Scan time: 2-3 minutes / Read time: 3-5 minutes
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Hello rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
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🙋♀️ Kate’s four projects at once
Kate is an HR manager with a podcast for people changing careers in their 40s.
On top of her podcast, she has started a newsletter, then a YouTube channel for short clips, then a course.
Her podcast hasn’t had a new episode in a month.
🧩 Her struggle:
She has never written down who the podcast is for, so she says yes to every new idea.
At the gym, she’s listening to an audiobook with the true story of a man
who also had too many products at once,
and turned a billion-dollar loss into a profit a year later.
He started with one marker and a whiteboard.
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📐 The four boxes on the whiteboard
Steve Jobs started Apple, got pushed out in 1985, and came back in 1997 to run it again.
When he came back, Apple was almost dead.
That year, Apple lost $1.04 billion.
Steve said later the company was 90 days away from not being able to pay its bills.
He spent his first weeks sitting in meetings, looking at every product Apple made.
There was a whole pile of them, including a dozen different versions of the Macintosh computer.
He kept asking his managers one question: “Which ones do I tell my friends to buy?”
Nobody could give him a simple answer.
So one day, in the middle of a meeting, Steve stood up and shouted “Stop!”
He walked to the whiteboard, picked up a marker, and drew two lines.
One went across, and one went down.
That made four boxes.
Across the top he wrote Consumer and Pro.
Down the side he wrote Desktop and Portable.
“Here’s what we need,” he said.
He wanted one great computer in each box.
Everything else would be canceled.
The room went silent.
Apple cut about 70% of its products, the ones in stores and the ones still being built.
One year later, Apple made a $309 million profit.
Turns out Apple kept using the four boxes long after that day.
Every new idea had to fit one of the four boxes.
If it did not fit, Apple did not build it.
There was no fifth box.
Steve said it best years later:
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on.
But that’s not what it means at all.
It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are.”
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🔥 The recipe
➡️ The Four Boxes
Steve drew four boxes, then cut seven out of ten Apple products,
and one year later Apple made a $309 million profit.
What Steve drew that day is a move called The Four Boxes.
Write down who you serve and the few things you make for them.
Then every new idea gets one test: does it fit?
Steve didn’t say no because the ideas were bad.
He said no because the ideas did not fit.
So the next time a podcast or a second channel sounds like a good idea, check your boxes first.
If it does not fit a box, the answer is no, and you do not need to think about it any further.
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🛠️ Kate’s turn
Back to Kate, the HR manager whose podcast hasn’t had a new episode in a month,
because she keeps starting new projects on top of it.
That evening, she runs the prompt at the bottom of this email, and gives it the list of everything she’s started since the podcast.
Her AI sidekick puts it plainly:
Your podcast is for people changing careers in their 40s.
Your newsletter serves the same people, so keep those two,
and pause the clips channel and the course.
She writes “people changing careers in their 40s” on a sticky note above her desk.
She pauses the clips channel and the course that night.
That weekend, she records her first new episode in a month.
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🌅 Three months later
Kate hasn’t started a new project since.
When a new idea comes up, she checks it against the sticky note first.
She’s put out a new episode every week, and about four hundred people listen to each one now.
Your side project probably has a few things piled on top of it that don’t fit who it’s for.
Draw your four boxes first, and say no to every idea that doesn’t fit one of them.
That’s it, my fellow renegades!
Yours ‘helping you borrow the shortcuts from people who already made it’ Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️
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🏄♀️ The prompt
The prompt below draws your own grid and tells you what does not fit a box.
🧰 What you’ll need
Everything you publish or sell right now, and who each one is for
- Type it, or say it out loud with a voice tool.
- e.g. a podcast for people changing careers in their 40s, a newsletter, a YouTube channel for short clips, a free career-change checklist, a half-built courseThe two things that most divide your audience, and anything you’d keep even if it fits nothing
- e.g. still employed versus already left, and a nearby field versus a brand-new one, and I’d keep the clips channel because I enjoy itHow many hours a week you actually have
- e.g. ten
🚀 How to run it
Open your AI sidekick, ChatGPT, Claude, or whichever one you use.
Swap the three examples, the text inside the curly brackets, for your own, then run it. If your AI sidekick can already see your notes, you can run it as is.
🧪 Want to test it first? Run it without changing anything, and it will use the examples.
CONTEXT:
- Use my own material first. If you can see my episode list, my analytics, or my notes, pull the real details from there instead of the examples below.
- If you know how I write, use my voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak.
- If you know who my readers are, write for them. Otherwise assume people changing careers in their 40s.
- If I have replaced the examples, use only mine. If an example is still there, fill it in from what you already know about me, and mark it as your assumption. If you don't know anything about me yet, use the example exactly as written.
- The grid gets at most four boxes and you may not add a fifth. If something valuable does not fit, say it does not fit and name what that costs me.
=============== INPUTS — edit these, or just run as is ===============
Everything I currently publish or sell, and who each one is actually for:
{e.g. a podcast for people changing careers in their 40s, a newsletter, a YouTube channel for short clips, a free career-change checklist, a half-built course}
The two things that most divide my audience, and what I would defend keeping even if it fits nothing:
{e.g. still employed versus already left, and a nearby field versus a brand-new one, and I'd keep the clips channel because I enjoy it}
Hours a week I actually have:
{e.g. ten}
======================== END OF INPUTS ========================
Outputs:
1. The two axes — the pair that genuinely divides my audience, with why those two and not the others.
2. The grid — four boxes, each named, with the one thing that belongs in it.
3. What does not fit — everything currently on my list with no box, listed plainly.
4. The cost of cutting — what I actually lose with each one, including the one I said I would defend.
5. The rule for next time — the sentence I use on the next good idea that has no box.
Then tell me which box is empty, and whether I should fill it or leave it empty on purpose.