#116 – Closing & Expenses

Good morning everyone,

Hope you’re having a great week!

Let’s jump in.

read online on my website 

read time 3 minutes 

#116 at a Glance:

• Quote: Arguing for your limitations.

• Podcast: Mark Bouris x The Inspired Unemployed.

• Framework: The ‘Either-Or’ Close.

• Hack: Personal Income/Expense Tracker.

• Tweet: Long-term gain > short-term pain.

Quote I’ve been thinking about:

Podcast I listened to:

Straight Talk with Mark Bouris #200 – The Inspired Unemployed

The Inspired Unemployed are arguably the most captivating comedic duo in Australia right now.

Jack Steele and Matt Ford, two Gerringong boys-turned-social-media-superstars, burst onto the scene just over six years ago with their hilariously viral skits.

Fast forward to now, and the lads have just turned 30 having amassed millions of followers online, built a multi-million dollar beer company, produced a hit TV show, and now launched their very own travel platform.

Pretty wild for two sparkies from the South Coast of NSW.

This was a very cool interview that got into the weeds of how they commercialise their popularity.

What struck me most is how astute and intentional they are about what they do.

A very easy listen with lots of fascinating (and hilarious) stories.

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.

[Duration: 57 minutes]

Framework I’ve been thinking about:

The ‘Either-Or’ Close 

I’ve been thinking a lot about sales this week and particularly the ‘either-or’ strategy.

The ‘Either-Or’ Close is a classic sales technique where you frame the buying decision as a choice between two options you present — Option A or Option B — rather than between yes or no.

This shifts the conversation from “Should I buy?” to “Which one should I buy?”, thereby reducing the likelihood of outright rejection.

It’s the reason why car salespeople will always show you two different models to choose from, and it’s the same kind of thinking behind tiered pricing models.

Now, this is extremely powerful when framing any sort of offering as it feeds directly into the cognitive bias of loop-closure.

But, I think that it is also highly applicable to the offers that we present to ourselves…

For instance, choosing between going to the gym or staying at home and doing nothing is a traditional choice between ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

However, presenting yourself the choice of going to the gym or going for a run creates the inevitability of exercise and (to some extent) completely removes the possibility of doing nothing.

Same can apply to pretty much any pursuit…

Hack I’ve been using:

Personal Income/Expense Tracker

Continuing on with the ‘personal finances’ theme from the last few newsletters…

Since the start of this financial year, I’ve been using an excel spreadsheet to track my personal income and expenses.

The way it works is I simply set aside 15-30 minutes each week to sit down and manually log my earnings and expenditure across all avenues.

I then categorise them into ‘buckets’ and see how they evolve on a weekly/monthly basis.

As basic as it sounds, I’ve never really tried anything like this before, and I’ve honestly found it to be incredibly valuable.

I’m a big believer in what gets measured gets managed, and when it came to my personal finances, I’ve never really taken a proactive view in monitoring them on such a regular basis.

Having made the switch to this weekly approach has honestly been a game changer for me. It’s also given me a much greater sense of ownership and accountability over both my income and spending.

I can’t recommend it highly enough.

As I said, there’s nothing too scientific about it, it’s just a very basic excel spreadsheet with some automated Pivot Tables to summarise different periods and categories.

(Would be happy to share the template if any of you would like it, just hit reply on this email).

I know that this certainly isn’t the flashiest way to do it, and I’m sure there are many apps out there that would be far more efficient and visually appealing.

But I decided to go down the manual route since I’ve found that physically inputting the data has meant that the numbers take on higher degree of significance — I’m actually processing the figures on a more meaningful level as opposed to it all being automated.

I haven’t set any goals with it just yet — at this point in time, it’s purely a measurement tool so I can understand the buckets that make up my personal P&L.

Will keep you updated with how it progresses.

Tweet I liked:

Long-Term Gain > Short-Term Pain

Thanks for reading! Grateful for your support.

Stay hungry, stay humble, stay curious. ⚡

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This goes a long way to helping me reach more people :)

See you in the next one,

Dimi

(P.S. the best ways to get in touch with me are via email or LinkedIn).