Weekly 40 Hour Kit by Fabiano Abreu Ott

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

40 Hour Kit: Your 'Ignored Edge' Strategy

(Here for the subject line? Find it in the 🚀 Challenge section)

Hey Reader,

I took 3 weeks off recently to travel to my family in Brazil, at a time when my business needed me most. I failed to switch off for 3 weeks, but at the end I managed to keep the workload below 3 hours per week.
Even though those weeks were long planned, it felt very scary throughout the trip. But getting back up to speed upon my return I noticed two things:
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​1. There will always be challenges within your business, but there are only so many unique experiences left with the people you love.
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​2. You can practice the confidence that even if life gets in the way of your business - you will figure everything out.

Now, let's get into your fresh 40 Hour Kit:

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💡 Entrepreneurial Insight

The most valuable person in your business is the one whose job is to tell you what's wrong.
If you don't have a critic within your business, find someone whose regular role is to attack the weaknesses in your products before customers find them.

Based on Daniel Ek (co-founder of Spotify) on the David Senra podcast.

⚖️ Balance Hack

Treat rest as a skill you practice, not a reward you earn. Design a rest system for yourself:

• Schedule active recovery: a phone-less walk, a nap, a hobby that puts you into flow state.
• Be okay with stopping work mid-flow (which also makes getting back to flow easier the next day).

Inspired by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang (founder and author) in his book 'Rest'.​

🚀 Challenge

This week, add your 'Ignored Edge'. One unglamorous task your competitors are too proud or too lazy to copy.

1. Spot your existing ones: Name one valuable task in your business that's a bit tedious or low-status: the manual onboarding call, the scrappy SEO page, the personal reply to every new lead.
2. Brainstorm (with AI): Find one similar 'Edge' that serves your customers.
3. Execute it: Test it out.

Based on an article by Substack creator and author Cate Hall.

✨ Recommendation

Whether you're preparing your next customer workshop, pitch, keynote or sales call, this framework will help you crush the first 3 minutes:

1. 'Why should the audience care?' Start with a powerful statistic, ask a question, share a quote, or open with a visualization. Give the audience the immediate feeling that listening to you will be relevant to them.
2. Name the outcome of the session: "by the end you will..."
3. Continue with the roadmap: announce the structure/agenda of the session.
4. State your main point (and repeat it throughout the session): craft your main argument/takeaway into one brief, memorable phrase.

Based on a framework from Stand & Deliver I learned in a communication coaching session during my time as an employee at Google.

❓ Question for you to ask another Entrepreneur

What's one 'rule' in how you run your business that's actually just a habit you've never questioned?

Have a nice and productive week!

-Fabiano

Grow together with other founders - without sacrificing your lifestyle.

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​Read past 40 Hour Kits here.