What I Explored This Month - April 2025: First workshop, quit to win, strategy curious
Originally published on Substack
Once a month, I share my future works in progress by sharing what I’m learning, exploring, and currently curious about.
WHAT I CREATED
New blog post: You can have revenge or change but you can't have both: A lesson from our Southeast Asia travels
WHAT I DID
Blog updates
I created 2 new sections in my blog to make specific posts easier to find:
Thoughts from a Late-Diagnosed Autistic Woman - My thoughts and experiences after discovering I'm autistic.
What I Explored - (This post you’re currently reading!) Once a month, I share my future works in progress by sharing what I’m learning, exploring, and currently curious about.
Hosted my first Financial Brain Dump (Bookkeeping body doubling workshop)
This month I hosted a beta virtual workshop Financial Brain Dump where attendees could come, learn how to create a simple bookkeeping system that doesn’t make you cry, then work on their books and get answers to their bookkeeping questions.
Workshop wins:
One attendee finished tasks for her bookkeeper
Another attendee got her Gusto payroll synced to her Quickbooks account
Will I do it again? Maybe, I actually enjoyed it more than expected. But not on a monthly basis, potentially just once a quarter.
WHAT I LISTENED TO
Beyond Margins podcast - Fresh Content Inked: A Subversive Approach to Driving More Sales By Creating Less Content - Yet another episode about simplifying marketing and sales using a content library. I’m intrigued
Hello Seven podcast - Meet The Woman Set To Make $1M Helping People Leave The USA! - I found Stephanie Perry years ago, during the pandemic early in my personal finance and digital nomad research phase. So I loved hearing her on this podcast episode.
WHAT I READ
Dirty Genes: Revolutionary Approach to Health and Wellness Through Nutritional Genetics and Personalized Plans for a Happier, Healthier You by Dr. Ben Lynch - My medical-interested mind enjoyed learning about the methylation cycle and MTHFR mutations.
My job is to give you the tools to understand how your genes are contributing to your mood and overall health. Your job is to give yourself the attention you deserve and act on what that attention reveals to you.
Just promise me that the next time you overindulge or eat a food you know you shouldn’t, you’ll enjoy it. Feeling guilty or regretful will only make your genes more dirty.
Quit: The power of knowing when to walk away by Annie Duke - Yep still reading this author’s books and enjoying her perspective on the benefits of knowing when to quit.
Contrary to popular belief, quitting will get you to where you want to go faster.
Inflexible goals aren’t a good fit for a flexible world.
Playing to Win: How strategy really works by Roger L. Martin - Strategy is my new interest so this was my favorite book I read this month.
In our terms, a strategy is a coordinated and integrated set of five choices: a winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, core capabilities, and management systems.
Asking a single question can change everything: what would have to be true?
Best role of the consultant became clear to me: don’t attempt to convince clients which choice is best; run a process that enables them to convince themselves.
We Should All be Millionaires by Rachel Rodgers - I nodded my head to a LOT of what this book said.
Set boundaries to prevent your own suffering.
If you are being nice when you don’t want to be, you’re really just lying.
We are the saviors we are waiting for. And it starts with bookkeeping. (Of course I had to quote this, I’m a bookkeeper!)
WHAT I WATCHED
As mentioned, I’m very curious about strategy and understanding it. I searched Roger Martin’s videos on YouTube to listen to and absorb his perspective on strategy. (I need that 360 view to really get a concept, remember?).
He mentions this idea often in his interviews and writing:
Great strategy is about creating a future that does not now exist
That means balancing the exploitation of what is and the exploration of what might be. All forces will pull towards exploitation of what is. A great strategist needs to resist that pull and always invest time and energy in exploration of what might be.
Thanks for reading about my learning explorations for the month. Take care!