And they’re never coming back
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Too much awesome in this week’s newsletter for me to try and contextualise.
Grab that morning coffee (or something stronger, no judgement) and enjoy.
- Article: The End of Free Money is an important read for every small business owner.
- Blackboard Fridays Episode #4 – can you guess “The Most Dangerous Word in Business”?
- Your AI Tool of the Week turns “like, uh, you know” into “you speak like you know a lot”.
1. Farewell to Two Zeros That Changed Your Business For the Better
Whether you’re reading this in Australia, the UK, the USA, South Africa, Fiji, or elsewhere – rising interest rates have had an affect on your business (and perhaps your home loan).
But the impact may be far more reaching, as tech journalist Alex Hern explains in this article.
Software development since the global financial crisis has been empowered by “Two Zeros” – ZIRP (the “zero interest rate policy” that fuelled capital) and ZMC (Zero Marginal Cost, which allowed SaaS business to sell you software for nothing or close-to-nothing per month).
Both of these environments have changed, and AI is partly to blame. So the background environment that provided so many simple tech tools that helped your business over the past ten years? It’s changed forever.
How will that change your growth plans?? Read the full article here.
2. Blackboard Fridays Episode #4
The answer is “Growth” – The Most Dangerous Word in Business. But why?
Growth sounds like the ideal goal for every business, but in practice, “Let’s Grow” is both too obvious to warrant debate and too vague to actually communicate direction. Growth means different things to different people – and some of those things are mutually exclusive.
Think about it: do you want growth in revenue or profit? Product lines or headcount? Do you want personal growth as well, or is it all about growing business valuation?
It’s entirely possible for two managers in your business, working on growth, to be simultaneously Hiring (grow headcount) and Firing (grow profit).
In my experience advising privately-owned businesses around the world, a focus on “Growth” usually means a strategy that hasn’t been clearly defined and articulated. And this week’s Blackboard Fridays video goes directly that definition, to ensure the Growth you want is universally supported.
3. Yoodli – Your AI Tool of the Week
Register and Use for Free Immediately
The Pitch: “Improve your communication skills with personalized and private feedback from our AI speech coach – for free”
I’m a member of a Mastermind group, and last week one of my friends joined our Zoom call … with Yoodli, her AI speech coach.
When you use Yoodli to record your meetings or have it watch some of your videos, you’ll received detailed feedback about where your communication is awesome! And where – specifically – you can improve.
When I saw Yoodli, I immediately thought of Sally Prosser, who was my speech coach when I first developed this Deep Generalist versus AI keynote helping humans beat AI. Was this the first AI tool that would put one of my friends out of business?
As it turns out, quite the contrary! Sally is a raving fan of how well Yoodli supports her work and her clients – she even interviewed Yoodli co-founder Esha Joshi for her podcast.
Every leader is a communicator, so even if you’re not a professional speaker like my friend or like Sally you do need to develop this skill.
Watch here how it scored Elon Musk a 2/5 – and then run the software to see if you can do any better.
With love,
Jacob Aldridge
International Business Advisor
