After I finished reading it (in March of 2022), I sent a text to a friend saying something like this:

Four Thousand Weeks will probably be the best new book I read this year—six out of five stars. I wish everyone would read this book.

After another nine months in the Year of our Lady Two Thousand and Twenty-Two, I stand by that assessment: Four Thousand Weeks is an excellent book, and you should read it.

Four Thousand Weeks is explicitly not about productivity, getting things done, or tips and tricks to answer more emails.

Four Thousand Weeks is about the simple fact that you — and me, and everyone else reading this letter (and not reading this letter) — will die.

If you or I are lucky enough to live to 80 years old, we’ll each have had just over 4000 weeks on this planet. That’s not a lot of time. But it is all (or about all, or more than) most of us are lucky enough to get.

So, what should you do with your limited amount of time?

Burkeman’s stance is that you can’t do everything and cannot keep your options eternally open. If you try and do all the things, you will feel overwhelmed at the treadmill of continual new life experiences to try and do.

The only way to relieve that pressure is to acknowledge and accept that you physically cannot do all the things and have all the experiences in life. That is the way to freedom from the sense of anxiety that you’re missing out on things.

Over to Oliver Burkeman:

Once you truly understand that you’re guaranteed to miss out on almost every experience the world offers, the fact that there are so many you still haven’t experienced stops feeling like a problem.

And

Convenience culture seduces us into imagining that we might find room for everything important by eliminating only life’s tedious tasks. But it’s a lie. You have to choose a few things, sacrifice everything else, and deal with the inevitable sense of loss that results.

Setting down ideas, projects, and ambitions is hard. It requires tough choices (”This or that”), but it’s worth it.

There is a challenge and resistance in acknowledging and accepting that I won’t get everything done in my life that I aspire to get done. I won’t be able to pursue every ambition that feels important.

That’s okay.

Momento Mori. Remember that you [have to] die. Accept that you can’t do everything; instead, use the time you have to do the things you care about.

Skimming through my Kindle copy as I write this letter, here are highlighted quotes that jumped back out at me:

(Emphasis — bold text — added by me.)

A few years ago, drowning in email, I successfully implemented the system known as Inbox Zero, but I soon discovered that when you get tremendously efficient at answering email, all that happens is that you get much more email.

Feeling busier—thanks to all that email—I bought Getting Things Done, by the time management guru David Allen, lured by his promise that it is “possible for a person to have an overwhelming number of things to do and still function productively with a clear head” and “what the martial artists call a ‘mind like water.’ ”

But I failed to appreciate Allen’s deeper implication—that there’ll always be too much to do—and instead set about attempting to get an impossible amount done. In fact, I did get better at racing through my to-do list, only to find that greater volumes of work magically started to appear.

Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster.

We plan compulsively, because the alternative is to confront how little control over the future we really have.

The more you try to manage your time with the goal of achieving a feeling of total control, and freedom from the inevitable constraints of being human, the more stressful, empty, and frustrating life gets. But the more you confront the facts of finitude instead—and work with them, rather than against them—the more productive, meaningful, and joyful life becomes. I don’t think the feeling of anxiety ever completely goes away; we’re even limited, apparently, in our capacity to embrace our limitations.

“Missing out” is what makes our choices meaningful in the first place.

Embracing your limits means giving up hope that with the right techniques, and a bit more effort, you’d be able to meet other people’s limitless demands, realize your every ambition, excel in every role, or give every good cause or humanitarian crisis the attention it seems like it deserves. It means giving up hope of ever feeling totally in control, or certain that acutely painful experiences aren’t coming your way. And it means giving up, as far as possible, the master hope that lurks beneath all this, the hope that somehow this isn’t really it—that this is just a dress rehearsal, and that one day you’ll feel truly confident that you have what it takes.

As I write this letter, I’m 36 years old. I turn 37 on January 26th, 2023. On my 37th birthday (in 49 days), I’ll have been around on earth for 1,924 weeks, A year and a half under the halfway point (2,000 weeks).

Reading Four Thousand Weeks encouraged me to set down a lot of aspirations/goals/worries that were leaving me churning with a mid-30s anxious feeling of “Oh no! When will I get to that? I’m missing out!!” I’ve started reorienting and focusing on a smaller amount of meaningful things that give me a feeling of joy and growth.

As a partial list, so far this year, after reading Four Thousand Weeks and spending a few months meditating and ruminating on the lessons in the book:

• I’ve picked up pencil sketching again (and am starting charcoal sketching).
• I’m getting more involved with my local communities and volunteering opportunities.
• I’ve started spending more time in my garden with my plants and in the forest with the trees.
• I plan on buying an electric piano in 2023 and resuming my ~15 years of Jazz piano (no joke, your friend Kai used to play a lot of piano).

Over to Burkeman for a final quote:

The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short. But that isn’t a reason for unremitting despair, or for living in an anxiety-fueled panic about making the most of your limited time. It’s a cause for relief. You get to give up on something that was always impossible—the quest to become the optimized, infinitely capable, emotionally invincible, fully independent person you’re officially supposed to be. Then you get to roll up your sleeves and start work on what’s gloriously possible instead.

You should buy a copy of Four Thousand Weeks. I encourage you to read it over the rest of 2023, and I think you’ll enjoy the book a lot: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Thousand-Weeks-Management-Mortals/dp/0374159122.

Excelsior!

Kai

p.s., Do you love your local public library? Try using this Library Extension (https://www.libraryextension.com/) to see book and e-book availability from your library while browsing the web. (Library availability shows up on the Amazon book product detail pages. So cool! Here’s a screenshot example: https://share.getcloudapp.com/kpuOLLk4.)

Hey, I bought that expensive book on Value-Based Pricing from Weiss after you recommended it. I wanted to let you know VBF made me an extra $10k/20k/50k last year. A good book, but a little dry.

I bought Value-Based Fees (2nd edition) in 2014 while living in Portland, Oregon. I have fond memories of cracking open, reading, and highlighting my copy of VBF sitting in the now-closed Three Friends Coffee House.

Value-Based Fees is probably one of the highest-impact books I’ve read from a dollar perspective. Over the last eight years, I’d conservatively say the concepts, strategies, language, and general je ne sais quoi of Value-Based Fees has put ~$100k-250k+ in my pocket. Not bad for a $50 investment in 2014.

Here’s the core idea of the book. It’s been incredibly impactful for me:

You should price your services based on the value they deliver rather than the time it takes to perform the service. It shouldn’t matter how much time you spend on the project.

That doesn’t mean chugging a beer and submitting a YOLO proposal with an aggressive value-based price. (”Their business does a million dollars a year, so I’ll charge them $500,000!!1 ”)

Value-Based Pricing means investing time in:

• Investigating your client’s business and industry.
• Dialoguing with them about the problem they’re experiencing.
• Understanding the potential impact of the change they’re looking to realize.

As you learn about the needs of your client and the change they’re looking to see, you learn a lot about how your specialized expertise can help and the value of the outcome they’re looking for. As you put those pieces together, you’re better able to price based on value (instead of time).

Value-Based Pricing isn’t a one-and-done ‘buy the book, check the box, unlock the new skill.’ Learning the concepts of Value-Based Pricing is sort of like marinating something before grilling it. You want to give yourself the time you need to soak in the flavor:

• Read the book.
• Start to internalize the principles and ideas.
• Practice the concepts in your business and with your leads and clients.
• Iterate on the concepts as you find out what works and what doesn’t work.

I think Value-Based Fees will make you more money, but you’ll need to take the time to put in the work. That’s why in my Levels of Consulting roadmap (https://kaidavis.com/levels/), I put Value-Based Pricing at Level 400. Value-Based Pricing is an advanced concept to work towards, and the reward is 100% there if you invest the time.

Alan Weiss released a new version of Value-Based Fees in 2022. (I haven’t read it yet, but it has solid reviews.)

• Here’s the 2022 version of Value-Based Fees on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Value-Based-Fees-Charge-Youre-Worth/dp/0470275847/
• Here’s the 2023 version of Value-Based Fees: https://www.amazon.com/Value-Based-Fees-Charge-Youre-Worth-dp-1119776929/dp/1119776929/

Neither of those links are affiliate links. (If you enjoyed this letter and book recommendation, you can buy me a tea or coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/kaidavis.)

I strongly recommend Value-Based Fees. It’s a very impactful book that will take some time to read, think through, and internalize. If you buy a copy, set a reminder for Dec 2023 to write me a note to let me know the impact it had on your business.

Excelsior!

Kai

I’ve purchased ~80-100 copies of The Brain Audit over the years, and I’ve made a habit of giving copies to clients, coaching students, and friends in the industry. It’s that good of a book.

The Brain Audit by Sean D’Souza

The Brain Audit teaches you why customers buy (and why they don’t) and what you can do about that. The Brain Audit is really impactful if you’re a service provider selling services.

The Brain Audit is one of those books that has changed my business, life, and approach to marketing more than anything else out there.

The book’s core is about understanding the steps people — you, me, our friends, our customers — go through when buying a product or service. And if your service (or product) isn’t selling, what you can do to attract and keep the customer’s attention.

The first time I read The Brain Audit was right after I moved back to Eugene in 2014 and was on a late-spring walk.

I was reading the book as I walked to a nearby park and kept diving deeper and deeper into the book. Turning pages, learning about why customers buy and why they don’t, I walked — face first — into a parked car.

I even smashed my face print into the dust on the car’s back window.

I kept reading. I did, however, sit down for a few minutes.

And then the story made it back to the author of The Brain Audit (Sean D’Souza):

I love The Brain Audit, and it’s one of the best books on marketing/business I’ve read in the last decade. I enthusiastically recommend The Brain Audit to you.

You can find it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Audit-Customers-They-Dont-ebook/dp/B00COQFUNU/. (Non-affiliate links.)

• The kindle copy is $8.99
• The paperback copy is $39.95

Excelsior!

Kai

With the Holiday season coming up, you’re likely thinking of books to buy those special (business) people in your life — or getting asked questions like, “Hey, uh, what books are you interested in? You know? For the holidays?”

I’m here to help. And recommend a few highly impactful books that I think will make a difference in your sales and marketing, business, or life.

On to the first entry in this year’s book recommendation list!

Ultimate Sales Machine

I first read Ultimate Sales Machine in ~2012 when I moved back from Hawaii to Oregon.

My copy of Ultimate Sales Machine is one of the most marked-up books I own:

(I’m rereading the book this December for the first time in a few years, and I’m excited to rediscover my notes and marginalia.)

The Ultimate Sales Machine is an excellent book on sales and marketing systems. It made a significant impact on me. As I told Chris O’Brien on the Ask Kai Anything page, Ultimate Sales Machine is the book that first introduced me to the concepts of:

• Outreach and follow-up
• Value-added sales messaging
• The importance of using market data in your sales messaging

All of which are very relevant to the work I do today, the products I create, and the articles and tips I share on my newsletter (https://kaidavis.com/newsletter/).

Here’s a quote (and a core concept) from Ultimate Sales Machine that has stuck with me over the years:

There’s always a smaller number of “best buyers” than all buyers, meaning marketing to them is cheaper than marketing to all buyers. A marketing effort to 100 “best buyers” is less expensive than a marketing effort to an entire audience of 10,000 “all buyers.” Best buyers buy more, buy faster, and buy more often than other buyers. These are your ideal clients.

This a key concept for positioning your business or marketing your services. You don’t want to be targeting everyone (e.g., “Small Business Positioning“). You want to be targeting a smaller segment of people who are your best buyers.

What’s the pitch for the book? Here’s a short summary:

Called “America’s greatest sales and marketing executive” by Charlie Munger (Warren Buffett’s partner), Chet Holmes identified 12 core strategies that provided great success to the companies he worked for and became the main structure of truly great companies.

His advice starts with one simple concept: focus!

Instead of trying to master a hundred or a thousand different strategies, Chet recommends zeroing in on just the few essential skill areas that make the big difference. Chet used to say, “Becoming a master is not about doing 4000 different things, it’s about doing 12 things, 4000 times each.”

It’s about spending just an hour per week on each impact area you want to improve: sales, marketing, management, and more.

The book goes through twelve key strategic areas for generating more sales. While the chapter titles (and the book title) can be a bit salesy, the content is good, and the tips are impactful.

1. Time management secrets of billionaires
2. Instituting higher standards and regular training
3. Executing effective meetings
4. Becoming a brilliant strategist
5. Hiring superstars
6. The high art of getting the best buyers
7. The seven musts of marketing
8. The eyes have it
9. The nitty-gritty of getting the best buyers
10. Sales skills
11. Follow-up and client bonding skills
12. All systems go

While lots of the topics apply well to sales teams, the ideas in the book apply very well to independents who are selling their services.

I strongly recommend you pick up a copy of Ultimate Sales Machine. It’s an impactful book that, in my experience, is full of strategies, systems, and methods for improving your sales.

Grab your copy of Ultimate Sales Machine right here: https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Sales-Machine-Turbocharge-Relentless/dp/1591842158/. (Non-affiliate link.)

Excelsior!

Kai

Check the episode out here: https://www.businessoffreelancing.com/podcast/money-psychology-playing-the-long-game-with-alex-hillman/

Alex drops a ton of wisdom in this episode about how to tackle and unpack some of the issues we all face in business with money psychology, playing the long game of business, and more.

Excelsior!

Kai

What do you want your 2023 to look like in terms of projects, clients, and projected revenue?

Here’s how I approach answering that question and plotting out my projects and projections for the coming year.

Projecting Projects and Profit

In addition to the habit of doing an annual review (https://kaidavis.com/gearing-up-for-an-annual-review/), I think it’s helpful to sit down and plan out what you want next year’s projects, projections, and profits to look like.

That screenshot is from a (free) spreadsheet that Jason Zook (of Wandering Aimfully) put out a few years ago. It’s great for planning your projects and financial projections for the coming year. (I’ve kept a version of this spreadsheet going every year for the last ~five years, and it’s handy.)

• View here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hUp_8DwT4FM3QuqlFuCKtPtdvzVaaUn4RuQbnb5SgqY/edit
• Make a copy here: You can make your copy with this magic link.

How to fill out this spreadsheet

I typically approach filling this sheet out by:

• Filling out the ‘Projects’ column with the names of:
  • Ongoing/recurring clients (e.g., Client #1, Client #2)
  • Productized services (e.g., Marketing Opportunity Report, SEO + Growth Video Teardown).
  • Products or projects (e.g., Quick Start Roadmapping)
• Then I plot out my ‘known’ income for the year. I fill in those cells on the spreadsheet for each of the following.
  • Is there money I’m expecting from regular/recurring/retainer clients?
  • Is there recurring revenue from products, projects, services, or affiliate/JV arrangements?
  • Do I have already scheduled/paid for 2023 projects?
• Then I start to think about the future and unknown income:
  • What new things am I thinking about launching in the coming year? (e.g., a new course, a new product, a new service)
  • What reasonable revenue do I want each of those to generate?
  • When am I going to work on those projects?
  • How much time will researching, building, marketing, and launching take?

Altogether, answering those questions (and filling out the spreadsheet) helps me understand what the coming year may look like, where my revenue is coming from, and where I need to allocate (and protect) time to build things.

In my experience, this activity helps get a sense of the coming year and make adjustments. After all, filling this out can help you see if you have the following:

• A big hole in your revenue
• A busy few months (booked solid until March!)
• Some opportune time to work on building that new thing

Note: This is all an educated guess about the future!

No plan survives first contact with the enemy (and all that jazz).

When you fill this spreadsheet out, you’re making an educated guess about the year ahead. Whatever your educated guess is about the future, it’s still a guess. Stuff happens, plans shift, and projects fall through.

That’s life.

I’ve found that updating this projects and projections spreadsheet over time helps me understand how the year is going and what’s coming up. Every few weeks, I update the following:

• Income and revenue earned (so I know what happened in the past)
• Projected info and projects (so I know what’s likely coming down the pipeline)

That way, I have accurate information about what has already happened and what’s happening next.

• View the projects and projections worksheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hUp_8DwT4FM3QuqlFuCKtPtdvzVaaUn4RuQbnb5SgqY/edit
• Make a copy here: You can make your copy with this magic link.

Excelsior!

Kai

You’ll probably get the best results asking me something about:

• Entrepreneurship and bringing a new service or product to market
• Digital marketing, search engine optimization, and email marketing
• Any of the topics I’ve written about in my articles, daily letters, or products.
• Indie consulting, advanced and expert freelancing, and the levels of consulting
• Marketing your products or services, filling your pipeline, and building an audience

Dive in and ask me anything! https://kaidavis.com/ask-kai-anything/

Over the past few years, I’ve come around to my friend Justin Weiss’s (https://www.justinweiss.com/) thinking on yearly quarters.

Q4 is a lie! It isn’t a quarter; it’s made of Holidays!

Once December starts knocking on the door, you’ve got ~two full weeks of work (in between Holiday planning) before the holidays arrive. And then it’s a new year.

Put another way, 2022 is going to be over dramatically soon. How did your 2022 go? What are you doing to think and reflect on 2022 and prepare for 2023?

My process for annual reviews

With December almost here, I’m starting to think about my 2022.

Each year, I set aside time at the end of the year to ask myself questions and reflect on the year as a whole. I’ve been doing an annual review of one form or another for the past ~ten years.

I do this process for both my business and personal life.

What I’ve found is that taking a few (non-concurrent) days at the end of the year and reflecting on how the year went helps me:

• Better understand the shape of the year
• Practice gratefulness for the ups and downs
• Identify what I want to do differently next year

In the past, I’ve used and enjoyed Chris Guillebeau’s Annual Review questions. These days, I like to start with these short, sweet, and simple retrospective questions.

• What went well?
• What could have gone better?
• What will I do differently next year?

My process is simple. I’ll:

• Start a new document (in Notion, Text Edit, or Google Docs – any tool works)
• Drop in those questions
• Start free-form writing and responding to the questions

Then, after an hour or two, I’ll close the document and put it away for a few days to return later with a fresh mind.

If I end up needing some additional constraints, guidance, or questions for the writing or thinking, I’ll:

• Review my quarterly plans for the year
• Think about what happened each month
• Use my Business Health Analysis questionnaire to spark new insights (The Business Health Analysis is the detailed questionnaire I use with all of my 1-on-1 growth coaching clients – https://kaidavis.com/coaching/).

I’ll iterate on my annual review a few times until it feels like I’ve gotten all the relevant bits in there.

Then I’ll reflect on the year, think about what I want to get done (or do differently) next year, and capture those insights.

Would you like to talk one-on-one about your business’s 2022?

If you’d like to talk through your business’s 2022 and what you’d like to do differently to market, grow, and generate leads in 2023, I have a limited number of one-on-one calls available in December (https://kaidavis.com/services/call/).

On a one-on-one call, we can:

• Talk through your business’s 2022
• Capture what went well + what could have gone better
• Define a plan for what you want to do differently in 2023

All calls are optionally recorded. At the end of the call, you’ll get my notes, a recording (if desired), and the plan for what you want to do differently in 2023.

You can book a one-on-one call right here: https://savvycal.com/kaid/clarity-call.

Excelsior!

Kai

• No, not that there are only 38 days left in 2022.
• No, not that we’re about to spend a month listening to Christmas music and muzak.
• No, not that I, a grown man, am about to cook and eat enough pumpkin pie to kill a 17-pound turkey.

It means as a special thank you to my readers, subscribers, and clients, you can buy all of my books, products, and courses at a 20% discount.

Welcome to the Build Your Own Bundle Thanksgiving Sale

This Thanksgiving sale runs from today (Wednesday, November 23rd) through the end of the day Monday (November 28th at 11:59 PM PST).

Save 20% on everything you purchase in this Build Your Own Bundle sale!

No coupons necessary! Prices have been updated to reflect this Thanksgiving sale discount.

Most popular + customer favorites

• Quick Start Roadmapping — get it for $150 $120
• Email Template Library — get it for $95 $75
•  Laminated Official Consultant Card (Limited Edition) for $20 $16 (including US shipping for this physical product)

Level up your skills at email outreach

• Outreach Blueprint for $150 $120
• Podcast Outreach for $150 $120
• Outreach Mastery for $200 $160

Generate leads on autopilot

• Referral Systems for $99 $80
• Raise Clients From The Dead for $50 $40
• Get More Leads for $40 $30
• Initial Call Script for $30 $24

Notion templates

• The BattleBoard Templates for $12 $9 (@NotionHQ called these templates ‘the ultimate productivity system.’)

Or buy everything — all eleven products! — and save 25%! Get Kai’s Epic Bundle of Treasure for $996 $747.

I’ll let you take some time to browse the store (https://kaidavis.com/products/).

If you have any questions about these products, the Epic Bundle, or the Thanksgiving sale (or anything else), email me. You can reach me directly at kai@kaidavis.com.

Excelsior!

Kai

If you could wave a magic wand and undo all the proposals you wrote for tire kickers (who never intended to purchase anyway), your overall close rate would go up, and you’d have saved a bunch of time.

Well, we don’t have a magic wand.

And we can’t go back in time to save you from writing those proposals.

But what we can do is protect Future You from time wasters, tire kickers, and proposal writing by building you a moat.

That’s one of the reasons I love selling paid discovery and project roadmaps. Roadmaps act as a moat, protect your time, and keep bad-fit clients away.

Once you’ve launched a roadmap service offering, it’s easy to position it as the recommended (or required) way to start working with you.

That way, when a lead or prospective client asks you for a proposal, you can politely nudge them onto the track with a short message about how you best work. Here’s an example of what you could say:

Thanks for asking for a proposal. Currently, the only way I start working with new clients is with {my roadmapping service}

Over the years, I’ve discovered that my client projects are much more successful when we start our work together with a small discovery-focused project to identify our target goals and outcomes and define our ongoing strategy before writing a proposal.

Beginning with an initial discovery project is what I’ve discovered works best for my clients, team, and business. As such, this is the only way I work with new clients.

If you’d like to get started working together, you can purchase {my roadmapping service} right here (<link>). Once you purchase, you’ll receive an email with the next steps to schedule our kickoff call.

Here’s the thing

Will some people object to your building a moat, selling roadmaps, and protecting your time? Absolutely.

But what I’ve discovered first-hand is that the people who get the angriest about your moat are the same tire kickers who ask you for proposals and then never end up buying what you’re selling.

So is it a bad thing if those non-buyers end up stuck on the opposite side of your moat from you?

I think it’s a win.

After all, when you start selling roadmapping:

• You’ll save time
• You’ll start selling strategy instead of implementation
• You’ll get paid for what you’ve been doing for free all along (writing proposals)
  

If you’re wondering how you can get started selling roadmaps (and build a moat for your business), then you should check out Quick Start Roadmapping (https://kaidavis.com/products/roadmapping/).

Quick Start Roadmapping has everything you need to start selling, running, and delivering strategy-focused roadmapping projects for your clients.

You’ll receive the book, email templates, questionnaire swipe files, video overviews, and more resources with your purchase.

Read more right here: https://kaidavis.com/products/roadmapping/.

Excelsior!

Kai