Howdy folks,

Just got back from a little trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I love SE Asia cities with massive shopping malls, endless food options & cute cafes where you can sit & watch the busy world go by.

This week I’ve got so many cool things that I’m looking forward to sharing with you. Again I’ve broken them down into little sections so that you can dip into whatever tickles your fancy the most. No matter if you’re looking to get into entrepreneurship or ideas around designing a life you love living.

Here’s a taster of what’s coming up.

• My Ju-Jitsu writing technique

• Tips on managing communication with a fully remote team

• Why you should build digital assets

• How fast can you build muscle?

• Plus AI tips, books, music, cute dogs + more

Sound like fun - let’s get into it shall we? ☺️ 

👨‍💻 Modern Entrepreneurship

1. Ju-Jitsu thinking to help get yourself unstuck

Do you ever get stuck in your head, trying to decide what your next move should be?

When you work for yourself, one thing that will happen is that you have to make decisions regularly. Some big, some small with different levels of importance.

It’s easy to get stuck in knowing what you should do. Should you hire? What tasks should you do yourself and what should you outsource?

So what do you do whenever you just don’t know what to do?

One thing that you can try is to do is Ju-Jitsu writing which I explained in more detail in my post on X.

But essentially creating a time and space where you lay everything out on paper so that you can reflect on ideas from multiple angles.

By doing this you will be able to make the best and informed decision. You write all your fears, what excites you, what worries you. You take time to acknowledge it all and try to find the best path forward.

I’m not saying that I’m an expert at making decisions. But I feel after 10+ years of meditating has taught me how to appreciate life isn’t just black & white. A decision isn’t 100% perfect or 100% awful. There are subtle grays that are worth looking at.

Anyway, if you’re stuck in business or life - I’d recommend considering writing to explore your thoughts deeper.

2. Managing communication with a fully remote team

I’ve been hiring people for 7+ years now. I remember hiring my first VA and paying her pretty much all my profits for months whenever I was just starting my online business.

Back then working online and remotely was pretty uncommon. There were internet issues, figuring out communication and managing expectations.

I don’t have and don’t plan to have a “traditional” business. Because of this, I’ve always looked at alternative ways of working and how I can approach it as well as how I manage people I work with when I hire.

I never had set 9-5 schedules, I always aimed to give autonomy, and I always tried to upskill train and self-empower anyone I hired along the way.

But anyway, I’ve learned a thing or 2 about working with people remotely over the years and I shared a few thoughts on this.

If you’ve never hired someone for remote gigs I’d highly recommend it. I’ve met some of the most amazing, talented & awesome people this way that I highly admire and respect.

3. The value of building digital assets is underrated

If there’s anything that I’ve learned from selling things online is that it is an amazing feeling to have products that can sell 24/7. You can literally go to sleep & wake up with new sales orders & money.

A lot of people talk about building wealth through assets like property or investments into stocks or crypto etc. But I don’t see many people talk about the power of building up online businesses as a digital asset.

These can be a personal brand, newsletters, digital courses, your own SaaS software or ecom business. There’s a bit more leg work up front to get these set up but I’d say the returns have awesome potential alongside there are potential headaches.

An example would be owning a property to rent on Airbnb. There’s a whole lot to deal with there in terms of buying the property, renovating, furnishing, managing Airbnb accounts, customer service etc.

Compared to if you build a personal brand based on knowledge and skills you already have and which you sell digital products.

The 2nd option is easier in my head, less risky & has a higher potential upside too. At the moment I’m most interested in business models and work that don’t scale with my time. (I’ll share more on this next week).

But an idea is that you have 1 newsletter that can reach 1 person or 100,000 people but you still did the same amount of work i.e. 4 hours to write a newsletter.

Another one would be creating a digital product. “Matt’s Guide to building your own website: A step by step blueprint to do it yourself” I sell this for $249. I spend 50 hours building the course. If I sell it once that’s a $4.98 per hour of my time. But I could sell it 100 times. Then it would be $498 per hour of my time spent on creating it.

👨‍🎨 Life Design

1. How fast can you build muscle?

It’s been just over 1 month since I started lifting weights in Bangkok. My big goal is to “look & feel great in a plain black t-shirt”.

Having a goal is helpful when working towards anything in life. In my weight loss journey, it was to get to 90kg and then 85kg. Having measurable goals & targets was super helpful in making consistent progress each week.

Right now it’s a bit abstract with building muscle and getting toned. I have a photo of a physique that would be “the dream” but for the most part, I just want to feel great within my body. Happy, confident, sexy & dope.

I wrote in the post above how fast I’ve started to see changes in my body in terms of muscle growth and definition. Again this isn’t me being a super gym bro either. It’s simple exercises that I do consistently. I don’t push myself too hard nor am I forcing myself to do things that I hate.

I shared all the lessons I’ve learned so far along with the exact workout routine that I’ve been doing so far.

My biggest takeaway for you which has been my biggest surprise.

It’s a lot easier and faster to get into shape than you could imagine. Trust me I did not want to do weights 6 months ago. All I could bring myself to do 6 months ago was walk on the treadmill. So that’s all I did nearly every day for 60min a day.

Over time I lost a bunch of weight and my confidence went up along with it. I started to do weights but I felt like it was time and I genuinely wanted to give it a go.

It’s okay to take things at your own pace and find your own way of doing things. Sure it’s great to be motivated by seeing fitness influencers across the web - but if it’s not helping you to get started I’d say scrap watching what they’re saying and just do whatever gets you moving.

Walk, dance, stretch, run, play football. Just get moving, enjoy it and have some fun. That will give you more long-term benefits than a New Year’s Resolutions that die by February.

You’ve only got 1 body so it’s super important to take care of it the best you can. You’ll not only thank yourself at a later age but it will help you deal with the physical and mental stresses of life. At least these are what I care about.

🔥 Interesting Finds

1. Access Midjourney on a browser

If you've generated over 100 images w/ Midjourney

You can now get access to the web browser interface

No more dm'ing a Discord bot - that was a bit weird, wasn't it?

Goes to show how a whole business can be built within Discord though which is pretty mental

Here’s an illustration I created to represent “The Art of Habit Stacking”

📚 The Book Club

Here's what I've been reading or listening to lately alongside some little nuggets I've picked up through the week.

1. The Parasitic Mind by Gad Saad

I don’t know about you but I feel pretty lost with the current state of the world it feels like the world is divided and people are more against each other than ever.

I stumbled across this book from an Elon Musk X post. I’d never come across Gad Saad before but I was interested in the idea that there are idea pathogens that are being spread and this is becoming dangerous.

It’s been a super interesting book to listen to so far. To be honest it gets me a bit frustrated & sad when I hear some of the examples given and how extreme things have got in the world.

I’m not one to get into politics but if you’re a bit confused about the state of the world then I’d recommend giving it a listen.

2. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

I’m still going through this book and it’s my go-to audiobook to listen to before bed. There’s nothing like a good history book to put you off to sleep. Lately, I’ve been listening about tectonic plates and how they have shaped the earth.

Whenever I listen to history books like this it always amazes me how much we’ve learned collectively about the world & universe we live in. If the previous book has highlighted the issues with ideas that divide us. This book is a reminder of what happens when we put our best minds together to figure things out.

🎵 Music to Vibe too

Stumbled across this beautiful instrumental sax piece by Caleb Arredondo. This is a song you can close your eyes to a let the music take you on an emotional journey. 🎷

Come join the listening party with one of my curated Spotify playlists

• 🤘 Rock Out | Belfast in the 00s

• 🧊 Vibe | Bali Beach Bar at Sunset

• 🔋 Energy | London Rave at 3am

🐶 Real or Ai Dog?

Last week it was pretty equal split with Ai vs Real doggo - I told you this would get tougher. This week I’ve taken things to another level. One of these is Ai generated - let’s see if you can get it right this week too.

And that is it for this week's newsletter folks

wishing you a great week ahead as always

let's chat soon

Matt

Stay awesome

🫶

P.s

Did you like the new design this week? I spent more time working on the branding to make it match up with a look & feel that matches my “personal brand”.

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