#47 Cutting Expenses 💰️ Conversation Starters 👍️ The Correct Way to Brag 👀

Good morning and welcome back!

As you know, our goal every week is to connect you to content that will help you improve in one way or another.

For adults, we think this is the best way to learn: self-directed, self-motivated, from the experiences or content of others on your own time.

It’s what we strive for every edition, but this edition?

It’s like a full semester’s worth of gems packed into our usual 5-minute read.

No deadlines, no homework, no textbooks…and no tuition!

Here’s What’s on the Agenda This Week:

💰️Gradually Trimming Expenses vs. Quitting Cold Turkey

👀 Bragging The Right Way

👍️ Eclectic Conversation Starters

➕ Much. More.

Experts’ Advice 🤝 

Who is Fiona Smith?

• We referenced her in a previous edition because we loved her advice with money - “She has spent 11+ years studying finance, with the last 7 as a wealth and investment advisor…she has helped manage over $600M and holds her MS in Personal Finance Planning. She has also co-founded a non-profit community teaching financial literacy, and her work is featured in Forbes, MSN, Experian, and FinCon.”

• Her website is themillenialmoneywoman.com, and her newsletter can be found here (which has over 30,000 people who subscribe to get Modern Wealth Secrets Straight to Your Inbox).

Who is Greg Berge?

• His tagline is: Actionable Ideas on Coaching, Leadership, Culture, and Team. He also writes a free weekly newsletter that is sent to 9,000+ people.

• His 31k+ followers on X seem to have made the choice to follow some actionable wisdom from someone who wants to help build great teams and betters leaders.

Making Cents 💰️ 

Why You Shouldn’t Quit Expenses Cold Turkey

Short and Sweet: Being mindful about your spending doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing game.

Instead of cutting an expense completely, start by reducing that spending by 10%-20% each month.

Why It Matters: Because the idea of cutting an entire expense can be nerve-wracking, and this approach may be a lot easier to stomach, especially if it’s something you enjoy.

Start by gradually buying/spending less, and see how it goes.

💡 Here Are Some Examples:

1. The Coffee Crush: Imagine you're a coffee fanatic ☕ You're spending a small fortune at the local café most mornings every week. If you decide to ditch your daily caffeine fix abruptly, your taste buds might revolt! Brewing your own coffee a few days a week allows you to transition from barista to home-brewed without the shock to your senses. And you save money along the way.

2. Streaming Spree: Picture yourself as a streaming aficionado 📺 You've got subscriptions to multiple streaming platforms. Going cold turkey means saying goodbye to all those binge-worthy shows and movies. Instead, try cutting one subscription first, keeping your favorites, and seeing where that takes you. And you save money along the way.

3. Dine-Out Dilemma: Imagine you're a foodie who loves dining out 🍔 Quitting restaurants and takeout completely may leave you feeling like you're missing out on delicious experiences. Begin by reserving one or two nights per week for restaurants / delivery, and soon you'll discover the joys of cooking at home. And you save money along the way.

Our goal for 2024 is to NOT be like this👇️ 

Hustle Hub 📈 

• YOUR SUCCESS: How to grow an audience in 2024. Watch this 12-minute video from someone who’s amassed 6 million subs about how he’d do it all over again.

• THEIR SUCCESS: Mel Robbins, the self-help guru who has over 2.19M subscribers on YouTube, shares her Goal Setting Toolkit to help you set and achieve yours.
  

• YOUR SUCCESS: The ability to learn new skills is crucial to any entrepreneur, side-hustler, or possible career-changer. Here are eight tips to help you learn more effectively.

• THEIR SUCCESS: A self-made millionaire shares the most important life lesson from her wealth-building journey.

Cool Communicator 💪 

🤔 The “Correct Way to Brag”

Humility is an objectively good trait, but there are situations where being too humble can be detrimental.

Sometimes, self-promotion is necessary and, according to a Wharton professor via CNBC, could make all the difference when pursuing your dream position.

TL;DR: The article’s focus is on “dual promotion,” which is when you praise a competitor / colleague while simultaneously selling yourself.

If you’re too humble, you’ll come off as likable but perhaps under-qualified; if you only praise yourself, you’ll do the opposite. The goal here is to achieve BOTH.

“The best way to brag about yourself…is by following your self-promotion with a promotion of someone else.”

EXAMPLE FROM THE ARTICLE: “I took care of all the financial analysis, technical processes, and back-end design. Alex really impressed me with how he handled our client communications. We both took charge of what we do best, and it led to a great outcome.”

ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS:

1. “A great venue for dual promotion is on social media, specifically LinkedIn.” While many come off as self-obsessed in these spaces, the dual promoter can make themselves more likable in comparison.
   

2. Despite the fear that humility can present as under-qualified, “in most cases, the dual promoter seemed more competent than the self-promoter, even though the accomplishments outlined stayed exactly the same.” So: having the right amount of humility can make you seem more likable AND more competent.
   

3. Don’t just share credit - complimenting someone else’s work, even if it had little connection to your own, goes a long way.
   

4. A 2004 study - blast from the past! - found that candidates who focus on likability have a better chance of getting hired than those who focus only on self-promotion.
   
   For more gems, click the link above to get the full article. Or if you want a deeper dive, click here for the study that inspired the article.

   
   

Conversation Starters 🙃 

The best conversationalists can talk about a wide range of topics. Welp, the range doesn’t get much wider than this…

• SELF-INTEREST: Talk about whether or not your to-do list runs your life.

• HUMAN INTEREST: Talk about the 55-year-old single mom who ranks second worldwide in the Rejuvenation Olympics (she’s not rich, either - her reverse-aging routine is something we can emulate!)

• ARTIFICIAL INTEREST: Talk about how AI enthusiasm differs from the Dot-Com bubble (and how this can be helpful when investing).

Major Moves 🗞️ 

 🍔 MCDONALD’S:

A “spinoff restaurant?” Did you know that was a thing?

In television, if an original is strong, it’s not uncommon for creators to try a spinoff to capitalize on popularity and maximize profits.

But in fast food? “What would happen if a McDonald’s character from the 1980s that was part alien, part surfer, and part robot were to open a restaurant? That’s McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski asking…and it’s becoming a reality.”

The “cafe-style” restaurant, COSMCS, will focus primarily on beverages and aims for ten locations by the end of 2024.

 🦾 rhythms:

Using AI to build better work habits

So many startups out here doing interesting things, it begs the question: how many will actually succeed?

The odds say not many, but the ones that use Rhythms might have a better chance. “Rhythms wants to help organizations improve their productivity by using AI to identify the working patterns of top-performing teams.”

OTF Take: Learning from others’ success to achieve your own? Yeah, that’s right up our alley.

 🤔 CVS:

New prescription drug pricing for increased transparency

Prescription drug pricing has been an issue for a while now. Part of it is cost; part of it is transparency. Think about it - do you know why your last prescription cost as much as it did at the counter?

CVS aims to eliminate that guesswork. Said CEO Karen Lynch: “What people have been saying is, ‘We don’t understand, it’s not transparent, it’s not easy to understand how much drugs cost’…We’re changing that.”

The new pricing model, which will launch in 2025, may not lower costs for every drug, but the increased transparency is a step in the right direction. (Initial reactions seem positive, with CVS stock up 4% after the announcement.)

🤖 pimento:

AI image-generation to ease the creative process

We don’t want AI to replace human creativity, but we love when it enhances it. Pimento, which uses AI to turn “creative briefs into visual mood boards,” does the latter.

The tool can be used for branding, advertising, graphic design, and more in the earliest steps of the creative process to “allow you to explore more directions more quickly” instead of scouring the internet manually to create visuals for presentations.

They just raised $3.2M to aid their mission.

Food For Thought 💭 

You are now On The Fly and In The Know.