In last week’s heuristic, we discussed choosing the best tactics and ideas copy. The point was the longer one has been used, the more likely you’ll find it helpful.

The Eisenhower matrix is one of these. Named after an old guy who used to run a country called the USA. He used this matrix to decide where to focus his time.

Being the president of a country, you can assume he had a lot of jobs and decisions competing for his attention. This method helped him choose what to do and, more importantly, what not to do.

Here’s how it works.

You separate your to-do list jobs and decisions into four boxes, using two criteria – urgency and importance.

Important & Urgent are where you want to spend the most of your time and attention. Unimportant and Not Urgent is what you should avoid at all costs.

In between are Urgent but not important, which you should delegate. And Not urgent but Important, which you should schedule to work on shortly.

Here’s a visual by Sachin Ramje to illustrate further.

How To Know You’re Giving Your Customers What They Want

There’s an aphorism in business that goes something like ‘if you’re not growing, you’re dying. It’s a vague statement on the surface. But if you dig deeper, it makes sense.

This aphorism implies that when your business is growing, you’ve created something valuable for the market that more and more are willing to buy. When your business is stagnant or dying, the market no longer sees what you offer as valuable compared to other options.

However, you don’t need to wait till this problem of stagnation or slow demise shows up on your profit and loss statement before you take action. A customer feedback tool called NPS can help you here.

NPS or net promoter score assesses your business by asking your customers a straightforward question – “How likely are you to recommend our business to your friends?“.

See, when you produce something people love, they’ll pay for it and tell their friends about it. When you don’t, they won’t. The more promoters your business has, the more you can assume you’re providing something your market wants.

You can also track this market sentiment of your business over time. This will help you understand how competitive you are in your marketplace and warn you of coming profit and loss problems.

Here’s a guide for good scores.

As a reference point my gym, which is growing at ~30% year on year has an NPS of 64. And a hair salon I’m involved with at last check had an NPS above 70 – and is also growing at a similar clip.

“Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them”

~ Albert Einstein

Where We’re Learning

• What’s happening to Chelsea FC -> Russian Oligarch Roman Abromavich is being forced to sell Chelsea Football club due to his relationship with Vldamir Putin. This thread covers how Roman ended up buying Chelsea FC and what’s happening to the club due to economic sanctions.

• What A CEO Does-> A quick blog on the most important jobs for a CEO that applies to founders and business owners. By one of the world’s most experienced and successful venture capatalist.

Luke Campbell: The Founder Building New Zealand’s Next Tech Unicorn

After intense customer validation and a significant product pivot, Vxt is on its way to becoming a New Zealand tech unicorn story.

They’re building a communication platform on a mission to automate the world’s admin. Initially a voicemail transcription app, Vxt pivoted towards a full-scale communication platform at the beginning of 2021.

Within a year they have crossed $300k in ARR, are seeing 15% weekly platform usage growth – well ahead of Paul Grahams (Y Combinator founder) high-bar 10% week on week growth rule. And have just finished their second raise which values them at 8+ figures.

We got the chance to sit down with Vxt founder & CEO Luke Campbell last week for a wide-ranging interview covering his journey to date.

He shared valuable insights into building an MVP, raising capital, customer validation, product pivots, and more.

This is a must-read for young founders in the tech/saas space.

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