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My 14 years’ experience of growing a business from £0-£100m as well as the life that goes with it.

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Simon Says

Winformation This Week...

Picture this, you’ve launched a new business, product or service. You want lots of eyeballs on it to make lots of sales? Correct? I know it goes against all logic, but no that’s not the move to make. In today’s One Idea to Win in Business I explain the natural mistake we’ve all made in pushing something new too hard too early. Trust me, I’ve learned the hard way on this one.

In 2025 billionaires seems to get bad PR. Almost as if they have done some wrong in creating huge businesses. If there’s one thing we can all agree on, to build something worth a billion you needed to have created a huge amount of value to others. That, and be VERY good at managing your time. No huge teams or private jets needed. In today’s One Idea to Win in Life we look at 10 billionaire time management secrets that can be implemented by us mere mortals.

One Idea to Win in Business

Something For You to Avoid

The Costly Mistake of Chasing Customers Too Soon

How can marketing your business too much be an error? Ok, sounds strange, so let me explain...

We’ve all been there (or maybe you are about to be there) a product or service, or maybe new business altogether! Exciting times and a desperate desire for lots of customers from day 1. A week after opening, you’ve had friends and family launch party and before the balloons have come down off the ceiling, you are spending your hard-earned startup capital on adverts and marketing to drive customers to your through your site or your door.

You have your product or service to sell, it’s taken a year, 2 years, maybe longer to get to this point, so lots of customers or clients to buy from you is the obvious next step? In fact, lots of customers early on could be what dumps your business into an early grave.

Here's Why...

People don’t decide to buy from marketing campaigns, they only create an initial awareness of your business. People actually decide to buy after validation from others. 20 years ago, this was all word of mouth, these days its 10% word of mouth, 90% online reviews and testimonials. So, by spending on big campaigns in year 1, you are amplifying the message and increasing the eyeballs on a product or service that at the moment isn’t quite good enough. You’re still perfecting it.

If you pay for more eyeballs on a business that hasn’t perfected the product, then when people talk, the word of mouth is negative, not positive. Negative word of mouth travels up to 5 times further and more quickly, that’s just human nature. There are scenarios that for every pound spent on marketing, you are in the grand mechanism of how this all takes place, weakening your brand, customer by customer.

“This is like trying to build a mighty skyscraper from foundations that aren’t deep enough for a single story garage.”

Seek Feedback & Improve Everything...

I know it’s tempting and goes against everything that might feel natural, but Year 1, stay small, market to closed groups, seek feedback. Use the feedback to tweak, change and perfect everything. I’m not talking here about the product or service, but the people, the processes everything. Look at your initial offering critically, keep people that offer you honest unfiltered advice close to you and ask them questions. Keep a close eye on all review platforms, absorb the feedback. Slowly, as the whole set up improves, day by day, week by week, month by month, you will see your custom grow. The 2nd wave of new customers has to also be spoken with. How did you hear about our business? When it’s clear that 20-30% of your customer base has come from friends and family referrals, and it’s increasing without any further direct custom, then you know it’s time to start the larger scale marketing.

Now you can go!

You only want eyeballs on your product or service when the conversations taking place about your business offline are positive. Your product or service is never not being improved, but when the conversations and referrals to your business are clearly positive, then is the time to start the larger scale marketing.

One Idea to Win in Life

Something to Get You Organised

How to Run Your Day Like a Billionaire (Without Losing Your Mind)

Whilst we may not have the team behind us to implement Elon Musk’s 5 minute time blocking method, there are some more “normal” time management lessons that the billionaires can teach us mere mortals. We dive into 6 great examples Hopefully you (and your productivity) can benefit from at least one or two of these billionaire time management principals.

Andy Grove – Work Until You Can’t

Sounds like the sort of thing you say in a job interview, but it works for Andy. Probably wouldn’t see this plastered over any modern day takes on time management, but there we go. Who’s the expert? Andy says rather than working to an arbitrary manmade thing like time “I finish at 5:30”, work until your body and mind says “that’s enough”.

Mohammed Dewi – Scheduled Downtime

The most effective people don’t work 16 hours a day. The human mind and body need rest. Productivity is about energy and focus not time. Billionaire Mohammed Dewi swears by his midday workout. Shannon Miller, 7 times Olympic Medallist has a midday nap. Whatever the “break” from constant focus is, it’s needed if you are human

Elon Musk – Leave the Meeting

If you aren’t contributing, or getting anything from it, leave the meeting. A little heads up at the start that this could happen saves a lot of “WTF” as you leave the room, I’m sure!

Warren Buffet – Blank Time/Thinking Time

This comes up more than once surprisingly in this list. Leaving white space in the day to think or even for downtime. The difference between the billionaire and the normal person on the street is probably the intentional scheduling of it rather than the “I’ve had enough now, where’s the remote”.

Jeff Bezos – Managing Energy as Well as Time

Bezos schedules the “High IQ” mentally draining meetings for when he feels his sharpest. This is mid-morning for him. Knowing when you’re at your best is key to know when to agree to perform “that task”. It’s different for everyone, but awareness of your daily energy cycles is key.

Mark Cuban – The Number One Time Waster

Mark Cuban says that meetings are the number one time waster. He only attends when it’s absolutely necessary. He says this is only when you “can’t reach a conclusion via email”.

Mike Cannon-Brookes - Unitasking

Focus on single tasking rather than jumping between tasks. This helps to reduce “context-switch overhead”

Dustin Moskovitz – No Meetings Wednesday

He implemented a day each week in his company when no meetings are allowed so people can focus on deep work, undisturbed

Jack Dorsey - Daily Theming

Dorsey famously themes his days (e.g. Mondays: management, Tuesdays: product, Wednesdays: marketing, etc.). This prevents scatter and helps deep focus on one area at a time.

Elon Musk – 5 Minute Time Blocks

The X Man reportedly breaks his day into 5-minute intervals, allocating each micro-slot to a specific task. This extreme granularity is intended to eliminate wasted time. Probably not the practice of the “normal” person, but is there something in this? Could this be extended into 15-minute blocks for busy days. Does that meeting need to be an hour, could it be 45 or 30 instead.

Which one will make the biggest impact to your time (and sanity!).

Win or Wonder?

Ask Me a Question…

No matter where you are on this mad journey. Starting out, scaling up, or somewhere in the messy middle feel free to ask me anything.

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Until next week! 

Let’s win, together!