Diary Of An Entrepreneur Series continued... Day 141: - It has been a weird AF month. I feel like I've been operating at like 20% but squeezing as much out of my limited capacity as possible. But I very much miss operating at 100%. - Still in "high impact, low touch" operating mode lol. Struggling to be in flow & do production work, but high-level decision making & strategy work has been good - Had a great consulting call with a client today chatting through understanding partnerships with PE firms, risks of signing on a big whale client & transitioning from freelance to full-time agency - Here are some miscellaneous pieces of advice from the call: 1. Partnerships with PE firms are great, they just take forever. So don't bet on that cash coming in now. Expect to be planting seeds that might sprout in 12-18+ months 2. Biggest risk when you land a big whale client is taking on fixed costs that you're forced to carry even if they churn 3. Other risk is also dedicating too much time/energy/care to the whale client that your entire business revolves around keeping them happy and your service quality for other clients suffer - Jumped on a call to support with some leadership stuff while my COO is out of office for a few days & did some light coaching on how to add structure & direction to conversations that get very brainstormey (eg. client calls where there are a TON of great ideas flying around) - A couple tips on effective communication: 1. Set the tone & structure of the conversation from the jump. Establish the purpose of the call, the key topics + what success at the end of the call looks like 2. After a lot of ideation, summarize & reflect back the key ideas you heard them say (eg. I heard that the 3 key things you want to test are X, Y, and Z - is that correct or did I miss anything?) 3. Summarize key decisions to make sure everyone is on the same page that decisions were made & what those decisions were. Sometimes it gets confusing between what was a decision vs just an idea or someone "thinking out loud" and that creates a lot of additional back-and-forth after the call 4. Always send call/meeting recaps - Had an amazing discovery call with a new brand we're excited to work with on @heybackbone 's productized service offering (still haven't publicly rolled this out yet) to help a 6-figure brand get email/SMS set up on a budget, profitably & still have insanely high quality strategy + creative 🥳 - Wrote some content - Had the absolute best mentorship call with my @youthfullyhq where we chatted about life design, how to make choices & know when to pivot, and the value of planning. He's 18 & asking the best questions like: 1. What's the difference between a plan vs a direction? How do you know when to use what? 2. How far out does it make sense to plan? How do you know when to plan far out for something vs not so far out? 3. How do you know when an opportunity is a distraction vs a sign to change directions? - These are the types of conversations I absolutely LOVEEEE coaching on. So many cool pieces of advice that came out from that call. Thinking of grabbing that transcript & sharing some highlights - Chatted with @DTC__POD & excited to share the strategy on how to scale retention marketing at each stage from "launch to 9-figures" #diaryofanentrepreneur If you're liking this series, follow me @jjesschan to follow along & start from the beginning here 👇 xitter.cf/jjesschan/status/16455…

I do believe that the number one element preventing people from success is their inability to go ALL IN on whatever it is they’re doing Success comes with trade offs. Full stop. If you’re trying to have work life balance in your early days, it is naïve to expect an irregular outcome. Stress needs to be an enhancer, not an inhibitor. Few people are actually willing to make these sacrifices and go all in. The few who do reap the rewards, but have to make amends with the trade offs that were sacrificed along the way. Have the self awareness to know where you stand.