Weekly 40 Hour Kit by Fabiano Abreu Ott

The journey of growing your business without grinding 24/7.

40 Hour Kit: Why Would You Fire Yourself Today?

Hey Reader, recently I talked to a friend about the startup I founded and was working on from 2020 to mid 2025 and why I decided to end it. I told him it all came down to one question I read in a book from entrepreneur Paul Jarvis: 'Would you start your business all over again with your current knowledge and learnings?'. My answer was no. So I decided to let go.
Hope your current answer is Yes.

Here is your weekly inspiration from other bootstrapped founders:

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💡 Entrepreneurial Insight

The thing you are personally good at is often the thing your company will struggle to scale, because you keep getting involved.

Based on Ben Chestnut's story with Mailchimp, bootstrapping it from 0 to $12 Billion Exit.

⚖️ Balance Hack

Keep a notepad next to you. Every time you have the urge to research something random (e.g., "how is the stock from Alphabet doing?", "is my old friend still running his company?"), write it down instead of opening a new tab. Look them all up at the end of the day.

Inspired by Cal Newport's 'Deep Work' philosophy on scheduling distraction.

🚀 Challenge

Take one core concept from your favorite hobby (e.g., intervals from running, composition from photography, wave selection from surfing) and creatively apply it to solve one business problem this week.

Inspired by the principles in David Epstein's bestselling book 'Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World'​

✨ Recommendation

How to know which marketing channel to focus on? And how to gain traction?

1. Define your marketing goal (e.g., 10 new customers).
2. Brainstorm one idea for every potential channel.
3. Rank them by potential.
4. Launch experiments with a clear metric and a hard deadline.
5. If significant traction isn't achieved in the timeframe, pivot the channel or your product - depending on user feedback.
6. Repeat step 1.

Based on the insights from 7-figure bootstrapped founder Pierre de Wulf & the traction framework from DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg.​

❓ Question for you to ask another Entrepreneur

If you had to fire yourself as the CEO today, what would be the primary reason stated in your termination letter?

Have a nice evening and productive week!

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Best,

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Fabiano

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​Read past 40 Hour Kits here.