A book that could change your life, a life hack and the January curse...

Man, I have never been so relieved to be in February! Why is that you may ask? Because we have officially skipped the January curse! If you are wondering what on earth I’m talking about, keep reading and you’ll find out…

MY BOOK RECOMMENDATION

So, at the end of 2020 I started an Accountability Community, which is a small, closed group on Facebook where we can discuss our goals and help each other achieve them. This is my way of having some one-on-one chats and personally get to know you. I won’t go into too much detail about it, but if you want to learn more you can check out our blog and sign up HERE

So far, we’ve had nearly 200 customers sign up, and what I’ve noticed is that one of the most common goals revolved around finances, which is perfect because I’ve recently finished reading the Barefoot Investor by Scott Pape. I highly recommend this to everyone, whether you are in the group or not.

I went into it a little big headed, thinking I’d be too advanced and that it would be too basic for me, but I was wrong! I got SO much out of it and there are so many actionable things it taught me that I’ve been able to implement into my life.

For example, I left the Commonwealth Bank after being with them for nearly my whole life and switched to the bank recommended in this book, which has much less fees. Now you might be thinking it’s too much of a hassle to change everything over, but if you put your head down and commit to it, the benefits will far surpass the hassle it took to change over – trust me!

I can’t stress enough how highly I recommend this book to everyone. If you’ve already read it, please comment below and let me know what you thought about it and what your favourite or least favourite part was!

LIFE HACK

Here’s a little life hack for you: go to work on public holidays. You might be thinking… uh, WHAT, are you crazy?! But let me explain myself.

So, I’ve come into the office on the Australia Day public holiday, and this isn’t uncommon for me to come in on a public holiday. Don’t worry, this isn’t a poor business owner asking for sympathy, this is a life hack that you should consider. It won’t work for everyone, but there’s no harm in trying right?

Now whilst I love working with the team, I’ve learnt that it’s best to come into work on public holidays because it’s super quiet, meaning there’s nothing to distract me from being super productive and getting a lot of tasks done.

You’re now thinking… but what about the long weekend, they don’t come around often! To make up for working on a public holiday, I will take a day off the following week and turn that into my long weekend instead.

I’ve found that this way makes it so much cheaper and less busy to get away. Even if you’re not planning a getaway, everywhere is generally less crowded. Head off to a café or play centre or something and have the whole place to yourself – Genius, right?!

I highly recommend asking your boss about it, any reasonable boss would at least consider it… I know I would! If they put two and two together and realise there’s no real downside so long as you’re coming in, working and getting it done. Try it, but make sure it’s a win-win situation and that it’s not all about you, but also benefits the business.

THE CURSE

As I said at the start, it’s now February and we’ve skipped the January curse, so time to throw that stress ball away! But what is this curse?

We’ve been operating for about 8 years now and we’ve had 3 major events that almost put the business under… When I say that, I mean we nearly had to shut our doors. For some reason, all 3 of these events happened in January, so when it comes time to enjoy the Christmas break, I find it hard to relax because I’m literally bracing myself for disaster to strike again… But we made it!

Often these things happen completely out of the blue and there’s no amount of planning that can prepare you for it. Bad things are always going to happen, whether it be in your personal life or work life… That’s just how it is and there isn’t always a way to avoid certain events.

One time we had our machinery break down and had to stall production while we waited a couple of weeks for a machine part to arrive from Italy… Absolutely nothing we could do about it! But the worst of the worst happened a few years ago. You might have already heard me say this, but this was during a time when we were mostly doing contract packing for other pod companies and our biggest client went insolvent, leaving us with hundreds of thousands of dollars owed.

As I said, nothing can prepare you for things like this, but when one door closes and others. Rather than crippling to this misfortune and closing our doors, I began developing new ideas, and guess what happened? Yep you guessed it, Urban Brew was born. Seeing how much Urban Brew has grown has made me glad this happened, and I’ve realised that everything truly happens for a reason, even if it means suffering!

NOW FOR SOME FUN

So, if you’ve made it this far, it’s time for some fun. Remember playing eye spy as a kid? What a fun game that was. Well, we’ve hidden a packet of Urban Brew somewhere in this video. Did you spot it? If you didn’t, go back and watch this video again and comment below the rough time of when it first appears, and you’ll go into the draw to win 50 FREE PODS!

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