start a business or own part of a business.

Social conditioning creates a lot of fear around the topic. Surrounding yourself with people and content that pushes a different message can be very helpful in getting over that hurdle.

Check out HelpBnk, and follow him here:
TikTok
YouTube
Instagram
Twitter

Concept

Funnels

A marketing funnel is a visual representation of the customer journey.

It’s shaped like a funnel because it resembles the size of the audience at each stage as you progress toward the sale.

Each type of audience requires a different style of marketing. As you work the potential customers down the funnel, your marketing gets more specific.

We know the different stages of marketing as Top of the Funnel (ToFu), Middle of the funnel (MoFu) and Bottom of the Funnel (BoFu). Pretty self-explanatory.

ToFu: The main objective is awareness. People are now aware of the problem you solve. You cast as wide a net as possible.

MoFu: Prospects want a solution to a specific problem that you solve and are weighing up their options. You are creating materials that help you stand out from the competition.

BoFu: Prospects decide to become your customers. This would include user guides and capabilities while using your product or service. It will also include the user experience while making a purchase. You want to convert as many as possible and don’t want to lose out on customers because of your mistakes.

The concept of the funnel can be applied to any objective. If you’re aiming to acquire leads, get people to sign up for a webinar, make sales or get people to sign up for your email list, they all require some sort of funnel.

Working your prospective clients down the funnel can help you strategize and achieve your objectives. It can also help you test where you lose prospects and plan to change that.

Here’s a great article on funnels if you want to learn more about them.