<![CDATA[Beck At It: Logs]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/s/logshttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!h_ns!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F67d0bcd5-cdb4-4a36-8413-697ab2a7b987_256x256.pngBeck At It: Logshttps://beckyisj.substack.com/s/logsSubstackMon, 04 May 2026 23:41:09 GMT<![CDATA[May creative updates]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/may-creative-updates-302https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/may-creative-updates-302Mon, 04 May 2026 14:20:03 GMTThis month in my creative life:

The rest of my video logs are here.

Work with me: https://go.beckyisj.com/workwithme

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]]><![CDATA[April creative updates]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/april-creative-updates-0e9https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/april-creative-updates-0e9Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:56:17 GMTThis month in my creative life:

The rest of my video logs are here.

Work with me: https://go.beckyisj.com/workwithme

Some links are affiliate links, meaning that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through the links at no cost to you.

]]><![CDATA[March creative updates]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/march-creative-updates-8f0https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/march-creative-updates-8f0Sun, 01 Mar 2026 08:27:42 GMTThis month in my creative life:

  • Building youtubeproducer.app

    • vibecoding thru Claude Code

    • pilled by

  • Bite-Sized Creativity

    • Will I finally hit publish???

  • Health

    • Running more thru joining a run club

  • Want to reading more, make more youtube videos

  • Wrapped up a February publish challenge with

The rest of my video logs are here.

Work with me: https://go.beckyisj.com/workwithme

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]]><![CDATA[February 2026]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/february-2026https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/february-2026Fri, 06 Feb 2026 14:51:38 GMTBooks read:

📖 The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

📖 The Art of Spending Money by Morgan Housel

📖 A Bad Idea I’m About To Do by Chris Gethard

Posts published:

February 5

🎧 118: Resenting Friends, the Grammys, and Punxsutawney Phil - Staying Up Pod

  • If you’re starting your luteal phase, progesterone can make you tired. Try going to bed 30-60 minutes early, as you might need 30-90 minutes of extra sleep.

    • Transcript:

      Cammie Scott

      Then I realized that I just started my luteal phase and that because of progesterone makes you really really tired so it says it’s good to either try to go to bed between 30 minutes to an Hour early because you normally need like 30 to 90 minutes of extra sleep around this time heard jeff and that made sense because i think i woke up about 90 minutes later than i normally Would crazy girl yeah crazy girl so listen to your bodies

February 4

🎧 Epstein Files Fallout, Trump’s Fed Chair Pick, and Musk Merger - Pivot Pod

  • Scott and Kara are talkin’ about Trump’s potential pick for Fed chair. Scott defines a “hawk” as someone more concerned about inflation than lower growth, who’ll keep interest rates high longer, even if it means errin’ on the side of lower growth to mitigate inflation risk. There’s concern Trump’s pressure might lead to prioritizing inflation over growth.

    • Transcript:

      Scott Galloway

      Explain what a hawk is. He’s got- Well, someone who’s more worried about inflation than lower growth, someone who will keep interest rates high longer than maybe they should, they err on the side of lower Growth, but less risk of inflation. And everyone is really worried that Trump is putting pressure and would rather err on the side of inflation.

February 3

🎧 How to Know When You Have Enough, Build a Safety Net, and Spend Money Well — Ft. Morgan Housel - Prof G Pod

  • You aren’t thinkin’ about the biggest risks in your personal life. Protect yourself financially by saving more than you think you need. If you’re only saving for the events you can foresee, you’re not ready for the surprises, which are always the biggest risks. A higher cash balance gives you a chance to stay invested when things get tough. This prevents you from sellin’ and havin’ a financial scar from dumpin’ stocks at the bottom. The hidden return on cash—from sleepin’ at night and bein’ there when you need it—can be enormous.

    • Transcript:

      Morgan Housel

      The biggest risk in your personal life and throughout the economy are things that you are not talking about and nobody sees coming. The biggest economic stories in the last 25 years were 9-11, Lehman Brothers going bankrupt, and COVID. And the common denominator of all three of those is nobody saw them coming until the moment that they happened. And same with Pearl Harbor, same with like all the big events are the ones that are unforeseeable. And in your personal life, your individual life, nobody gets married thinking they’re going to be divorced. No 25 year old thinks they’re going to die of cancer in the next 10 years. Go on down that list. The biggest risk in your personal life are things that you are not thinking about today. Because of that, the only thing that you can really do financially to guard yourself and protect yourself in that world is have a level of savings that seems like it’s too much. Like if you are only saving for the events that you can foresee, then by definition, you’re not prepared for the surprise. And the surprise is always the biggest risk. And so when I save money, or if a financial advisor were to look at my asset allocation, they might say, what are you saving for? You saving for a house? You saving for a new car? And my answer would always be like, no, I’m saving for a world in which the biggest risk is always what I don’t see coming. I have no idea what the next COVID is gonna be, what the next 9-11 is gonna be. And if I only have enough cash for the risks that I can foresee in front of me, I’m gonna be caught off guard. And so the other thing about that is that if you have a higher cash balance, it gives you a fighting chance to keep invested in the stocks that you own. The only thing that’s going to matter for the investments that you own over the course of your life is whether you can remain invested when shit gets real, when shit hits the fan. That’s all that matters. And if having 35% cash means that when the stock market falls 50%, you’re able to leave it alone because it’s not that big a deal and you have this cash, this liquid savings, then actually The return on that cash is much, much higher than the 3% you’re getting in your savings account. If it prevents you from selling and having this unbelievable financial scar from dumping your stocks at the bottom, then the actual return, the implied return, it’s a hidden return That you earned on your cash, might be 10% or 20%. And so that hidden return on cash from letting you sleep at night, from being there when you need it, and preventing you from dumping your stocks at the worst possible time can be enormous.

February 2

📰 Just Go Do the Thing by

  • I don’t think most people realise how much time they waste trying to optimise something they haven’t even started yet. You can’t optimise zero.

  • Logosystem — Cool website curating awesome logos.

  • Variant.ai — The first AI design inspiration site I’ve seen that actually produces nice looking stuff.

February 1

📰 33 and NYC by

  • 33 is a special number. I tell people that I’m the same age Jesus Christ was when he was crucified. They always laugh in response. I’m not sure why, since I’m just as important as Jesus.

  • I have to say, it’s incredible to quit a great paying job on a whim. My 18-year-old self did my 33-year-old self a real solid.

📰 Like Father by

  • But my greatest fear is that it won’t hurt that much — and what that might say about me.

Book a call: https://go.beckyisj.com/30min

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]]><![CDATA[February creative updates]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/february-creative-updates-7b2https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/february-creative-updates-7b2Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:01:19 GMTThis month in my creative life:

  • Book

    • Reviewing Bite-Sized Creativity

    • Can’t thank enough for being my editor through this all

    • Will go with self-publishing (h/t for inspiring & encouraing many to do so!)

  • YT producing

    • Making new YT producer friends

    • Hanging with other YT producers every 2 weeks

  • Small Creator Big World

    • Hosting creator office hours with : luma.com/smallcreator

    • February publish challenge - we’re committed to publishing throughout the month of February. Drop a comment below and I’ll DM you a WhatsApp group link

  • Lunar new year

    • Spending it with family

  • Back on YouTube

The rest of my video logs are here.

Work with me: https://go.beckyisj.com/workwithme

Some links are affiliate links, meaning that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through the links at no cost to you.

]]><![CDATA[January 2026]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/january-2026https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/january-2026Fri, 16 Jan 2026 14:31:21 GMTBooks read:

📕 1929: The Inside Story of The Greatest Crash in Wall Street History by Andrew Ross Sorkin

📕 Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkin Reids

📖 The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

📖 The Art of Spending Money by Morgan Housel

📖 The Other Side of Change by

Posts published:

Small Creator Big World posts and podcast eps:

Small Creator Big World
We're Not Think Media (And That's Fine)
Hey World 👋…
Listen now
3 months ago · 1 like · Bhav Sharma and Becky Isjwara
Small Creator Big World
The 30-Day Challenge
Hey World 👋…
Read more
3 months ago · 5 likes · 7 comments · Bhav Sharma and Becky Isjwara
Small Creator Big World
4 Lessons from 2025 as Small Creators
Hello World 👋…
Listen now
4 months ago · 2 likes · Becky Isjwara and Bhav Sharma
Small Creator Big World
🎯 Should You Start a Second Channel? Read This First
Hey World…
Read more
4 months ago · 1 like · 6 comments · Bhav Sharma and Becky Isjwara
Small Creator Big World
The One Resource You Need As A Small Creator
Hello World 👋…
Listen now
4 months ago · 2 likes · 3 comments · Becky Isjwara and Bhav Sharma

January 31

🎧 Notes on Being a Man — A Live Conversation With Ben Stiller - Prof G Pod

  • Scott Galloway argues that the US won World War II because it embraced women in factories, contrasting this with Hitler’s view. He suggests that the inclusion of non-whites and women in the workforce from the 1960s to 1980s was crucial for America’s economic success.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway The reality is the reason we won World War II and men got to come home heroes is because we embraced women in the factories. Hitler wanted women to stay at home. And we said, fuck that. Women can make P-51s. Let’s get them in the workplace. Had women not entered the workplace, had we not had the advancement of non-whites and women through the 60s, 70s, and 80s, America’s economy, just on a very economic joy level, would Have crashed. (Time 0:11:43)

  • There’s a dating disparity: only a third of men under 30 are in relationships, compared to two-thirds of women. This is because women are dating older men who’re more economically and emotionally stable. Many jobs that once helped men enter the middle class have disappeared.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway A young man is now, only one in three men are in a relationship under the age of 30, two in three women. You think, well, that’s mathematically impossible. It’s because women are dating older because they want more economically and emotionally viable men. And a lot of the jobs that were on ramps for men into a middle-class lifestyle have disappeared. (Time 0:13:24)

  • Young men aren’t getting the same opportunities as previous generations but they’re still being held responsible for the opportunities that past generations had. This results in young men dying by suicide at four times the rate of other groups.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway The result is a young generation of men who don’t have nearly the opportunities that we had, but are being held liable and accountable for the opportunities we had. And the result is you just would never have a special interest group killing themselves at four times the rate of the control group and not weigh in with programs. (Time 0:13:59)

  • If you really start looking at the data, you recognize that we can walk and chew gum at the same time. (Time 0:14:42)

  • We can address issues facing women, like wage gaps after having kids and the negative impact of social media on young girls’ self-esteem. It’s also important to recognize young men are struggling, and the country’s and women’s continued success depends on men not flailing.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway But if you really start looking at the data, you recognize that we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can still address the problems facing women. A woman, once she has kids, goes to 73 cents on the dollar versus men. That’s a problem. Social media is unfortunately attacking the self-esteem of young girls, and the rates of self-harm and cutting have doubled since social and unmovil. That’s a problem. We can address it. But we can also recognize that young men are really struggling and that our country isn’t going to continue to flourish and women aren’t going to continue to ascend if men are flailing. And what I would offer up, and this is, the conversation has become so much more productive than when I started talking about it five years ago and immediately got this wild pushback, (Time 0:14:42)

  • Scott Galloway spends about a third of his time writing, a third on media like podcasts and television, and a third on investments and boards. He’s usually teaching but is on leave from NYU, since he’s been in Europe for the last three years.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway Kind of three buckets. I spend about a third of my time writing. I write a newsletter. I enjoy writing books. About a third of my time on media, podcasts and television. And about a third of my time, quite frankly on investments where I go on boards. And because I’ve lived in Europe the last three years, I’m on leave from NYU, so I’m not teaching. But typically, one of those things, a third of the time would be teaching. But I consider myself at the end of the day, a teacher. (Time 0:18:24)

🎧 How to Talk About Money, Raise Independent Kids, and Build Real Wealth — Ft. Morgan Housel

  • Be a poor accountant to have a good relationship. Don’t keep score in relationships.

    • Transcript: Morgan Housel There’s a quote that I love, which is, to be in a good relationship, you need to be a very poor accountant. (Time 0:03:01)

  • It’s increasingly common for parents to go line by line through college applications with their kids, even hiring consultants. While it might seem helpful, it sends the message that the child can’t handle it themselves. If they can’t fill out a college application on their own, they might not be ready for college.

    • Transcript: Morgan Housel It’s very common today, it was less common 20 years ago, but very common today that when the child is applying for a college, when they’re 17, 18 years old, the parent is holding their Hand and going line by line through that application, one line after another and doing everything and hiring consultants to do it. Maybe avantage. There’s maybe data that shows that that is a good thing to do and your child has a better chance of getting into Harvard, whatever it might be. But also what you did to your kid is you say, you can’t do this yourself. You don’t have the skills to fill out an application on your own. I’ve made this joke sometimes when dealing with those people in our own life who are applying for college, that if you cannot apply for college on your own, you’re not ready for college. It’s the first litmus test on whether you can do it or not. (Time 0:07:56)

  • Instill confidence in your 17/18-year-old so they can be independent. Galloway agrees in theory but thinks it’s tougher in practice.

    • Transcript: Morgan Housel But I also feel like the greatest thing you can do for your 17 or 18 year old is instill the confidence that they are able to do it on their own. Scott Galloway I agree with everything you’re saying, theoretically. I would like to set a timer for us to have this conversation again when your kid is 17 and a half. I don’t disagree with that. Absolutely. (Time 0:08:46)

  • Morgan doesn’t view savings as just idle cash or delayed gratification, but as a source of immediate pleasure. Saving isn’t about being overly cautious; it’s about gaining freedom, independence, and flexibility. We damage the perception of savings by associating it only with a rainy day, when it actually offers tangible benefits now, like the feeling of independence.

    • Transcript: Morgan Housel I’ve never viewed savings money as either idle cash or as delayed gratification. It’s always given me pleasure today, right now, knowing that I have this independence and this backup. And I think a lot of people, the idea of saving money just feels too cautious. It feels like you’re not taking it. It feels like you’re not living enough. I always felt like it was one of my most prized possessions, how much I save so much, because I knew that I had freedom and independence and flexibility. If this job isn’t working out, I can just I can just quit. And even if I don’t find another one for six months, it’s fine. It’s not a big deal. I can live wherever I want. I can go on vacations whenever I want. That level of independence was so huge. And I think we do a lot of damage to the extent, particularly for young people, when we associate savings with saving for a rainy day, when it’s actually giving you something right now, Like very tangible. The feeling of independence is one of the greatest feelings in the world. (Time 0:29:09)

🎧 Humanoid Robots, Building a Service Business, and Why CEOs Won’t Save Democracy - Prof G Pod

  • Over-serve your first three clients so they become evangelists for you. Make them feel like you would do anything for them to turn them into advocates.

    • Transcript:

      Scott Galloway

      You’ve got to over-serve your first three clients. They need to be evangelists for you. I mean, they just got to feel like you do anything for them. You would jump on a grenade for them because you want them to be evangelists for you.

📰 A Simple Question Against Action Bias by Vicky Zhao

  • Some of the sharpest thinkers and clearest communicators I’ve known across consulting and big tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and others ask the most basic questions. Action bias is real, so many teams are consciously asking what part of this chaos is the actual problem?

  • Here’s the simplest way you can do this in the next meeting: “What do you mean by {X}?”

  • When someone says “we need to move faster,” ask: “What do you mean by moving faster? Fewer meetings, faster decisions, or quicker execution?” When someone says “we need better alignment,” ask: “What does alignment look like to you in this context?”

📰 Resist and Unsubscribe - Prof G Media

  • A one-day slowdown is irritating. A one-month slump is terrifying.

  • Consumers, whose spending accounts for more than two-thirds of the economy, wield enormous power. Few things worry leaders more than a decrease in their purchases. Consumer spending fell 3.4% during the Great Recession — at the time, the most severe year-over-year decline since World War II — and 9.8% during the second quarter of 2020, in the depths of the pandemic. Those events sparked two of the fastest political movements in history, with the U.S. spending huge sums to escape each crisis. In the case of Covid, economic data, not the death toll, was the main driver.

  • Americans in the top 10% income bracket, who account for about half of all consumer spending, play an especially important role.

  • Trump put everyone on notice last week with his lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase and its CEO, Jamie Dimon, over allegations that the company stopped providing banking services to Trump and his businesses for political reasons after he left office in 2021.

  • A senior executive at OpenAI, James Dyett, wrote on X that there was more outrage from tech executives over California’s proposed wealth tax “than masked ICE agents terrorizing communities and executing civilians in the streets.” *Exactly.*

  • Real change always comes from the American people, not from our political parties.

  • Getting off your couch, taking to the streets, and building community is important, but the most radical act in a capitalist society isn’t marching, it’s not spending.

🎧 The Collapse of American Virtue — With Fareed Zakaria

  • If you want your book to sell well, start building a social media following before you even write it. Your social footprint is what matters to agents and publishers because the advance size depends on how big your following is.

    • Transcript:

      Scott Galloway

      As my social media following has grown, so have my book sales. That’s the bottom line. So if you want to start, before you start writing a book, if you want your book to sell a lot, you need to start building your social footprint. And it’s sort of pathetic to say, but that’s kind of the whole shooting match right now. And I believe the first thing your agent and publishers will look at if they’re thinking about signing up your book in the size of the advance is based on how big your social following Is.

🎧 Economic Protests, Social Media on Trial, and Big Tech Earnings - Pivot

  • Don’t sweat the small stuff. Focus on the basics like sleep, diet, and exercise. It’s easy to get lost in the weeds with protein debates, but those are just around the edges of optimizing your life. Prioritize fundamental health habits.

    • Transcript: Kara Swisher One of the main things, oddly enough, you know, sleep is important, obviously. Diet and exercise are important. And there’s lots of things, you know, that everybody understands. Fermented foods, stuff like that, and eating. You know, the protein debate has gotten out of hand. Those are like around the edges of saving you minutes of your life. (Time 0:17:26)

  • There’s new science indicating hot saunas and cold plunges might be problematic for some people, despite their popularity. Concerns include the shock to the body and other potential issues.

    • Transcript: Kara Swisher Hot sauna, yes. Cold plunges. There’s a lot new science where it may be really problematic on people. Although I know all the bros love it, but there’s all these issues around the shock and different things. Hot saunas, absolutely. (Time 0:20:18)

  • Kara mentions friendships are scientifically and causally important.

    • Transcript: Kara Swisher One of the things, let me tell you the number one thing, both scientifically and both causally and correlation, is friends and family. (Time 0:20:31)

  • You’ll feel better when you do something with other people, rather than only complaining. It helps you feel like you’re actually makin’ a change.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway You feel better when you do something with other people. (Time 0:22:27)

  • People ask like, what job is safe from AI? And I say, I personally think if I were to bet on one job, that’s only going to increase in importance. It’s things around communication, strategic communications, investor relations, PR, and the two biggest communications mistakes of the last probably quarter happened in the Last week. On a corporate level, whoever the fuck didn’t literally body block Tim Cook from not only going to that dinner, but getting a picture with Brett Ratner. And I’m not going to make a judgment on Brett Ratner’s past. Kara Swisher Please go read about it. Scott Galloway But that’s just not a good look to be at the Melania premiere. (Time 0:39:07)

January 30

🎧 Daniel Pink: How to Write Something Truly Useful | How I Write

  • Consistency, routine, and ritual are super important for writing. If you’re working on a book or a long article, have a structure. Be rigid. Show up in your office at a certain time. Give yourself a word count and don’t do anything until you reach that word count. Do it the next day and the next day and the next day to get it done.

    • Transcript: Daniel Pink There’s a certain sense of consistency, routine, ritual that seems absolutely core to your process. No question. When I have something to write, I’m working on a book or a long article, I have a structure. I’m pretty rigid. I show up in my office at a certain time. I give myself a word count and I don’t do anything until I reach that word count. And then I do it the next day and the next day and the next day. Otherwise, there’s no way I would have been able to. And I came to that in a hard-won way with struggling to write stuff and certainly struggling to write my first book. (Time 0:02:00)

  • Daniel Pink starts his day with the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. He then walks 22 steps to his refurbished garage office. He aims for a daily word count, often 500-800 words since he’s a slow writer. He doesn’t bring his phone or check email and writes until he meets the word count, then feels a sense of freedom.

    • Transcript: Daniel Pink I get the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. So I’ll look at that and then I’ll go to my office. My office is the garage behind my house. So I go out my back door, 22 steps to the refurbished garage behind my house, and I sit at my desk and I have a certain word count for that day. For me, because I’m a pretty slow writer, it’s often not a very high word count. Sometimes it’s 500 words. Sometimes it’s 700 words, 800 words. That’s hard for me. Writing is still really, really hard for me, even though I’ve been doing it my whole life. And so I will have that word count and I don’t bring my phone with me into the office. I don’t open up email. I don’t do anything like that. And then I would just crank until I hit that word count. Then there’s a moment of liberation where I’m like, oh, I’ve done it. (Time 0:03:03)

  • Daniel Pink recommends focusing on one chapter at a time. He suggests working on a chapter for several weeks to get it right and then dedicating another week to editing and rewriting it. He repeats the writing process for each chapter of the book.

    • Transcript: Daniel Pink For a book, I will work on a chapter at a time. And so I’ll make sure that I get the chapter right. And so what it might be is I do that for several weeks to get the chapter done, and then I’ll spend another week editing and rewriting and editing and rewriting on that. And then I’ll be in the process again. (Time 0:04:07)

  • You gotta visualize the structure of your book before you write it. Use whiteboards or post-it notes to map out the skeleton. It’ll help you get a feel for the overall structure ‘cause you can’t write anything until you see the structure of the building.

    • Transcript: Daniel Pink What I will also do is for me, especially for books, the structure of a book is really, really important. I can’t write a book unless I see at least the skeleton of it, the structure of it somewhere. So I’ll spend months doing research and reporting to try to find the structure. And what I will often do is put either a whiteboard or big post-its with my first kind of scratchings about what that structure might be. And I will literally turn in my chair. I have a swivel chair. Here’s my desk. Literally turn and behind me, I’ll have post-its and I will sit there and just look at that to try to get the structure because I can’t really write anything until I see the structure of The building. (Time 0:06:01)

  • Breaks with other people are more restorative than solo breaks, even for introverts. Make sure breaks are fully detached; walking while staring at your phone isn’t a real break. Start thinking about breaks in a different way.

    • Transcript: Daniel Pink For writers, a little bit counterintuitive breaks with other people are more restorative than the breaks on your own. This is true even for introverts. It’s important that breaks are fully detached. That is, a break, you go off for a walk and stare at your phone, that’s not a break. And so we know a lot about how to take effective breaks and we have to start thinking about breaks in a fundamentally different way. (Time 0:10:19)

  • Daniel Pink says when you give a speech, you can see the audience’s real-time reactions such as whether they laugh, stare at their phones, or space out. Pink watches other people’s speeches and positions himself to see both the speaker and the audience to gauge the audience’s reaction.

    • Transcript: Daniel Pink When you’re giving a speech, you see the audience. You’re getting feedback in real time. Are they laughing at the joke or are they not laughing at the joke? Are they staring at their phone? Are they talking to their neighbor? Are they spacing out? But a lot of times when I watch other people give speeches, I will position myself in a way that I can see both. So I want to see what the speaker is doing, but I also want to see how the audience is doing. (Time 0:11:01)

  • If you’re speakin’ at an event, especially later in the day, get there early. Scope out the audience to see what they’re into and how receptive they are. It’ll help ya tailor your talk.

    • Transcript: Daniel Pink This is especially true if I’m going to, say, an event, and I’m speaking at the event, and I’m speaking at like three o’clock, and I’m there at 11, and I want to sort of gauge the audience. What kind of audience is this? How receptive are they? What are they into? (Time 0:11:22)

  • Always write long book proposals, like 30-40 pages. It’s a test to see if the idea can withstand a long-form treatment. Writing the proposal forces you to think about the core substance of the idea. It also tests your own commitment; if you hate writing the proposal, you’ll hate writing the whole book.

    • Transcript: Daniel Pink I always write very long book proposals too. I write maybe 30, 40-page book proposals. And the reason I write them is that it’s a test of the idea. Because if this idea can’t withstand a 30-page proposal, it’s not going to be able to withstand a 300-page book. Right. Okay? And also, it forces me to think about whether there is a there there. It’s a test of me as well. Do I like writing this 30-page proposal? If I hate writing a 30-page proposal, I’m going to really hate writing a 300-page book. So it’s a test of that. (Time 0:15:40)

  • The most important thing in a book proposal? Articulate a totally fresh but also totally familiar idea. Ya wanna have that combo. For example, instead of a how-to book, write a when-to book.

    • Transcript: David Perell Can you walk me through the structure of a book proposal? Like, okay, so I want to sit down to do this. I have an idea. What is my outline? What are the... It depends. It depends. Daniel Pink The most important thing in a book proposal are being able to clearly articulate what the idea is and also why it is totally fresh but also totally familiar. Right. So what you want is you want to have that combination. Basically, the great pitch for the timing book was we have lots of how-to books. We need a when-to book. (Time 0:17:46)

  • Make sure the idea’s good, and show why you’re the best person to write it. You gotta establish why no one else has written it and why you’re not only the best, but the only person who could possibly write it. Be the anointed one.

    • Transcript: Daniel Pink So the idea itself is really important. I think establishing why you are the best person to write it. First of all, establishing why no one else has written it and why you are not only the best person to write it, but the only human being on God’s green earth who could possibly write it. An anointed one. (Time 0:18:30)

  • Nail down who your audience is. It is never everybody. Then, get a sense of the book’s structure and its contribution. Explain why nobody’s written it yet and why you need it now. Nowness is key: why does this book meet the moment and why is it the right book for the right time? There’re books that are good but timed wrong.

    • Transcript: Daniel Pink And then figuring out who the audience is. And this is actually really important. Um, um, being able to clearly articulate who the audience is and many writers delude themselves into thinking their audience is everybody and it’s never everybody. Um, and so being able to articulate that and then, you know, giving a, giving a sense of, of, um, what the structure of the book might be. Um, and also kind of what it contributes to the world, you know, like why, like there’s a, why, why has nobody, why has nobody written this and why has, um, and why do you, why do you need It now? There’s also the nowness is really important. Why does this book meet the moment? Why is it the right book for the right time? There are plenty of books that are good books that are in the wrong time. So why is it the right book for the right time? (Time 0:18:46)

  • Dan says that when he is deciding whether to write a book, he asks himself if he’d wanna read it in its first week. If he wouldn’t read it, he probably shouldn’t write it.

    • Transcript: Daniel Pink One of my criteria for writing a book is, um, if someone else had written this book, would I want to read it the first week? And, uh, if the answer is no, then it’s probably not a book I should write. (Time 0:35:25)

  • Develop taste by rating books, movies, and art on a scale of ones and tens. When visiting a place like the Met, avoid a dulled sense of, “Oh yeah, it’s pretty good.” Instead, focus on identifying what you truly love.

    • Transcript: David Perell The other thing we were talking about taste earlier on and, and, and you had me thinking about how do you develop taste? One of the best things I’ve learned is, I don’t know, you could call it like ones and tens. Like think about books you’ve read, movies that you’ve watched, art that you’ve seen. I think actually art that you’ve seen is a really good example because when you walk to an art museum, you go to the Met, there’s this weird cultural idea that everything in the Met is incredible. This is the paragon of quality for Western civilization in this building, right? And all this is to say that what ends up happening is most people walk around with this sort of dulled sense of, oh yeah, it’s pretty good. Oh yeah, it’s pretty good. Like we’re some sort of like French art connoisseur. Whereas actually, I think the best thing that you can do when you’re an art museum is to think about, okay, what do I love? But also, is there anything that I despised, anything that I loathed? And when you kind of force yourself to reflect on not just what I love, but also what did I hate? I think the process of doing that consciously develops a sense of discernment and discernment is the thing that’s upstream of taste. (Time 0:44:38)

  • David perell collects good writing examples by dumping them into a giant sheet, categorized into fun paragraphs and good introductions. He does not have a systematic approach.

    • Transcript: Daniel Pink How do you collect examples of good writing? Do you have a systematic way to do that? I just dump them all in a giant sheet. I have fun paragraphs and I have good introductions. (Time 0:47:31)

  • Daniel Pink’s been keeping a commonplace book for eight years. Every day, he writes down a sentence, phrase, paragraph, or something he’s encountered that speaks to him, including words whose definitions he didn’t know.

    • Transcript: Daniel Pink I’ve been keeping a commonplace book for eight years, where every day I write one kind of sentence or phrase or paragraph or something that I’ve encountered that speaks to me. I write down words that I didn’t know the definition (Time 0:48:11)

  • Daniel Pink thinks that being useful is one of the most important qualities for a nonfiction writer. It’s not enough to be interesting, smart, or entertaining. You win when people think and do things differently because of your writing.

    • Transcript: Daniel Pink As a nonfiction writer, people might disagree with this, but I actually think that one of the most important qualities in a nonfiction writer is not only are you interesting and not Only are you smart and not only are you entertaining, but are you useful? And so you, you win when not only do people think a little differently, but they do different stuff. (Time 0:51:01)

📰 Netflix’s Crazy Livestream, Explained - Jon Yousheai newsletter

  • Swallow your pride. Think longer-term. Be like Honnold. If you’re trying to be world class, the world will ultimately notice.

  • About 33% of YouTube users now pay for their Premium tier where they see no ads.

📰 Notes for When I Overthink by

  • Honor the momentum window. There’s a brief period after inspiration strikes (48 hours? maybe 72 if you’re lucky?) when action feels electric and natural, before fear and over-analysis calcify around it. This window is sacred. The moment an idea excites you, commit to one concrete action before it closes. Send the email. Book the ticket. Have the conversation. Miss this window, and even the smallest viable action becomes infinitely harder to execute.

  • Inside that window, if you’re still frozen: borrow someone else’s energy. Think of someone who’s done the thing you’re afraid of—someone specific, someone you’ve actually seen in action. Channel their energy completely as though you were full on method acting for ten minutes. Move like they would move. Then do the smallest action while wearing their confidence.

📰 Do I Secretly Love All the Things I Hate? by

  • “Fear is excitement without the breath” - Fritz Perls

January 29

📰 I Went on a Think Week—9 Learnings - Sahil Bloom

  • Author Derek Sivers has a great line: “Keep earning your title, or it expires…Holding on to an old title gives you satisfaction without action. But success comes from doing, not declaring.”

  • It’s ok to lean into things that seem wrong to others if they feel right to you.

  • Look in front of you. Identify a puzzle that seems interesting. Solve it. If you solve enough interesting puzzles, your quest will reveal itself in due time.

  • mall issues on the ground become big issues in the air. Make sure your rocket is in sound working condition on the ground before you start the launch countdown. That means taking care of the basics in your life. Sleep 7+ hours per night. Eat whole, unprocessed foods. Move your body for 30 minutes per day. Connect with someone you love on a daily basis. Clear your mind. If you take care of the basics, you’ll be ready for the crazy forces that a “launch” places you under.

📰 🚫 Stop Copying Your Competitors - Ali Abdaal (CreatorNotes)

  • I wanted to talk about a conversation that my YouTube Producer, Becky, had with a dude called Caleb Ralston at the end of last year, who runs his own channel and business helping creators like me scale their personal brands. (View Highlight)

📰 Stop Following “Content Tips” - Caleb Ralston

  • Here’s how: Calculate your 90-day average for views (or whatever metric matters most to you). Then grade every future post against that number using a multiplier. So for example: If your average is 1,000 views and a post gets 6,500—that’s a 6.5x outlier. Now you can look at your sheet at the end of every week or month and immediately see what to double down on (and what to stop doing).

  • Super direct CTAs often kill your reach. That’s just how the platforms work. They don’t love posts that push people off-platform. So instead of saying “go buy my thing,” figure out how to make your audience aware of your product without the hard ask (and without a link). If you’re a vlogger selling an energy drink, always crack one open mid-video. If you have a course, reference the frameworks from it in your free content. The more you can subtly weave your paid product into your free content, the better.

  • Pick 2–3 metrics that matter. For us, it’s conversions, views, and watch time (YouTube-specific).

  • 1. Use Data to Guide the Next Post

    • Here’s how: Calculate your 90-day average for views (or whatever metric matters most to you). Then grade every future post against that number using a multiplier. So for example: If your average is 1,000 views and a post gets 6,500—that’s a 6.5x outlier. Now you can look at your sheet at the end of every week or month and immediately see what to double down on (and what to stop doing).

  • 2. Remix Your Top Performers

    • 70% of what I post is content I know works. 20% is iterations on that 70%. And 10% is pure experimentation.

  • 3. Innovate Your CTAs (Calls-to-Action)

    • Super direct CTAs often kill your reach. That’s just how the platforms work. They don’t love posts that push people off-platform. So instead of saying “go buy my thing,” figure out how to make your audience aware of your product without the hard ask (and without a link). If you’re a vlogger selling an energy drink, always crack one open mid-video. If you have a course, reference the frameworks from it in your free content. The more you can subtly weave your paid product into your free content, the better.

  • 4. Tailor to the Platform

    • Don’t just repost the same clip everywhere. Repackage it.

  • 5. Tracking Everything Isn’t Productive

    • Pick 2–3 metrics that matter. For us, it’s conversions, views, and watch time (YouTube-specific).

🎧 Davos Drama, DOGE’s Social Security Scandal, and Netflix Goes All-Cash for Warner Bros - Pivot Pod

  • Pay employees 30-50% above market rate. If you’re able to do this, don’t complain about income inequality and instead be the change. Paying well reduces churn. You won’t get calls on a Friday because an employee is handing in notice. It’s a luxury.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway But I try to pay people between 30% and 50% more of the market. And what I find is, well, one, if you have the money, it’s a good thing to do and stop bitching about income inequality and live up to it. And two, it’s like such a luxury because when you pay people really well, I won’t say overcompensate, you have no churn. And it just is so much, it’s so nice not to get a call on a Friday and I’m hexing myself from one of your key employees managing. Kara Swisher I’ll be calling you on Friday. Scott Galloway And saying, oh, I’m giving my, you know, two weeks now. Oh, fuck. (Time 0:30:09)

  • Esther Perel thinks folks dig Heated Rivalry ‘cause it prepares you for a hit that never comes, makin’ you feel better ‘bout the outcome. It retrains you to think everybody ain’t evil. As a gay person, Kara Swisher notes she kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, anticipating rejection or ugliness, but it didn’t happen. She’s gonna watch it again since she was expecting bad news from depictions and life.

    • Transcript: Kara Swisher One of the things that was really interesting is Esther Perel talked about the reason people like Hito Ravu, which is sort of the media of the moment, really. Saying that it makes you feel better about the outcome, that you’re expecting the hit and you don’t get the hit. You get the right response from people. And it retrains you to think everybody’s not evil, essentially. Like I know as a gay person watching it, like I was waiting for someone to get beaten up. I was waiting for some rejection or some ugliness. And all the answers are good. And so I’m going to go watch it a second time because I was just sitting there waiting for the bad news as a gay person because it always comes in those depictions and in life. So it was not as much anymore, but definitely in my younger life. So I just thought that was great. That was great, too. I’m (Time 0:53:14)

January 28

🎧 The Cost of Corporate Silence on ICE, Trump’s Health, and TikTok USA - Pivot Pod

  • Scaramucci draws a parallel between Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler and the current silence of business leaders facing Trump. He argues that collective resistance from CEOs and political figures could deter Trump’s actions, but their fear of individual intimidation prevents them from acting. He uses Jamie Dimon as an example: Dimon spoke out on a few issues and Trump is bringing a lawsuit in response. Scaramucci believes he’ll lose the lawsuit, but it has a chilling effect.

    • Transcript: Anthony Scaramucci When Chamberlain headed for Munich to discuss with Adolf Hitler his annexation and what was going on there, the German bureaucrats, okay, we discovered this in their diaries 50, 60, 80 years later, the German bureaucrats were with great relief. They were writing to each other and in their diaries, oh, this is great. The British empire is coming to Munich, represented by Neville Chamberlain, and they’re going to flex on Adolf Hitler. It’s going to scare the daylights out of him, and it’s going to knock him out of power. Thank God this last five years have been a disaster for Germany, and he’s going to get tough and knock Adolf Hitler on his ass. Did that happen, Kara? No, it did not happen. He went there and he totally capitulated. And he came back with a sheet of paper and said, peace in our time. And Churchill said, this is ridiculous. You’re allowing him this birth of authoritarianism. And five, six, seven, three years later, two years later, you’re in war. Five, six, seven years later, 60 million people are killed. I’m not comparing Trump to Hitler. I’m just talking about behavior. If these CEOs and these business leaders and political leaders got together and said, F you, we’re not going to take this anymore. They’ll scare Mike Johnson. They’ll scare the Republicans in the Senate. They’ll push back and they’ll flip it. But they won’t do it as long as Trump is intimidating you one-on Cara. He’s going to beat you because he’s got the force of the presidency and the federal government. But you have the economy. If you’re quiet, you see, see, Jamie, Jamie Dimon. Whom he’s suing. Whom he’s suing. Oh, yeah. Well, let’s just talk about this for a second. He said three or four things that Trump did not like. OK, number one, he wants the Fed to be independent. He doesn’t like the lawsuit and the criminal investigation against Jerome Powell. Number two, he said, I’m not giving money to the ballroom because if I give money to the ballroom, the next administration is going to say, hey, jackass, you were trying to blackmail, You know, you were getting blackmailed and you were paying bribe money to the president. So he’s pretty open, pretty honest guy. Full disclosure, I know Jamie personally. I love Jamie. I think he’s one of the more brilliant financial services executives in our history. So he’s pretty honest. And then what does Trump do? He’s going to bring the hammer down on him. He’s going to bring a $5 million lawsuit, which of course he’ll lose. And he’s bringing a lawsuit against Jamie personally and the bank. He’ll lose the lawsuit. But this is a massive chilling effect. (Time 0:13:55)

🎧 Why Podcasts Are the New TV, Careers After 50, and Divorce With Kids - Prof G Pod

  • Pivot gets about 300,000 audio listens and 100,000 video views, totaling 400,000 impressions. While video CPMs are lower, audio offers greater intimacy and is preferred by advertisers. Pivot’s blended CPM is around $40, with audio at $45 and video at $30. CNN’s CPM, in comparison, is $15.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway Pivot is between our audio listens, about 300,000, and our video views, 100,000, so 400,000 impressions. We’ll get a blended, you get a lower CPM for the video views. Audio creates more intimacy and advertisers like it more. We get a blended CPM, probably about 30 to 40 bucks, 45 bucks for the audio. CPM’s 30 bucks for the video. So call it blended of 40. CNN right now is getting 15. (Time 0:05:23)

  • If you wanna get into podcasting, do it, but see it as a way to market another product. Scott’s videos at L2 raised awareness, leading to a newsletter and media company. So, use podcasting to market another product or for personal enjoyment.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway You want to get into podcasting, do it, but use it as a means or start out initially thinking of it as a means of marketing another core product. For example, our videos initially at L2 were meant to raise awareness among our client base. And we did an amazing job of them. And it ultimately led to a newsletter that we turned into a media company, See About Profity Media. But right now, if you’re going into podcasting, you should be doing it for personal consumption or to market another product. (Time 0:07:45)

  • If you’re feelin’ anxious, remember that action absorbs anxiety. Make a list and then get going by sendin’ emails, makin’ appointments, and callin’ on others.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway If you’re feeling any anxiety, action absorbs anxiety. Write down a list and just start sending out emails and making appointments and calling on people. (Time 0:15:07)

  • Scott Galloway: People remember how people behave in stressful, emotionally charged situations. (Time 0:24:20)

January 27

🎧 Is Alex Pretti Shooting a Turning Point? - Pivot Pod

  • Kara Swisher: And I know you call for leaders, but we are the leaders, right? Citizens are the leaders, not our politicians. (Time 0:12:28)

  • Don’t just protest; use economic pressure. If half of Americans delayed an iPhone purchase or 10% of ChatGPT subscribers canceled, that’d have a major impact. Target companies that Trump cares about, like those in the tech economy, which make up 40% of the S&P. Move money from big banks to regional ones, cancel streaming, cancel AI subscriptions, and delay phone upgrades. If they have to disclose this movement in their earnings calls, things will change quickly.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway What I’m suggesting is, and again, I’ve struggled with this my whole life, the difference between being right and being effective. And we’re angry, and I get it, protesting is powerful, promising them that there will be an accountability. And I’ve said this, I think there should be something equivalent to the Nuremberg trials after this is all over. And to make it clear that once we’re back in power, which we will be, this is going to happen. And the statute of limitations on murder is never. However, it’s the boring shit that moves the needle. And here’s something really boring that would stop this. If we could convince half of Americans who are planning to buy an iPhone in the next 60 days to not buy it, just put it off, and we could get 10% of existing ChatGPT subscribers to cancel Their subscription, this ends. These are the people that he cares about, and this is about the market. Look at the only time he’s blinked, when the Japanese bond market started taking our 10-year yields up, and when tariffs took the markets this is how he responds. It’s not cinematic. It’s not romantic. It’s not going to be written up in great history novels. But if you could figure out a way to basically kick a small number of companies related to the tech economy that account for 40% of the S&P right now and who are the people he cares about, If all of a sudden, if you took all of your money out of any J.P. Morgan affiliated bank and transferred it to a local regional bank, if you canceled all of your streaming media platforms, if you canceled OpenAI and Anthropic and you said, I am not Upgrading my Apple phone, and there was a real movement, they registered, and they had to disclose it in their earnings calls, this shit would come to an end pronto. (Time 0:21:30)

January 26

📰 This Weird YouTube Advice = 80 Million Views by Creator Startup

  • 20 million new YouTube videos are uploaded every single day.

  • Here’s Speeed’s 9 Rules of Building a Successful YouTube Channel

  • 1. Start With a Point of View

  • 3. Watch YouTube and Have Favorites

    • “If you’re going to work in a medium or an artform, you have to be a fan of the medium or the art form” – In our full conversation, James shouts out all of the creators he admires who influenced what Speeed is today.

  • 4. Have a List of Videos You Can’t Wait to Make

  • 5. A Camera and a Computer

    • Production value should mean value to the audience, not the value of the cameras you use.

  • 6. Define the Vision (Then Let It Evolve)

  • 7. Set Realistic Quality Standards

  • 8. Loose/Optimistic Bookkeeping

  • 9. Prioritize Entertainment Above All YouTube is TV. If it’s not entertaining, it won’t work.

January 24

🎧 Personal Investment Strategies, Effective Public Policies and Should We Tax AI? - Pivot Pod

  • Kara regrets her mom losing touch with her dad’s parents and reconnected with them in college. She feels it’s important for kids to know their grandparents and relatives on their dad’s side if they’re good people. She wishes she knew more about her dad’s friends and was touched by the stories she heard after writing about him. Kara named her son after her dad to keep his memory alive.

    • Transcript: Kara Swisher Job. I hate to trash my mom this episode, but it’s true. She lost contact with my dad’s parents, and I reestablished it when I was in college myself. When you’re a kid, you’re a little bit at cross purposes of loyalty. And I thought that was not good. She threw away a lot of pictures, which I recovered, some of which I spent a lot of time finding stuff about my dad. And I right now have a big box of letters of his that I just read one that was wonderful. I think she should have spent a lot more time talking about him. And I don’t think she remembers herself, but I don’t think she was kind to his parents. So that was one thing, is if your grandparents are good people, make sure your kids know them and know their relatives on your dad’s side and they’re his friends. I wish I knew more about my dad’s friends. And I found out later when I wrote a piece in the Washington Post, I got inundated with friends of his that my mother never told me about, that I then went and met and all these stories. I think I’ve said this before, there was a gay couple who my dad was lovely to, and I didn’t know that. It was a wonderful thing to find out. A young African-American woman he tutored wrote me for now she was a doctor and said she wanted to thank him. An ex-girlfriend of his wrote me saying it should have been me that married him, which was funny. There’s a picture of him behind me. I have a lot of pictures of him around. One thing I’m sad is my kids won’t know him. And I also named my son after my dad. So that’s what I would say. That’s nice. (Time 0:20:29)

  • Don’t pretend loss isn’t happening or downplay it. Read *The Loss That Is Forever* (author unknown). Remember and talk about the person you lost every day.

    • Transcript: Kara Swisher One of the last things I would say is there’s a great book called The Loss That Is Forever. I forget the author. I would recommend reading it. It’s forever loss. So don’t like pretend it’s not. Like don’t underscore what the loss is. And I think about my dad every day, every single day. And you should let them do that. And you should think and talk about him every day to them. I mean, I think that’s critically important. (Time 0:24:36)

🎧 Disney’s OpenAI Investment, Nvidia Chip Deal, and Australia’s New Social Media Ban by Pivot Pod

  • Scott joined YEO at 30 and got Bob Swanson, founder of Genentech, as a mentor. Swanson shadowed Scott for a day and pointed out that Scott talked too much and needed to focus on being effective, not just right. He emphasized that great leaders listen more than they talk.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway Did you know my big, in YEO, I want to bring this back to me. I know I don’t like to talk about, you know I don’t like to talk about myself, Cara, but there was something called YEO. And I joined when I was like 30 years old in San Francisco, which is supposed to be a feeder into YPO. And you get a mentor. The best part of it is you get a mentor who’s a YPOR. And my mentor was the runner up for, or one of the runner ups for person of the year, a times person of the year. And it was Bob Swanson. Do you remember him? Kara Swisher No, no. Scott Galloway He was the founder of Genentech. Oh, okay. Kara Swisher All right. Scott Galloway And he met me. Kara Swisher I thought that was Craig, whatever you call it. Scott Galloway We met and the loveliest guy, I mean, this is a guy very busy, right? And he said, we met, we had lunch and he said, and I said, I had just started Profit, this brand, this strategy firm. And he said, would you, he goes, how can I be the most helpful? I’m like, you know, I sort of know what I’m doing, but I really don’t. And he said, well, I have an idea. I’ll just, I’ll just shadow you for a day. Yeah. He met me in my office, actually met me at the gym. I worked out every day from seven to eight. He met me at the gym, picked me up, took me to my office, and he just shadowed me for a full day. Meetings, client meetings. And he’s a fairly like kind of quiet, like not, he was sort of like, like, you know, shorter guy, carried a few extra pounds, just sort of kind of, I don’t want to say blended in, obviously A genius. And he just shadowed me the whole day. And at the end of the day, he sat me down and he’d taken a bunch of notes and he said, okay, great leaders listen more than they talk. You are not a great leader yet. You want to impress everybody. You’re talking too much. He said, he had all these things that have stuck with me my whole life. He said, you don’t understand the difference between being right and being effective. He’s like, you’re right a lot, but you’re too aggressive and you’re turning off people. You got to think about how am I effective here? And he just gave me a series of things. Wow. Anyways, that was my mentor story. (Time 1:05:58)

January 23

📰 Subscribing to Newsletters via RSS via Bob Matyas

  • Beyond subscribing to blogs, I also use NetNewsWire to handle my newsletter subscriptions. To do this, I use the excellent service “Kill the Newsletter!“. It allows you to create an email address (i.e. ) which you use to subscribe to a newsletter. It then generates an RSS feed of everything sent to that email (including confirmation emails). It’s a great way to keep up newsletters without having to resort to email.

📰 Notes on Not Posting by

  • Consumption alone is a weak drug. Posting is what keeps me sucked in. When I’m not posting, it’s far easier for me to drift away for days, even weeks at a time.

  • I’ve been consuming less of the media that’s discussed on social media. It’s less interesting without the accompanying discourse. Commentary is half the product, confirmed.

  • Social media is a surveillance tool. Some people keep tabs on you through your posts. When you stop posting, they notice. You can usually identify their emotions: anxious, annoyed, worried.

  • Without the micro-dopamine, real-world pleasures register more.

January 22

🎧 4th Egg Retrieval, Capitalism, and the Lost Art of Reading - Staying Up with Cammie and

  • Cam and Taryn advise that couples should spend as much time together as possible leading up to the wedding. Doing so primes the couple to stay together during the wedding itself, where they’ll be pulled in different directions by guests. Plan ahead to create a space where guests are taken care of, so the couple doesn’t have to host them the whole time.

    • Transcript: Taryn Arnold One cam would always say like leading up to the wedding, I want to stay together as much as possible. And I think that like primed us really well to, to do that and to experience it together because once it’s happening there’s 200 people from yeah all different parts of each of your lives Cammie Scott It’s really people grabbing you to go talk and you’re like you’re hosting a party yeah and I had already seen that when Taryn and I host parties we have our different roles and we are rarely Getting to be together we are like trying to take care of our guests and a wedding is 200 of your well depending on how big your wedding is but it’s it’s like your most favorite guests ever All coming together so you do feel some pressure to properly host them that was one thing but I think a solution for that is like it comes in the planning of the wedding. Totally. Of creating a space where one, your guests are already taken care of. So you’re not having to take care of them the whole time. (Time 0:56:18)

  • Taryn and her partner had wedding planners who created intimate moments for them. They set aside time after the ceremony but before the party for the couple to enjoy drinks and treats alone while watching their cocktail hour.

    • Transcript: Taryn Arnold We had wedding planners which was great but life-changing they we talked to them before about this desire to like really experience it together and so that they baked in a couple times That were just us like after the ceremony and before the party like while everyone was at cocktail hour yeah we took 10 minutes to ourselves yeah had a drink they brought us treats and Cammie Scott They asked us like what drink do you want after the ceremony yeah and they had it ready for us and we were in a room where we could see out really clearly but they couldn’t see in very clearly Taryn Arnold So we were watching part of our cocktail hour just like experiencing (Time 0:57:44)

January 20

📰 The 10% of AI Tools That Drive 90% of My Results by Jeff Su

  • You just finished a weekly meeting. You have a video recording of the call, a 20-slide deck, and a photo of a messy whiteboard session. You can upload all three to Gemini and ask it to summarize the discussion, pull out key decisions, and draft the follow-up email. Gemini is the only tool that can synthesize all three in one go.

  • When you need diagrams, ask Claude to generate Mermaid code. You can paste that directly into tools like Excalidraw to get clean visuals in minutes.

  • Specialist AI: Lightning Round A few more specialist AI tools deserve mention, even though they do not get daily use:

    • Gamma for presentations

    • ElevenLabs for voice cloning

    • Zapier and n8n for automation

    • Excalidraw and Napkin AI for quick visuals

📰 The Best Way to Read the Internet by

  • I added the Standard Ebooks URL to my reader so I see every time they add a new ebook to their library.

January 19

📰 My Biggest Mistake With Goal-Setting... by Ali Abdaal

  • I’ve started asking myself a question whenever I feel the urge to start something new: “What am I already doing that this would compete with?”

January 18

🎧 If You Want to Gain 1 Million Followers in 2026, Listen to This Episode - 505 Podcast

  • People only see the external numbers, like a $100 million launch. Michael Lim reflects on the behind-the-scenes vlog that showed the immense prep involved in that success.

    • Transcript: B Figgy Michael, everyone sees the external numbers. They see $100 million made online. But what is the behind the scenes actually look like that makes all of that happen? Michael Lim I’ve been thinking about this a little bit recently. They just released the behind the scenes vlog, kind of like showing all the ups and downs and like the immense amount of prep. (Time 0:01:01)

  • Michael Lim shares how Alex Hormozi locked his content team in a room for 72 hours to compress eight weeks of work into a single weekend. They wrote texts, emails, landing pages, recorded VSLs, and shot product photography.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim CEO, urgency, laser beam, time compression, like this, this thing that I think Alex talks about, he locked us in a room for like consensually right but we’re like hey like how would you Guys feel if we just like locked ourselves in a room for 72 hours over a weekend and we we compressed like eight weeks of work into one weekend writing all of the text messages all the emails Test all the landing pages record every single vsl like regular vsl for pre-order, VIP upsell. There was like four or five videos that we needed and then take all the product photography of him holding the books and the bonuses. (Time 0:08:56)

  • Ramp up ad spending strategically. Start with 20% of the budget a few weeks out, increase to 40% the week before, and then spend big (e.g., $2.5M) in the final 72 hours, as most conversions happen at the end.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim We ended up running, I think like 2000 or so pieces of ad creative over the course of like the two months. And it was like ramped up, right? It’s like you spend 20% of the ad budget, you know, a couple of weeks out, you spend 40%, you know, the week before, and then like you blow like two and a half million dollars or whatever The number was like in the last 72 hours, because all the conversion happens at the very end. (Time 0:09:54)

  • A large percentage of sales, 60-80%, happen in the last 48 hours of a launch. This suggests that urgency and scarcity can be significant drivers for conversions.

    • Transcript: B Figgy We’ve sold 60 to 80 percent comes when it’s two days left there’s 48 hours left check this out yeah we’re not doing it again in the future like did you guys notice when you started running The 48 hour and the 24 hours or day of ads that it was like the conversion started to really come? (Time 0:11:15)

  • Michael Lim shares that silent retreats and in-person gatherings are underrated and that the world is appreciating compressed work again. He likens it to pledging, where shared struggles create social bonds, resulting in the most fun you never want to do again.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim Off sites and retreats are super underrated and like the world is kind of coming back to a place where this appreciation of in-person really like compressed work is is notable there’s Also like a social bonding perspective from like it’s like pledging right like you get locked into a basement you’re like like it it’s a fun kind of like struggle thing. It’s the most fun you never want to do again. (Time 0:16:07)

  • Allocate your ad spend like this:

    • 80% on proven campaigns.

    • 20% on loose adaptations of what’s already working.

    • 10% on net new experiments.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim Google published their approach to ad campaigns. And it’s like, they recommend 80% of your ad spend goes towards proven stuff. And then I think I’m probably butchering the numbers here, but it’s like, maybe it’s like 70%. Then it’s like 20% is on sort of loose adaptations of the stuff that already works. And then 10% is like totally net new things. (Time 0:17:07)

  • Always be selling because entrepreneurs have a lot of trade-offs and other priorities.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim This is like a lesson learned, I think, in working with really amazing entrepreneurs like Alex is like, you have to always be selling, right? Because they have so many trade-offs and other priorities. (Time 0:22:05)

  • Don’t waste time doing content. Instead, put your energy into building something meaningful and worth talking about. Also, develop a unique skill set.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim So I just think that a lot of people’s time would be better spent actually building something meaningful and like worth talking about and also just a skill set that makes them unique. (Time 0:26:00)

  • Don’t do sales ‘cause you don’t know how to do marketing, and don’t do marketing ‘cause you don’t know how to do product. If your product’s good enough, it’ll sell itself through word of mouth and positive brand recognition.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim The Naval quote, this is like total oversimplification that’s going to make people mad, but like it’s, it’s meant to be a thought exercise. It’s like you’re doing sales because you didn’t know how to do marketing and you’re doing you’re doing marketing because you didn’t know how to do product. And so the idea is that like if your product is good enough, it should ideally get enough word of mouth, positive, you know, brand recognition that it begins to sell itself. (Time 0:28:39)

  • Do things that don’t scale to understand customer needs. A good exercise is to find a list of prospects and call them to understand their language. It’ll become the foundation for your marketing.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim The Silicon Valley Y Combinator, like do things that don’t scale is a really good exercise because it forces you to really like get in front of customers and really tight feedback loop. Like finding a cold call list of your prospects and like just getting on the phone with them and trying to do like a hand-to thing, I think is a very like good way to get a product out there Because it forces you to like really hear the language they’re using. That eventually becomes your like sort of foundation for how you market your product. (Time 0:29:26)

  • Spend an hour each week talking directly to your customers; it’ll be way more effective than any marketing framework. Transcript: Michael Lim If you can commit to just like spending an hour a week, really one-to or face-to talking to your customers, it will do you a lot better than any fancy marketing framework. (Time 0:32:53)

  • Clarify what winning means for your team and identify metrics that indicate success. Implement a scoreboard to track progress continuously, not just immediately after a viral hit. This ensures you know if you’re on track consistently, like in a basketball game.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim There’s a thought exercise that I think every team could do just like clarify, what does winning really mean for us? And what metrics would indicate that we’ve actually done this? I think that’s a helpful thing. Then there’s a scoreboard, right? It’s like, every single minute of the game, you know, like, who which team is winning, it’s like not ambiguous, right? But I think you have a lot of teams who are just bouncing between like viral hit to viral hit. And so it’s like for, for 30 minutes after the upload, they have clarity, like, Oh, like we’re doing well because it’s a one out of 10. And then they wait another like two weeks and it’s like, Oh shit, this video is not doing very well. But like, imagine if you had a team just like in a basketball game that like every single minute of every single day, they know if they’re on track. (Time 0:35:45)

  • Create a content playbook by defining the exact number of content pieces you wanna hit weekly, then categorize them into specific buckets. For example, for Instagram, allocate slots for carousels (including throwback ones), collaborations, podcast reels, content from tweets, and day-in-the-life vlogs. This provides clarity for the team.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim At Hermosi, we knew exactly how many pieces of content we wanted to hit every single week. And we knew what buckets those content pieces fell into. So we had, let’s just say, 21 slots for Instagram a week. Eight of them are carousels. Of those carousels are throwback carousels. Three of them are collabs between Alex, Layla, Sharon. And then five of the reels are podcast reels. Three of them are like taken from tweets directly. And then two of them are like, you know, day in the life, like, you know, Layla vlog stuff. So it’s very clear to the team, like, this is the playbook, right? (Time 0:36:30)

  • To run a successful content team, make sure everyone understands what information is shared, how often, and in what formats. Also, define who needs to be included in reports and what communication should be synchronous versus asynchronous.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim Like Layla is really, really good at helping teams understand like what information is shared, how often and what formats, who needs to be included on these reports, which of this needs To be synchronous versus asynchronous. (Time 0:39:23)

  • Find ways to build media infrastructure so everyone’s happy. Create systems where the founder, the team, and everyone feels rewarded, motivated, and is learning quickly. This infrastructure and discipline outweigh specific tactics, platform strategies, camera gear, or even individual roles.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim In the last year of working with Alex and Layla is that you need to find a way to build media infrastructure so that everybody is not miserable. Like you need to find a way to create systems where the founder or the person in front of the camera is happy. The team is happy. People feel rewarded, reinforced, motivated. They’re learning quickly. And it’s a really nuanced soft skill and more so like infrastructure you have to develop, like discipline around. And it supersedes any specific tactic or platform strategy or camera gear or individual role you’re hiring for. (Time 0:42:23)

  • Make sure everyone on your team feels like they’re a hero in the company’s story. If not, show them how important their role is. Every team member, from the founder to the videographer and scriptwriter, drives value. A good videographer architects the film environment, ensuring everything’s set. The writer crafts words that form the DNA of the video; if they aren’t right, it impacts the speaker, clarity, and conversion.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim Does your team feel, does every single person on your team feel like the hero in the story of your company? And if you can’t answer yes to that, you have a little more work to do on helping that person understand how important their role is for the team. And so like an exercise that I’ve done is like, how does every single person on this roster of creatives, like really, really drive value for the team? The founder is super obvious. You’re the face, like you say all the fun stuff, you come up with the frameworks, right? But like an underrated one is like videographers. Videographers, like a really good videographer is not just making sure that like the gear and the recording and SD cards, like everything’s like, that’s really important. But a videographer I think of as like the architect of the environment of the film space they’re making sure that like the right beverages are there they’re making sure that the temperature In the room is set they’re making sure that like they’ve sent a photo of the setup before the day before to the director so the director is not panicking thinking the lighting’s gonna Be fucked up like it was last time right uh in the same way like your script writer your writer, the words are like the fundamental DNA of your entire video. If the words aren’t right, it’s going to trip up the person speaking. It’s not going to communicate ideas as clearly. It won’t be as compelling or high converting to the audience. And so like every single person on the, on the team understands that like how important and how like almost this entire operation rests on them. (Time 0:43:25)

  • Creating an infrastructure where teammates feel rewarded and reinforced is more effective than salary, free lunches, or fun vacations. Pizza parties are not the answer.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim The ability for you to create infrastructure that enables teammates to feel really rewarded and reinforced for their work is way more effective than salary, way more effective than Like free lunches or fun vacations or off sites. Pizza parties. (Time 0:45:09)

  • To avoid discouragement in media, especially with uncontrollable variables like people’s opinions or algorithm changes, work on a micro scale to build resilience. Aim to be like a ‘Buddha archetype’ – happy, generous, and unfazed by setbacks, just keep going.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim So by doing that on like a really micro scale, you can end up becoming the kind of person who can upload a video and then have it not go very well and not have it discourage you from continuing To do the work. Or you can have a filming experience with like a podcast cast, maybe like, you know, didn’t have a bunch of great answers or you could have done better research. And you’re like, well, we’re going to keep going. We’re going to work on it in post. And I think it’s like a really, really taxing mental process working in media because you’re just subjected to so many variables outside of your control. People’s opinions of you, trends, how the algorithm chooses to bless you or not on a given day, right? And so like the perfect creator, I think, is a sort of like a Buddha archetype that like is happy, positive, generous, warm, and like doesn’t give a shit if things go well because they’re Just going to keep existing and like living in this whatever, you know, elevated state of consciousness. (Time 0:47:48)

  • Don’t expect external success (money, fame, respect) to bring lasting happiness. Humans are wired to want more due to our evolution in resource-scarce environments. Focus on inner work and satisfaction because contentment is internal.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim Happiness is an inside job. It’s like a heist that you have to like make happen because like no amount of money or fame or respect or like attention from people is going to like make you feel like everything is right In the world because like just biologically humans are just wired to want more because we evolved in a very like resource scarce environment and now we are resource abundant um and so B Figgy You just have to like work on that have there been moments throughout these super high highs that you maybe have reflected and been like, man, I’m not happy and I feel like I should be happy (Time 0:53:17)

  • YouTube provides the highest quality attention, allowing for nuanced explanations that build brand affinity and credibility. Short-form content platforms have higher variance, making it more likely for content to ‘hit’ if you post frequently. This enables you to double down on successful content. It’s harder to achieve the same hit rate with long-form content like podcasts because you can’t post as frequently.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim YouTube is where the highest quality attention is. You also are able to explain topics with a lot more nuance that create really strong brand affinity and credibility. Thing that i would caution you against like or encourage you to maybe figure out how to continue to figure out the short form game in like a way that’s like scalable and financially feasible Is that like there’s this concept like variance and statistics and like short form is just a higher variance platform and it’s actually a good thing like you just if you can post a hundred Times in a month and it’s hard to post a hundred long from podcasts in a month, you’re just more likely to have one or two of them hit. And then once that happens, you can double down on that. And then all of a sudden next month, four hit and then eight hit. Right. Whereas like, if you’re waiting for the two out of a hundred outcome for a podcast, that might not happen. Right. (Time 0:56:14)

  • Short-form content algorithms treat each piece as a standalone entity, offering more variance and potential for random hits, unlike long-form content on platforms like YouTube, where audience profiles and personalization metrics play a larger role. Therefore, early-stage builders should focus on short-form to ‘roll the dice’ more often.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim You’re still not benefiting from the variance of the actual short form algorithm itself, which is weighted towards treating every single short as its own standalone thing. I think YouTube channels, long form, you’re beholden a little bit more to like, YouTube has some kind of audience profile. They understand the performance and the personalization metrics of the people who are watching your videos. And so you’re unlikely to have a random hit of new audiences that watch your long-form YouTube content if you don’t already have a large base. Short form, I think it’s totally different because it’s almost like a dice roll every single time. And so I think you just like, when you’re trying to build something early stages um like just roll the dice more I think and even like you also can benefit from clipping old old old podcasts (Time 0:57:43)

  • Automate content clipping by building a system that identifies key moments during recording. Start with time-coding, then add moment-tagging, live transcription analysis, and AI-driven suggestions. Aim for a workflow where your team can quickly review and approve AI-selected moments, creating briefs for editors, saving time, and ensuring the most impactful clips are used, because you have the most taste of your entire team.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim Trying to get like cheaper editors to like do stuff if they’re not like on set or like understand english as well as like stephen bartlett has like the have you heard like the ai button No thing the thing the button under the table oh yeah do you know what it does though no it tells them that like this is a moment they should click right and i’m pretty sure it’s set up with A live transcriber and a time code system so it like so i was trying to build this with her mosey team i was like wow okay so mid pod he’s he’s he’s i think so i don’t actually i’ve heard him Talk about that wow so the ideal situation would be one of you has like a thing on one of these ipads you hit a button and there’s a there’s a clod or some kind of mcp related thing that has Access to your transcript and then it like there’s okay so like level one is time code it’s like okay one minute and 27 seconds good moment be like yuli writing this down but that’s not That good it still requires a lot of effort to make that right okay step number two is um it also gets the moment so it’s like when i was asking this question about the NBA thing, that’s a Moment. Step three is the bot has access to the transcription that’s happening live. And it does a query that says at 90 minutes and 45 seconds, the podcast guest was talking about NBA teams. And, you know, like Bradiden asked this question about uh you know what Mr. Beast was like and that’s a moment and then it even has the transcript there so it like has everything that the Clipper needs to be able to make it and then step four would be at the very end Of the podcast you have an agent that then just like you just sit down as a team and you hit a button and it and it lists you the 25 moments from the podcast and you just go yes yes no no no no yes Yes yes yes and then that’s a brief that gets sent to your editing team that just probably cuts down on a lot of because you guys have the most taste of your entire you always have the most Taste of your entire team you can’t outsource that yeah like even if you get a really dope badass editor from LA who’s like been doing this for a while like they don’t have the 200 episodes Of knowledge you guys have of like what clips and what moments hit so these kinds of infrastructure things are things I’m trying to build with my team I’m to save time because like I have Three media team members right now I’m used to like you know Mr. Beast had like 25 when I joined obviously now hundreds Alex and Layla’s media team was like 18 by the time I left (Time 0:59:06)

  • Prioritize a healthy, focused “LeBron” and clean up their calendar. Build a core group of senior managers, then use vendors. Hire managers for operations (infrastructure, cadences) and content marketing (storytelling, customer knowledge). Add leads for short-form content (hooks, visuals, UGC) and YouTube (titles, thumbnails, ideas). Outsource specific production inputs like videography to contractors to avoid extra headcount. Delay hiring editors, junior strategists, or clippers and instead get agencies to outsource a lot of the specific production inputs if you have enough centralized direction and strategy.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim Number one, you need your like LeBron to like, just be like healthy, happy, like focus. Got lbj out ways to like clean up their calendar optimize for like batched film sessions you know uh get rid of bullshit that they ideally can get handled by like an ea and stuff number Two my opinion these days and the way that i’m building my team is core group of senior managers and then vendors so like i’ve hired a uh manager for operations who’s going to be building Like infrastructure and a lot of these like cadences for us. And then we have a director of content marketing who actually was at the company before I joined. He’s like a world-class storyteller, went to film school, knows our customers super well, like amazing at creating storyboards and like understanding how to interview people. And then I will hire two more leads this year. One is a short form, like head of short form manager who understands like hooks and visuals and how to pick up a camera and like film UGC stuff. And then I will hire a YouTube manager who’s like obsessed with titles, thumbnails, ideas. And then that’s it for a while. I’m going to wait to hire like a editor or like a junior strategist or like a clipper, because I think that if I have enough centralized direction and like strategy we can we can get like Agencies to to like outsource a lot of like the specific production inputs and that even goes for like all of my videography is right now happening with like a local contractor I would Like to have an in-house videographer but like in a venture backed startup like every bit of headcount is an opportunity cost to hire another engineer. So I’m like, ah, like probably could make the product better. I will, I will wait to hire like my, my editor. (Time 1:01:33)

  • To build a great content team:

    • 1. Ensure the founder is available and can film regularly.

    • 2. Assemble a core leadership team with experience.

    • 3. Create foundational documents that define brand ethos, desired associations, key messaging, and how to measure success.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim Number one, you need your founder to be like just super dialed in and like calendar is clear of commitment so they can film regularly. Number two, you need a core group of senior leadership that ideally has been there, done that. Number three, you need really, really clear, I call these like foundational documents. Like what is the ethos of the brand we’re trying to create? What are the associations we want? What kind of messaging do we want people to know or not to receive in our content? And then like, how will we know if we’re winning? (Time 1:03:11)

  • Create a growth model spreadsheet for your media team. Instead of volatile metrics like impressions, track follower growth per platform. Use baseline percentages from the previous year to project growth. Model different scenarios by adjusting publication rates or other inputs to see how they affect follower growth. Even better, hire a spreadsheet monkey to build these things.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim Every team in 26 needs this thing that I call like a growth model. So in, you know, investment banking or like management consulting, there’s all these like, you know, we’re basically spreadsheet monkeys. So we make these spreadsheets that project out financial forecasts for companies. And I basically was like, what if we had this, but for a media team, but instead of impressions, which is very volatile, it’s just follower growth per platform. So, and I can send you guys a screenshot of this later, but basically it’s like, I took the baseline percentages of every single platform in 25. So Facebook grew by 4% a month, Instagram grew by 7% a month by followers. YouTube grew by 12%. And then I created a base case of like, if I just multiplied that compounding every single month, where would we end up by the end of the year? And I think it was like, we would go from 100 something thousand followers to like 400. And then I was like, okay, I think if we increase our publication rate from seven times a week, so one time a day on Instagram to 14, I don’t necessarily think that will double the rate of Growth, but I think it could increase our rate of growth by 20%. So you basically can start to map out increases in inputs and then increases in growth rate. And you can hire a spreadsheet monkey to like build these things. (Time 1:03:46)

  • Michael Lim and Alex Hormozi increased carousel posts after Adam Mosseri (Instagram) indicated it’s the platform’s direction. They posted ~3 times daily and decided to make half the posts carousels. They noticed that carousels featuring both Alex and Leila performed better because of shared audiences and relatable content.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim When I say Alex and I were paying attention to what Adam Masseri was talking about with Instagram and carousels at the end of 24, he was saying this is the way that the platform is going. We’re like, okay, make more carousels. Well, how many? Well, know that we’re approximately posting three times a day. So let’s just make like half our posts carousels. Within that, then we also noticed in the data that like Alex and Leila carousels did better than individual carousels because they have like, obviously shared audiences. It tends to be more like wide reaching relationship content people can relate to. That’s beneficial for the brand. (Time 1:06:09)

  • Don’t rely on SOPs; they can easily get lost. Instead, create a lasting artifact like an internal book that documents how to succeed within the company. This makes it easier to locate and reference crucial information.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim I’d love to just document everything but not so much in these like little one-off like SOPs. I think like SOPs can get lost super easy. Then like everyone’s like, where’s the fucking Google Doc or their filming thing? And so I was like, I want to make an artifact. Like Alex has done such a great job of writing these books. I kind of want to make like an internal book, but it’s going to be about how to succeed at this company. (Time 1:08:58)

  • Leila recently launched a newsletter, Leila’s Letters, which everyone should subscribe to. She also publicly released an internal memo as part of Acquisition.com.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim Leila ended up sort of publicly releasing it as she launched her recent newsletter, which everyone should go subscribe for Leila’s Letters. And it’s embedded into one of these internal memos that she released as a part of Acquisition’s history. (Time 1:10:14)

  • To build media effectively for a business, first, understand the cultural underpinnings important to the team. Second, learn the foundational frameworks of how media makes money for companies. Without this, you’re just making random clips and hopin’ they hit. Third, with that framework, figure out how to grow as a creative professional.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim Number one, what are cultural underpinnings that are important to Alex, Layla, and the team so that you can understand the language with which we think about growth and business? Number two, what are like foundational frameworks that you need to understand for how media actually makes companies money? Because I don’t think if you don’t have that, you can’t really build media for a business. You’re just like making random clips and hoping that they hit. And then number three, with that framework, how do you actually grow in advance as an individual, like a creative professional? So I’ll give like the TLDR, you can find it online or something. (Time 1:10:31)

  • Don’t just create content once; repurpose it! Turn content into internal training, LinkedIn posts, recruiting videos, and even podcasts. Also, integrate content review into existing meetings to save time and avoid scheduling extra meetings.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim Leverage means everything you do as a media team should ideally be a double, triple, quadruple dip. If you’re making content, find a way to make it into an internal training and also a LinkedIn post and also a recruiting video and also a podcast that’s going to be shared on YouTube. Same with like founder’s time. Like if you’re having a film session, try to fit the content review at the end of the film session or during the lunch break so that you don’t have to schedule an entire extra content review Meeting during the week. (Time 1:11:17)

  • Volume negates luck. Putting in enough reps helps overcome the natural variance in waiting for things to happen. It’s about consistent effort to mitigate the randomness of success.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim Volume negates luck. Like it’s like one of Alex’s mantras that if you just put in enough reps, you were able to get over the sort of natural variance of waiting for things to do well. (Time 1:11:44)

  • If you’ve already got a brand, it’s easier to get folks to buy ‘cause they’ve seen your free content and trust ya more. Organic content gives ya unlimited efficiency ‘cause you aren’t paying more for extra views, unlike paid ads. Use organic content to influence customer acquisition.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim If you have a brand, it requires less advertising to convince them to hit the buy button because they’ve seen your free stuff online. They have more trust. It also gives you economies of scale of converting more people because if you can put the same piece of content out there and it gets a million views, you didn’t pay more for those views, But you would if it was a paid ad. That’s the advantage of organic content is you can get unlimited efficiency with customer acquisition. And that’s kind of how media influences stuff. (Time 1:12:51)

  • Content shouldn’t just get views; it’s gotta convince people that your product’s good and better than the competitors’. It has to convince them that the people making the product align with their values and that they aspire to be like them. Use content to make advertising more efficient by pre-handling objections. Structure your content with rotations to make it easier to fill in the gaps and implement a feedback loop, like a weekly report, to share the top-performing posts.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim Our content can’t just get views. It has to convince someone that like our product is good and better than the competitors. Our product to convince people or our content has to convince people that the people making this product are aligned with my values, that I aspire to be more like them. Our content has to make our advertising more efficient by pre-handling objections that they would need to believe to be able to buy our soda versus our competitor’s soda. And so, you know, at the final, like probably 20 pages of this guide, it was like, how do we do this? Well, one is understanding that within content you need rotations because it makes it easier to fill in the gaps than like making things up every single week. You also need some kind of like feedback loop. It could be like a weekly report that just shares the top performing posts of the week. (Time 1:13:38)

  • Optimize for followers, not impressions, because follower conversion is the closest thing to someone raising their hand and saying they’re willing to give you money.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim Third, you probably should optimize for followers, not impressions. So we believe at acquisition, and I believe that now, like with my current company, that growth dashboard that I was saying, that spreadsheet is all follower counts. It’s not impressions because your follower conversion, I think is the closest thing to someone raising their hand and saying, I’m willing to give you my money. (Time 1:14:25)

  • Followers is *the* most important metric within a media ecosystem, despite its seeming unimportance for distribution. People follow accounts whose content they really enjoy, so they don’t risk missing it.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim Followers is not a vanity metric. I think it’s the most important metric you have in your entire media ecosystem because like, because, and it is actually because it matters so little for distribution. So right now, why do you choose to follow someone? I at least follow someone because I their content so much i don’t want to risk not being able to find them again so i hit the follow button (Time 1:15:03)

  • Understand your audience deeply. By the end of the year, aim for your media and marketing teams to know your ideal customer. Strive to know, for example, what YouTube videos a restaurant owner watches, and how it connects to their business goals and cuisine. This enables you to provide much better, personalized service.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim By the end of the year, our media team and our marketing team will understand a restaurant owner when they come into our pipeline, what YouTube videos do they watch? How does that connect to like what they’re trying to do with their business and their cuisine type and just be able to give them much better service because we have that level of personalization. (Time 1:19:41)

  • Don’t jump straight into creating broad educational content (level four) without first establishing a foundation. Start at level zero (doing the work), then level one (showing you’re legit with happy customers), and level two (creating content specifically for sales enablement, like customer testimonials). This ensures your content efforts have maximum leverage and impact at each stage.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim Level zero is you have nothing. You are only doing like, let’s say you’re a plumber. Okay. You’re a plumber. You drive around with your van, you hit houses, you unplug their toilets, whatever. Level one is you have enough stuff to let people know that you’re not a scammer and that you exist. And that there’s like a little bit of like happy customers. You take your phone out after the toilet’s put unplugged and you’re like, look, there’s no more shit. Like whatever, right? So that’s level one. Level two is you have content that is purely used for hand-to combat, like sales enablement. So you’re a plumber, you record a testimonial selfie with your happy client that just says like, hey, like our pipes were leaking, the sink was a mess, Joe, the plumber came and helped Us out. Like, thank you, Joe. And you send it only during sales cycles. So these videos get like 12 views, but they’re super hot leads that are on the fence. And the whole reason why I’m creating this framework is because at every point in the media cycle, you want to be able to pour time and attention into media where it’s having the most leverage And effect in your business. So if you go straight to level four, which is like, I’m going to make plumbing educational content, maybe it’ll hit. Maybe you’re just going to be making plumbing educational content for like six months. And then you’re just like, you could have been focusing the entire time on your business, (Time 1:21:06)

  • LinkedIn will probably have figured out its video algorithm by 2026. It’s a mess now, but folks are starting to use video on LinkedIn.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim LinkedIn in 26 is going to figure out their video algorithm it gets a little bit fucked up right now but like i’m starting to see people on my linkedin like video feed (Time 1:23:19)

  • Apply intense focus to your agencies, akin to Elon Musk’s CEO style. Communicate daily, provide detailed feedback (both positive and negative), and offer more praise than other clients. Express gratitude through personalized gestures like Christmas cards and videos to show appreciation.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim You have to apply that Elon Musk CEO laser beam to all your agencies. You can message them every single day. Like where’s the video edit? Hey, there were like four or five things I didn’t love about this. And then more importantly, like give them way more positive praise and reinforcement than any of the other clients. Like write them a fucking Christmas card, like send them a personalized video when your first post goes up and be like, thank you guys for taking a bet on me. (Time 1:25:01)

  • To improve content, examine retention curves on short-form platforms. Develop hypotheses, like testing text hooks with numbers and dollar signs in the first two seconds to boost engagement. Track these tests in a media change log over a month.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim Look at the retention curves. Every short form platform now has retention curves, just like YouTube did like five years ago. And make some sort of hypothesis. Like we think that if we put up a text hook that has some numbers and dollar signs in the first like two seconds, you know, people are more likely to stay and engage and follow. And then just write down your list of hypotheses on a given week and then just test them for a month. And then I have this document I call like the media change log. It’s kind of like in software development. (Time 1:26:10)

  • Michael Lim helped MrBeast create Beast Philanthropy from scratch, aiming to make doing good go viral. Lim’s background in social impact and education aligned perfectly with the idea of applying viral video tactics to charitable activities like feeding people, building homes, and donating resources.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim You can help me start this new like charity. I want to create this thing called Beast Philanthropy and we want to make doing good viral. And so, yeah, I was like, that sounds like aligned with my previous background and like working in social impact and education. Uh, I love this idea of like starting things from scratch. And so did that with him for about a year and a half. And, um, it was amazing just like being able to apply this like viral vector of, of, of like videos and fun, to feeding people and building homes and giving away clothes and laptops to Students in need. (Time 1:32:53)

  • Create stakes in any content format by painting a picture of what happens if the content’s goals aren’t met. If you’re creating educational content, emphasize the negative outcomes of not following your advice. Frame stories by highlighting what would’ve happened if you hadn’t succeeded.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim You can create stakes in any content format, right? You have to just like paint the picture of what happens if we do not succeed at this thing, or if you’re doing educational content, what happens if you don’t take my advice or what would Have happened if I didn’t succeed at the story that I’m telling you now? Um, so yeah, I think it’s like packaging stakes volume, like doing more, you know? (Time 1:36:00)

  • Don’t just say packaging is important; invest time and money into it. Michael Lim spends $13,000/month on packaging consultants for titles, thumbnails, and AI mock-ups. Prioritize this process and force your team to dedicate the necessary time. Packaging and ideation are key to a media strategy.

    • Transcript: Michael Lim One more note on the packaging that I’ve been thinking about recently is that people can pay lip service to saying that packaging is important and not actually do it. So you have to put not just your money, but your time where your mouth is. So right now I’m spending $13,000 a month on packaging consultants. Like we just like sit down, we go over titles and thumbnails and like AI mock-ups and like, and it’s, I’ve never done this before. All my money has always gone towards like first like editing and making sure that the stuff is polished and the captions look good. It’s like, I just realized I have to force my team and myself to like give this thing the time that it takes. And because I’m spending so much money, I’m not going to skip those meetings. We are, we are absolutely going to sit down and just like beat this title to death. And so I would say like, I can’t stress enough how important it is to really think about that as a process. And I’d say like, they’re not just packaging, they’re like ideation consultants. So like it’s ideas and packaging together that are the tip of the spear for all the value for an entire media strategy. The question was like, what other things are important to think (Time 1:37:20)

  • Make your content visually congruent. Change at least 60% of the visuals from one piece of content to the next. Ensure the first 10 seconds of your YouTube videos confirm the title and thumbnail, even without audio. Provide early proof points to assure viewers they won’t be scammed, especially for new audience members. Repeat your accomplishments to build credibility and make it easier for others to share your story.

    • Transcript: Kostas Garcia What makes a YouTube channel successful or a video itself successful? Michael Lim Visual congruence. So like I wrote about this on LinkedIn the other day. Meta had this Andromeda update, which changed the advertising algorithm to prioritize ads that look different more than like sound different or like talk different, right? And so the rule of thumb is 60% of the visual of your ad has to change from creative to creative in order for meta to give it the opportunity to be auctioned against audiences and shown. And I’m like, look, if meta has this, whatever, trillion dollar, you know, advertising machine, and they’re feeling like on Instagram that the most important thing for ads that are Being swiped through is visuals. Well, organic has to be the same way because it’s all in the same feed. It’s the same human scroll and the same thing. Kostas Garcia So are you saying though, person to person, it has to look different. Or if you’re, if you’re creating ads for yourself, 60% of the way it looks needs to be different for each one of the ads that you make. Michael Lim Yeah, and I don’t even mean ads. Like I basically am translating, like, if this is the mandate from ads, it should also be the same for your content. So if you’re making organic short form content pieces, you have to find a way to make the visuals different, which is actually quite hard to do with educational formats because you’re- Yeah, you’re in a student. At the end of the day, you’re talking head in the studio. So you have to find a way to like, this is where like, it just forces a creative exercise. How do I make the beginning of my content look different from my last video? Do I pick up my phone and I start this podcast with a fucking selfie? Do I, do I, do I, I don’t know, change the chairs? Do I like do fun little challenges at the beginning of each of the episodes? And that’s both a long form and a short form thing. It’s more important on long form. And the reason why I say visual coherence or congruence is because the first couple, like people don’t realize that your thumbnail and your title are not just like the thing that people Click on. It’s the whole thing that happens when your video gets auto-played on the YouTube mobile thing. So if you have your YouTube thing, when you hover over a video, it plays the first 10 seconds on mute. So you have to make sure that the first 10 seconds look like they’re confirming the title or thumbnail without any audio. That’s why every single Beast video, you see a tank shooting in the video. Then you see a tank in the actual thing itself. There’s some ways you can get around it. Like I think having like B-roll and credibility are a good way to like convince the viewer you’re not going to like clickbait them. Because what’s happening is like the tank in the thumbnail and the tank in the video is just to let the viewer know you haven’t been scammed. Like you’re going to get what you clicked on. If I make a video titled how to be an eight figure entrepreneur in 2026, I could have like dollar bills in the video. But like, what’s more important is that pretty early on in the story you share or in the video, you share some kind of like proof point to convince the viewer that like, they’re not going To be scammed by you. And that’s why Alex would be like, I’ve done, you know, every single time, every time this exit. And because you have to assume the person who’s new to your audience needs that the person who’s old to your audience doesn’t mind. Yeah, they’re just like, whatever. Yeah. And it makes it easier for people to evangelize you. If like they know what you’ve done. I can pretty easily articulate what Alex has finished because or accomplished because he’s repeated it to the team and in public so many times in a row. (Time 1:38:41)

📰 Mozi Media’s Guide to Success at Acquisition.com - Michael Lim

  • Leila gave a great analogy of how we balance the two: Impressions is like your revenue, but followers is like your profit (how much is “captured” from that).

  • In Alex’s own words: the biggest risk of Media is him not enjoying content enough to want to do it for decades. This is why we place so much emphasis on…

    • Positive reinforcement during shoots

    • Strategizing content that is exciting to Alex Leila and Sharran

    • And making the filming schedule as efficient as possible.

  • Rotations also keep Alex and Leila more bought into our strategy. They don’t always have time to review every single piece of content, but they can understand general buckets of content that we are producing. It’s easier for them to understand ‘UGC Collab carousels” and “GRWM clips” are doing really well than “Mondays 9AM post was an outlier” and feel reinforced by that.

  • On YouTube, rotations create what we call CTR adherence. By branding videos in a recognizable but varied way, audiences learn to trust the format while staying

  • curious about each new version. They know it’s an Alex Brutally Honest video when they see the thumbnail and “Brutally Honest” in the title

  • Rotations also ensure we touch all parts of the buyer journey. Wide, motivational content for new viewers who just discovered us. Deep tactical content like training a sales team for advanced audiences who’ve been following for years. Both matter. Both serve different purposes. And we need volume in both categories to keep the funnel full.

  • You have to consume the platform daily to understand its culture, its trends, and what works. Important note: If we are not doing well on a certain platform, do not blame the platform. Blame our inability to understand what trends and specific formatting works. Then put in more volume.

  • the test for every metric is: does this help us make better creative decisions? If not, DO NOT TRACK IT

  • An important distinction to make here is the difference between leading and lagging indicators. CTR is a lagging indicator because it is the end result of the production process. The platform telling you how many people clicked for a certain number of impressions. But the more valuable, useful, and actionable data point here might actually be: how many thumbnail variations did you have prepared for a particular idea?

  • ps thats a good idea YouTube team we should make make a dashboard for packaging variations

  • Visibility into your work is one of the best things you can do on this team.

  • It can be as simple as celebrating a piece of content that performed above average and screenshotting the view curve. It does two things immediately:

    • It reinforces Alex and Leila for making the content in the first place.

    • It gives other teams on that same platform a chance to copy what’s working (ie Sharran IG can just YEET something from Alex IG given the right visibility into top performers. Common factors analysis strikes again!!)

  • Visibility increases trust, speeds up feedback, and makes it easier for people to positively reinforce you.

  • Automate. Once something is repeatable and been simplied, THEN build a system to automate components of this. If you do this too early, you automate steps that shouldn’t even exist

  • It’s why we talk about “doing things that don’t scale here”. For the Media team, the product is the content. As we add layers of management, there’s always the risk that the quality of the content gets diluted. Adopting “Founder Mode” is how we prevent that from happening

📰 The ‘Vcel’ Movement by Scott Galloway

  • Having an impressive person who could date other men choose and love you is profound.

  • Nobody is entitled to reproduce, nor obligated to serve another group. Women are ascending; it’s a collective achievement. Men need to level up.

📰 the Retention Killer Ignored by Most YouTubers by

  • I’ll show you how to 2x the number of videos you make per month to generate more leads… without spending hours brainstorming new video ideas.” How did that feel by comparison? To me, I found myself imagining much more specific imagery:

    • By *showing* what we meant in the first sentence, we leave the viewer in no doubt what we’re talking about.

    • I can picture a viewer being “hooked” by a video, and there’s now a specific timeframe as well.

    • I can *feel* the pain of “not making sales”.

    • I can picture making “2x” the number of videos per month.

    • I can picture the stress of having to spend hours I don’t have “brainstorming new video ideas”.

  • A “setup” is effectively a *re-hook* every 1-2 minutes as you begin discussing a new topic.

January 16

🎧 Snuggling, Dog Shelters, and Women’s Health - Staying Up with Cammie and

  • Taryn read ‘Careless People’, a book about the folks at the top of Facebook/Meta. Some high-performing advertisers found ways to use Meta to target young girls, due to their emotional and impressionable nature. She thought the listeners would be interested in this info.

    • Transcript:

      Cammie Scott

      What happens with fucking meta now?

      Taryn Arnold

      I read this book called Careless People. And it’s about like the people that are at the top of Facebook. And, um, one of the things that I wrote down, cause I was like, dude, the peepees are going to eat this shit up cause it’s so fucked up and they like the stuff that we think is interesting Is they, so obviously companies use meta for advertising. Okay. They can buy different packages for different levels of how granular the targeting gets um early on some really high performing advertisers from different companies found ways to Target so granularly that they would target mostly young girls because of very emotional and very like

🎥 How to Get on RuPaul’s Drag Race! | Trixie’s Top Tips

  • I’m going to tell you basically some golden rules that I think apply to casting across the board, especially with something like reality television where you’re not auditioning for an existing character. You’re sort of auditioning yourself as your own character as an option

  • I just started taping everything. If I was doing a show, I would run while the drag queen was on stage, you know, barely blind drunk, being like, “Up next, we have this girl from, you know, like, whatever the drag queens are saying.” I remember this one drag queen used to always say, “She’s your baby sister. She’s my baby sister. She’s everybody’s baby sister.” And I never got that. Maybe it’s because I’m from the country; everybody thinks I’m inbred. That’s okay. They would be announcing me as Trixie Mattel. And I would run out into the audience in my outfit. Imagine me ducking like, “Hi. Can you just tape this?” I would give it to some drunk guy to hold the camera and film me. And then after my number, I would walk out. And take my camera and go backstage. I mean, I was handing this camera to strangers left and right and be like, “Can you film me filming me walking across the street filming me anytime I was in drag? I just gave it to random people and told them to film me.”

  • when Brandon told me when I was 23, 24, do not film the Drag Race audition tape. Film the Drag Race audition tape in the style of the pilot for your own reality show. Everything clicked

  • Nick just gave me four good keywords: bright, big, soft, and head-on. You do not want side sources when you’re in drag. You do not want overheads. You do not want upshots. You want the Oprah lighting. You want the view. You want the Rupaul lighting. And I’m telling you, basically create a wall of light.

  • The day I decided I might audition, I started filming everything. That way, when the casting started and I downloaded like the application and it was all the things I needed to do, I already had hours of footage. Because what you don’t want, let’s say you’re a drag queen. What you don’t want is closets full of looks that you’ve worn over the years and then when you have to audition for Drag Race, you got to spend a day in front of a ring light putting them all on and walking around your living room. Wouldn’t it be better to have footage of you in drag in these looks working? There’s the spotlight, there’s the audience, there’s something real about it. Like, start filming now. You never know what video footage you might need later. And make sure you film every look, every performance, everything interesting that happens in and out of drag. Let’s say you have a boyfriend and it’s your birthday and it’s like footage of you having like a family event. You never know what if in your audition later you talk about um your boyfriend who means so much to you. It’s a better video for you to have footage to to fil to throw to

  • Brandon taught me this when I auditioned. He said, don’t think of your tragic backstory, but think of the levels of your life. If you are also a competitive ice skater, that’s cool. Make sure you include that. If you also are a twin or what are the cool or different parts of your life? Because when we’re making a 44-minute television show, we’re going to need to get to know you as a character in a few sentences

  • Construct yourself as a reality character, using only the parts that came in the box.

January 13

🎧 Ali Abdaal: How to Build a Life of Freedom, Fulfillment, and Success -

  • Don’t just solve small problems based on existing skills. It’s better to tackle a big, painful problem, even if you have to learn new skills along the way. Solving bigger problems is what helps you build a big business, even if it brings up imposter syndrome because you don’t yet have all the skills.

    • Transcript: Ali Abdaal Do some more work to learn more skills and figure out the system such that you’re actually able to solve a more painful problem for the business or for the customer that you’re serving. That will actually, that’s the thing that helps you build a big business. And so this is where the imposter syndrome really comes in because these guys genuinely do not have the skills yet to be able to solve the big problem. But what I’m encouraging them to do is I would rather you solve a big problem and learn the skills than you solve a smaller problem purely based on the skills you already have and just not Get anywhere with it because like it’s too small a problem for someone to pay for.

  • Instead of saying “I don’t know how to do that,” reframe it to “I’m learning how to do that.”

    • Transcript: Corey Wilk One of the reframes I had heard was rather than say, I don’t know how to do that, say I’m learning how to do that.

  • Ali signed up for $200,000 worth of coaching programs and masterminds. He consumed their content at triple speed, transcribed everything with software, and used AI to take notes. He then used a notebook LM to compare the approaches of various experts like Cole Gordon, Taki Moore, Alex Hormozi, and Charlie Morgan, focusing on offer design. All this while rereading books and doing prep work.

    • Transcript: Ali Abdaal Was I signed up to like literally $200,000 worth of coaching programs, mentorships and masterminds from other people who are in that space, consumed all of their content at triple Speed while I was on a run, transcribed the shit out of everything using transcription software, got the AI to give me the notes for it, got the, you know, turned it into a notebook LM to Ask questions around like, okay, let’s look at all of Cole Gordon’s stuff, all of Taki Moore’s stuff, all of Alex Hormozy’s stuff, all of Charlie Morgan’s stuff. And like, talk to me about how they think about like designing offers and stuff. Rereading the books and doing all that kind of like prep work, all the book work, as it were,

  • Theory crafting can be addictive. It gives you a dopamine rush from planning and strategizing without the risk of actual failure. You feel like a master strategist who can solve anything, playing out scenarios in your head and creating the illusion of winning without risking loss.

    • Transcript: Corey Wilk Theory crafting is so compelling and almost addictive sometimes for people because you get so much of the dopamine, I guess, for lack of a better word, of doing the thing without actually Risking failure, right? Because when you’re theory crafting, you are the master strategist. You have all the answers, no matter what happens, you can figure it out. And you just play all these like mock battles and scenarios in your head. And it gives you the illusion of playing the game and winning the game without ever having to risk losing the game.

  • Don’t overwhelm your team with too many new ideas at once; introduce them gradually. Explore new ideas yourself initially, and get feedback from mentors, not your team. Only introduce them during quarterly planning. Bigger companies operate in longer cycles because of their size. As a beginner entrepreneur, take advantage of being small and agile. Don’t operate like a big corporation when you’re just starting out.

    • Transcript: Ali Abdaal There was a quote I saw from Jeff Bezos where he’s like, every day I have a dozen ideas that could kill Amazon because it’s not at a certain scale. It’s not about coming up with more ideas. It’s about drip feeding new ideas into the organization at the rate that the organization can handle. Because if I were to come up with like a bunch of new ideas and just throw them at the team, then the business would actually crumble. And so what I need to do is have the restraint when I’m coming up with a new idea to actually just do the exploration by myself. Not talk to the team about it, talk to coaches or mentors or friends about it, but not talk to the team about it because they’re actually busy executing all the stuff that we’re already Doing. And only when it comes to quarterly planning that we’re like’re like okay let’s now do this as a q3 thing or as a q1 thing or as a q2 thing so like if the business was still smaller and i had The idea of like oh let’s do an online business school i probably would have just done it but at the scale we’re now at it’s like actually waiting six months to make sure this is the right Thing to do before we do the thing at our scale now is actually quite a sensible thing to do um and this is why even bigger companies operate in like three year cycles. It’s like, oh yeah, we’re going to do this in 2029. It’s like, and it’s very easy to look at that and laugh at them and be like, lol, they’ve lost the agility they once had as a startup, but also they’ve got thousands of employees. So it’s like, it’s just a different game that you’re playing at that point. But the thing that I would always say for beginner entrepreneurs is when you are small, you have the benefit of not having that many costs. You have the benefit of not having a big team. You have the benefits of, it doesn’t really matter if the thing doesn’t work because no one gives a fuck. So like actually leaning into that energy and taking advantage of it rather than operating like a big corporation when you’re a one man, a one man solopreneur.

  • Figure out how many 5-year units you’ve left, given the average life expectancy is around 80 years. This’ll help clarify your choices and focus on the big things you wanna do.

    • Transcript: Corey Wilk Kevin Kelly, but he’s like quoting one of his friends. And his friend is like 65. And he says, five years is what any project worth doing will take. From the moment of inception to the last good riddance, a book, a campaign, a job, startup, whatever, will take five years to play through. So he asks himself, how many five years do I have left? He can count them on one hand, even if he’s lucky. So this clarifies his choices. If he has less than five big things he can do, what will they be? So if we assume average life expectancy is around 80, how many five-year life units do you have left?

  • Ali Abdaal’s stress manifested physically, even to the point where his girlfriend (now wife) could see his face twitching or signs that he was about to cry, even when he himself wasn’t fully aware of feeling triggered.

    • Transcript: Ali Abdaal Even to the point where my then girlfriend and our wife, we’d be talking about something and she’d be like, oh, your face is twitching right now and it seems like you’re about to cry. What’s on i’ll be like really oh because i actually couldn’t feel that um but like someone else could see it on my face that like this thing has triggered me or affected me in some way i was Like oh that’s very interesting

  • Ali saw an Instagram reel that said, “bills are paid, wife is hot, kids are cute.” He reflected on it.

    • Transcript: Ali Abdaal There’s an instagram reel i saw the other day that was like um bills are paid, wife is hot, kids are cute. What more do you need? And I was like, oh, literally, bills are paid, wife is hot, kids are cute.

📰 My 2025 Annual Review by

  • Our average clickthrough rate (a measure of how many people see our thumbnails and decide to click on them) was 4.3%, which is low compared to a target benchmark for best-in-class educational channels of around 8%.

  • Lead magnets are also becoming much less effective, I assume because AI now allows you to create something similar in seconds. Every single source of traffic to our website shows a 40-94% decline in subscription rates, regardless of whether traffic went up or down. This means that organic email subscriptions are way down over the last few years: from 237 per day in 2022 to 115 per day in 2025, a 50% drop. We’re becoming more dependent on “events” such as webinars, viral YT videos, and partnerships and having to work harder to convince people to join our newsletter.

  • ncredibly, in 2025 the average time someone was on our email list before purchasing was only 3 days, which reveals that they don’t necessarily need a lot of nurturing first. The smaller number of people who sign up are also more committed. The total conversion rate from our email list to all products was a healthy 2.75% – which means 1 in 36 people who join our email list end up buying something.

📰 Weekly Habits of YouTubers Making $100k/Year by

  • By the end of this week, always have AT LEAST next week’s videos & emails scheduled.

    • This is a rule I try stick to. So you wake up on Monday and it’s all sorted. How nice. If you can get 2 weeks ahead, then I salute you 🫡

  • Schedule time every week to get help on your channel. Don’t go it alone.

  • So here’s what is actually in my calendar every week:

    • 1. YouTube - Prepare to film at least 1x YouTube video (often I’ll film 2) on Thursday mornings.

    • 2. Email - Write 2x emails, they are often part of the prep for the videos I’m filming (Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings)

    • 3. Sell, deliver and improve my programme (late mornings and afternoons, every day)

  • Email is a (powerful) bonus if you have the time and headspace. If you don’t, just make sure to collect email subscribers with lead magnets. The top entrepreneurs and YouTubers ruthlessly remove items from their to do list.

  • List the 1-5 most important things you need to do next week, and schedule when you’re going to do them.

    • Then every day, review your to do list and ruthlessly cut it down so you’re only left with the essentials (YouTube, email and offers).

January 10

🎥 How to Make a Video Every Single Day - Matti Haapoja

  • It’s also my theory why YouTubers are some of the best storytellers in the world right now because they are learn make repeat. They’re doing this all the time. Whereas like Hollywood filmmakers, they’re making one big project every couple years, for example.

🎥 Why You Have a Personal Brand, but Get Zero Results - Caleb Ralston

  • Although you might be somebody who would feel awkward calling yourself an expert, but if you have multiple W’s on your resume, if you are the person who your audience wants to become or you have done the thing that your audience wants to do, then you are the expert and is your job to teach in public. The student is learning in public, but you are teaching in public.

🎧 114: Holidays, Goals, and Breakups - Staying Up with Cammie and

  • To boost your chances of achieving a goal like exercising more, write a letter to your future self far down the road (e.g., 30 years). This makes you feel more responsible for that future self’s well-being compared to writing to a near-future self (e.g., six months). It works ‘cause you’re more inclined to protect a version of yourself that feels distant and whose health you want to preserve. [[essay idea]] letter to Becky in 30 yrs

    • Transcript:

      Taryn Arnold

      They did a study many moons ago where they had a bunch of people that said that they wanted to exercise more and they had them write letters to themselves in the future Half the group wrote Letters to themselves like six to nine months into the future. So who you would be in six months, nine months. I think up to three years. The other group wrote letters to themselves 30 years down the road. Super far down the road. They measured both of those groups. The group that wrote letters to themselves further down were way more successful with exercising they exercise way more more consistently whatever whatever after they had written To like a very far farther future version of themselves yeah so because they felt like they could change that future version more than their six month or whatever it was yeah and like

      Cammie Scott

      The things this is actually impact i have to protect this person because that person almost doesn’t feel like you yes future you feels unrealistic six months from now is like basically Present you yeah you’re like we’re the same bitch yeah whatever what you do i do but 30 years from now you’re like oh is she going to be proud of the work i put in to preserve her health?

      Taryn Arnold

      And, like, your body’s going to be a lot different. And it’s, like, what you’re able to do in 30 years, unless you’re zero, is not the same than what you can do now.

January 5

📰 Five Things: A Simpler Issue -

  • I finished The Other Side of Change by . This is a book of stories about people who went through changes in their lives. If you like the kind of reporting style non-fiction books that interweave a bunch of stories about people, you’ll like this book. The writing is down-to-earth, and it doesn’t come with an agenda of any kind. The best part, by far, was the final chapter in which Maya detailed her own challenges trying to build a family, which, given some of our own recent challenges, was relatable and powerful.

  • And I also finished Unhinged Habits by . This was GREAT. I loved it so much that I am going to be writing about it next week. I think this will be a great companion for people on a pathless path who can’t quite commit to one thing or one habit forever.

January 3

🎧 Our 2026 Creator Economy Predictions by Colin and Samir

  • Clips from a CEO’s podcast are outperforming the full episodes, even at 12-20 minutes. This raises the question of shorter podcasts, maybe even 2-minute formats. Kareem suggests making a podcast of just the best parts. Creating weekly video podcasts that have diehard fans will be tough in 2026.

    • Transcript: Colin Diary of a CEO, great example, started a clips channel. Some of those clips are outperforming the episodes, and the clips are in the 20-minute range or 12-minute range. And obviously, it’s been a strategy forever, but even with us as we’ve been experimenting in short form with this in or out, the question is, what does a two-minute podcast look like? Or is that even a podcast? What is that? And a lot of that driven – if you’ve been listening to the show, you’ve heard us ad nauseum talk about Kareem and subway takes. But he has a quote where he says, what if I made a podcast with just the best parts? And I think we are at that moment where to get to a weekly video podcast that people are diehard about, I think will be challenging in 2026.

  • Audiences might get tired of long podcasts and won’t stay loyal to them. Instead, they’ll choose podcasts based on the guest, topic, or if there’s a controversy. This loyalty to the video podcast format mainly exists in comedy, because comedy provides a consistent group hang experience.

    • Transcript: Colin When we look at the long term view, I do think the audience in general is going to have fatigue over like the two hour podcast and won’t be loyal to the two-hour podcast. That’s what I think is the most important thing, is that it will be guest dependent. It will be topic dependent. It will be like if there’s a controversy and you can hear someone talk about what’s going on. Or like after Jake Paul fought Anthony Joshua, you know, the next morning he’s on Logan Paul’s podcast and a lot of people wanted to hear him talk about that. So there you go. That podcast did really well. So I think it’ll be event-based and topic-based and guest-based, but the loyalty to the video podcast, I think just remains in comedy right now, in comedy podcasting. Samir Because comedy consistently delivers on that group hang sort of experience. Yeah. Colin And it’s a it’s a way to learn about the news. That’s fun. Samir With entertainment. Colin With entertainment.

  • Summarization changes the content landscape. Information alone isn’t interesting anymore because it’s readily available. Perspective and entertainment value are what matter now. People are more loyal to comedians.

    • Transcript: Colin What this means when you can summarize content. It changes the dynamic of like information is not that interesting. Like why would information be interesting now? You can get information anywhere. You can just get it. So now it’s like perspective and entertainment value. And again, why I’m starting to notice that when I ask a lot of people who they are loyal to, it’s mostly comedians.

  • In-real-life (IRL) events still matter despite people saying they don’t have time for them. These events are more interactive, engaging, and resistant to summarization by AI. When evaluating content, consider if it can be easily summarized or if it provides a real, emotional, and entertaining experience that justifies people’s time.

    • Transcript: Colin Back to the Ain’t Nobody got time for that. I think there is a group of people who like definitely has time for the IRL event. And that’s, that’s crazy to say, because that is a way higher lift than watching a hour long podcast, but, but it’s way more interactive. It’s way more, it’s, it’s way more engaging and interesting. And like, think that’s what we have to think about is if we’re making something, kind of have to take a step back and go, can this thing be summarized really easily by Gemini? Does anyone have time for this? Does this mean anything? Is this entertaining? And when I think about all those things, events come to mind as something that answers the question of, yeah, I think this matters. This can’t be summarized. This is a real experience that has real emotional impact on you. And it’s entertaining. It’s fun to be with other people in a similar context. So it’s harder, actually, in my opinion, to find the videos that match that criteria right now than it is to find an experience that matches that criteria. Okay, so we’re both in. We’re both in.

🎧 Are We Reliving 1929? Parallels to Today’s Market Mania — Ft. Andrew Ross Sorkin - Prof G Pod

  • The 1920s saw huge technological change with automobiles, telecommunications and radio. Access to credit and loans for consumer goods (like cars and appliances) fueled this boom, but Wall Street extending credit for stock purchases turned stock trading into a national pastime.

    • Transcript: Andrew Ross Sorkin The 1920s, people talk about the go-go 20s and this sort of remarkable period. It was probably one of the most transformational generations of our time from a technological perspective, automobiles, telecommunications, radio. And the other magic ingredient was credit, the opportunity for people to get loans to go buy stuff. And originally it started with buying cars and appliances from, you know, all sorts of different stores and things like that. And then Wall Street caught on and started offering people loans so you could go buy stock. And that was really what changed everything in terms of how stock trading in America became almost like a national pastime.

  • Sorkin got into the story of 1929 by exploring the characters involved. He wanted to recreate the immersive experience he had while reading books like Barbarians at the Gate and Den of Thieves where he felt he was in the room with the people involved.

    • Transcript: Andrew Ross Sorkin I’d read a lot about the period, but I’d never gotten inside the story, the characters, who they were. I loved books like Barbarians at the Gate and Den of Thieves and, you know, books that Eric Larson had written where you felt like you were in the room with these people. And I thought, could I go do that?

  • When you’re young and before you’ve got kids, do everything you can. Juggling a professional life with being a dad is complicated and hard.

    • Transcript: Andrew Ross Sorkin Professionally when you’re young, before you have kids, do everything. Do everything you possibly can do. Because I do think one of the great conundrums and challenges of being a dad and being a father and having a professional life is the complication of trying to do both well. And it’s hard.

  • Successful people often show more kindness. A key to opportunity is being thought of well when you’re not present. Achieve this by being kind and helping others without expecting anything in return. Remember to note when you want to help someone in the future.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway Exceptionally successful people, generally speaking, over-index on kindness. They’re generally good people because one of the keys to success is being put in a room of opportunities when you’re not physically in that room. And the way you get there is through kindness and doing things for people where there doesn’t appear to be any expectation of reciprocal benefit. And you just kind of memo to yourself, I’d really like to do this person a solid someday.

  • John Raskob conceived the five-day work week, which changed America by boosting the consumer economy. He believed an extra day off would drive purchases of cars, gardening equipment, and more.

    • Transcript: Andrew Ross Sorkin John Raskob very cleverly came up with an idea that actually, I would argue, changed America in a large way, which is today we work only five days a week. Back then, we worked six days a week. The stock market was open on Saturdays. And he had this idea that she wrote about in November of 1929 that, you know what, we should have a five-day work week because, not because he wanted to be nice to people, because he thought That if you actually had an extra day during the weekend, it would create a bigger consumer economy. More people would have to buy cars. They’d have places to go. They’d buy gardening equipment and everything else.

🎧 The Crash: What 1929 Has to Tell Us About 2025 With Andrew Ross Sorkin - Next Question with Katie Couric

  • Andrew Ross Sorkin often chases what’s interesting, which can mean chasing failure. He believes that’s where the most drama is.

    • Transcript: Andrew Ross Sorkin I’m always chasing interesting, which oftentimes means chasing failure. And no, because I oftentimes think that’s where the most drama is.

  • Sorkin explains his extensive research process for his book. Unlike typical historical research that focuses on a few key archives, he had to search through many different places to find relevant information. He had to guess who key figures might have contacted and then sift through their archives, hoping to find a letter or some piece of evidence. Sometimes, he was successful; other times, he wasn’t.

    • Transcript: Andrew Ross Sorkin Most historians sort of find two or three or four archives and then they excavate the archive and they really just go deep in the archive. The challenge in this case was there really wasn’t like one or two or three places you could go. It was you had to be like needle in a haystack situation with, you know, 15, 20, 30 different places. And you’d almost have to guess. You’d almost have to say, OK, well, I don’t have an archive for this character, but he might have called somebody or talked to someone after. Well, who are the 12 people he might have talked to? OK, I’m now going to go to their archives and then pray to God that I’m going to find some letter there. And sometimes you would, and sometimes you wouldn’t.

  • ARS found it fascinating that even though people knew things were getting out of hand, the human condition is to want more.

    • Transcript: Andrew Ross Sorkin And it was just so fascinating to see, I don’t want to say greed, but I think that the human condition is to want more. Everybody wants more. And people knew that this was getting out of hand. It wasn’t that nobody was saying, you know, this isn’t crazy.

Work with me: https://go.beckyisj.com/workwithme

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]]><![CDATA[January creative updates]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/january-creative-updates-640https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/january-creative-updates-640Sun, 11 Jan 2026 09:26:35 GMTThis month in my creative life:

  • Running

    • Doing some easy 10ks

    • Doing a half-marathon next week (eek!)

  • Reset

    • Taking January kinda slow

    • Still listing some items that I don’t want anymore on secondhand sites

The rest of my video logs are here.

Book a call: https://go.beckyisj.com/30min

Some links are affiliate links, meaning that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through the links at no cost to you.

]]><![CDATA[December creative updates]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/december-creative-updates-048https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/december-creative-updates-048Sun, 07 Dec 2025 04:36:20 GMTThis month in my creative life:

  • Book

  • Reset

    • Having a week off work from Dec 23 - Jan 1

    • Plan is to declutter and just chill out for 2026

  • Running

    • Did a 10k in Nov

    • Doing a half-marathon in January

    • Friends’ recommendations is to do 2x 3-5km runs each week

  • Side hustle

    • Coincidentally I’m also a LinkedIn coach for Ali Abdaal’s Lifestyle Business Academy

    • Testing out offers to help entrepreneurs generate leads from LinkedIn

The rest of my video logs are here.

Book a call: https://calendly.com/beckyisj

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]]><![CDATA[November creative updates]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/november-creative-updateshttps://beckyisj.substack.com/p/november-creative-updatesSat, 08 Nov 2025 01:44:49 GMTThis month in my creative life:

  • Oct was a month of travels

    • Probably longest I’ve been out of HK since working

    • Spent time biking around Gili & under the stars in Yosemite

  • Book

    • In my final round of edits.

    • Met my amazing book editor (and good bud!) <3

    • It’m glad that I didn’t edit it earlier. Life happened and parts of the book had to be rewritten 😅

    • But now I want the book to be out before end of year bc I don’t wanna rewrite it again

  • Pod

    • Moving to fortnightly. I know we keep saying that but we mean it (I think)

  • Hustle season

    • Leaning into work

    • Am setting aside work-life balance for a bit. I’m feeling excited about work and want to double down

  • LinkedIn stuff for my side hustle / biz

    • ngl rent is more expensive and I wanna earn more money

    • so I’m doubling down on the skill I already have

    • Bonus: I’m gonna be a LinkedIn coach as well for Ali Abdaal’s Lifestyle Business Academy course

    • Everything is aligned to pursue this. So here we go 🔥

The rest of my video logs are here.

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]]><![CDATA[October creative updates]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/october-creative-updateshttps://beckyisj.substack.com/p/october-creative-updatesThu, 02 Oct 2025 00:00:43 GMTThis month in my creative life:

The rest of my video logs are here.

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]]><![CDATA[September Creative Updates]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/september-creative-updateshttps://beckyisj.substack.com/p/september-creative-updatesFri, 05 Sep 2025 12:24:38 GMTThis month in my creative life:

  • Personal events

    • I moved out of my old flat. Geez moving is stressful

    • I flew back to see my parents in Indonesia

  • Getting more confidence in my job

    • Partially by taking more ownership over Ali’s YouTube channel

  • Side hustle-y

    • I’m taking on some clients, including people in the finance space to do their newsletter, personal branding, and coaching

    • Have also formed a side hustle squad with some buds so that we can encourage (The dream team: , , , and )

  • Bite-Sized Creativity

    • The book has been on pause

    • I just wasn’t in the headspace to do any more edits

    • Will slowly get back into it

  • Published an essay in the Pathless Collective, led by

    • Grab a copy from Metalabel here

    • and I are ramping up to do the pod fortnightly

The rest of my video logs are here.

Book a call: Have a bite-sized creative project? Let’s give you a starting line boost a la Mario Kart - https://www.beckyisj.com/consulting

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]]><![CDATA[August creative updates]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/august-creative-updateshttps://beckyisj.substack.com/p/august-creative-updatesSun, 03 Aug 2025 13:17:30 GMTThis month in my creative life:

  • Fitness

    • Completed my third Hyrox

    • Did my first unasissted chin-up (though I cheat a bit by jumping)

  • Stressed about job

  • Short-form content creating

  • Connecting to other people in this creator space

    • Tony from Thomas Frank's channel

    • Rommel from MakeTypos

  • Book

    • Editing is taking a while - my own decision to take it slow

  • Photography

    • Resuming mentorship in film photography

  • Travel

    • Visiting parents in a few days

The rest of my video logs are here.

Book a call: Have a bite-sized creative project? Let’s give you a starting line boost a la Mario Kart - https://www.beckyisj.com/consulting

Some links are affiliate links, meaning that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through the links at no cost to you.

]]><![CDATA[July 2025]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/july-2025https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/july-2025Sat, 12 Jul 2025 14:22:14 GMTBooks read:

📕 Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan

📖 The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong

📖 Building a StoryBrand 2.0: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller

Posts published:

Small Creator, Big World
Second Channels, Substacks & Self-Doubt
Hello World 👋…
Listen now
10 months ago · Becky Isjwara and Bhav Sharma
Indie Thinkers
Becky Isjwara
be Becky Isjwara…
Listen now
10 months ago · 8 likes · Daniel Hunter and Becky Isjwara

July 15

🎧 China's EV Power Play, AI Career Choices, and Time Travel - Pivot Pod

  • Don't waste your energy (mojo) on unimportant things. You've only got a limited amount of focus, time, and attention, so spend it on the 2-3 things that matter most, like studying.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway Around porn, I've tried to couch it in other things. I I talk about the notion that you have only a certain amount of mojo. I say you have only a certain amount of energy and you don't want to waste it on bad calories. You have only a certain amount of focus, time, and attention. You want to spend it on the two or three things that are most important in terms of your studying.

  • Porn, being on demand, can kill your mojo and fire, acting as a courage killer. Channel your sexual desire to become a better man: stronger, better dressed, good smelling, and more enduring.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway If I'd had porn, I'm not sure I would have had that same mojo and fire to want to meet women. And that anything that reduces your mojo and your fire is a courage killer. And what I've said to my boys a bunch of time is that porn is a courage killer because it's on demand. And what Kara says about it being, you know, a facsimile of what you're supposed to expect in relationships. And I say to my boys, and this is what I'm very saying, I'm saying, it's good to be horny. Channeling your sexual desire to making you a better man, wanting to make you stronger, dress better, smell good, shower, develop a rap, endure rejection.

  • Recommendation algorithms can lead people down a path from basic content to increasingly dark and disturbing material because everything is accessible.

    • Transcript: Kara Swisher You can get anything, right? And so it moves people down a highway of something basic, you know, chalk van straw porn versus something really sick. Right. And that's really the problem is that it can start to get very dark very quickly and very accessible.

July 14

📰 Greed Can Look a Lot Like Ambition. by

  • Ambition improves the world. Greed only improves your situation.

    Ambitious people tend to solve problems. They create value that didn’t exist before. They make things better for others while also benefiting themselves. The mission is their contribution to a greater good.

    Greedy people accumulate. They optimize for personal gain regardless of whether they're adding any value. The mission is acquisition.

July 13

📰 Rules That Epictetus Lived by Pt. 2 by Ryan Holiday

  • Always grab things by the right handle *“Every event has two handles—one by which it can be carried, and one by which it can’t. If your brother does you wrong, don’t grab it by his wronging...Instead, use the other—that he is your brother...hold of the handle that carries.”* In every situation, there is a weak handle and strong. No matter our condition, no matter how undesirable the situation, we retain the ability to choose which one we will grab. Are we going to choose to see that our brother is a selfish jerk? Or are we going to remember that we share the same mother, that he’s not this way on purpose, that we love him, that we have our own bad impulses too? This decision—which handle we grab, day in and day out, with anyone and everyone we deal with—determines what kind of life we live.

🎥 These 3 Rules Reinvented the Vlog | Ft. LifeOfRiza

  • I felt like I needed to do something a little bit more loose. - Yeah. So then vlogging was something that not a lot of people were doing at the time. I feel like if you were known, then people say, “Oh, you only should vlog if you’re known and you have an audience already.” And I was like, but I just want to be able to tell a variety of different stories. And work on my storytelling and my filmmaking. The only niche that I could really think of was vlogging that it would make sense.

  • one thing I'm learning as I'm talking with you is like, it's funny, when people use the term vlog, it's usually this very impromptu, unscripted thing, but what you've done, is you've created a cinematic production process to recreate the improvised vlog. I like to say that it's based on a true story versus what we think a traditional vlog is. Yeah. I think a vlog or the vlog niche is the closest thing I can categorize this as. Because if it's too different on YouTube, then I don't know if it works as well. People need something that's a bit familiar in order for that new thing to be accepted.

📰 Smartphones and Lovemaking by

  • An embodied life cultivated with true intentions is a life lived as one act of love. In a life cultivated with *passio*, all action is a form of lovemaking: cooking with love, gardening with love, writing with love, and, literally, making children with love. When material reality integrates with compassion—when we’re embodied—the heart becomes as much of a sex organ as any other reproductive part of us. Everything we produce could be a labor of love, from babies to books to brunch.

🎥 Unpacking Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2025! by WVFRM Podcast

  • I think adding friction is the sweet spot for me because I don't really want something that forces me to be unable to do a thing. I just want some friction added so that if I'm mentally deciding, I want to not be as addicted to my phone for the next while. I would argue this is like no friction, though. Like if it was in that mode and I wanted to look at something on Instagram, I could probably fingerprint and flip this up before the screen even turned on. Yeah, but you'd have to mentally decide, oh, I'm breaking my own rule. No, no, no. But as someone who did a I went through a pretty big phone detox recently, after like a week of hardcore use. The muscle memory goes away. That goes away shockingly fast. I think if you did a real detox and then were using that, you’d be absolutely fine. And this is coming from someone who has very little self-control.

📰 My AI Think Week Starts Monday by Vicky Zhao

  • I am dividing my week into 3 main parts:

    • Input: reading books on AI fundamentals. I’m focusing on timeless principles (signal) rather than timely news (noise, mostly).

    • Process: reflections and notetaking All that input is no use to me if I don’t actually make them my own. I’m scattering processing throughout the day to make the info relevant to me.

    • Output: experimenting with AI tools You know I’m all about making things practical. So the afternoons are for experimentation.

  • (Yes this is the input output loop I keep on talking about because I don’t want to get stuck consuming with no end.)

July 12

📰 Sailing Against the Current of Frictionless AI by Rhea Purohit (Every)

  • To avoid impulsively “just shipping it,” he introduces deliberate friction through cooldown periods when reviewing designs or providing feedback. This intentional pause allows ideas to mature, fostering more thoughtful and meaningful responses.

📰 ICE Age by Scott Galloway

  • The World Economic Forum says 9 million jobs globally may be displaced in the next five years. Anthropic’s CEO warns AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. Imagine the population of Greece storming the shores of America and taking jobs (even jobs Americans actually want), as they’re willing to work 24/7 for free. You’ve already met them. Their names are GPT, Claude, and Gemini.

📰 The Try Guys' Streaming Service, One Year Later by The Publish Press

  • Founders Kornfeld and Keith Habersberger (who are the sole investors in the company, with no outside financiers besides paying subscribers)

July 11

🎧 How the Prof G Pod Gets Made, What Does It Mean to Be Rich? And What Really Matters in Hiring

  • Consider creating podcasts focused on specific, high-interest topics like China or economics if you've established expertise in those areas. This targets audience interests and leverages existing strengths.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway I'd like to do a PropG China podcast. I'd like to do a Prop G economics podcast because we're good at this.

  • Transcript: Scott Galloway The podcast creates speaking opportunities. I make about $4 million a year speaking. I charge an average of about $125,000, $150,000 a speaking gig. I do about $30,000 a year, $25,000 a year. The books, I make about a million, $1 million, two on each book. Is that right? Maybe a million and a half, including international. And obviously the podcast and the speaking support the books. And then the newsletter that goes out every week, we don't monetize it. We've just started monetizing. We're making about eight or 10,000 a newsletter, getting an advertiser sponsor. That goes out to about 300, 350,000 people. It used to be half a million. And then we cleaned out the people who hadn't opened in a month, a lot of bots. And it all is sort of a flywheel, right? The downloads inspire more book sales. The book sales inspire more speaking gigs. The speaking gigs inspire more newsletter, newsletter more downloads, and the wheel flies, right? So we're trying to create a kind of a content flywheel that supports it. But yeah, it's a nice business. It's a media business. And once you hit a certain scale, it's very profitable. But no, again, let me just finish where I started. Greatness is in the agency of others. What you're seeing or what you're hearing is about an hour and a half of my time. And I would bet every episode is somewhere between 20 and 40 hours of someone else's time. Even the person who runs this company, Catherine, tends to listen to almost everything. There's video editors involved, sound engineers, the producer who lined

📰 These 3 Decisions Will Determine if You Get Rich by

  • Set and enforce an aspirational hourly rate. If fixing a problem will save less than your rate, ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it... My aspirational rate was $5,000/hr. — Naval Ravikant

  • item. If your aspirational hourly rate doesn't feel impossible, it's too low. Why? Delusional goals rewire your brain.

  • The golden zone for challenge is about 85% difficulty.

  • start by creating a list of things you *don't do.* Things that are literally not worth your time. Coffee meetings. Returning stupid items. Scrolling because you're bored. Partying because you lack zest and proper stimulation. Texting everyone back on time (this one is especially stupid, because nobody is wired for people being able to access their attention at any time). Little todos that could be outsourced or ignored. When these decisions come up, firmly state, "I don't do that."

  • create a list of things you *will do.* Things that merge your real hourly rate with your aspirational hourly rate. Study information that drastically increases your earning potential. Practice skills that make you self-reliant. Starting a business. Joining a startup. Pushing for an executive role. Learning and building. The more you think about your actions, the easier it is to see why you aren't rich.

July 9

🎧 The Viral Expert: Anthpo - Colin and Samir

  • It's easier to reach the entire world than your neighborhood in our current era.

    • Transcript: Colin We live in a time where it's easier to reach the entire world than it is to reach your neighborhood

  • Anthpo believes viral content needs a proof of concept with large groups, connection to celebrity culture, and an absurd/dumb element. The humor lies in the unexpected act itself, creating intrigue and prompting questions about the doer's motivation. The absurdity is the point.

    • Transcript: Anthony Potero I have proof of concept with big groups hanging out and like i also know that people care about celebrity culture and like other intellectual properties and i know that people like something That feels absurd and dumb and like the notion that a person hangs up a lookalike competition poster throughout the city is like funny right like who is doing this like that's a funny Colin Thought and then i think you just because it's kind of like what's their incentive yeah right like it's clearly just for the absurdity of it

  • Make content so that everyone either has a good time or ends up with a good story.

    • Transcript: Anthony Potero Ultimately like we want to make sure everybody if they don't have a good time they have a good story

  • Good culture involves innovating on existing concepts. Anthpo reflects on how many cherished cultural elements originated from earlier iterations and considers how to modernize them.

    • Transcript: Anthony Potero So much of what makes good culture is like the that like you take it in original you take a concept and you like innovate on it where it's like again this happened what like 100 years ago Um and i was like that was we have like a laundry list of just like things in culture that we love and hold dearly and like that was one of them and i was like what's the modern version of that

  • The origins of viral content can be traced back to jokes. Before internet virality, a well-crafted joke would spread globally. People tried creating original jokes to see if they'd make their way back to the originator.

    • Transcript: Samir The original viral concept was a joke that like before there was virality through the internet there was a joke and if somebody told a good joke it would make its way around the world yeah And he they like tried this thing where they came up with an original joke and saw if it would come back to them oh that's a banger and often whoever came up with the joke doesn't get credit

  • Anthpo shares the six psychological principles of influence: social liking, scarcity, consistency, authority, reciprocity, and similarity. Understand 'em 'cause every bit of feeling and emotion evoked can be categorized into these. For example, scarcity is like uploading content infrequently, which creates mystique. Consistency is uploading regularly, becoming part of the audience's routine. Reciprocity, like in 'Kid with Crocs,' involves engaging directly with early fans to foster loyalty. Combining principles like consistent yearly uploads is effective too.

    • Transcript: Anthony Potero The psychology of consumption this is now this is some cringe stuff oh marketing um i don't know if you guys know but like the principles of influence let's hear um it's social liking Scarcity consistency um authority reciprocity um i wrote my my notes um and similarity it's like those psychologically like that's how we consume those six things. You can wait. Can you break those down again? Yeah. So, so, and I, and this is my secret sauce. I actually shouldn't be giving this out, but it's fine. I think everyone should be a creator. Um, how we consume things and are influenced by things. Every bit of feeling and emotion we evoke can be categorized into one of these six things. Scarcity. When you say someone is mysterious and has aura, that's what psychologically you're trying to describe. Like you upload once every eight months and it's like a big deal. That's a Michael Reeves. That's like, you know, someone who's uploading high quality, low quantity content. That's people like that, right? Consistency, the opposite of that in a sense.'s like um uploading every day like it's almost like when you come home from school or work it's like oh i'm gonna watch this creator i've Come to like like almost make it a part of my routine um and you could also combine those two right like you can upload every year but you do so consistently so you can combine those two principles Of influence reciprocity that was a big part of kid with crocs where it's like this is a new account and i am kid with crocs i would always respond to fans and like the first thousand people That followed me i followed them back and like just had full conversations with them and so now these people are like rooting for me and in a way like i am not like like manipulatively thankful

  • Don't be too proud to use trending elements like fonts and sounds. Let your artistry shine in other ways while leveraging what's popular.

    • Transcript: Anthony Potero Similarity i think most artists street artists 3d artists they think they're too good to follow like trends and sounds and put text on the screen and that's something i was like i can't Be afraid to use proxima nova font like the tiktok font like i can't be afraid of that i can let my artistry shine through in other ways yeah but i need to be familiar

  • Colin jokes about the ubiquity of Helvetica font by listing three fonts in order of preference: Helvetica, Helvetica New, and New Hass Grotesque. He then admits that the joke is that they're basically all the same font.

    • Transcript: Colin Top three fonts i mean i gotta put helvetica at the top right and then probably like helvetica new and then maybe like new hoss grotesque oh wow it's mainly just like a helvetica joke because They're all basically helvetica

  • All likes and views aren't the same; they aren't created equal. Focus on depth over width. 800K likes on a unique project have more value than 800K likes on a generic meme. Views from a core community, like those on a vlog with a non-algorithmic title/thumbnail, are more powerful. Undervalue width, overvalue depth.

    • Transcript: Anthony Potero Not all likes and views are made the same. Yeah, they're not created. And I think people still don't realize that. But like 800,000 likes on this is like an army versus 800,000 likes on like some kid like this with like text on top of the screen. It's still cool. And like, you should be very happy that you have that. But like, no one's talking about a meme that has 800,000 likes the way I'm talking about this guy is Sunday nobody. Samir Yeah. You know what I mean? Totally. Yeah. I think people undervalue depth quite a bit. Right. And they overvalue width. And so I think you're absolutely right. I think even 100,000 views on a personality vlog, or even like I was telling Colin this morning that you have a video after your cheeseball man fight that's just titled, I fought him. And it has almost 600,000 views. Those are very powerful views because that title thumbnail is not algorithmic by any means. That is not for like a random passerby view, right? That is for a core community. And we always talked about like this one Emma Chamberlain video that's called You Totally Caught Me Making Soup. That's a great title. Yeah, that's bang. That's actually really funny. Yeah. And it's like, has like millions of views and it's just emblematic of like how massive her community

  • Art's all about effort for effort's sake. That's why artists'll always be around, even with AI advancements. Just like painters still exist despite digital art.

    • Transcript: Anthony Potero Like i love effort for sake of effort i think that's what art is right and that's why i think no matter how intelligent and good generative ai gets there will always be artists the same Way that they're still painters even though we can digitally make something.

  • Play to your strengths and create content you consume. Steal from your 15 favorite artists to create something unique. Every creator has probably stolen from others, whether it's their speaking style or editing techniques. Take inspiration from friends; for example, draw inspiration from creative friends to develop new skills.

    • Transcript: Anthony Potero There's no two success stories that are the same. There's no two artists that are the same. So like play to your strengths, create the content you consume, um, and steal like really truly steal like if you steal from your 15 favorite artists you make something that is so unique And you that it's so like every creator i've ever watched i've stolen from i'm like i love the way they speak i love the way they edit i take a lot of inspiration from my friends like billy Um he's a amazing one of the most creative people i've ever met in my life like i didn't really draw at all until I met him. And then I picked up kind of like making shitty sketches. And I think that's part of my identity now. I helped him edit his educational show called Big Weird World. Yeah. Yeah. Samir We were up against them in the streamies.

📰 How We Made This 6.8x Outlier by George Blackman

  • What is a Big Swing idea?

    • A standout piece of content that you don't want to remake for at least 2-3 years.

    • It should represent your core beliefs, on a topic that is fundamental to your brand or philosophy.

    • It should have a higher view ceiling and act as a vehicle for growing your channel.

    • It might require more time or resources.

    • However, it's riskier.

  • You need to be confident in the idea and its packaging before taking a *big swing*.

  • For example, the framing of this Bryan Johnson video stuck out to me. It's a video about AG1, but the specific framing is "[X] Failed. Here's Why." I just loved it the moment I heard it. (And this video was also an outlier!)

  • In my case, I literally searched the word "Notion", and filtered for videos with over 200K views. I wanted to know what type of packaging in this niche had a high view ceiling.

📰 Mozi Minute: More Value, Less Stuff

  • Here's your silent pruning playbook:

    1. Identify features with low usage OR high support costs

    2. Remove them without announcement

    3. Monitor complaints for 14 days

    4. Analyze who complains (revenue value, customer tenure, LTV)

    5. Only reverse if valuable customers are affected

  • Example: Let’s say you have a SaaS company and you removed your "custom export" feature. Only 3% of users had ever used it, but it generated 22% of support tickets. After silent removal, just 6 customers complained out of 3,400 users. When analyzed, you might find those 6 were all on legacy discounted plans and represented less than 1% of revenue. So you keep the change and see onboarding completion rates jump 17% - new users were getting confused by the complex export options!

  • A membership site removing three "bonus resources" from their offering. Nobody complained. When they surveyed users months later, nobody even remembered those resources had existed. But new member conversion improved 8% with the simpler offering.

July 5

📰 How to Start Travel Photography Today by

  • Starting locally gives you a distinct advantage over visitors who come from far away. Open Google Maps and research places within a one- to two-hour commute—you’ll likely find something worth exploring. Another benefit is year-round access, allowing you to revisit locations as seasons change. For example, a specific spot may look best in summer light, while other locations shine in winter. As you go, you can gradually widen your radius and explore farther afield.

📰 3-2-1: On Becoming Hard to Copy, the Power of Fundamentals, and Three Qualities That Matter by James Clear

  • "When I notice myself worrying about 'what other people will think,' I find I'm usually not worried about any single person's opinion. If I pick a specific person, I'm rarely concerned about what they will think. What I fear is the collective opinion in my head. It's imaginary."

  • What aspect of your work is hardest to copy? How can you amplify it?

📰 Stop Maximizing Everything. by

  • life exists in the margins and the unoptimized spaces.

  • So, instead of trying to maximize the result of every single thing we do, what if we just try our best to show up as a version we’re proud of?

📰 The One AI Belief Holding You Back by

  • Instead of asking “*what can I optimize*?” he recommended the following question: If I had unlimited resources, who would I hire?¹ (The CEO of Shopify codified this mantra into their hiring policies.)

  • As you think through your dream team I encourage you to list out how you will address the first and last mile challenges. This exercise will really force you to truly understand your core tasks and how you add value. Second, it will push you to understand the bottlenecks in your AI workflows. (There are many!) And finally, you’ll realize that many of the first and last mile challenges can already be solved with:

    • Automated Workflow Tools (Zapier, Make, Relay, n8n)

    • Vibe coding (Cursor, Replit, Lovable and Bolt)

    • Coding with APIs

📰 The Only Thing Standing Between You and Your Dreams by

  • I’ve used this concept called convexity to make millions. Convexity means you have an opportunity with a known downside and an infinite upside. Business opportunities in 2025 are like this. I’ve made many bets like this — some have paid off and some didn’t. But overall I’ve won. I spent $20,000 on getting some help with my marketing that didn’t pay off how I wanted. What did I do? I moved on. Cost of doing business.

  • Expected value (EV) is how you assess whether a decision is *worth* the risk. If you have a 30% chance of making $10,000 from a $1,000 investment, the EV of that decision is $3,000, which is more than $1,000. That’s a good bet, even if you lose sometimes. But most people are so terrified of a single loss they ignore the long-term gains. They want *guarantees*, when they should be thinking in terms of *probabilities*.

📰 Are You Thinking Big Enough? by

  • This is what I now know to be true:

    • Thinking small and acting small helps you get going. It gives you something manageable to focus on when anything else feels paralysing

    • Thinking big and acting small helps you build momentum. This is when you start to conceptualise a bigger vision while still executing in small, consistent steps

    • Thinking big and acting big helps you scale beyond yourself. With more resources (time, money, people etc.) you can now take larger risks and bigger swings

📰 The World Between My Ears by

  • RIP journalist Bill Moyers. Just a few weeks ago I was thinking about his interview with Toni Morrison on love and writing, when she said: “While it may be true that, you know, people say, ’I didn’t ask to be born,’ I think we did, and that’s why we’re here. We are here, and we have to do something nurturing that we respect before we go.”

📰 How to Get Clean Photos by

  • Light plays a crucial role in creating clean images. Typically, I recommend shooting either into the light or at a 90-degree angle to the light source for optimal results, though in this case, it’s less about angle and more about how the light interacts with the environment and subject.

  • Regarding colour, if you have several similar hues, use the HSL tool to bring them closer together, creating a more cohesive look. For example, you could adjust teals, blues, and purples to harmonise them slightly.

Book a call: Have a bite-sized creative project? Let’s give you a starting line boost a la Mario Kart - https://www.beckyisj.com/consulting

Some links are affiliate links, meaning that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through the links at no cost to you.

]]><![CDATA[July creative updates]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/july-creative-updateshttps://beckyisj.substack.com/p/july-creative-updatesTue, 01 Jul 2025 14:27:34 GMTThis month in my creative life:

  • Job

    • passed probation!

  • No travel to rest

  • Hyrox womens doubles at the end of the month

  • Creativity-wise I feel like I did a reset

The rest of my video logs are here.

Book a call: Have a bite-sized creative project? Let’s give you a starting line boost a la Mario Kart - https://www.beckyisj.com/consulting

Some links are affiliate links, meaning that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through the links at no cost to you.

]]><![CDATA[June 2025]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/june-2025https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/june-2025Sun, 29 Jun 2025 06:58:24 GMTBooks read:

📕 $100M Leads by Alex Hormozi

📖 Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan

🎧 He Who Drowned the World by Shelly Parker-Chan, narrated by Natalie Naudus

Posts published:

June 30

📰 Why You Want to Make Exquisite Work by

  • Nobody else has your precise blend of mind-body-spirit, childhood, circumstances, experience, talents, personality, skills, resources, community, gifts and vision. And they never will. So, what’s yours to do?

June 28

📰 Come On, World by

📰 I Built an AI Agent for My Zoom Calls by

  • But it goes further, providing valuable information for my (quickly growing) AI Training and Strategy business:

    • Pain points and dream outcomes (for marketing copy)

    • AI use cases (for product design and positioning)

    Any entrepreneur knows that these last two bullets are gold — yet hard to consistently extract and save in a regimented fashion.

June 22

📰 How Do You Serve a Friend in Despair? - David Brooks

  • It’s only later that I read that when you give a depressed person advice on how to get better, there’s a good chance all you are doing is telling the person that you just don’t get it.

  • I tried to remind Pete of all the wonderful blessings he enjoyed, what psychologists call “positive reframing.” I’ve since read that this might make sufferers feel even worse about themselves for not being able to enjoy all the things that are palpably enjoyable.

  • I learned, very gradually, that a friend’s job in these circumstances is not to cheer the person up. It’s to acknowledge the reality of the situation; it’s to hear, respect and love the person; it’s to show that you haven’t given up on him or her, that you haven’t walked away.

  • Jen had some wise words when I asked her what she learned being around him during those years. “I was very aware this was not the real Pete,” she said. “I tried not to take his periods of negativity and withdrawal personally.”

📰 The Last Moat, We Drove Across the Country, a Rich Guy Jet Story | #247 - Cam Houser

  • Not All Knowledge Is Created Equal Griffin’s success points to a crucial framework for the AI era: not all knowledge is created equal.

    • Domain Knowledge Domain knowledge is the published facts, formulas, and regulations anyone can look up. This is rapidly becoming AI's territory. If it's been published, digitized, or taught in school, AI can probably access it better and faster than humans. This type of knowledge will get hoovered up into LLM training data with ease and increasing frequency. The two below, however, will not.

    • Institutional Knowledge This is the unwritten organization-specific know-how: which risk limits actually matter, whose approval really counts, and which metrics truly drive decisions. This is the "how things really work around here" layer that gives established players their home-field advantage.

    • Tacit Knowledge Tacit knowledge comprises the intuitions and muscle memory born from experience: a trader's feel for when market sentiment shifts, a chef's adjustment to cooking temperature based on smell, a negotiator's ability to read body language. These skills are nearly impossible to articulate, let alone code into an algorithm.

📰 This One Mindset Shapes Your Entire Life by Sahil Bloom

  • Ask these questions to reclaim your Internal Locus:

    • What part of this situation is within my control?

    • What's one tiny action I can take right now?

    • If my best friend were facing this, what advice would I give them?

    • How would my ideal self show up in this moment?

    • How can I create space to separate myself from this situation?

📰 Colin & Samir’s Cannes Lions Takeaways 🏖️

  • attention is a commodity, but connection is a premium. A creator who can fill a room is worth more than one who can game the algorithm.

June 21

📰 I Stopped Writing Code. My Productivity Exploded. via Every

  • Then Reid Hoffman's advice echoed in my head: "Run more agents." So with this project, I decided to lean into it completely: pure AI agents, no fallback coding, no writing functions when things got tough.

  • I opened Claude Code with a simple question: "If you had 10,000 files, how would you find which ones are duplicates?"

  • From there, it started listing approaches it could take: hash-based detection, command-line tools, specialized software. But I stopped it. "Don't write any code yet. Let's think through this problem together." This instruction helped. Instead of jumping straight to code, we talked through the problem first.

  • Working in Claude Code’s terminal window—with no fonts or UI and just text—felt weird at first, but that simplicity forced focus. Through 15 minutes of back-and-forth, we refined the approach:

    • Stage 1: Size grouping Group all files by exact size. If a 2.3MB file is the only one of that size, it has no duplicates and requires no further checking.

    • Stage 2: The peek test For those files sharing sizes, read just the first 16KB. Files that differ in their opening can't be identical. Why read gigabytes when 16KB tells you enough?

    • Stage 3: Fingerprinting For the files that passed both filters, we used hashing. Think of hashing like digital fingerprinting. It reads your entire file and generates a unique code. The same file always produces the same code, but if you change even one bit, the fingerprint completely changes.

    • Using this three-stage approach, we went from 50 million operations down to about 10,000 operations—a 99.98 percent reduction in work. When I ran it on my own desktop, I found those 158,000 duplicate files. It was the best code I’d ever “written.”

  • The best metaphor I've heard came from an Indian director: A director doesn't have to be on set for the show to technically go on. The actors act, cameras roll, the show continues. But without the director, there's no emotion. That's us now: Claude writes code. Codex manages branches. But someone needs to know why it matters. Someone needs to feel the user's frustration with clutter, or joy at recovering 50GB of memory.

June 19

📰 The Ownership Gap. by

  • Successful people have an almost obsessive sense of ownership. In my experience, they'll even take responsibility for problems that aren't actually their fault.

    This doesn't mean they're pushovers or accept abusive behavior. It means they refuse to waste their precious mental energy on blame because blame doesn't move them forward.

🎧 Buying and Selling 2025 Creator Economy Trends - The Colin and Samir Show

  • You're selling the absence of a conventional host perspective. The appeal of a show like Theo Vaughn's is seeing how the host interacts with guests like Timothee Chalamet, and how the guest responds to the host's unique character.

    • Transcript: Colin You're, what you're selling is the, um, the lack of host perspective, because what matters about Theo Vaughn is I will listen to, like, I was so excited to see Timothee Chalamet on Theo Vaughn because I want to hear how Theo Vaughn talks to Timothee Chalamet. Samir And how Timothee Chalamet reacts to the character that is Theo Vaughn.

  • In 2025, creators should figure out how to make videos 20+ minutes long. This is largely due to connected TV viewership. Longer watch times also build deeper connections with the audience.

    • Transcript: Colin I'm also selling videos under 20 minutes on YouTube. I think if you are a creator going into 2025, you need to solve how your videos are 20 plus minutes, largely because of connected TV viewership. And I think also just the fact, the sheer fact that like longer watch times build deeper connections. Samir Yeah, I would agree with that. I think the trend will continue to get longer.

June 18

📰 Lessons in Creativity From Kevin Hart, Beast Games and Adam Grant - The Colin and Samir Show

  • Samir organized a live pitch meeting with 3 others where everyone brought YouTube titles and thumbnails. It was fun and competitive. Samir was surprised he had some of the worst ideas, despite hosting. If you have a small creative team, try this.

    • Transcript: Samir For a meeting that i put on with three other people and i had everyone bring three different youtube titles and thumbnails to the table separately. And it was so fun. It was just like a live pitch meeting. And some of the ideas were really good. I almost felt competitive. I was like, I'm probably going to have the best ideas. I'm the one hosting this meeting. I came up with this idea. And I was pleasantly surprised that I had some of the worst ideas at the meeting. I would recommend that if you have a small team of creatives to try this out, it's really enjoyable.

  • Think about how you'd rebuild everything from scratch if it all disappeared today. This can reveal losing efforts you're no longer truly invested in.

    • Transcript: Colin As like insane of a prompt as that is to everyone, I think it goes in line with the escalation of commitment to a losing action. I think if you think in the direction of if everything was taken away today and everything like burned down and you had no choice, like it was all gone, how would you rebuild it? And that might illuminate what you have committed to that is a losing action that you actually don't believe in anymore.

  • Ask yourself: Am I currently escalating my commitment to a losing action? This'll help you avoid throwing good money after bad.

    • Transcript: Colin Am I currently escalating my commitment to a losing action?

  • Think of your podcast as a series of seasons. Determine the number of episodes, desired look, and definition of success for each season. Review at the end of each season to evaluate whether it was successful and enjoyable.

    • Transcript: Samir I would like us to do that after this run of podcasts ends. Yeah. Is think about what is a season of our show? Sure. How many episodes is that? What do we want it to look like? And what would success be for that season? So we can look back at the end of it and be like, oh, did we like that? Was it successful? Yeah. Colin Instead of what feels like this very constant, continual stream of episodes.

🎧 These Are All the Ways Ryan Holiday Feels Poorer Than He Is

  • Anxiety is an expensive habit. It costs you misery, frustration, sleep, family time, vacation moments, and opportunities due to fear and worry.

    • Transcript: Ryan Holiday How anxiety is a very expensive habit, that it's cost me a lot. It's cost me misery and frustration and a lot of sleep. It's cost me to miss out on things that were important to me. Family dinners where my mind wandered, minutes of vacation because I was preoccupied thinking about this or that happening, opportunities that I passed up because I was caught in Various fears, or again, nights that I laid awake in bed just worrying about what might happen. The thing about anxiety is it feeds on itself.

  • Work, family, and social life – you've gotta pick two. Doing great work and being there for family might mean missing out on social events. Prioritizing family and work leaves less time for friends, creating a "privileged impoverishment" where social connections suffer.

    • Transcript: Ryan Holiday My friend Austin Kleon has talked about this. We've done it a lot at Daily Dad, like says work, family, scene, pick two, like do great work. You can be there for your family, but like, you're probably going to miss out on a lot of parties. Or if you go to a lot of parties, you're going to neglect your family if you're still doing work, or, you know, if you're just hanging out at home and at parties, you're not at the office Doing the work. I happen to love my family. I love my work. And that doesn't leave as much time for friends or socializing as maybe I would like. And actually, Austin and I talked about that the last time we hung out. Like, why don't we do this more? But we know why. It's because it's lower on the priority list. That's a shame. And there's a privileged impoverishment in that, I think.

June 17

🎧 Cynthia Erivo: ‘I Was Working to Prove That I Was Worth Loving’ - On Purpose with Jay Shetty

  • People might not know exactly what they're searching for, be it happiness, validation, or love. What's underneath all of it is the need for agency, autonomy, and control. It's about living for yourself and owning your feelings, including deciding when to embrace or release them.

    • Transcript: Jay Shetty We were saying, I don't think humans even know what they want anymore. Like we think we want happiness, but do we really like, is that what we're looking for? Or do we want validation? Or do we want approval? Or do we want love? Like, what do we want? And I think as we're talking about right now, I'm thinking about it. What we really want is to feel agency and autonomy and control over our lives and not feel like we're living for someone else and not feel like we're trying to, because even if you're trying To prove someone wrong, you're still living for them. Right. That's right. And I think we want to feel like, no, I'm living for me. Yeah. Cynthia Erivo I love the idea that we're sort of trying to figure out what we want. Do we want happiness? But actually the idea that we're simply seeking agency over our lives allows us to own all of those things. So yes, we do want happiness, but maybe it's contentment. But also we want to have agency over the sadness that we have. So it's not because of someone else, but we can allow ourselves to feel something. And then we can decide when we actually want to damp down that feeling, let it go.

  • Hurt can paradoxically aid another person's growth. When you experience pain, you're compelled to grow and evolve as a result.

    • Transcript: Cynthia Erivo Sometimes hurting someone actually aids the growth of another person. When we experience hurt, we are forced to grow.

  • Cynthia Erivo learned to distinguish between being abandoned and someone simply leaving. Initially, every departure felt like abandonment, impacting her ability to express true feelings for fear of driving people away. She's learned that people leaving isn't always abandonment.

    • Transcript: Cynthia Erivo What I've had to do over time is start to trust people and to not tart everything with a brush of abandonment. If a person has to leave, a person has to leave. That's okay. They're not abandoning. They're simply leaving, you know? And that isn't to say that the experience of feeling abandoned isn't real, but it is also to say that that experience of abandonment isn't always what happens. And for a really long time, I couldn't tell the difference. And so every time a friend left or I broke up with a person or a relationship didn't quite work, it felt like a massive moment of abandonment. It felt like the floor was taken out from underneath me. And it's taken a long time to get to a point where I can trust that that's not the case. And so what that would do is stop me from saying how I really felt in a situation because I didn't want them to go away. Yeah, Wow. You know, like if I'm, if I'm not happy with something, then I wouldn't say, because I don't want them to have a reason to leave, you know, or if I didn't want something, then I wouldn't Say I didn't, I didn't want something because I was afraid that they would leave. Right.

  • Gotta be okay with people leaving; if they're meant to return, they will. Being afraid to let go keeps us stuck. We don't know what path others are on when they enter our lives; we may be just a stepping stone for them, and they for us. If we aren't comfy enough to use that stepping stone and move forward, we won't go anywhere.

    • Transcript: Cynthia Erivo I've had to learn to be okay with the idea that if someone leaves, they are meant to, and if they're meant to come back, they will. Right. But sometimes we're very afraid to chance it. We're very afraid to let a person go. We are afraid to let a person go and we need to be okay with letting people go because they have their own journey as well. We don't know what path people are walking on when they walk into our lives. We might just be a stepping stone in their path, just like stepping stones are in their life. And they might just be a stepping stone in our lives as we keep moving forward. If we're not confident or comfortable enough to let that be a stepping stone to move on to the next one, we won't go anywhere. We're stuck.

📰 5 Things That Work for Me by

  • Summer is a good time, actually, to get a lot of work done. It’s too hot after about 10AM to do much of anything else.

  • I think of each illustration as a “nest egg.” When you say “nest egg” many think of money saved and put away, but a literal “nest egg” is a real or fake egg that you put in a nest to encourage a bird or a hen to lay more eggs there. I learned this from Thoreau, who said that writing in his journals was like laying nest eggs: > Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg, by the side of which more will be laid. Thoughts accidentally thrown together become a frame in which more may be developed and exhibited… Having by chance recorded a few disconnected thoughts and brought them into juxtaposition, they suggest a whole new field in which it was possible to labor and to think. Thought begat thought.

  • I like to have a really big book going in the summer. Two summers ago I read *Don Quixote* and *Dune,* last summer I read *Middlemarch,* and this summer I’m reading *War and Peace*.

June 16

🎧 The Death of the Follower & the Future of Creativity on the Internet: Patreon CEO Jack Conte - Colin and Samir

  • Creativity and business can mix well because creativity, at its core, is problem-solving. However, the term 'creator' has oversimplified the combination of these two elements.

    • Transcript: Colin Strategy and creativity, they can mix because I think at the top level, like a lot of creativity is problem solving. But I think we've jammed them together into one word of like being a creator.

  • Don't optimize only for views. Choose content you genuinely enjoy. You might reach fewer people, but those who stick around will deeply appreciate your work, making it a better long-term strategy.

    • Transcript: Samir Taste is a long-term strategy. Creators ask us, should I be optimized or should I not? And I'm like, I don't know. I think you should go with what you like. And we don't always do this. I wish we did. And we're getting better at it over time. But I'm like, choose what you like and you may get less people, but you will filter the people that like what you're doing more. And that's a long-term strategy.

  • Consistency over time acts as a growth lever for creators. But do not assume it's a hard requirement because many beloved creators lack consistency and formats and are still successful.

    • Transcript: Jack Conte Neistat when I was like, consistency over time is a lever. Like it's a, it's a growth lever for a creator. And I want to be careful about saying that because there are also a bunch of creators that I deeply love who do not have a format and who are not consistent. And that is also possible.

  • Patreon pages that are succeeding aren't just asking for support. They're offering something concrete in return, like an extra episode each month. This business model has become very successful on the platform and marks a shift from Patreon's original fan-funding spirit.

    • Transcript: Jack Conte Like the pages that are like crushing on Patreon, they're not going out saying, please support us. They're going out saying, if you want our extra episode every month, you can get it. Like that like business model has kind of emerged as like a very successful business model on the platform. It is different than like where Patreon started, right? Like 10 years ago, it was more in the like fan funding, like spirit. Samir To support our journey. Jack Conte Exactly. Which is kind of where it started. But what we've seen is actually like, that's not where it's evolved to. (Time 0:49:56)

  • Jack Conte thinks titles don't matter as much anymore. He doesn't care what Natalie Lynn's next title and thumbnail is and will watch her video anyway. Samir mentioned Casey Neistat could upload a video with no title and a black screen. Colin references Emma Chamberlain's video called 'you totally caught me making soup' with a ridiculous title and thumbnail, but it has 4 million views. Ashley Alexander is an incredible creator.

    • Transcript: Jack Conte I don't care what Natalie Lynn's next title and thumbnail is. I'm watching the video. Yeah. It could be a black card. Samir We've said that about Casey before on this show. Yes. Casey could upload a video with no title and a black screen and it might actually be a pretty good thumbnail. We've also talked about that Chamberlain's video called you totally caught me making soup. Colin Yeah. Which is a ridiculous title and thumbnail, but it has 4 million views or, or, um, a creator, your mom, Ashley, Ashley Alexander, incredible creator.

  • Losing excitement is scary. Batch production boosts efficiency but hurts creative excitement because creators sitting on videos for months develop a different relationship with their content.

    • Transcript: Colin And I actually think losing that excitement is a scary thing. And it's happening with, um, we were talking to is Harris and she was talking about the danger of batch production. Was it is who said this or no, maybe so we've been talking, I forget. We've been talking to a lot of people about this, but I think we talked to is about it of like batch production is great in the context of efficiency, but in the context of creative excitement, It might not be great. When you're sitting on a video for two months, you have a different relationship with it.

  • Move beyond shorts to build a direct-to-community and business. Shorts alone make you more subject to platform whims, creating a volatile environment for long-term sustainability. Find your audience on shorts, then figure out how to build a long-form media format and a tighter community around that format. Find a repeatable long form thing that your audience enjoys every week, where people are listening and building loyalty to you and the format.

    • Transcript: Jack Conte On shorts uh i i think step two again if i'm thinking about how to do it as a creator in 2025 you have to move beyond shorts um now you don't have to but there are dangers if you don't. It becomes harder to build a direct-to community and a direct-to business. There are creators who have figured this out. And because when you're at the ultimate top layer of the internet, you are more subject to the whims of the platform's direction of traffic. It's a more volatile environment to build a long-term sustainable business versus finding a format like you guys have found, where you've got this repeatable long form thing that Your audience enjoys every week. And you have these, you know, you have like these long conversations and people are listening to them and building loyalty to you and building loyalty to the format. I think there's a key step if I'm doing it as a creator is like, find my audience on shorts and then figure out after that, how do I build a long form media format and a tighter community around That format?

  • Find an autotelic behavior, something you'd do even if nobody's watching. Van Gogh painted for 11 years in his parents' basement without recognition because he loved it. YouTubers who love telling stories would continue whether their ad revenue is up or down. Don't sacrifice that passion, as it's crucial for a long-term creative career.

    • Transcript: Jack Conte There's a wonderful creator named Adam Westbrook. He made a video essay. It's one of my favorite pieces of media on YouTube. It's like 15 minutes long. It's about van gogh who lived in his parents basement for 11 years lived in his parents basement making paintings every day while his teeth were falling out his parent like nobody saw His paintings except for his brother was the only person who saw his paintings and his brother didn't even like his paintings very much. And Van Gogh did this for like 11 years, didn't sell a single painting and no one saw them but him. And he did it because he loved painting. He just liked doing it. He liked exploring color and texture and framing and composition and it lit him up. And so he kept going. It's like the YouTubers, you can tell, they just love telling stories and making videos and they would do it if their ad revenue is up and they do it if their ad revenue is down. And the creator in this video, Adam Westbrook, calls this an autotelic behavior. That's the word for it. An autotelic behavior is a behavior that you do for the sheer joy of the behavior itself versus some expected reward from having done the behavior. And I think as a creator, it's so important to find something that is autotelic for you. Something you're going to do in your parents' basement for 11 years, whether people like it or see it or not. And if you can find that and it works with an audience, oh my gosh, you're in an amazing place. It's hard to find that. But like, if I had one piece of advice to emerging creators right now, it's like, don't sacrifice that part of it. That part of it is so important to a long-term creative career.

  • To build a creator business in 2025, understand media market fit using shorts to find fit for a medium or long format. Once you've found that fit, then build out a longer format. Short form content is too volatile and unpredictable to sustain a business alone. Then, build a tight community around that long form content.

    • Transcript: Colin We are on number three of how you would build a creator business in 2025. So, so let's just recap media market fit shorts, the longs. That's as far as that's as far as we've gone. Jack Conte Leverage short form traffic to find fit on a medium or long. So we were two in three is once you find fit on shorts, build that long form format and find fit on a longer form format because the short form ecosystem is too volatile and unpredictable. That's three. Four is build a tight community around that long form format.

  • Fans often crave a deeper connection and more engagement from creators. A small percentage, around 10%, represent the core fans who are deeply invested, follow across platforms, attend shows, and purchase merchandise. These are the ones who desire a more profound relationship.

    • Transcript: Jack Conte There's like fans want that from you, right? Like fans are, they want, a lot of fans want more from you. 10% would be like the upper bound might be your core fans, core fans who like love everything you do. They follow you across all socials. They, you know, they, um, they go to all the shows. They have the merch, they have the t-shirt. Colin They like, they, they want more from you.

  • People aren't usually willing to pay for something they previously got for free. However, they're often willing to pay for additional content that is similar to what they already enjoy.

    • Transcript: Jack Conte Fans don't want to pay for something that was previously free do you want more stuff like this yes exactly our rules like they're down to pay for something in addition yeah but not the Thing that was already free

  • Start by working with people on specific projects as short-term contractors. If you enjoy working with certain individuals and consistently give them more work, consider transitioning them to full-time roles.

    • Transcript: Jack Conte Learned. I found it easier to like work with people on a specific project. Yes. Like project-based short-term contractor relationship to start. To start. And then you're like, if you like work with 20 people like that, two or three of those people, you're going to be like, oh, I love working with that person. And I'm giving them more work every month and you sort of naturally gravitate. And then you're like, okay, well, this is kind of a repeatable thing. And then you can start thinking about, okay, what does it look like if this person works full time?

June 15

🎧 The Story of Scott’s Career - Prof G Markets

  • The lesson there is that nobody is really qualified to do anything they ever do. And that's what it means to be an entrepreneur. And we worked our ass off. We did a great job for them.

  • You just want to put yourself in a position to be lucky. And how do you do that? You endure.

🎧 The Newsom-Trump Beef Heats Up - Pivot Pod

  • There's an expression I use with people, I use it when I was a manager, and I'm not a manager anymore, but that people that confuse activity with productivity, right? Like, people that are manic and move around a lot, they look like they're doing things. It's sort of like, look busy, Jesus is coming kind of thing.

📰 Here's How I Made $249k in 2022 by

  • I launched my podcast in 2017, renamed it three times, and did more than 100 episodes before getting my first sponsorship income in 2022

  • When I launched I did have ~5k subscribers but only had pre-sold ~150 books

  • My general pricing approach, especially for corporate stuff, is “price high or free” but I usually start lower and raise prices as I become more confident about the offer.

  • Pricing high also means less work. Many indie types feel like they should take any work that comes their way. But for me, I’ve realized turning down money for more time can not only be good for the soul, but it can also be good for the wallet if I can be patient enough.

📰 My Five-Year Journey Creating, Launching, Failing & Succeeding With Online Courses by

  • I created these courses after I had some validation that people were struggling with these things and that I had some sense that my way of thinking about these issues was helpful for people.

  • Creating content with the intention of teaching others enables you to learn something in a much deeper way than simply “knowing” how to do something.

  • Godin’s general advice to focus on finding the people who want your help and to do it with generosity.

  • Here’s a secret you should know: *I only built about 20% of the content before “launching”*

  • Digital products need some form of distribution. For me, SEO worked really well because this was an in-demand topic via google but other strategies like e-mail marketing, audience building on platforms like Twitter, and partnerships all seem to be viable strategies.

  • Just because “cohort-based courses” are all the buzz right now does not mean other models won’t work well for your course. I’ve been fascinated by the cohort-based course movement but I think there is room for a number of models to work with online courses.

  • Not every course has to be a monetary success. The biggest benefits for me in creating reinvent have been going much deeper in a number of topics I plan to keep writing about for many years in the future. In many ways creating this course helped me improve my thinking and writing and helped me build the courage to pursue writing a book in 2021.

  • This directs people to a small exercise where they can share their motivation and offer a “gift” that feels right. I nudge people to offer something because in previous iterations where I offered it for free no one finished the course!

June 14

📰 From Quora to Consulting Niche - A Casual 7-Year Journey | #169 by

  • I renamed the course Think Like a Strategy Consultant, got rid of the ninjas, wrote a bunch of stuff based on the Quora posts I had written, applied Nat Eliason's SEO mini-course, and then let it run. Almost immediately, random people from the web started buying the course. This was wild and it was the first time I had made any substantial money without having to trade my time. I shifted all my attention to the course for the next year. I ran two live cohorts, upgraded the materials, and eventually developed the right structure for it that seemed to resonate with the audience I was targeting (a self-paced version, or a hands-on coaching version where I work with them 1-on-1).

  • the more clear and direct I’ve been in communicating my services, and price, the more people have reached out to me.

  • As soon as I added pricing to my site, I immediately noticed a dramatic increase in inbound requests. This is something I wish I knew earlier and I think more freelancers should consider. There are likely a lot of people that don’t reach out for help because they either don’t want to go through the pricing dance or simply just want to know what something costs.

June 13

🎧 Does Anybody Want to Be an Influencer Anymore? - and

  • Having time freedom means ya don't feel pressured to pay for convenience. You can take your time to cook, walk, do laundry, and watch your kids. They didn't do daycare for the first two years, worked less, and swapped child care duties.

    • Transcript: Paul If you have a lot of time freedom you can you like don't have the pressure to like pay for convenience you can like take your time you can like cook your own food you can like walk places i Don't know do your own laundry like watch your own kids it sort of just works out yeah watching your own kid is a big thing we didn't we didn't do daycare for the first two years yeah and we We just worked less and swapped back and forth

  • Adults often fear unemployment because they don't know how to spend their time. Perhaps the task of life is figuring out how to spend your time well. There's a tension between funneling kids through systems and adults being terrified of unemployment, which highlights the importance of learning how to spend time meaningfully.

    • Transcript: Then i talk to adults all the time that like their biggest fear is like oh if i quit my job i don't know what i would do no it's like these two tensions of yeah wow we we're so worried about funneling These kids through these system and then everyone around us is like all these adults that are like terrified of being unemployed or without a job because they don't know what they'll Do like they don't know how to spend their time and so what if the task of life is just like figuring out how to spend your time well

  • Paul teaches a course called 'Think Like a Strategy Consultant' which he iterates on slowly, working on it one to two days a month for six years. The self-paced course teaches how to turn information into world-class ideas in consulting or knowledge work, generating steady income.

    • Transcript: So I teach a course called Think Like a Strategy Consultant. I actually love teaching these skills and I'm very good at it. And so over the years, I created and iterated this self-paced course. I could have made more by going down the live cohort, but I never did. And I just sell the self-paced course about how do you turn information into world-class ideas in the context of working at a consulting firm or in knowledge work at big companies and So that course has just been something i've tweaked slowly i've probably worked like one to two days a month on it for six years and it just generates a steady income

  • Paul prefers online intellectual engagement so he can spend more time with family.

    • Transcript: I want to spend more time with my family and so i rather get some of the intellectual engagement online

  • Pursue creating valuable content because you invested yourself in the process, not because of how it's perceived. The time it takes shouldn't be a concern.

    • Transcript: Khe Hy Like I want to I want bangers not because they're perceived as bangers, but because I gave so much of myself in the craft of doing so. And if that takes four months or if that takes, I could do it in two weeks. I have no idea. Right.

  • Paul talks about how he outlasted everyone in the course business. People might've thought he was the least ambitious at the start, but he's still going strong and could end up making more money than those who quit.

    • Transcript: Khe Hy The interesting thing about the course business is like everyone quit i outlasted everyone yeah so but if you looked at the beginning you would have said like oh paul is the least ambitious Yeah i mean you raise like you raise an interesting point too yeah i might still be going in five years and might actually end up generating more money than most of the people that quit.

  • While there's a lot of talk about long-term thinking, not many people actually do it. It isn't just about thinking long-term, but whether your actions align with that long-term perspective.

    • Transcript: Khe Hy There's all these memes about long-term thinking and all that, but very few people are really long-term thinkers. And it's not even long-term thinking. It's like, are your actions consistent with long-term thinking?

  • Play a medium-term stubborn game. Be stubborn about things you won't do.

    • Transcript: Paul: What i'm actually doing is playing a medium term stubborn game and so i'm incredibly stubborn about things i won't do

  • When you don't know what to write, just write the weirdest thing possible. Leave traces of humanity in your writing, even if it means including typos or using a word incorrectly. This approach might help you stand out amidst the AI flood and satisfy the craving for creative content.

    • Transcript: I think what's going to happen, we're're gonna get flooded with this as we're just going to crave more weird creative like the hunger for the creative stuff is going to go up that's how When i approach writing now and i'm like i don't know how to write what to write i'm like just write the weirdest weirdest thing possible if anything and i i feel like i wonder how this will Evolve but i feel like i'm not even subconsciously i'm consciously saying like can you leave traces like uh breadcrumbs of humanity in your writing like and it could go as so far as like Typos you know or like slightly using a word i always have using a word incorrectly

June 11

📰 Mozi Minute: Membership Offer Stack

  • Notice how the biggest discount is on day one - not delayed to the second purchase. Most businesses get this backwards and wonder why conversion tanks.

June 9

📰 The Single Most Overlooked Skill on YouTube by Creator Startup

  • Great stories skip the setup. They drop you right into the action — and let you catch up.

  • If your audience doesn’t know where the story is going, they don’t know why to stick around.

  • When you hold something back - a detail, a motive, a reveal - you give your audience the chance to *solve* the story with you.

June 8

🎥 Why Everything Is Making You Feel Bored by Johnny Harris

  • Boredom isn't simple, it's not trivial, it's not benign. It's actually a painful emotion that quietly haunts our sense of meaning and purpose. It's more like pain or disgust. We've been going deep on this.

  • Attention and meaning are vital for how humans navigate their lives, how they make decisions on where to go with the constraints of their everyday experience.

  • We need purpose and meaning to fuel our actions. And this has been one way that humans have been pushed to create and change their natural situation, not just for more resources like all animals do, but also in search of meaning where these self-aware apes who are able to tell stories of meaning and purpose to each other, and we ourselves are kind of characters in our own story. It's a major reason why humans have been able to cooperate in large numbers with each other, looking towards stories like corporations or religions, or countries. All of these are meaningful stories that bind us together to cooperate and change our situation. So a lot of experts now think that boredom is this emotional cue that is pushing us to do something different with our lives, to deliver on that need for meaning. But boredom today is pretty different. In fact, in the old days, most people didn't have time to get bored. - It's typical for traditional societies that you don't have to spend a lot of time thinking about what to care about because it's already defined for you.

  • Get me back to being bored in that dark car before the trolling being mean to my kids and partner began. Here we go. We're stuck here. Instead of revving your car up with that demonic fuel that we just saw, you can do the much harder thing. You can get out of the car and push it. You can push it down a road that you know contains some meaningful experience. Here I am pushing mine towards, going on a walk in nature. It's actually a lot of effort. I do not want to do this by definition because I am bored. I am manually pushing it, but as I push, my mind is kind of in this big picture place. Remember the default mode network? I'm thinking about the past and the future about the meaning of my life. I'm feeling things and reading my thoughts in a way that I usually don't get to. And look what happens when I get close. (engine whirs) (engine purrs) This worked. My car fires back up, and yes, it took some effort, but my purpose tank is filling up. My attention and my ability to keep it is flickering back on. I'm going back to things that bring me purpose without having to harm anyone. And in fact, the benefit of all of this is I'm now more in touch with my sense of meaning and purpose because I've had to sit with it. I've had to struggle through not feeling it and contemplate what meaning is for me. What do I actually want to do with my life? So I get back in the car and I'm rethinking my route on this map, what turns I want to take. And to stretch this analogy even further, I'm stronger. I'm stronger because I got out and pushed my car, so like my muscles are stronger. Next time I get bored, I have the mental muscles to push through. And this is why some studies, not all, demonstrate a statistically significant correlation between boredom and creativity. Being bored makes you more creative according to some of these studies, which gets to answering another question I've had for a long time, which is, why some cultures have entire concepts that embrace this idea of boredom?

June 7

🎧 Steven Pinker: Harvard Professor Explains the Rules of Writing |

  • Show your drafts to people outside your field. Steven Pinker shows his drafts to intellectually curious people with some degree of education, but not to peers in his field. He also leverages his editor and academics from different fields to get feedback. They are smart but not in his field, which provides a fresh perspective.

    • Transcript: Steven Pinker But at the end of the day, I show it to people. When my mother was alive, I would always show her a draft of my book, not for the reason that most academics cite, namely referring to my mother as the epitome of an unsophisticated, not Very well-read, not very bright person. My mother was extremely intelligent, extremely well-read, and very sophisticated, but she wasn't a cognitive psychologist. She wasn't a psycholinguist. She didn't know what I knew. And when I write, I don't write for just a random sample of the population. They don't buy my books. I write for people who are intellectually curious, who have some degree of education. However, not for peers in my field. And so my mother being an example, but also, of course, when you publish for a commercial publisher, you have an editor. And the editor is typically very smart, but again, not in your field. And I show it to people in different fields who are academics. But it's surprising how insular even academics are when it comes to other academics.

  • Don't just assume you know what your reader is thinking. Get a real person to read your work and see if it actually makes sense to them. This is the most important thing you can do.

    • Transcript: Steven Pinker The first one being find some way of getting into your reader's heads, but don't just depend on your ability to get their heads actually get a flesh and blood person to actually read it And see if it makes any sense to them. So that'd be number one.

  • Writing isn't just stringing words together; it's about conveying ideas that are visual, emotional, and sensory. Constantly allow your reader to form a mental image based on what you write. Avoid abstract terms like 'stimulus'; instead, use concrete examples like 'bunny rabbit'. Don't use jargon that people can't visualize.

    • Transcript: Steven Pinker Language is a means to an end of getting people to appreciate the ideas you're trying to convey, which are not just a string of verbiage. And those ideas very often are visual and motoric, that is bodily, emotional, auditory, but they're sensory. Or they're even conceptual, but they aren't just a bunch of vowels and consonants. And so constantly allowing your reader to be able to form a mental image based on what you're writing is the next key to good writing. That is, don't talk about a stimulus if you mean a bunny rabbit. Don't talk about a level or a perspective or a framework or a paradigm or a concept, all of which mean a lot to you in your day-to work, but no one can form an image of a paradigm in their mind's Eye.

  • Prose from earlier eras often feels more vivid due to the lack of academic jargon and abstractions that have accumulated over centuries. Writers relied on common imagery to connect with their audience, rather than abstract terms like aggression, opting for more evocative language, like 'the spirit of the hawk entered into our flesh.'

    • Transcript: Steven Pinker One of the reasons that often the prose of other eras strikes us as so much more vivid is... I was going to say lush. Lush, yes. Partly because they had the advantage of writing before there were several hundred years of academia and intellectuals inventing terms and abstractions. And they had to appeal to images that were part of people's common knowledge. So instead of saying something like aggression or antisocial behavior, they might say the spirit of the hawk needed into our flesh.

  • When reviewing your writing, read it aloud. If you can't say it smoothly, your reader likely won't be able to read it smoothly.

    • Transcript: Steven Pinker Often when you read a draft of your own prose, and if you can't articulate it smoothly, that probably your reader won't be mentally sounding it out smoothly either.

🎧 Change Your Relationship With Money With Steven Bartlett - IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

  • Steven Bartlett recalls his podcast's growth. For the first 3 years, no one listened. Then, growth occurred incredibly fast.

    • Transcript: Steven Bartlett If I think about how my podcast grew, for the first three years, no one's listening. And then it's incredibly fast.

  • Don't just focus on common skills. Life rewards rare and complementary skill stacks. Even if you're training for something specific like law, think about which rare skills will be valuable in that industry in the next 10 years (e.g., AI). Someone with a rare and complementary skill will be valued and paid much more than someone who's just slightly better at a common skill. Consider Cristiano Ronaldo: he isn't the best at any single skill, but his unique combination makes him the best player.

    • Transcript: Steven Bartlett On skills, this is quite an interesting one because the thing that ends up making an 18-year valuable in the economy and in the working market, and this is kind of paradoxical, isn't If they go and get common skills. Crazy thing about life is it doesn't necessarily reward you for common skills. It rewards you for having a rare and complementary skill stack. So when we think about an entrepreneur, we think they have the skill of entrepreneurship. No, they have 10 underlying skills, which made them successful at entrepreneurship. And actually in life, the people that become number one in an industry aren't necessarily the best at any individual underlying skill, but they have the right set of rare and complementary Skills. If you're training to be a lawyer at this moment, instead of tripling down on law, what I would highly advise you to do at that age is to think about the rare and complementary skill that This industry is going to value over the next 10 years. I would recommend that you go and do one semester or one course on large language models and artificial intelligence. Because the lawyer that has that isn't paid the same as the lawyer that's even 10% better at law. They are paid hundreds of percent more in terms of value if they have rare and complementary. The best football player in the world, Cristiano Ronaldo, that played at Manchester United, as you'll know, he's not the best at any individual skill. He's not the best runner, not the best penalty taker, not the best free. I'd go on and on and on. He's the best player in the world. The reason for that is he has the right set of rare and complementary skills that aren't often found in one person. So again, going back to this point of skills, I would tell April to think about the rare skill that's going to be complementary that her industry values and start compounding there.

June 6

📰 Scram! by

  • “I think that keeping a journal, diary or daily reminder is one of the best independent methods for self expression, knowledge and experience. A journal can be started at any time in your life and the longer it is maintained, the more valuable it becomes to you...” The daily journal of 80-year-old Raymond Herbert.

  • I also gobbled up David Shields’ *How We Got Here*, which attempts to trace the history of ideas — from Melville to Dostoevsky to Bloom to Zizek to Bannon — that brought us to this contemporary moment when “truthiness” rules the day. I read it as a kind of sequel to Shields’ *Reality Hunger*, in which he argued that we crave “reality” because we experience hardly any for ourselves. (The way Shields uses quotes to build his argument was a big influence on *Steal Like an Artist*.)

🎧 3 Creator Economy Trends Shaping the Future - The Colin and Samir Show

  • Brands are becoming creators, and creators are becoming brands. There's an uptick in brand spending across the board.

    • Transcript: Samir The first trend that we're seeing is around brands. Now I say this like in two ways. I think brands are becoming creators and creators are becoming brands. So a couple of things were happening. Number one, we're seeing an uptick in brand spend across creators.

  • Unilever's new CEO wants to increase creator spend from 30% to 50% of their marketing budget. This trend of brands working directly with creators will become more common. However, it doesn't necessarily mean each individual creator will receive more money; it may just mean that more creators will get opportunities.

    • Transcript: Samir Unilever has a new CEO and he's young, he's in his 30s, and he wants to up their creator spend working directly with creators from 30% of their marketing budget to 50% of their total marketing Budget. I think that's going to be common amongst brands, but that doesn't mean that each individual creator will get more money. It just means more creators will get money.

  • Long-form content's challenging due to its cost and the difficulty creators face fitting it into their schedules. Few creators can drive real results with it. It's more about association and awareness than direct conversion, a metric brands like Unilever will likely use. Short-form ads offer brands more control because they can be repurposed as paid ads.

    • Transcript: Samir The challenge with long form content is it's expensive and it's hard to fit into a schedule with creators. And there's only a handful of creators who can drive real results in long-form content. And long-form content, I think, is much more about association and awareness than it is about direct conversion. And when you get brands like Unilever or start to get more brands entering in the space, they're going to peg it against conversion. So when they get to do a short-form ad with you, they also get to run it as a paid ad, most likely. So they actually have more control over that asset.

  • YouTube isn't just becoming like TV; it's actually replacing it. It has been the number one platform on connected devices for the last two years.

    • Transcript: Samir Our next trend, which is YouTube is not necessarily becoming TV, it's replacing it. So obviously the number one headline that's been a headline for the past two years is that YouTube is the number one platform on connected TVs.

  • Adopt Reid Hoffman's 'default dead' mentality. As a creator or entrepreneur, wake up every day knowing you must bring your idea to life again.

    • Transcript: Colin So. Reid Hoffman. Yeah. Your default dead. Samir Yeah. I love that. You wake up every day. As an entrepreneur or a creator, you wake up every day default dead. You have to bring your idea to life every day. Yeah. I love that. All right.

  • Samir is impressed by the influence of live streamers (Twitch, etc.) like Kai Cenat, IShowSpeed, and Ludwig. Consider how they're shaping the internet as we move forward.

    • Transcript: Samir I am increasingly more impressed with streaming, meaning Twitch streaming and like live streaming. The incredible amounts of influence that live streamers have on the internet, I find to be so interesting and something to just really sit back and study of like the amount that Kai Sinat Is influencing the internet or I show speed is influencing the internet or Ludwig's ability to influence the internet. I find to be really interesting and something to think about as we enter this next chapter.

🎧 TACO Trade, Elon's DOGE Farewell, and AI Video Gone Wild - Pivot Pod

  • Real value in higher-paying jobs lies in design, distribution, and product marketing. These aspects are key to adding value.

    • Transcript:

      Scott Galloway

      But the real value add in the higher paying jobs are in design, distribution, product marketing, all that good stuff back here.

June 2

🎧 How Johnny Harris Changed the News Forever - The Colin and Samir Show

  • Advertising's influence on news is kinda messed up. It limits coverage to high-viewership topics. News wasn't always supposed to be this way. Originally, there were rules against advertising during news broadcasts. This shift has fundamentally changed news.

    • Transcript: Samir It's bizarre that advertising is the business model for this. Colin Yeah. Samir It just is, right? Because then you just can't cover things that won't get high viewership. Yeah. It wasn't supposed to be. Johnny Harris It wasn supposed to be. When it was one hour, it was stipulated that there could not be advertising for that one hour. And the history is really fascinating and worth looking into. It completely has shifted news. Completely. And irrevocably.

  • Johnny and Iz prep for story day by standing around a huge table with a large piece of paper, markers, arguing, debating, and drawing thumbnails. This new process, implemented six months ago, has been revolutionary.

    • Transcript: Johnny Harris But what it looks like when we have a story day is the two of us. And we're mostly going to be on our feet. And we're going to have a huge piece of paper that is sprawled out across a huge table. That's cool. And we are going to have markers. Colin And we're going to be arguing and debating and drawing thumbnails all day drawing drawing out the thumbnail this is a new process that is implemented yeah like maybe six months ago and It has been revolutionary it's like gone from the stallion's gut to a to like which is a wonderful place but i also it's because i believe that i need your team to animate.

  • Creators can't just make esoteric content that interests them. If you're relying on ad revenue to pay 25 employees, content has to appeal to a bigger audience consistently to justify brand investment. Defending the broader appeal of a topic is useful, but can face resistance.

    • Transcript: Colin I'm going to make something and like a hundred thousand people are going to be interested in this or whatever. If you are creating and you have to reach two to 4 million people every time, which kind of, we have to, for like the business to work. We have, they have to be home runs every single time. Johnny Harris Not every time, but again, he tells himself certain things. Iz Harris Don't tell them anything different. They kind of do. Why don't you tell them anything different? Colin In order for the brands to come back and pay the rates that they do so that we can pay payroll, they have to be home runs every single time. You have 25 people on payroll. Yeah. The overhead is not cheap. Can't be volatile. So it can't be like, I'm doing a video on something. No, they can't. So since we got to the point where the home run has to be pretty consistent, it has been very useful to not have it just be like, I'm interested in this esoteric thing and I'm going to make It interesting with animation. Is he coming in and being like, but defend it. Why is this interesting? Has been a really good exercise for me to appeal to a much bigger audience. Which he was very resistant to. Johnny Harris Super resistant. Still kind of am.

  • To retain talent, pay them for their work and give them a share of the revenue they generate for the company.

    • Transcript: Johnny Harris The first solve was, how do we create a deal that gets talent to want to stay? Turns out, you pay them for the work that they're doing. You pay them some part, at least of what they are bringing into the company.

  • If you're trying to solve hiring or build a creative org, learn at least three critical things others have learned in the process.

    • Transcript: Samir A lot of creators who are trying to solve like hiring or building a creative organization would appreciate, you know, some knowledge of even like three things that you would say are Critical that you've learned in building a creative organization. Okay.

  • Bias towards action is beneficial in business. Make quick decisions and act fast. Don't waste time discussing problems; focus on solving them by taking the first step.

    • Transcript: Johnny Harris But for the most part in business, it serves us well. So bias towards action. You make decisions quick. You do things fast. You break things. Colin And you don't talk about it. You don't get the feel good of talking about a problem or presenting the reasons it can't happen. You get the feel good by solving the problem of what is the first step towards.

  • Be kind to others; it's also self-serving. It took Johnny Harris a while to learn this, especially in business contexts.

    • Transcript: Johnny Harris The other is to be kind. And I know that that sounds like, oh, how sweet, but it actually is a bit self-serving. Be kind to other people. It took me a while to learn that. I'm kind in my life, but when business starts to happen, it gets harder.

  • Be the nicest and coolest rocket ship in town. Treat people well, set high expectations, move fast, and show up with kindness, respect, and humanity. It's important when building relationships.

    • Transcript: Johnny Harris Always say that I want us to be the nicest and coolest rocket ship in town. It's like everyone wants to work with us because we treat them well. They leave us feeling good. But we have high expectations and we're moving fast, you know, and it's like come on the rocket ship, but you better hurry up. You better move at our pace. But at the end of the day, we're going to show up with kindness and respect and like humanity. It is important. It's important as you're building relationships in this industry.

  • To succeed, figure out what you're best at, be honest about it, and hire people to cover what you're not good at. It's key!

    • Transcript: Johnny Harris Finding out what what you do best and being really honest and then hiring for the things that you don't is essential.

  • Focus on getting it right over being right. This idea can be applied to many situations.

    • Transcript: Johnny Harris Caring more about getting it right than being right. And this could be applied to everything.

Book a call: Have a bite-sized creative project? Let’s give you a starting line boost a la Mario Kart - https://www.beckyisj.com/consulting

Some links are affiliate links, meaning that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through the links at no cost to you.

]]><![CDATA[June creative updates]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/june-creative-updateshttps://beckyisj.substack.com/p/june-creative-updatesSun, 15 Jun 2025 08:51:46 GMTThis month in my creative life:

  • Hyrox

    • Did Bangkok doubles, I was super down about the results

    • Have a HK one in July

  • Book

    • Finished editing v3 last night

    • Cccording to now this just needs 1) his review, 2) 2-3 people giving feedback

  • Cheat on Your Job series

    • Started essay series

    • The first post (manifesto) is now my most popular post

    • Seems like this is a topic that resonates with people

  • Job

    • When I joined I didn't think I'd be touching the YouTube channel at all and now i'm managing schedules, pre-pro workflows

    • It's more stressful than my corporate job but it feels like growing pains

    • I’m now in full learning mode and I’m very deep into the whole internet economy

    • It’s taking over my life lol

  • Creative Consulting

    • 4 people booked calls w me this week to discuss their creative projects

    • idk what's in the air but wow thanks

The rest of my video logs are here.

Book a call: Have a bite-sized creative project? Let’s give you a starting line boost a la Mario Kart - https://www.beckyisj.com/consulting

Some links are affiliate links, meaning that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through the links at no cost to you.

]]><![CDATA[May 2025]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/may-2025https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/may-2025Sun, 18 May 2025 08:54:25 GMTBooks read:

📖 $100M Leads by Alex Hormozi

📕 Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman

📕 $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi

📕 The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

📕 Hell Yeah or No by Derek Sivers

Posts published:

Small Creator, Big World
What We’ve Learned About Consistency as Small Creators
Hello World 👋…
Listen now
a year ago · Becky Isjwara and Bhav Sharma

Subscribe now

Apps built:

May 31

🎧 Ezra Klein: The Case Against Writing With AI via

  • To publish something significant, make sure someone with really good judgment has reviewed it. Knowing if a sentence is clear isn't enough; you need confidence in the reviewer's overall judgment.

    • Transcript: Ezra Klein I'm a good writer. I can tell you if my sentence is clear. What I need before something, pretty something hot, goes out into a very big world where there's a lot of attention on it, is to believe that the other person who saw it has really good Judgment.

  • Taste is whatcha can't measure but is most important, especially in writing and editing. Technical skills can be taught, but knowing what's good is hard to come by and teach. Good taste is subtle, textured, and varies by person. Different editors can have different tastes; discerning who's right defines them.

    • Transcript: Ezra Klein The thing that is hard to find is taste. The thing that is hard to measure is taste. The most important thing is taste. Both with writers and with editors, on some technical level, if you have an intuitive sense for what is good and what is not, you can probably upskill to get there. The biggest problem is not knowing what is good and what is not. And it's a very hard thing to teach in part because it's subtle, it's textured, it's different from person to person. It doesn't need to be the same. I'm not saying there's one objective good, but you can have two editors saying really different things. Who's right about what is good is what separates the editors.

  • Ezra Klein shares an anecdote about Graydon Carter's new memoir about working in magazine journalism during times of huge budgets. He also mentions the recent departure of Vanity Fair's editor and a *New York Times* piece questioning whether anyone even wants the job anymore, given the current budgetary constraints.

    • Transcript: Ezra Klein Former editor of vanity fair graden carter has a new memoir out about being in magazine journalism when the budgets were gigantic and then uh he was succeeded and then the the editor Um uh of vanity fair just moved on or is moving on and there's just a times piece about does anybody actually even want this job anymore because it's become so much tougher under the current Budgetary environment

  • Consider how many individual subscriptions a person can reasonably afford. Ponder the saturation point for single-person subscriptions costing $60-80.

    • Transcript: Ezra Klein Really how many 60 to 80 dollar single person subscriptions can a person afford?

  • Substack addresses high-frequency take writing, but it won't solve the challenges of investigative journalism.

    • Transcript: Ezra Klein One of the things that always worried me about Substack as an answer to journalism, it was only ever an answer to one kind of thing, which was high frequency take writing. It was never going to be an answer to investigative journalism.

  • To make an impact, ensure your message is important, profound, vivid, and 'hot.' All the great storytelling and rhetoric won't matter if the core idea can't break through and influence culture.

    • Transcript: David Perell If you have something to say that's important, that's profound, that's vivid, that's hot. I love that word. I'm not going to forget that. But if that then covers up over a lot of other things and you can wax poetic about storytelling and rhetoric and whatever. But like if they're if like the tip of the sword of what you're saying can't pierce through the fabric of culture, then it's just going to fall flat.

  • Don't over-embellish your writing. Communication is key, so focus on having something worthwhile to say and doing the necessary work to achieve that. Avoid hiding your message with unnecessary ornamentation.

    • Transcript: Ezra Klein Writing is communication. The question with communication is what are you communicating? It's actually important not to gussy that up too much. I'm not saying it's not great to have a beautiful style. It's great if you do. I wish I did. But the most important thing, at least in nonfiction writing, is having the thing you're actually trying to communicate and having done the work to have something worth communicating. That trying to hide that in embellishment and ornamentation is a terrible habit.

  • Ezra emphasized the importance of 'doing the work' or 'doing the reading.' When he started in journalism, simply reading the Congressional Budget Office reports (which weren't long or complicated) gave him a huge advantage, because others only read executive summaries, if that. Beating people is possible by outworking them and reading what they ignore because it's boring or unenjoyable.

    • Transcript: Ezra Klein Right. I had written a commencement address for somebody that got canceled maybe during COVID. And the whole commencement address was called just do the work. Or do the reading in this case, actually. And the point I was making in that was that you just would not believe as a young person going out into the world how many shortcuts your elders are taking. When I got into journalism, the idea that I would just actually read the Congressional Budget Office reports, which are not complicated, are not usually longer than 30 pages, but people Were just reading the executive summaries, if that. People just weren't doing the reading. And that was a huge opportunity for a young person. You could just beat people by outworking them, by reading the things that they had ignored, that they found too boring, that was not the part of the job they enjoyed.

  • Ezra compares conducting to podcasting. In the movie *Tár*, the fictional conductor says that almost no revelation happens when conducting, but a lot happens in practice. Ezra relates to this, saying that he has relatively little revelation when taping a podcast because so much of his brain is absorbed. He often can't remember what happened and has to relisten to it.

    • Transcript: Ezra Klein The movie Tar? No. About the composer, the fictional composer, but Lydia Tar. I think that's the movie's name, right? It's a big deal a couple years ago but it begins with this fictionalized interview between her and uh adam gopnick who's a real life writer for the new yorker and he's saying to her and She's a classical composer or a conductor i'm sorry um he's saying how much revelation happens to you when you're conducting and she says almost none but a lot happens in practice. And I was like, yeah, that exactly. That I actually have relatively little revelation when I'm doing, when I'm taping a podcast conversation because so much of my brain is absorbed. And even when they're good, I like walk out and I don't really remember what happened. If I really like it, I have to go listen to it again myself.

  • Ezra Klein hasn't found a consistent way to use AI in his work, though he uses it as a Google search replacement. AI is good at tasks he doesn't need to do, so it isn't useful. Summarizing books or papers with AI is a disaster because it misses the connections he would make, since the time spent researching is the most important. He sees AI as something that would show the obvious, whereas he is interested in seeing what others would not have seen.

    • Transcript: Ezra Klein I'm not completely against anything. And I have not, and not for lack of trying, and I think not for lack of being informed or interested in the issue, found a way that I consistently use AI in my work. I'll sometimes use it right now as a replacement for Google searches, and it's valuable for that. And deep research has been good on some kinds of preparatory work for me. It's just, it's very hard to not be outsourcing the part of the work I need to do the most. AI is better at the things I need to do than the things I don't need to do. And so having AI step in, which I will sometimes do in a crunch if I don't have time to like make the spreadsheet myself and like gather the data in the way I'd like to gather it or, but having AI summarize a book or a paper for me is a disaster. It has no idea what I really wanted to know. It would not have made the connections I would have made. And so that is, again, to my stance on this, as somebody who thinks it's the time I spent researching, it was the most important time. Having AI do research for me is a bad idea. But, you know, if you had other people on the show, they'd give you something different. I think somebody like Tyler Cowen has made AI much more fundamental to his workflow. Than I have. But I'm interested for the thing I will see that other people would not have seen. David Perell And I think AI typically sees what everybody else would see.

  • Ezra Klein is against shortcuts. While you can't read everything, it's more dangerous to think you've read something when you haven't, than to not read it at all.

    • Transcript: Ezra Klein But I think I'm pretty against shortcuts. And obviously you have to limit the amount of work you're doing. You can't read literally everything. But in some ways, I think it's more dangerous to think you've read something that you haven't than to not read it at all.

  • Ezra used to think of knowledge like a Matrix download, but now he believes it requires grappling with a text and making connections. Summaries can't replace the deep engagement needed for knowledge to impress itself upon you and change you.

    • Transcript: Ezra Klein I used to conceptualize knowledge the way you see it in the movie The Matrix, where it's like I wanted the port in the back of my mind that the little needle would go into. And then I had read John Rawls' political liberalism. Right. I thought that what you were doing was like downloading information into your brain. And now I think that what you were doing is spending time grappling with the text, making connections. It will only happen through that process of grappling. And so the idea that you could speed run that, the idea that it could just be summarized for you. Part of what is happening when you spend seven hours reading the book is you spend seven hours with your mind on this topic. The idea that O3 can summarize it for you, in addition to all this stuff you just will not have read, is that you didn't have the engagement. It doesn't impress itself upon you. It doesn't change you. What knowledge is supposed to do is change you.

🎧 Paul Q&A Episode - Moving to Asia, Parenting, Preparing for Kids, Pathless Hardcover Art Edition by

  • Paul's releasing a $100 hardcover 'art version' of his book, similar to Craig Mod's strategy. He aims to delight the super fans (1-3% of his 60k book sales), creating a beautiful, special artifact that resonates deeply. He's bucking the trend of mass-market books, instead focusing on hyper-curious nerds who appreciate ambiguity and deep dives. I think this shows a new way of doing things.

    • Transcript: Paul Millerd I'm going to launch this hardcover edition. It's going to be a $100 book. It's what some people call the art version. Craig Mod follows a similar strategy. And so it sort of pairs with, okay, the fans of this book are going to want a beautiful artifact that they can keep. It's something special to them, something they connect to. And that's probably one to 3% of the readers of the Pathless path i've sold about 60 000 copies and so what is that 600 people um 600 to 2 000 people that's sort of like what i'm feeling is Um those are kind of the super fans i want to create something that absolutely delights them i want to create something that's beautiful that delights me and also that makes a statement Against the grain of the current pull of publishing, I think, which is basically just not really pushing the boundaries of creativity. I think there could be way better books in the current paradigm, but I think because of the way the industry is set up, a lot of people will write books that are geared toward sort of a mass Market. That is not my goal. I want to reach a niche audience of like hyper curious nerds who want to go deep on a topic, can handle ambiguity, can handle researching more on their own as I riff on ideas and things like That.

  • Wanna learn about Paul's publishing process? Check out his blog post, "Blog to Book" on pathlesspath.com/self-publishing. Usually, he writes in Google Docs, formats in Vellum, and uploads to Amazon. However, for his new project, Otter Pine and Saia Wood are handling production and fulfillment, which makes things more complex.

    • Transcript: Paul Millerd I didn't really answer your question about the publishing process. I've written a long post about that called Blog to Book on pathlesspath.com/self-publishing. And so I would just check that out. But for the most part, I write them in like Google Docs format and vellum and then upload to Amazon. But this new process, I'm working with Otter Pine and Saia Wood. She's leading the production process and she's actually going to take physical ownership of the books and then ship them out in her fulfillment center. So that's a bit different. This is when things get complicated. But yeah, still learning.

🎧 So Gay for You With Leisha Hailey & Kate Moennig - Dear Chelsea

  • Chelsea shared how, in the 1600s, there'd been an explosion of female painters in Paris. These 13 women were well-known and in history books, but after 1800, they disappeared. Men, feeling threatened by their success, erased them, claiming their work and barring women from painting. Kate then asked if the same pattern occurred in Hollywood, where women directed everything at the beginning.

    • Transcript:

      Chelsea Handler

      Got this great book, this friend, I'm going to do this when we do our book roundup. My friend, my makeup artist in New York gave it to me. And she was going over all these women in history, you know, who've gone unnoticed and all these painters and that there was a period in the 1600s, where there was this explosion of female Talent. And by explosion, there were like 13 really well-known painters in Paris during that period of time where all these painters were coming up. And there were 13 of them, and they were in history books in the 1600s. And then when you get past 1800, they're gone. There's complete erasure of them because men were so threatened by the few that got in and the successes that they reached, which were beyond the reaches of the men, that they decided, Okay, we're going to take their work and claim it as our own and women are no longer allowed to paint.

      Kate Moennig

      Isn't that the same with Hollywood? Women directors, they directed everything at the beginning of Hollywood. Yeah.

      Chelsea Handler

      Right. That's true. And then it was gone.

May 30

📰 Knowledge Work Is Dying—Here’s What Comes Next by Joe Hudson via Every

  • Today, as models swallow entire fields overnight, *wisdom*—skills like emotional clarity, discernment, and connection—is what keeps you indispensable.

May 29

🎧 The Death Thing Is a Bonus by Beautiful/Anonymous

  • Don't let your DNR paperwork get lost in a junk drawer. Instead, stick it on your fridge or somewhere easily accessible. Give a copy to your death doula, so its location is always known.

    • Transcript: Chris Gethard You know, there's people right now who they'll go to their elderly parents' house and the, and their parents have the DNR on like neon pink paper up on the fridge. People go, Hey mom, dad, isn't this a little, and they're going, no, no, no, no. We need that. Other Speaker He's a Lilo. That's how it's printed, Chris. It's always like a neon color. It's not that they choose to print it that color. Legally, it has to be a crazy color so that it's easily findable in a hospital file. Chris Gethard Yeah, it's a real thing. If you have DNR paperwork, don't let it just sink to the bottom of your junk drawer, everybody. Nope. Other Speaker Nope. Stick it on your fridge. Put it somewhere where it's easily accessible. Chris Gethard Or give a copy to your death doula so that someone knows exactly where it is at all times. Correct? Or yep. Other Speaker See all the above. Absolutely.

  • You can prepay for both the burial plot and funeral services. This's a beautiful service to give your loved ones, eliminating doubts about your preferences since everything is pre-arranged and paid for.

    • Transcript: Other Speaker Do you know you can prepay for your funeral? Chris Gethard I know you can prepay for a burial plot. Other Speaker Not just a burial plot, but for the funeral services. Oh, wow. Of course. It's actually, when you think about it, it's really a beautiful service to give to your loved ones because then there's no doubt. It's like, okay, this is what Aunt Susie wanted because she prepaid for all of it. You know, there's no questioning, would she have liked this? Would she have wanted that? Nope. It's all paid for, you know, it's ready to go.

  • Read 'A Beginner's Guide to the End, Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death' by B.J. Miller and Shoshana Berger. It's conversational and helps understand the details of end-of-life matters for yourself and loved ones. Transcript: Other Speaker This book is called A Beginner's Guide to the End, Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death by B.J. Miller and Shoshana Berger. And this book, it's so beautifully written. It's very conversational. It's not like clinical or anything. It makes everything, it lays everything out really nicely. And it's just really handy for understanding all of these, all the details, all the nitty gritty that happens at the end of life, both at the end of your own life, but also at the end of your Loved one's life. And I imagine having this knowledge, I actually, now that I'm talking to you, I'm like, oh, I got to read this book again.

May 27

📰 How Average People Will Get Rich With AI by

  • The shortcut we've been talking about this entire time is starting an AI-first business.

  • Every business is a media business now. That means every business, from e-commerce to digital products to local businesses, are posting internet content to advertise their business.

  • The greatest differentiator is *you.* Personal branding isn't just another fad. Yes, the concept of a "personal brand" is cringe. But the essence of it is beautiful, which is *getting paid to be yourself.*

  • Most beginners should start with a digital product. We don't live in a world where you pour your life savings into a business and pray that people want what you sell. Instead, you do this:

    • You test ideas with social content

    • You turn the best ones into a digital product fast

    • You improve the product with feedback

    • You expand that product into different offers

  • A digital product can be anything from an ebook to a course to a small-scale software that solves a singular problem.

  • There are 4 skills you need to start a modern business.

    • 1. Content – because you are a media business, and media is how you attract potential customers (no customers, no business).

    • 2. Brand – because why would they trust *you?* Why do random people on the internet resonate with what you help them with?

    • 3. Product – well, that's obvious, because without one you don't get paid, or you get a fraction of the payment (sponsorships, platform revenue, affiliates)

    • 4. Promotions – if you don't promote your product under your brand and content, it will never get seen.

  • For something like building a personal brand, there are 1000 different ways to go about it. Everyone has their own way of building one. They all work, but sometimes they aren't aligned with your goals. If you were to just ask AI how to build one, you probably wouldn't get very far. Here's what I would do:

    • 1. Find an expert you trust who teaches personal branding

    • 2. Feed their advice into AI and condense it into a detailed action plan

    • 3. Turn that into a prompt that coaches you and keeps you focused

  • using a prompt that helps you create good prompts according to best practices.

  • Since it takes an entire article to teach this, good content isn't only about writing social posts. You need to "build a world" of content for people to binge and explore. I teach that here.

  • So far, we know how to break down what works into a detailed guide with AI. We also know how to turn that into a prompt that performs the task for you. Lastly, we know we need to find a source of expert-level inspiration so that we can give AI context to perform the task from. So, there are a few things you can do here:

    • 1. Find a YouTube video that explains the best types of digital products to sell as a beginner – turn that into a prompt that interviews you to see which one is best.

    • 2. Based on the type of product (ebook, course, cohort, template) ask AI what topic you should create the product around – feed it your personal brand strategy from before as context.

    • 3. Ask AI to give you a comprehensive breakdown of Alex Hormozi's offer creation framework. Turn that into a prompt that guides you through creating your own offer out of your product idea.

    • 4. Break down a PDF like Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz into a comprehensive guide to write landing page copywriting. Turn that into a prompt to write your landing page and give it your offer (I also talked about how to do this in my future of digital products letter last week).

    • 5. Find someone who has a similar product, purchase it, and paste each section into AI to break down the structure of the product. Turn that into a prompt that guides you through creating a similar product but with your own ideas.

  • you need to promote your product *in your content.* That means:

    • Link your product in every YouTube description

    • Plug your product in a reply once a day as a reply to a Tweet, Thread, LinkedIn post, or in your Instagram story

    • Guide people toward your bio link for Shorts, Reels, and TikToks

May 26

📰 If YouTube Isn’t Fun, You're Doing It Wrong by Creator Startup

  • Success is just the opportunity to keep doing what you’re already doing. So if you aren’t making things you like, you probably still won’t like them if they find success.

May 25

📰 My AI Rules by

  • I’ve come to realize that the friction I feel when I stare at a blank page or feel like I’m out of ideas, is a fundamental part of the creative process.

📰 Lesson 3: Take Control of Your Time by Scott Young

  • A word of warning, however, is that this strategy is cognitively demanding. Part of the reason time blockers get so much more done is because their average intensity of focus is quite high compared to their semi-distracted peers. Such concentration, however, takes a toll. So you do *not* want to extend this blocking discipline to your time outside of work, as this excessive rigidity will eventually lead to burn out.

May 24

📰 I Built a Custom GPT to Analyze 10-Ks by

  • When deciding if you should build a Custom GPT, here are 3 questions to consider:

  1. Outcome — What single pain point will this GPT resolve? How frequently do we encounter it?

  2. Audience — Who will interact with this GPT? How similar/different are their backgrounds?

  3. Background Knowledge — What static info can I provide as context across all the queries?

📰 Making It Easier by

  • “I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit,“ wrote Kurt Vonnegut in *Timequake*. “I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, ‘The Beatles did.’” (Let’s pair that with Sarah Manguso, who I quoted in *Keep Going*: “The purpose of being a serious writer is to keep people from despair…. If people read your work and, as a result, choose life, then you are doing your job.”)

May 23

📰 10 Unconventional Things I'm Doing to Grow My Newsletter 📈 by

  • I include infographics in my emails even when no visualization is actually needed. Why? Because they give people something to share that makes them look smart (versus just sharing a link to my article). Even when the infographic repeats my text verbatim with zero added value, people love sharing them!

  • Whenever someone sends me a connection request on LinkedIn and fits my target audience, I manually send them this message: ... I’ve sent over 1,000 of these DMs. It’s a “why not?” kind of tactic with only upside. These people approached me first, after all.

  • For anyone writing a newsletter: Always prioritize your profession first, writing second. Expertise above all else.

📰 The Key Traits of Successful YouTubers by

  • take off the blindfold. What kind of channel and business do you want to build?

  • Progress is the goal. Helping our students get results is the goal. Growing the business is the goal. Not forcing yourself to stick to the weekly upload schedule, send an email, record a podcast, upload short form content to 3 platforms and try to network, all in the same week. Please, for the sake of your mental wellbeing and your future ambitions, do less. Identify the most important thing to focus on right now and do nothing else.

📰 Vibe Check: Claude 4 Opus by Every

  • Opus can also notice subtle patterns across large blocks of text. which is useful if you, like me, are writing a book. I fed it 50,000 words of a book I’m writing and asked it to find themes and patterns that I hadn’t written about yet. Could it tell me what I’m trying to say better than I can? The answer is yes. It found a few ideas about my parents’ divorce and my relationship to work that run throughout the book. While I knew this already, in an unspoken way, Opus put its finger on it.

📰 Lesson 2: Rediscover Depth by Scott Young

  • In my previous Focus Week lesson, I recommended unplugging to provide your brain some breathing room. Here I’m recommending that you put this breathing room to good use by reintroducing yourself to the pleasures of concentrating without distraction on something difficult but rewarding; to rediscover, in other words, the necessity of depth.

  • There are many ways to execute this reintroduction. For the sake of concreteness, here is one specific strategy among many that I’ve found to be effective: **read two chapters from a book every day; with at least one of the chapters read in a scenic or otherwise interesting setting.** ... As you complete each book, however, raise the difficulty of the next. Your goal is to get to a place where the two chapters consumed each day really push your mind. ... The addendum about finding a scenic or interesting location is meant to help your brain ritualistically context shift. This will help your concentration and increase the satisfaction of the exercise.

📰 In Defense of Starting a Bad Business by

  • The answer is so simple—the way to enjoy work is to do work you enjoy. The way to like your company is to make one you desperately want to exist. I don’t know why it has to be more complicated than that.

📰 3-2-1: The Simple Path to Wealth, How Time Works, and Things That Hold Talented People Back by James Clear

  • A question inspired by The Simple Path to Wealth: Which expense in your life delivers the least happiness per dollar and which delivers the most happiness per dollar?

🎧 Sam Altman, OpenAI and the Future of Artificial (General) Intelligence by On with Kara Swisher

  • Sam Altman knew early on that building a company is the best way to mobilize people, even better than building a religion. He attempted to create a quasi-religious movement around OpenAI's mission.

    • Transcript:

      Karen Hao

      Know, I opened the book with a quote from Sam in his early days of blogging where he says that the best way to mobilize people is to build a religion and ultimately people realize the best Way to do that is to build a company. And I really do think that he understood that very well from the very beginning. And he tried to create a sort of quasi-religious movement around a mission for OpenAI. Yeah.

May 22

🎧 Prof G on Marketing: Should Your Brand Take a Stand?

  • Pick one key goal to focus on each year. Being an effective leader means knowing what *not* to do, and focusing resources. For 2025, Prop G Media's focus is boosting video views because YouTube is now the top distribution channel for podcasts, not Apple or Spotify.

    • Transcript:

      Scott Galloway

      It's important to have one thing that you're like, this is the one box we have to check this year, because I think being an effective leader not deciding what to do. It's deciding what not to do. And that is you only have so much wood. So I think it's important every year to say this is our strategic imperative. We've got to check this box. For 2025, the strategic imperative for Prop G Media is to get much better and dramatically increase our video views. What I found just fascinating, kind of blew my mind, was that the primary channel of distribution for podcasts right now is not Apple, it's not Spotify, it's YouTube.

📰 This Is Your Morning Mission - Daily Stoic

  • “When you leave the office every day, leave a yellow pad in the middle of the desk, and when you come in the morning, write down the three most important things you gotta get done that day in that order. That day, do not do anything else but the first thing on the pad. And if you get the first one, then you go to the second one. That will put structure to your day, and it’ll give you a sense of purpose.”

🎧 On Purpose With Jay Shetty - Dear Chelsea

  • Don't waste time giving the same advice if it's not working. Stop if they don't want it or aren't accountable. Only give advice if someone commits to being accountable to you for a specific period. Otherwise, accept their choices and adjust the relationship accordingly. Don't take on the burden of keeping someone accountable if they haven't committed to change.

    • Transcript: Jay Shetty You, I have friends who I've given the same piece of advice to for seven years. And after seven years, have stopped giving that advice because I realized that it is wasted because that advice is not changing their life and they don't have the capacity, the emotional Availability, or the intention to change or the attraction to change. And again, I focus on what I can control. I've realized that often I was giving that advice because it sounded right, but they didn't really ask for it. They didn't really want it. They never told me they were accountable. And so I've stopped giving unsolicited advice. Unless someone tells me, Jay, I am accountable to you for 30 days. Tell me what to do and I will do it. Unless someone says that to me and commits that way, I just keep it as a casual friendship. I'm happy for them to have the same problems. Of course, I may not talk to them as often. And I'm okay with the fact that my life's gonna move on because I don't wanna take on keeping you accountable when you haven't committed to that. And I think that's on us to make sure that we create that clarification.

  • Hold two opposing ideas at the same time and still function. That's the mark of a first-rate intelligence according to F. Scott Fitzgerald.

    • Transcript: Jay Shetty There's a beautiful statement that I love from F. Scott Fitzgerald, where he said that the sign of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two ideas, two opposing ideas at the same time and still retain the ability to function. So the fact that you could actually hold two ideas that are completely opposite, that's actually what he calls a first rate intelligence.

  • If something constantly stresses, drains, or triggers you, you don't belong there. As you grow spiritually, you can welcome challenges and thrive in environments that once drained you. Spiritual growth isn't about avoiding pain but strengthening yourself.

    • Transcript: Jay Shetty If something's always stressing you out and draining you and triggering you, you don't belong there. That's what I'd like to remind people. You don't belong in places that constantly drain trigger you. Now you start there. Over time, as you strengthen and as you grow, you actually are open to the challenge. So the same environment that used to drain and trigger you, when you grow and strengthen spiritually, now you're welcoming the challenge. You're welcoming the discomfort because you recognize you can hold space for it. And finally, you can actually find a way to even thrive in environments that originally used to drain you. And that's what spiritual growth is. Spiritual growth is not running away from painful places. Spiritual growth is strengthening yourself so much that something that used to drain you now challenges you and now actually helps you thrive.

May 21

🎧 America's Favorite Boy - Beautiful/Anonymous

  • Don't live by avoiding actions; live by taking them. It's better to regret things you do than things you don't.

    • Transcript:

      Speaker 1

      We don't live by not doing things. We live by doing them. Right. Yeah.

      Chris Gethard

      I think there's a lot of truth to that. You got to regret. You got to regret the things you do, not the things you don't do.

📰 Ask Yourself This One Question to Find Work Your Love by

  • "The analogy of mountain climbing really fits. You spend your whole life climbing a mountain, and maybe you get two-thirds of the way up. You’re still really high, but then you realize the peak is way higher—and to reach it, you might have to go all the way back down and look for a new path. Nobody wants to do that. Starting over is hard, especially later in life when you don’t feel like you have the time. It’s painful. But sometimes, that’s exactly what you have to do. That’s why the greatest artists and creators stand out—they have the rare ability to start over.” - Naval Ravikant

May 20

📰 Will AI Kill Our Freedom to Think? by

  • AI currently guides about one-fifth of our waking hours, according to our 2024 time-use analysis. It drafts our contracts, diagnoses our diseases, and even ghostwrites our laws. The principles coded into these systems are becoming the hidden structure that shapes human thought.

  • From medicine to finance to politics, invisible boundaries now have the power to shape what we can know and consider. Against these evolving threats stand timeless principles we have to protect and promote. These include three foundational ideas, articulated by the philosopher John Stuart Mill, for protecting free thought: First, admit humans make mistakes. History's abandoned "truths" — from Earth-centered astronomy to debunked racial hierarchies — prove that no authority escapes error. Second, welcome opposing views. Ideas improve only when challenged by strong counterarguments, and complex issues rarely fit a single perspective. Third, regularly question even accepted truths. Even correct beliefs lose their force unless frequently reexamined. These three principles — what we call "Mill's Trident" — create a foundation where truth emerges through competition and testing. But this exchange needs active participants, not passive consumers. Studies show we learn better when we ask our own questions rather than just accepting answers. Like Socrates taught, wisdom begins with questions that reveal what we don't know. In this exchange of ideas, the people who question most gain the deepest knowledge.

📰 Remind Yourself That Your Task Is This - Daily Stoic

  • “Remind yourself that your task is to be a good human being,” Marcus Aurelius writes in *Meditations*, in reaction, it must be said, against his own dysfunctional and cruel times. “Remind yourself what nature demands of people,” he added. “Then do it, without hesitation, and speak the truth as you see it.”

📰 AI and Work by Cal Newport

  • Smart search has become the first killer app of the generative AI era because, like any good killer app, it takes an activity most people already do all the time — typing search queries into web sites — and provides a substantially, almost magically better experience.

  • Despite recent hyperbolic statements by tech leaders, many professional programmers aren’t particularly worried that their jobs can be replicated by language model queries, as so much of what they do is experience-based architecture design and debugging, which are unrelated skills for which we currently have no viable AI solution.

📰 When O3 Plans Your Career Better Than You Do by

  • Before you start chatting, clarify what you’re hoping to get out of the exchange. A few possible goals:

  1. Reflect on where you are in your career and where you want to go

  2. Make a big decision (stay, quit, pivot, pitch)

  3. Break through a case of the professional blahs

  4. Build a roadmap that balances joy, money, and momentum

  • What to say to get started Paste this text into a fresh chat window, being sure the model is set to o3:

  • *You’re my career coach. Your job is to help me feel clearer, braver, and more grounded in my career decisions. You’ll do that by:* 1. *Asking smart, clarifying questions before jumping into advice* 2. *Helping me identify what I actually want, not just what sounds good* 3. *Surfacing patterns and reframing self-doubt* 4. *Offering solidarity when I feel lost, and structure when I feel scattered* *Start by asking me about my current situation and what I want to explore.*

  • *⁠* Prompts that work well 1. “What’s a sustainable version of ambition for me right now?” 2. “Can you help me build a roadmap based on what I’ve already done and loved?” 3. “What’s a small experiment I can run to test this path without overcommitting?” 4. “What am I undervaluing in my current skill set?”

🎥 How MKBHD Became the Most Powerful Man in Tech - Jon Youshaei

  • I'm respecting the audience that I'm talking to by just talking to them like I would if it was you and me in a a barber shop talking about a phone I just started using or something like that like that's the sort of setting that I was aiming for and always have been um I'm happy to see it slowing down

  • my to-do list app is is very crucial to my remembering to do things I won't diagnose myself with anything but like I need this app so so I so it's called tick tick and this is the one I keep coming back to

  • give me sequels to this video or oh wow so you take a more successful video and you ask for a sequel yeah

🎧 Is the Future Too Bleak to Have Babies? With Cleo Abram - Smart Girl Dumb Questions

  • News isn't always biased left or right, it's often biased towards negativity, which can be traced to the old journalism adage: if it bleeds, it leads.

    • Transcript: Nayeema Raza One of the things I love that you have said to me is, you know, we talk a lot about is news biased and left or is it biased to the right? But you have a different take. It's biased towards negativity. Yes. Cleo Abram This is a line that originally I think I heard from Derek Thompson, who's an incredible writer at The Atlantic. Nayeema Raza And that's an old adage in journalism. Like, if it bleeds, it leads. If it's a bad news story, it's a good news story.

  • Don't underrate how many of today's problems are side effects of our progress. Climate change, for example, stems from lifting many people out of suffering through energy use. This doesn't diminish the urgency to solve these new challenges; it just reframes them as the next set of problems we must tackle.

    • Transcript: Cleo Abram Think that we underrate how many of the problems we face today are the product of our progress. That doesn't make them any less important to address. The fact that climate change is the result of removing a huge number of people from a huge amount of suffering through the use of energy doesn't make climate change any less urgent to Solve. It just means that you see this as the next challenge that we'll face together.

🎧 Can Billionaires Save Us? With Mark Cuban - Smart Girl, Dumb Questions

  • According to Pam Pan Wong, a friend of Nayeema Raza, a lack of belief in luck hinders compassion. There's an element in the American Dream and meritocracy that suggests success is deserved, and failure is equally deserved.

    • Transcript:

      Nayeema Raza

      A friend of mine, Pam Pan Wong, always says, like, if you don't believe in luck, you can't have compassion. And there's a certain amount of ethos here of, like, the American dream and meritocracy of, like, if you made it, then you deserve to have made it. If you don't make it, then you didn't deserve to make it.

May 19

🎧 Prof G on Marketing: How to Stand Out in a Saturated Market

  • Wanna know how others perceive you professionally? Get some people you trust and ask them what they think of you in a professional setting. It's not just about the good stuff; ask about the bad too and see if the criticism lands. If a criticism feels like a punch to the gut, it's probably true.

    • Transcript:

      Scott Galloway

      If you wanna be really formal about it, find some people in your life you trust and say, what do you think of when you hear me in a professional context, tell me you're going through this Process. And not only think about the positive things, but also find out if there's anything negative. You know if that criticism is valid. If you feel as if you've been punched in the gut, that means it's true. If they say something stupid and it's mean or whatever, you can write it off.

📰 How a Landscaper Avoided Getting Ripped Off, One of Three Rules I Remember From Business School | #245 by Cam Houser

  • 🤖 If you are annoyed with AI being too agreeable and uncritical, switch the perspective. Instead of asking it to critique *your* idea, tell the AI that the idea is from someone else and you think something is wrong but you're not sure what it is. The AI will give you a far more honest answer.

  • “Cushion is key,” he explained. Reality has a surprising amount of detail. His move is the “double cushion.” Assume the project will cost twice as much and take twice as long.

📰 What Breakout Videos Have in Common by Creator Startup

  • what do these outliers have in common?

    • They leaned on proven formats

    • They created strong curiosity gaps

    • They all had high TAMs (BNPL & Chipotle, Basketball, 3d Printing & Biking)

    None of these creators had massive followings when they posted.

    But one good idea—packaged the right way—can change everything.

🎧 Nelson Dellis Shares 3 Rules for Life - Three Rules Podcast

  • Don't just stand there. When you're with your kids, notice the trees, the wind, their laughter, their movements, and how you feel about them. Enhance your memories by being present and using your senses.

    • Transcript: Nelson Dellis It has to do with visualizing and using the senses and feeling your emotions. And so when I'm, you know, outside with my kids and they're biking, you know, it's not just me standing there watching them, making sure they don't hurt themselves. You know, I'm noticing the trees, the wind blowing, you know, the sounds that my kids are making, laughing the way their body's moving on the bike, you know, and just how they interact And how I feel about them. Like watching that feeling for a second, like all these little things in a moment on a vacation during an experience. They enhance the memory of it.

  • Spice up memories by doing out-of-the-norm activities. For example, Nelson tied a rope to the back of bikes so the kids could skateboard behind them. This created a memorable experience that stood out from regular biking trips. Try different things each weekend like going to new museums or playgrounds to make things more memorable.

    • Transcript: Nelson Dellis What I will do is I will go for maybe experiences that are out of the norm, you know, so if we're just going biking, like we did this the other day, I had a rope, long rope in my garage. And I was like, guys, let's tie this to the back of the the your bikes. And we'll get the skateboard and you can lose down the street, you know, maybe not the safest thing, but whatever. It was just something out of the norm. And for them, I'm sure they were like, wait, what are you talking about that? Are we going to do this? And I guarantee you, I haven't talked to them about it, but they would remember that. And so would I, it's like this one moment now that sticks out of all the times we went biking where there's this stupid yellow rope and, you know, my kid goes flying off the skateboard, You and we're all laughing right um so doing things out of the norm is also a way to make your memory light up and remember those things so being open to trying new things so every weekend You know we're doing something with the family try a different thing we'll go to a new museum we'll go to a new playground uh just to spice it up and to make things more memorable so that They are distinct from all the other memories that we're trying to build.

  • Try to create novel experiences, especially with your kids, to create core memories. You're not gonna remember the lazy days, even tho they're still important.

    • Transcript: Matt D’Avella I just love the idea of trying to create novel experiences, because if you're reflecting back at the end of the year, you're not going to remember the lazy days that you had. Of course, those lazy days are important. I'm not saying never have lazy days. But it's trying to find those novel experiences that are fun, especially with your kids to be able to kind of create those core memories and core experiences for them.

🎧 Is It Better to Buy Flights on a Tuesday? With the Points Guy’s Brian Kelly and Nicky Kelvin - Smart Girl Dumb Questions

  • Use Point.me (point.me/Amex) like Google Flights, but for award tickets. It's free for Amex users to find the best point transfers for flights, e.g., JFK to Paris. Also, if you're flexible, Seats.aero lets you search for a year to find deals like Emirates first class (JFK to Dubai) for 135,000 points.

    • Transcript:

      Brian Kelly

      With your Amex points, you can go to point.me slash Amex and Point Me is a tool like Google Flights is a tool to find the cheapest flights to pay for. Point Me is like Google Flights for award tickets. So that tool is free for Amex users. So on any given day, you can use that tool for free to say, how do I use my Amex clients if I want to fly JFK to Paris? And it'll actually show you, instead of going, transferring to Delta, which would be half a million points, you can actually transfer to Air France at 50,000 points potentially. There's another tool that you should use if you're flexible called seats.aero. Seats.aero allows you, so say your dream is to fly Emirates first class. Yeah. You can actually put in JFK to Dubai and search for a year. Right. And you can sort all the different days for 135,000 points that you can fly that $10,000 flight.

May 18

📰 Why We Cling to Things That No Longer Serve Us by Sahil Bloom

  • The Endowment Effect describes our tendency to assign more value to things simply because we own them. Once people possess something, they value it more highly, purely because it's theirs.

    It provides the scientific basis for an irrational attachment to the things that are ours.

📰 The AI Revolution Is Leaving You Behind. Here's What to Do... Right Now. by Chris Donnelly

  • from Day 1, you need to be building custom GPTs for your business. This is a non-negotiable in 2025. I’m building an email writing GPT at the moment that can write full emails to people that are probably more polite than the two-liners I would normally send.

  • The Playbook: 4 Real Steps to Get Started

  • Stage 1: The Basics of ChatGPT

    • First, you have to learn to prompt.

  • Stage 2: Intermediate Skills

    • Build your prompt templates using the following structure: Role → Task → Details → Tone → Output Format

  • Stage 3: Advanced Workflows Build stacked automations using tools like Zapier and ChatGPT.

    • For example, every new Stripe sale triggers a thank-you email, logs the data in Airtable, and adds the contact to your CRM. You can do all that without any manual input. I think that’s incredible. I would also recommend using AI for research by feeding in competitor websites or customer reviews. Then prompt it to summarise what customers love, what they don’t, and where you can position differently. Finally, I would train a custom GPT on your own materials. You can use anything - sales pages, LinkedIn posts, blogs, articles, transcripts from meetings or interviews, and so much more. Now you have an always-on, always on-brand writing assistant. (View Highlight)

  • Stage 4: AI Agents

    • The conversation around AI agents has really exploded recently and it can be hard to know where to start. If you haven't used them before. I'll lay out a simple way you can get started: ​

    • Pick a simple goal, like “Summarise news articles every morning.”

    1. Use N8N to build the steps:

      1. Grab article links from a website.

      2. Send them to GPT to summarise.

      3. Save the summaries in a Google Doc.

    2. Make it agent-like: Add a step where GPT checks its own work and improves it if needed. That means the AI isn’t just doing one task... it’s thinking, adjusting, and finishing the job for you.

📰 Money Can Buy Happiness! by

📰 Colin & Samir’s Brandcast Takeaways 📺 by

  • what is YouTube focused on right now? The living room is the clear priority, as YouTube remains the most-watched platform in the US across cable, broadcast, and streaming, per Nielsen.

  • Podcasts have been a major selling point as platforms woo advertisers throughout the upfronts process.

🎥 I Studied 1,000 YouTubers, This DESTROYS Their Sales by Ed Lawrence

  • you have a website, and you might need a big website like this, but for your link below your video, you need to create a landing page, not a website. That's just one page where all they can do is book.

  • We're not selling them a video call; we're selling them a solution to the biggest problem they have. We need a headline that sets up a result and a subheadline that fills in some details.

  • the whole point of a course is that you lay it out in an order that saves them from having to flip and go through all the information online that’s probably wrong and contains conflicting information, so they just have one source of input where they get consistent results.

📰 Will AI Replace My Job? [Let's Reframe This Question] by

  • The future has never been certain Our survival depends on working WITH new technologies to support our productivity. We’re exiting the early adopter stage of AI which is gaining broader traction across organizations and for personal use.

  • Here’s a TL;DR version of how to develop a persistent set of skills:

    • Forge unusual partnerships. Invest in relationships.

    • Upskill, reskill, skill stack. Identify and understand transferable skills.

    • Give your growth mindset a real workout: unlearn and relearn. (see the section AI in action)

    • Don’t wait for an invitation to lead differently.

    • But most importantly, leverage your Heirloom skills.

  • New technologies do not replace our skills; they transform how we apply them.

📰 Scamming Substack? by

  • Good memoir writing from actual people with blood and brains and hearts tends to move from the highly individual to the universal.

  • It seems to me that a rubicon has been crossed. AI is genuinely touching human hearts, and it’s making money, and at least some readers don’t seem to care. More scary: this is only the beginning.

  • The voices of the best writers are recognisable in their opening lines. That’s what we should be aiming for. This is not just a matter of ’finding’ your voice, it’s about developing it.

  • My journey through the gruel taught me that AI struggles to create genuine experience. Real life, and real people, are almost always somewhat strange.

  • AI does not take risks. You should.

  • I understand the temptation of using AI for a little lift, but the more you rely on it, the more your work risks leaning to the average, as the gruel seeps inexorably into it.

📰 What Does a Book Cover Cost? by

  • Some designers, like Jordan Wannemacher, try to maintain a $1,000 minimum—if not actually per book, then as an average.

  • In a recent post on Goodtype’s Instagram about their pricing guide, they shared a recommended book cover design rate of $5,000.

May 17

🎧 U.S.-China Trade Deal, Trump's Plane Grift, and the American Pope - Pivot Pod

  • Some interviewers try to create a TikTok moment. Others, the generous ones, let you speak and want you to get your views out there, whether they personally agree or not. They want to set you up for success.

    • Transcript:

      Scott Galloway

      I've been on Christiana [Amanpour]'s show. I think she's, I also like her because she's one of those journalists that tries to set you up for success and she lets you speak. I find so many journalists are there to- Substantive is the word you're looking for. Well, actually, it's not, but thank you, lemon tree weirdo.

      Kara Swisher

      Catholic lemon tree.

      Scott Galloway

      What I was thinking was actually generous, and that is I find there's some times when I go on a show, they're there to try and corner you or get you to say something provocative because They want a TikTok moment. And I'm guilty of this, too. A lot of times I ask questions trying to show how smart I am as opposed to get to an answer. And then there's journalists who will let you just speak and want you to get your views out there, whether they personally agree with them or not. They're generous. They want to set you up for success. And I find that she's one of those people.

      Kara Swisher

      She is. I really, really adore her. We've become good friends and I really like her. It was a great talk. Anyway, please listen to it.

📰 Vibe Check: Codex—OpenAI’s New Coding Agent by Every

  • Codex isn’t a vibe coding tool. You can tell it’s built not to replace senior software engineers, but as a tool for them.

📰 The Secret Sauce to Growing Your YouTube Business -

  • The startup founder Paul Graham famously said “do things that don’t scale” and it couldn’t be more true.

  • One of the best pieces of advice I can give you as an educational YouTuber is to learn more about your audience. I know, it's so basic. Almost too basic. But it's vital. Get on some 1:1 calls, run audience surveys, and test out offers.

  • What problems do they actually have? Even better, record the conversations and use AI to analyse everyone's pain points.

📰 7 Email Subject Line Styles That Consistently Deliver Higher Open Rates -

  • A killer subject line does two things:

  1. It hints at a benefit. For example, “How to get your first 10 sales (without a big list)”* Clear benefit and it removes a mental obstacle.

  2. It creates curiosity. THIS almost killed my launch” What’s “this”? What happened? Instant curiosity.

  • The 7 Email Subject Line Styles That Consistently Deliver Higher Open Rates You don’t need 1,000 templates. You only need these 7:

  1. Curiosity “THIS changed everything for my business.”

  2. Pain “Still can’t convert traffic into buyers?”

  3. Benefit “How to 2X your leads in 30 days”

  4. Story “I accidentally ordered d*ck cheese” (yes, deliverability took a hit. but replies went crazy.)

  5. Question “Do you make these content mistakes?”

  6. Contrarian “Why storytelling WON’T grow your brand (and what will)”

  7. Proof “How I grew to 70,000 followers in one year”

  • Use these to match your email type.

    • Sending a story? Use a story subject.

    • Giving advice? Use benefit or question.

    • Writing to sell? Use pain or proof.

📰 How to Be More Lucky 🍀 by

  • once someone exploits a loophole, the rules change. That’s why the top 1% never stop spotting new patterns.

  • How to engineer luck 💰 It’s simple: Luck = Doing × Telling Once you decode the rules of a game:

  1. Do more things within those rules

  2. Tell more people about what you're doing

  • Lucky people ALLOW themselves to be distracted by new things.

  • The real question isn’t “How to be more lucky” but “How can I position myself where good things come to me?” The answer is simple:

  1. Understand the playground – find the hidden rules that govern each environment and understand them better than anyone else.

  2. Then, take massive action within those rules. Remember: Luck = Doing × Telling. The more shots you take within the optimal playing field, the more chances you have to win.

May 16

🎧 Was It Worth It? (10 Years of Leaving Wall Street) by

  • Don't underestimate building a personal brand. For 10 years, Khe Hy has provided value through podcasts, social media, and newsletters by being honest, a good storyteller, funny, and kind. Cultivate relationships by replying to DMs, comments, and tweets. Ensure your digital presence reflects your real-life persona, focusing on being helpful and human. Doing this consistently creates a powerful safety net.

    • Transcript: Khe Hy So we talked about the financial safety nets, not burning any bridges. I think that I didn't realize this at the time, but building, I hate the phrase, but effectively a personal brand acted as a really powerful safety net. You know, for the past 10 years between the podcast, social media, and the newsletter, you know, I've been in the ears, inboxes, feeds of people, hopefully adding, you know, micro moments Of value, which is what I always strive to do, being honest, being a good storyteller, being funny when I can be, meeting people where they are, being kind. And that's valuable. I mean, if I think about all the ways that I've made money, we just closed, we're about to close this AI accelerator for financial professionals this week, or, you know, we'll close tomorrow, Actually. That's just all from cultivating relationships. I talk to people who DM me, I reply back, I try to respond to every comment that's respectful. I try to respond to every tweet. You do that for 10 years, people start to know you, people see you a certain way. I really do think that my digital presence is an extension of who I am in real life. I think that they are very consistent. If anything, the digital version of me is way more comfortable being vulnerable than the in-person version of me. And so I think that that's probably not the question that was asked, but I do think that that safety net was building that personal brand slash audience. But really what I would say is showing up, being kind, being human, being helpful often for a decade. And that's going to make a significant difference.

  • Khe realized that while at BlackRock, he was running several side projects like writing an anonymous blog, tweeting anonymously, hosting events, and trying to start a headhunting business. None became legit businesses, but proved he could think creatively and had the hustle to will things into action. This gave him the confidence to leave without a plan.

    • Transcript: Khe Hy For someone listening who's 80% ready and 100% scared, what's the single experiment they should run this month? Ooh. I've always said, are you running away from something? Are you running to something? And I knew that when I was working on Wall Street, you know, 70, 80 hours a week, probably closer to 70 towards the end, I had a million little side projects. I was writing an anonymous blog. I was tweeting anonymously. I was hosting events in the city. I was trying to start a headhunting business. I had all these projects that I was doing. None of them were going to be legit businesses. I have come to realize none of them became legit businesses, but they were all things that proved to me that you can think creatively. You have the hustle and determination to will things into action. I think for those of you who have followed my story for a while, whether it's the life coaching business, whether it's the notion productivity, SY, supercharger productivity cohort, Whether it's the AI work now, like I have willed many, you know, micro businesses into existence off of sheer passion and work ethic. And I was practicing that while I was at BlackRock on the weekends, in the mornings. And that's why I had the confidence to leave without a plan. It's like, I didn't have a plan, but I had a lot of, um, irons in the fire. And that was really, really powerful. And it gave me confidence.

  • Don't just think about what could go wrong when making big decisions. People often overemphasize the potential downsides. Remember to also consider the potential upsides and what could go right.

    • Transcript: Khe Hy When people are in this position, they are always thinking about the downside. What can go wrong? What will happen? Will I be broke? Will I run out of money? Will my spouse get angry at me? And will I fuck up my kids' lives? What can go wrong? Downside planning is really important. But remember, human beings are wired to think, to over-index on the downside, and they forget one really, really important question. And so if you are in that situation, doing the planning, doing the financial modeling, thinking about what you're going to do next. I know that you're asking yourself the question of what can go wrong, but don't forget that there's another question. What can go right?

May 15

🎧 Becoming a Writer - - Pathless Podcast by

  • Most non-fiction writers don't make books their primary business. For many, books support other ventures like speaking, coaching, conferences, or courses. Some authors like James Clear or Mark Manson do make books their business, but this's rarer.

    • Transcript: Nat Eliason For most nonfiction writers, the business is not the books. Paul Millerd Yeah. Nat Eliason Occasionally, you'll have somebody like a James Clear or a Mark Manson or a Ryan Holiday where the books do become the business, but you have a lot more, significantly more cases where The book is like supplementing some other business. It's speaking, it's coaching, it's conferences, it's courses, it's, you know, or it's just like a thing they do on the side while they while they do other work

  • You've gotta find your 'Asimov limit' which refers to Isaac Asimov, who wrote or edited over 400 books. But even with Asimov, most people only know a couple of his books.

    • Transcript: Nat Eliason You've got to find your asimov limit limit i know i know right although but even with asimov you know it's like like okay yes he wrote and edited 400 books but most people can only name like Two

  • Pathless Path surprised his existing audience. Though he only had around 3,000 newsletter and 4,000 Twitter subscribers

    • Transcript: Paul Millerd It's very narrative driven it's narrative driven around my my life and yeah I hadn't written much of that style of writing I sort of pushed beyond my capacity and writing the book and So what happened was the people that had followed me i had like 3 000 newsletter subscribers i had like 4 000 twitter subscribers um and everyone was like shocked at like how different The book was and like i think it was above stuff i had written before so there was the shock of like, then this word of mouth started spreading.

  • Don't focus on big names or top-down influencer marketing. Instead, reach out to super fans who are already promoting the book and keep providing them with copies to give away.

    • Transcript: Paul Millerd I don't really focus on like big names and the sort of like top-down reach of other influencers. I just reach out to these like super fans who are already spreading the book and just keep sending them books to give out.

  • If you're an author, consider writing a novella to help readers decide if they like your writing style. A shorter story (120 pages) in the same universe can be read in an evening or two, acting as a gateway to your series. This lowers the barrier to entry compared to asking readers to commit to a longer book. Offer a novella as a freebie for joining an email list.

    • Transcript: Nat Eliason There's always that question of like, do I want to pick up a new series? Right? Or do I want to spend six, eight hours potentially with an author who I don't know if I actually like their writing style yet and so part of what I've been working on the last couple months Is a novella so a much shorter story 120 pages in the same universe but in a different period of time that could be read at any point in the series. So you could read the novella first, or you could read Husk One first. And so now I have a much smaller ask, like, hey, 120 pages, you could probably read it in an evening, maybe two evenings. And then you'll really quickly get a sense of do I want to read more of Nat's books or not or am I interested in this universe or not and that becomes like a really cool way to get people into Your world as well and what a lot of fiction authors will do is they'll just like give a novella away for free if you join their email list

  • Nat Eliason received a $275,000 advance for Crypto Confidential. The book didn't earn beyond that amount, so the advance served as a guaranteed minimum income.

    • Transcript: Nat Eliason My advance of crypto confidential was 275k and the book hasn't done well enough where i'll probably ever like see more money than that and so it was nice to have that as like the floor

  • Nat Eliason acknowledges that writing about diverse characters (beyond just white, male, and heteronormative ones) is encouraged, but recognizes that by writing in the latter category, he's choosing a more difficult path, though it will give him more control.

    • Transcript: Nat Eliason Just to put it bluntly like if you're a white guy who is writing like mostly male heteronormative characters you're basically like increasing the difficulty by 345x because there Is still a little bit of the like uh you know we want to you know promote other voices or like you know diversity of characters and all these things and like you know, there's definitely Arguments to be made for that. But, you know, if I'm going to be playing on hard mode, like I may as well play on hard mode where I have like more control over everything.

  • Nat Eliason started writing the first version of Husk in November '23 and had a second draft by July '24. After receiving feedback that it wasn't good, he trashed the 120,000-word novel and started over in August '24, finishing it by February '25 for a May release. He basically wrote two novels in under two years.

    • Transcript: Nat Eliason Getting the reps in is so I started the first version of Husk in November of 23. And I got it to a good, or I got it to what I thought was a good second draft by like July of 24. And then I got feedback on that and, you know, basically just wasn't very good. Right. But I had written a whole 120,000 word novel at that point. And so I threw that novel in the trash and started over in August of 24 and then basically finished it February of 25. And now it's coming out in May, so next month. And so I wrote two novels in a little under two years.

  • Fiction presents a unique challenge for beta reading. Unlike non-fiction, where the content is known, fiction relies on surprises and plot twists. Giving a draft to a beta reader means you can't get their unspoiled first impression on later drafts.

    • Transcript: Nat Eliason That's a whole funny thing in fiction where like with non-fiction everybody knows what the book is about and like what's going to happen in the book. And so you're not like spoiling anything or like wasting a beta reader by giving it to them early. But like fiction has surprises in it and twists and like plot arcs that really only hit the first time you read it. Because the second and third and fourth are always going to be colored by roughly knowing what's happening and that's actually been kind of a challenge for me where it's like okay do I give this draft to someone knowing that I will not be able to give them a later draft and get their like accurate first reader impression on it anymore um that's kind of like a whole challenge With with doing this kind of editing and feedback that i didn't have doing the non-fiction work

  • Do direct sales to connect with readers. Offer bundles (hardcover, audiobook, ebook, signed copy) to incentivize purchases via your site. Selling directly removes Amazon's cut and provides email and mailing addresses, enabling a direct relationship with readers for future book launches, discounts, and updates. Set a baseline now and improve with each book.

    • Transcript: Paul Millerd So um with this book husk uh you are uh going direct which means you're printing them yourself and selling directly you can you can also buy it on Amazon and Ingram and all the other places But you're really pushing these direct sales once you can send out signed copies but two I assume you can start to develop this connection with the readers and yeah take some a lot of what You've learned from nonfiction writing to this world. Nat Eliason Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so for the pre-orders for Husk, I did this like bundle deal on my site where for the price of the hardcover, you get the hardcover, the audio book, and the ebook, and you get like A signed hardcover, and I'm going to send them out probably a week before the book publishes for everybody else. So it's kind of this like fun bundle deal that adds a little extra incentive. And then I put it on my own store on Shopify because one, I remove Amazon's cut from the equation. So I'm making more per book, but also I'm getting email addresses and mailing addresses and just building that more direct relationship with the people who are like most interested In the book, right? It's like you sell a book on Amazon. There's no way to follow up with anybody who bought it. You don't even know who bought it. You had no information. And you know, when it's your like most enthusiastic readers, you kind of do want to have a bit of a relationship with them because I can like give them a discount on the next book when it Launches or even just like let them know that it's launching, which you can't do on Amazon. It's one of these things where I didn't have any expectations for it for this one. Because again, no one's read any fiction from me. I don't expect them to completely trust that I've figured it out. I feel very confident in it, but it's kind of a big ask. And I just wanted to set a baseline for this book so that when I do the next book, I'm trying to move that up and try to do bigger and bigger pre-order campaigns as subsequent books in the Series and whatnot come out. And so I put it up on my site about a month ago and I've done like 220 copies directly through my site, which is really cool. You know, that's awesome. Seven or eight grand in revenue.

  • Not many people are self-publishing on a large scale through Shopify; most are using Amazon. Therefore, publishing via Shopify is an emerging approach.

    • Transcript: Nat Eliason They're like aren't a ton of people i've found who are doing it at a really big scale, which is exciting. There's a lot of people self-publishing really successfully on Amazon. But doing it through Shopify is a very new thing.

  • To get a better launch, give early access to a core group. Even if pre-launch sales don't count toward the launch week pop on Amazon, the buzz generated by early readers posting about the book amplifies the launch's echo chamber effect and increases visibility.

    • Transcript: Nat Eliason There's an argument against it because anybody who's buying from me beforehand is not buying on amazon during launch week so i might not get the same launch week pop, but I think that's Worth it to build that closer relationship. Plus if 50 of these people who are getting pre-orders read it in the week before launch and then post about it during launch week, that's 50 more people talking about the book than I would Have had otherwise. And so that really helps get the like echo chamber effect going during that launch period, which is, again, just pretty important for getting the initial pop.

  • Consider releasing content frequently for your audience. Think about how musicians, like Drake, constantly release singles to keep their fans engaged. Explore how this model could apply to your own content creation strategy.

    • Transcript: Paul Millerd People that are following you want to like keep collecting stuff from you right like the the super fans of a musician, and I think music has done this really well. Somebody like Drake is releasing songs literally all the time. Yeah. And just single, single mashup, single, single. And it's nonstop. So it's something I've been thinking about a lot.

  • Don't assume fewer people read books. The opposite's true! Book sales are at an all-time high. People even buy audiobooks first, then purchase physical copies as 'trophies' if they enjoy them.

    • Transcript: Nat Eliason That stat that more vinyl records are sold today wow than were sold when vinyl was like at its when vinyl was like the way you bought music they actually sell more of them now than they did Paul Millerd Back then because i think of the same thing people are excited about collecting it yeah and i think there's something there around books I think this is the thing everyone misses oh less Nat Eliason People are reading books but the people that are reading books are reading more books yeah I mean book sales are an all-time high for like all of history right now people are buying and I've heard this a lot too that people will buy the audiobook for a book and then if they like it they'll buy the paperback or the hardcover and that's basically their trophy for listening To the audiobook

📰 We Launched Our First Shopify Theme by Nic Chan

  • There aren’t many all-women teams in the Shopify theme space, and we felt that we could bring not only our professional experience, but our personal experience as the target audience for the kinds of brands we’d be hoping to reach.

May 14

📰 For Anyone Worried About Being Replaced by AI by

  • Tim Brown of the design firm IDEO popularized the concept of “The T-Shaped Professional” (TSP). The T-shape refers to the depth and range of expertise. The TSP is someone who can combine deep expertise in one area (the vertical stem of the “T”) and broad, functional knowledge across multiple disciplines (the horizontal bar of the “T”). Brown contrasted TSPs with “I-shaped” specialists (deep but narrow) and “generalists” (broad but shallow).

  • The TSP is a specialist with a generalist mindset. And I think this is precisely the sort of thing we need to be adaptable in the age of AI. You need deep expertise (the vertical) because…

    • Depth is needed for AI oversight - only with deep expertise can you accurately assess AI outputs, identify errors, know when to override algorithmic suggestions.

    • Above-average expertise creates value AI can’t match (yet): I think AI’s really good at producing work at the level of an average professional, but it struggles with mastery. It doesn't have the nuanced understanding that comes from years of being immersed in a topic. Depth gives you pattern recognition that AI lacks. And you need breath (the horizontal) because…

    • AI excels at specialized, repetitive work within narrow domains. Being confined to one skill set makes you vulnerable when that specific task gets automated.

    • The ability to pivot is a hedge. As AI reshapes industries, if you have knowledge across domains, you can more easily shift to adjacent areas where your skills are still relevant.

May 13

🎧 Scott on Hotel Brands, Netflix’s Adolescence, and Theranos Takeaways - Prof G Pod

  • Scott Galloway jokes he doesn't know who is raising his 14-year-old son because he spends so much time on the internet.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway I don't know who's raising my 14-year because he spends a lot of time on the internet.

  • Who is raising our sons? Are we? Schools? Algorithms that don't have their best interests at heart?

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway Who is raising our sons? Do we really know who is raising our sons? Are we raising our sons or schools raising our sons or algorithms that don't have our best interests at art raising our sons?

🎧 The Worst Karen - Beautiful/Anonymous

  • Andrea answered the phone by saying, what is on your mind today?

May 12

📰 Don’t quote. Make it yours and say it yourself. by Derek Sivers

  • If I hear an idea, have considered it, and integrated it into my beliefs, it’s mine. I’ll say it succinctly in my own words, and stand behind it. Like adopting a child, I will take care of this idea and raise it as my own. If anyone wants to know the source, I’ll be happy to tell them. I highly recommend this. Stop referencing. Stop quoting. Paraphrase. Internalize it. Make it yours. Tell me what *you* think, not what someone else thinks.

🎧 OpenAI Abandons for-Profit Plans, Disney and Uber Earnings, and Meta’s “Creepy” AI - Pivot Pod

  • Economists under 50 don't think stagflation can occur, but it happened in the 70s.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway What's so interesting is any economist under the age of 50 doesn't even know the word stagflation. They don't even think it can happen. It can happen. It happened in the 70s.

  • The biggest threat of AI is that it's going to speedball loneliness. And that is, I'm frustrated. I don't have friends. I can't figure out the social pecking order. I am really upset. I don't have a girlfriend. So I have this incredible AI girlfriend that's a mix of porn. And maybe I even have an AI robot slash sex doll. And I never develop the skills or take the risk to establish a romantic relationship. And this is the fear. This is what young men have fighting against them, is they have the deepest pocketed, most talented people in the world trying to convince them they can have a reasonable facsimile Of life with no human contact. You need the community. Kara Swisher So you're not concerned with loading yourself, which is my question. Scott Galloway Well, okay, it's too late for me. And not only that, quite frankly, I have economic security and people who love me unconditionally. So I'm there. I'm at the promised land. What I'm worried about is young men who are struggling to find a connection to school, to work, or to other people and get a reasonable facsimile of that DOPA hit that you get from a relationship, From Reddit, Discord, porn, Robin Hood. Oh, I'm not gambling, I'm investing. And they spent all of their time in their basement, never going through the hardship of trying to make relationships work. Kara Swisher Let me say, we have to move on, but Scott will be everybody's friend, next friend. Just so you know, Scott is everybody's friend. I'm very unfriendly, but Scott will be everybody's friend.

May 11

📰 The Day My Mother Stopped Cooking by

  • As a statement, it was up there with, “Will you marry me,” “It’s a boy,” “You’re hired,” and “We’re selling the house.”

    They were words that signaled the changing of lives, a past era concluding, and a new one beginning.

📰 You Want What You Actually Do by

  • I see people complaining about how much they use social media. Stop! You want this. Just figure out *why* you want it.

  • Have you tried just admitting you want something badly, too? More simply, there are no problems to be fixed. You want everything you are doing!

  • It’s a weird thing to want in today’s world, especially when I could make more money by denying this want. But the good thing is that I can just love the hell out of this desire, a desire to try to make it work on an unconventional path, to see it as a cool part of myself, and move on with the experimentation of trying to continue to make it work.

May 10

📰 ’s father’s poem

  • In 1870, post Civil War, Julia Howe appealed to mothers
    To protest all violence and future wars, so brothers wouldn’t kill brothers.
    The day was observed for many years with prayers and tears amply shed,
    Primarily where the war had left the most men wounded or dead.
    President Wilson, in 1914, declared observance of a day
    To be known as Mother’s Day each year on the second Sunday in May.
    Though its founders and supporters resisted commercialization,
    In the 1930s Mother’s Day underwent a transformation.
    A magazine for florists noted profit if the holiday were tied
    To honoring mothers with flowers. It was a ploy worth being tried.

🎧 Trump's Meme Coin Scheme, Alphabet's Earnings, and Cybertruck's Competition - Pivot Pod

  • Kara posits AI's male dominance and lack of safety stem from some men's inability to have children, framing AI creation as a form of 'giving birth' or 'growing beings' for them, especially since women physically grow children. It's a way for them to create.

    • Transcript:
      Kara Swisher Think sometimes I think AI. I told you this theory. I think AI is the way it gets so dominated by men and there's so lack of safety and everything else. I think men can't have children. Certain men, not all of them think this way, but can't have children. This is their way of giving birth or something or creating.
      Scott Galloway I never thought about that. Think about it. Fuck you up. But are you saying incel culture or the people who run AI companies?
      Kara Swisher No, I think the people who run some of these companies, they can't make beings. It's a very beautiful thing to make a child. Men and women make them together, obviously, but really women grow children, right? And this is men's way of growing things, growing beings. I don't know. Anyway, go ahead. It's such a dystopian, weird

  • Hospitals reveal our true selves by touching our wounds and showing people from different worlds intersecting. In the face of pain and irreversible loss, we realize our shared humanity and the importance of respect, forgiveness, love, and living intensely, freeing ourselves from judgment and interference. Life's too short to waste fighting, obsessing over appearance, or accumulating wealth. Embrace the present, cherish loved ones, and respect yourself and others.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway My win is a little bit longer and I know you're probably interviewing the ghost of Boutros, Boutros Ghali, but you're going to have to put up with me. So, um, he's very handsome, but go ahead. So after the Pope passed, there was something that was attributed to him. I don't know if he said it, a privileged doctor saving the life of a beggar. In intensive care, you see a Jew taking care of a racist, a police officer, and a prisoner in the same room receiving the same care. A wealthy patient waiting for a liver transplant, ready to receive the organ from a poor donor. It's in these moments when the hospital touches the wounds of people that different worlds intersect according to divine design. And in this communion of destinies, we realize that alone we are nothing. The absolute truth of people, most of the time, only reveals itself in moments of pain or in the real threat of an irreversible loss. A hospital is a place where human beings remove their masks and show themselves as they truly are, in their purest essence. This life will pass quickly, so do not waste it fighting with people. Do not criticize your body too much. Do not complain excessively. Do not lose sleep over bills. Make sure you hug your loved ones. Do not worry too much about keeping the house spotless. Material goods must be earned by each person. Do not dedicate yourself to accumulating an inheritance. You are waiting far too much. Christmas Friday next year, when you have money, when love arrives, when everything is perfect. Listen, perfection does not exist. A human being cannot attain it because we are simply not made to be fulfilled here. Here, we are given an opportunity to learn. So make the most of this trial of life and do it now. Respect yourself. Respect others. Walk your own path and let go of the path others have chosen for you. Respect. Do not comment. Do not judge. Do not interfere. Love more. Forgive more. Embrace more. Live more intensely. And leave the rest in the hands of the Creator. Anyways, Pope Francis, rest in peace.

May 9

📰 Vibe Check: Gemini 2.5 Pro and Gemini 2.5 Flash by

📰 A Few Questions by Morgan Housel

  • Which of my strongest beliefs were formed on second-hand information vs. first-hand experience?

  • Is my desire for more money based on the false belief that it will solve personal problems that have nothing to do with money?

  • Which future memory am I creating right now, and will I be proud to own it?

🎧 Jhana Meditation Silenced Her Mind—And Changed Her View on AI | Nadia Asparouhova, Author and Researcher - AI and I

  • Dan Shipper enjoyed Nadia Asparouhova's deep dive into her Jhana meditation retreat experience.

    • Transcript: Dan Shipper And I love reading your stuff in particular. I think a good place to start is you wrote a really deep dive of your experience going on a journey Jhana meditation retreat, which I read and really loved.

  • Julian Jaynes theorizes that self-talk and self-narrative, which we consider fundamental to the human experience, only began a few thousand years ago. Before that, people attributed thoughts to external sources like gods. Milestones in history, like the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, correlate with increased introspection and exploration of the conscious mind, such as Shakespeare's monologues and the rise of psychoanalysis. The digital revolution, intertwined with the history of psychedelics, marks another inflection point in our curiosity about the conscious mind.

    • Transcript: Nadia Asparouhova There's sort of like Julian Jaynes and his theory of bicameral mind where he believes that, and he uses the term conscious, and I don't really want to use the term conscious because I Think it's very fraught. But let's say, let's substitute that by saying, you know, he believes some version of people only began to have this kind of self-talk and self-narrative that we think of as being fundamental To the human experience. He thinks that only started a few thousand years ago. And he goes through all these historical texts to sort of demonstrate how it doesn't really show up in at least like people's writing and the artifacts that they're producing until A certain point in time. And before then people attribute it to like voices from the gods or things like that. And you can see these different sort of milestones or inflection points over human history, you know, coinciding often with like explosions in the creation of art. So the Renaissance, people, you know, often say that, you know, Shakespeare was one of the first people to pioneer this idea of monologues and soliloquies in his writing, this idea Of a character would just stand there and talk about like what is going on inside their mind. Like that was a fairly new thing. Industrial revolution, you see the introduction of or interest in psychoanalysis, William James writing about consciousness, this sort of recognition that, oh, there's something Going on in the mind is, again, a fairly new development. I think we had another inflection point more recently with that, with the digital revolution. And so, you know, this famous intertwining of the history of psychedelics, curiosity about the conscious mind happened at the same time as the development of the computer. And these two, these two stories are intertwined somehow. And so there's, I think there's a reason for that

  • Use Chat GPT as a thought partner. Use it in the early stages for idea formation when you're just throwing stuff at the wall to see if it makes sense. Use it again at the end when you need just the right word to say something. Handle the in-between yourself, turning messy ideas into prose.

    • Transcript: Nadia Asparouhova As a writer in particular, I mostly work with chat GPT and I just see it as a thought partner that I use every single day, all the time in my writing. I mostly use it in that kind of like early messy idea formation stage where I'm kind of just like throwing stuff at the wall and being like, does this make sense? I'm trying to connect these two ideas together. Does that make sense? You know, that's sort of very high, high level unstructured thinking. And then I'll use it towards the end where it's the very, very fine, like, I need just the right word to say this thing. And I can't figure out what it is. Can you help me figure out what that word is, you know, that kind of stuff. And then all the stuff in between, I think is, is more, I'm on my own, trying to figure out how to take the messy ideas that I now have some shape around and then translate them into prose.

  • Nadia's new book, Antimimetics, is about ideas that resist spreading or being remembered. These ideas can include taboos or cognitive biases.

    • Transcript: Dan Shipper You have a new book coming out. What is it? Nadia Asparouhova It's called Antimimetics. And it is about why some ideas resist spreading or being remembered. So you think about like taboos or cognitive biases or yeah, just any of these sorts of ideas where they're kind of slippery and hard to hold on to.

🎧 Lifestyle Arbitrage, Balancing Ambition and Relationships, and What Gives Scott Hope - Prof G Pod

  • Scott says that a tax swing paid for his cars, housing, and kids' school because he makes good money, but a lot of it was current income. If you make $300,000, saving 13% can become significant capital that grows over time.

    • Transcript:

      Scott Galloway

      But basically, my cars, my housing, my kids' school were paid for in that tax swing, because I make really good money, but a lot of it was current income. So 13% of that, then you invest it. If you make $300,000, you're not saving $39,000. You're saving, you have $39,000 in capital that should grow to 78 or 100, 150, 10 years on.

May 7

🎧 An Inside Look at Building an Email Client in 3 Months - Ep. 44 With Kieran Klaassen, Brandon Gell - AI and I

  • It's getting much cheaper to build software. Now, the question of what to build has become more important, since a rough version of almost anything can be built in just a few days.

    • Transcript: Dan Shipper For anyone who's thinking about building in AI right now, which is for a long time, we've always talked about solving problems in software, right? But for a long time, the most expensive thing was actually like building the software. And that's changing dramatically. It's much, much cheaper now. And what that does is it makes the question of what you're building way more important. Because like you can build anything in a couple of days if you want, at least like a really rough version.

  • Kieran builds prompts for new models by envisioning an app while walking. He starts with a base idea, then uses walking to enter a flow state, verbally describing the app's interface and functionality in detail, including visual elements like colors, textures, and layouts. He iteratively adds details until his mind is empty, using terms to influence the model (e.g., 'Apple design').

    • Transcript: Kieran Klaassen This is an example of something I was thinking of at some point walking somewhere. Normally what I do is when there's a new model coming out, like I think this was 01 coming out, I want to make an app. I want to build an app and I'll see how far I can push it, how far it will go and where it breaks. It's just a good way to test it out. So I was a composer and I wanted to make a music app had a specific thing where you where you click somewhere and there's a synthesizer and a sound generator and like a mirror note like a Whole complex compositional system but really what I do in a moment like this is I just go walk and walking enables me to just like keep going like not thinking too much about it like getting More into a flow state and just start building a prompt in my head. It's kind of weird. Like you're basically talking like it will become a prompt. And this is something I actually learned from you then in the earlier episodes where you said you need to ground it and like how to like push the model into a certain direction so i should Start dropping like oh yeah you are a very good ios engineer and you do like swift swift 18 you're amazing or like just start with something like that and it's a start and you like start Grounding it um here it's like I'm going to describe an app and its elements. This app is called These. If you open it, there's only one screen. Well, I just visualize the app here in my head and just do like I'm opening my phone and just imagine it and just talk through what happens. So maybe every corner has a different color, four-way gradients, tones of green and blue, a little bit of texture on it, like a grainy noisy texture so it looks a little bit fancy. Like using words like fancy and maybe Apple design, like just describing the feel, that's the background. Then in the middle there's a separation there's a line in the middle somewhere in the middle and the line is actually it's not a line but it's like two parts of gradients so you see i i was Thinking about something i was like oh no no no scrap that let's go so i just jam like that uh here you can see everything and until i don't know and and i try to just add details everywhere I can until my brain is empty and then i stop the recording and and i i don't take it anywhere directly from that that's just step one

  • Prompt engineering is gonna stick around. Being able to describe exactly what you want an app to do, including specific details about the UI, will be very important.

    • Transcript: Dan Shipper Being able to say like, hey, I want an app that does this and I want the background to look like this and I want the style of the button on the left-hand side to look like this is actually, That's not going away. And that is prompt engineering and that is really, really important being able to know that.

  • Use voice memos to capture ideas, then convert them to PRDs. Mac Whisper is an option for transcription, or use the new iOS 18's built-in transcription. Once transcribed, use an LLM to refine the idea and develop it into a PRD. Cursor's notebooks or tools like Cloth can help with outlining files or creating artifacts. Don't worry too much about where that initial inspiration goes; just capture it.

    • Transcript: Kieran Klaassen What i do is i use the voice memos and then i put it into mac whisper which is a free free just whisper converter but actually now voice memos does transcription as well with the new iOS 18. So I use that once in a while as well. Yeah. So yeah, I'll just use that. And then from there, I go into my choice of LLM for the, for the moment and start working on it more and converting this to like into a prd most most of the time i say hey okay i have this idea Um in cursor sometimes i add a like a notebook um and i create like an outline of files or like depending on what it is like if it's simple uh in cloth is great for artifacts but whatever i Want to do after that i take it from there but it's a separate thing. Like that initial burst of inspiration does not matter where it goes.

  • Replete's agent will be important because it'll host and push your stuff to a website. This makes it accessible regularly so you can do what you want without needing to run in the terminal. This makes luxury and one-time software possible because hosting, not coding, is now the hard part.

    • Transcript: Brandon Gell That's why like replet replets agent is going to be so important because getting stuff actually like hosted and pushed to a website that you can access it regularly so i can do whatever I want versus like going to need to run nPM run dev in the terminal, which most people don't know what that is. Like that's really where luxury software and one-time software becomes possible. Because like maybe 01 Pro, 01 is the best at writing code, but that's not what's hard anymore. It's what's hard is actually hosting it. Dan Shipper All the environment stuff.

  • Create a file in your project to correct mistakes and guide the AI. When you see the AI doing something wrong, add an instruction to the file so you don't have to repeat the correction.

    • Transcript: Kieran Klaassen There's this file that you can create in your project called.cursor rules. And you can write stuff. This is linked to the current project. So normally what I do is when I see things go wrong, like what you said, where I do something wrong, I just go in here and add it. And it's very simple. So for example, for controllers, I like to say, hey, actually there are two helpers always present that you can use. Dan Shipper So basically you're putting like in-cursor rules at the top, you have like a heading that says controllers. And then underneath that you have like some information about controllers in your code that you want it to follow. Is that that's basically how it's structured? Yeah. Kieran Klaassen Go wrong or like things that are like, oh, like it did something. And then I say, oh, but can you actually do it like this? And I'm like, okay, let me add that instruction already in the cursor rules. So I don't have to say that every time.

  • It's tough to avoid being biased toward your own products. You're likely to use them, potentially overlooking real issues because you want them to work. It's hard to tell if you're downplaying problems.

    • Transcript: Brandon Gell What the hardest part about this is, which is that we just have a bias to use the products that we make. And sometimes I feel like that can make us feel like the products are working because we use them, even though we may be convincing ourselves that some of the problems that we're encountering Aren't real problems because we want to be using the product. And that is, it's like an impossible question to answer if we're doing it or not, because it's hard to recognize that for some types of problems.

May 5

🎥 How to Make High Quality Videos in 54 Min, 19 Sec, 20 Milliseconds from The Studio

  • how can I make a better script or how can I write a better story and really no matter the kind of video you're trying to make whether it's I don't know a review maybe a retrospective video essay or like a long form video there are two or three things that you want to keep in mind number one have a thesis number two learn the context and number three unearth all the details

  • the point of a review is to focus on does this deliver on what it says it is and is it worth your money

  • for example the video essay a very popular Style video on YouTube right now there's a lot of different really creative ways to do a video essay but something that I personally like to do is to give the audience a ton of context for everything that's leading up to this point that I'm trying to make so that maybe you can care about this as much as I do

  • understanding the entire story by consuming as much information about a subject as you can do you really start to see The Wider story that might not be as obvious

  • I do generally consider the video essay kind of the hardest style of video to make because you have to come up with really unique ideas and having a unique idea is probably the hardest thing you can possibly do but the best way to train yourself to come up with these UniQue Ideas is just to immerse yourself in that kind of content look for different stories talk to your friends about this kind of stuff talk to your parents just rant as much as you can and consume as much as you can about a specific subject and get to know it inside and out and that's when some of those bigger stories will kind of like light up in your brain

  • a lot of that story is actually going to come out in the research process for this project we already know where we ended up right boosted boards went out of business and what we're trying to figure out is why now you could just Google these questions and kind of get broad Strokes answers but the storytelling the thing that really keeps you engrossed in the story is in the details and in order to get those details you want to talk to as many primary sources as he can

  • 80% of these scripts is honestly just Gathering the information and talking to people and it's only that point that you can actually take all that information that you learned and start putting together the story

  • those first round of interviews are kind of just about like educating myself about the story of what happened what's going on just learning more about the space then I try to put the video together and I realize that I I know a lot more now and I need to really dig into those details so that's when I call those people back and really start putting the meat on those stories

  • to tell those like long form docummentary style stories you've already kind of got your box of where the story starts and where the story ends you really just have to fill it with detail to tell an engaging narrative

  • okay so three things one have a point know what you want to talk about revolve all of the content around that point because that video needs to be going somewhere two understand the context immerse yourself in as much detail as physically possible about what you're trying to talk about do research search talk to friends explain it to family understand the context in the detail and three have a passion that you want to chase if you're excited about that dive deeper and deeper into that passion about that project and eventually you'll end up with something

  • here's really three things that I think of when I think of a Marquez video and it's that it's very distraction free it's very light on the music not a lot of like retention editing he has really crisp and clean b-roll and also just a really simple but effective talking head video

  • if you're just recording dialogue you're doing it in mono lots of things sound great in Stereo dialogue is not one of them. iPhone mics default to stereo but you can switch it to mono in edit

  • the boooks thumbnail so you'll see the final and initial image aren't terribly different really the only difference between these two things these two frames is the screen but there's other things in here so from this to this what happens is that his hand is cut out twisted and then punched up so we make the phone about 10 to 15% bigger which helps with legibility it's small scales that's the first thing second thing was changing the screen to be a little bit better at smaller scales so we did things like changed the um artwork for the music we blew up the apps we got rid of the like the labels underneath just things that gave the eye a little bit more breathing space and negative space so you could kind of move around and then we made all the lines thicker again so that it would help just punch up and read at smaller scales

  • one of our most successful AB comparisons where the Delta between the winner and the loser was actually pretty significant - 44.5% vs 55.5%

  • the only thing that we did different to it was to try and punch up what the focal point was we want to try and get the product in the center if we can it's either in the thirds or the center Center is nice because it just makes less effort for the eye to move around the frame so we've already got in the middle how can we highlight it even more the cup is yellow what complement yellow violet or purple

  • price point they work really well if it's priced really low or priced really high those tend to do better in thumbnails

  • one more thing that we added which you know as a designer can be pretty obnoxious because it's just you know one more thing but arrows arrows work really well um you kind of can't beat them they just do they just do well

🎧 How to Predict the Future With Kevin Kelly, WIRED's Cofounder - AI and I

  • Balance learning about AI with studying history to get a better understanding of the future. Also, balance wrestling with AI with hands-on activities in the real world.

    • Transcript: Kevin Kelly All the my favorite people who were best about the future were actually great historians, too. So I would balance reading something about AI with trying to read something historical in the past. And I balance wrestling with the latest AI stuff with working in my workshop and using my hands.

  • KK thinks humans aren't central but an 'edge species' with unique intelligence. AI will expand the types of intelligences we know, making our current definitions seem limited. We'll look back and barely recognize some future intelligences.

    • Transcript: Kevin Kelly We're an edge species. We're not at the center of anything, the galaxy or the solar system or evolution. We are an edge. Our kind of intelligence will be revealed to be a very peculiar mixture that's evolved for us. And then what we're going to be doing with AIs is making hundreds of various other kinds and filling out that possibility space with many types of thinking. And so we'll look back and we won't even recognize maybe some of these other things as intelligence right now because we don't have a very good definition.

  • Kevin Kelly suggests giving young science fiction writers journalistic assignments. Because they are natural storytellers, they'll love being paid to learn and will produce amazing content.

    • Transcript: Kevin Kelly Get the young science fiction writers of today and give them journalistic assignments they love it because they're born storytellers you're paying them to go learn something they Want to learn and they'll come back with something amazing

  • A lot of AI-generated content now, like the 50 million images created daily, is mostly for personal enjoyment, with the creator also being the primary audience. People'll make full-length movies for themselves. The pleasure comes from co-creating and directing the movie for oneself.

    • Transcript: Kevin Kelly What I'm hypothesizing is that a lot of the generative stuff, the 50 million images that are generated each day with AI, 99.999% have the audience of one. They're generated for the pleasure of the co-creator. And this idea of people will be making feature length movies for themselves and the the pleasure will be in the generating of the movie the co-generating of the movie that you're directing You'll be directing the movie for yourself

🎧 Going Independent on YouTube With Becca Farsace - WVFRM Podcast

  • I think I want to do more Story Time videos in general because it's shocking how many stories that we have that would actually just make a fun piece to just share with people

  • people are are interested in people which is cool

  • Do you also think of thumbnails like packaging the whole video before you make the video? I’m bad. I’m really bad at thumbnails, and I try to now because I know that I need to. Um, but usually, thumbnails are like, well I’m exporting the video, I better make the thumbnail now. That’s usually what happens. That’s where we live. I mean, we try to be better at it as well. I mean, I’ve gotten less advice to Flip it on its head like we'd make the whole video, and then as it's uploading, we're like, "Yeah, we should have a title for this probably, and also a thumbnail, huh?" and then that gets made at the last second. Now we try to go through the whole writing process in a way where we can appropriately package the video in our brain first and then make the video that satisfies the packaging. Yeah, which is, I think, good advice. It's just hard to do. It's hard to do. Yeah, yeah. It is good advice considering, uh, 95% of whether or not someone's going to watch a video is the thing that they see on the homepage. 100%. It's the thing that matters the most.

  • I do challenge myself to make at least two or three thumbnails always. Like, I always make one and even if I love it, I, you know, hide it and make another one, and hide it, and make another one.

  • Something that he said that really struck me about YouTube was, people always ask about the algorithm: how does the video find the person? How does it push it to certain people? He said to think of it not as the video being pushed by the algorithm; it's that videos are being pulled by users. So when a user logs in, it's up to YouTube to find videos for that user. It knows what they like; it knows what that person's watched before and what it has interacted with, and so it's going to pull what it thinks they'll find, whether they're subscribed or not. So this is why the subscriber metric feels more and more like just a kind of vanity thing. It is because it's really about what you make when it's presented to people that theoretically should be interested

  • "You know, you have a show and you're a character on that show. If you're consistently that character and you consistently make someone feel a certain way, they're going to keep watching the show. And so that's how I've been thinking about it as well. But it's a similar idea of like shared interest and shared feelings.

  • subscribers are a metric, they're also really good for a quick sample size for trying out an idea. Yeah, so if you try something new, you just have a whole bunch of people waiting to watch whatever you put out, and that's great. And then some fraction of them will be like, "I hate this," and leave, and that’ll be very informative to the algorithm for who they should serve it to later.

  • you might find the thing about having a lot of subscribers is that many of them are not active recently. So there are people who might not typically watch videos for years, and then they get resurfaced in the algorithm, and they're like, "I didn’t even know I was subscribed to this channel!" That happens too.

  • I've seen one tech channel get to the double-digit female percent viewership, and is yours double digits?

  • it's like 2% female, maybe even like 1%.

  • the average for my channel might be 9% or so female.

📰 Make Your Story 160% Better! by

  • in TV drama, we see evidence that the traditional story arc isn’t necessary for success.

📰 How Do I Make Friends as an Adult? by

📰 The Reading List Email for April 2025 by Ryan Holiday

  • Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick ​At our staff meetings for Daily Stoic and The Painted Porch, one thing we do is all go around and explain interesting ways we are using AI to be more productive and efficient. I do this because 1) I don’t want people doing it in secret. I want to be clear about ethical and non-ethical uses (for instance, I would *never* use it to write one of these emails) 2) I want to encourage smart and creative productivity gains 3) I like learning new strategies and ways of doing things. This book, which I heard about on Ezra Klein’s episode with the author last April, is a great primer on how and why to use AI to get better at what you do. I like his term “co-intelligence.”

📰 You Make Your Own Luck. by

  • Look at the story of Maya Angelou. > Angelou only realized her ambition to write in her thirties when she was working as a dancer in California. She heard that the writer John Killens was in town and she sent him samples of her work. He advised her to move to New York. There she joined the Harlem Writers Guild, a group that provided support and feedback on her writing. Some years later, her friend the novelist James Baldwin took her to dinner with Jules and Judy Feiffer. Judy Feiffer was a writer and editor. She persuaded Angelou that her incredible life story ought to be turned into a book and introduced her to an editor at Random House. It was in this way that Angelou wrote *I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings*, her first book, aged forty. I love this story. By the time her opportunity came along, Angelou was *tired*. She actually didn’t want to go to the dinner party! The fact that she went, that she got *invited*, was lucky. The fact that she was *in a position to get invited* was not lucky; it was the result of years of work. > … that wasn’t random luck: she had spent years in the network, building relationships. And when she got to the dinner, she was able to dazzle with her story. Not everyone gets invitations to parties like that, but you are more likely to get them if you send your work out, take advice, join writers’ groups, and so on.

  • Look at the story of Maya Angelou. > Angelou only realized her ambition to write in her thirties when she was working as a dancer in California. She heard that the writer John Killens was in town and she sent him samples of her work. He advised her to move to New York. There she joined the Harlem Writers Guild, a group that provided support and feedback on her writing. Some years later, her friend the novelist James Baldwin took her to dinner with Jules and Judy Feiffer. Judy Feiffer was a writer and editor. She persuaded Angelou that her incredible life story ought to be turned into a book and introduced her to an editor at Random House. It was in this way that Angelou wrote *I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings*, her first book, aged forty. I love this story. By the time her opportunity came along, Angelou was *tired*. She actually didn’t want to go to the dinner party! The fact that she went, that she got *invited*, was lucky. The fact that she was *in a position to get invited* was not lucky; it was the result of years of work. > … that wasn’t random luck: she had spent years in the network, building relationships. And when she got to the dinner, she was able to dazzle with her story. Not everyone gets invitations to parties like that, but you are more likely to get them if you send your work out

  • Networking and luck aren’t just about making connections: they are about being able to make *use* of connections.

📰 Jobs-to-Be-Done: A Framework for Writing Newsletters People Want to Read by

  • The newsletters you open week after week are the ones that help you:

    • Make more money

    • Save time on work

    • Learn something specific

    • Look smarter in meetings

    • Get ahead of your competition

    These are "jobs" you readers need done.

May 4

📰 More This, Less That by

  • **In my interview with Thomas Frank**, he said he uses Reddit to make videos to solve those problems. It’s a big reason he has 175M+ views. ​ “If there's a problem on Reddit — that's a real person with an actual problem” Frank said.

  • Here's how you can do that on Reddit, too: ​ 1. Type your niche or keyword 2. Select the most popular subreddit 3. Filter posts by *Top* 4. Read most upvoted comments/questions 5. Make content around that

May 3

🎧 The Next AI Wave Will Be Social, Not Solo | Sarah Tavel, Benchmark and Ex-Pinterest - AI and I

  • There's an opportunity to build a UGC site specifically for AI prompts, particularly in areas like health and quantified self. Users could follow creators of effective prompts and easily apply them to their profiles.

    • Transcript: Sarah Tavel If I'm going to an existing UGC site that isn't made for this use case, that feels to me like an opportunity where somebody who's going to be really freaking good, you know, of making, You know, prompts for different health things, quantified self, whatever, like I would love to follow that person and then very easily apply it to my own profile.

  • A film director uses ChatGPT by creating distinct personalities for different needs. She uses a holistic wellness persona for medical advice, a hype-person for constant encouragement, and a direct feedback persona for writing specific emails.

    • Transcript: Dan Shipper Yeah, it's interesting. I was at a dinner the other night and I was talking to a film director. Sarah Tavel Oh, cool. Dan Shipper About how she uses ChatCVT. And she has made a bunch of different personalities for it. And she uses the different personalities for different things. For example, I think one of the personalities was she's had a lot of like medical issues that doctors couldn't solve. And one of the personalities was like a sort of like holistic wellness type person that like would recommend both medication and, you know, supplements or body work or whatever. And then, and another one, like the main personality was like just someone who would like gas her up all the time and like compliment her all the time. And then, but then she had another one that was like just super direct and like just gave like really harsh feedback that she would use for writing specific kinds of emails or like that Kind of thing. And it was really interesting that she'd constructed this whole set of personalities for different things in her life to surround...

  • Some people are really good at creating training data. James, a person Sarah interviewed for her Substack, maintains a spreadsheet of all the movies he's watched with his own reviews. People like James, who are skilled at creating training data, can then have a more personalized and valuable experience.

    • Transcript: Sarah Tavel Some people that are really good at creating training data. Do you know what I mean? Like there's some people, someone was showing me, I interviewed him, James, for my sub stack. And he showed me like the spreadsheet he creates of all the movies he's ever watched and his own review of it. Right. And so I don't know about you. I've never done that, but the people who are really good at creating training data can then have a more personalized, more valuable experience with an LLM.

📰 The Most Powerful Asymmetries in Life - Sahil Bloom

  • Send a monthly "state of play" email to your direct manager. Keep it short: what you accomplished, what you’re focused on next, and one thing you’re learning. It builds visibility and shows initiative.

  • Create an "Idea Folder" where you log interesting business ideas. Whenever you have a spark, drop it in the idea folder. Flip through it for inspiration. One of these ideas might be the 100x opportunity that changes your life.

📰 How to Make a Viral Video -

  • here’s a step by step breakdown of what virtually every YouTuber who tries to create virality will do in some form or another:

  1. Generate 50+ video ideas every week ("*To have a great idea, have a lot of them.”* - Thomas Edison)

  2. Use your own channel, competitor channels, tools like 1of10 (aff link) and your own imagination to generate these ideas.

  3. To filter for the best ideas, rate them for viral potential out of 5.

  4. How do you predict viral potential? Research, plus experience. It's very hard to predict, but studying YouTube is the best way to get better at it.

  5. The most important data for predicting performance (in order) is what's worked well in the past on your channel, then competitor channels, then channels in similar niches then finally all other channels.

  6. Choose the ideas you're most confident in.

  7. Write *at least* 10 title variations for each one. Keep them to 55 characters or less, and use viral title frameworks you've found in your research.

  8. Generate 2-3 thumbnail concepts per video.

  9. Get feedback from peers you trust on the title and thumbnail concepts.

  10. Finalise the title and thumbnail.

  11. *Then* make the video.

May 2

🎧 You’ve Never Seen Writing Visualized Like This — - podcast

  • I'd say I'm still stubborn in the sense that I still insist that I write every single sentence. Um, but that said, I am using AI a lot in the process, right? I'm, for example, I might have a draft that's 3,000 words. I'll say, "Hey, tell me this in 10,000 words. Tell me it in 100 words. Tell me it in one sentence." So, it's a great way to structurally compress your drafts and understand the essence of it, right? Like sometimes I'll realize, whoa, AI did this thing in 10% of the space and I get the idea like why am I rambling and then I'll just rewrite it myself with shorter context.

May 1

📰 AI Art: Promise and Peril by

  • I’m not convinced that Studio Ghibli is harmed by the attention or that they have been diminished in some way. If human artists — or humans using AI tools — want to invoke his style, it doesn’t really take anything away from him. In fact the opposite might be true. It’s better to be copied than forgotten. The worst fate for any artist is oblivion.

  • AI will alter the relationship between artists and audience. Skilled creators may or may not use these tools, but either way the audience may feel empowered by them. There will always be passive fans, but there will be a new class of artists that we might call "AI-enabled sub-creatives."

  • For decades there have been fanzines and cosplayers, but that dynamic of the empowered fan is about to explode.

  • Old-school artists shouldn’t be snobby toward their digital siblings. It’s all art if it moves us. We’re all artists. No one is guarding the gates, but it’s a lot more crowded in here.

  • Whichever way the work is created, a lasting creation should be more than just attention-getting or meme-worthy. It has to capture the public’s imagination, move the emotions, and reflect the *zeitgeist*.

  • New art forms will be created by combining AI with analog skills—old school, handmade, analog techniques. That blending of old tech and new tech is similar to what Laika did by combining stop motion with 3D printing, or what the Cuphead game designers did when they used drawn-on-paper animation to guide the look of a modern video game.

  • The most immediate outcome of the advent of genAI and machine learning is to put a value on live performances, acoustic music, and painting workshops. If it drives a lot of artists back to the basics of sketching and journaling, maybe that’s a good thing.

Book a call: Have a bite-sized creative project? Let’s give you a starting line boost a la Mario Kart - https://calendly.com/beckyisj/

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]]><![CDATA[Building a “Write with AI” course]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/building-a-write-with-ai-coursehttps://beckyisj.substack.com/p/building-a-write-with-ai-courseFri, 16 May 2025 13:54:36 GMT

Every writing course I loved has vanished, but the lessons they left behind are too good not to share.

I was really bummed when online writing courses kept closing down.

Write of Passage, the course that propelled me to publish here every week, shut last fall. This was the program that introduced me to the writing community online - one that looked very different from when I was on Blogger in elementary school and even my college stint on Medium. I loved the course so much that I stayed on as an editor. I made some of my best creative friends through there and then through my writing.

I credit a lot of my writing practice, craft, and process to WOP. The course may not exist anymore, but editing 200+ essays has really cemented the winning elements of online writing in my brain.

Subscribe now

But more crucially, this was the course that I sent many of my friends to whenever they say “I want to start writing again but I don’t know how”. This was the solution, or at least I thought it provided a solid framework to the solution. The course didn’t just teach about writing, but it taught frameworks around distribution, around putting together a hook that appeals to an average internet reader, into crafting a story that highlights a person’s unique voice. A story that only they can write.

Understandably, AI became so prevalent in the world of writing that the curriculum for Write of Passage had to be completely rewritten. But before they could do that, they shut the course down.

I tried to find another writing home on the internet. I was trying to learn about this AI thing, especially because I ws a bit late to the game. It was January, and ChatGPT could write much better prose than it could when it first entered the internet vernacular and subsequently became the fastest adopted consumer tech of all time.

told me about this course called Write with AI, offered by Every’s Evan Armstrong. I took the course in February and was once again blown away by what I learned. I didn’t get the same community experience (it was a much smaller course than WOP) but the course introduced different ways to use AI to supplement my writing.

But before I could start sending people over to the course, Write with AI closed.

I’m starting to feel a bit restless with all the information, teachings, and learnings that I’ve gathered. I’ve absorbed them all, revisited them time and time again, and have moulded them into ways that work for me.

The results of my weekly practice is not so much in the number of subscribers, but more so in 100+ weeks of consecutive writing, the relationships I’ve cultivated since writing online, and — my current job working for one of the biggest creators on the internet.

I thought about just sharing my writing process. I’ve already written about this a bunch. I thought about screen-recording my process. A low lift given how much I’ve fallen in love with Looms.

But once I started listing out what I could share, I saw the list for what it is:

A curriculum.

I never dreamed of building a course, but if I were to start one, I had always admired what Proko did with their Drawing Basics course. For each module, there was a Level 1 (for beginners), and a Level 2 (for advanced students that are revisiting the foundations). There were even different homework assignments for both. I thought that made the course extra valuable.

So I started mapping out my list for three tracks: beginner, intermediate, advanced. I placed myself in the intermediate, remembering that a lot of my ex-colleagues called me very tech-savvy. I really don’t think so, but this just reminds me that a lot of people probably don’t spend their waking hours in Notion the way I do.

With the help of ChatGPT, the course will look something like this:

I probably won’t keep it this way exactly. But it’s exciting to see what a course mapped out could look like. I can already envision myself building this course, recording one Loom at a time, each module being ~10mins or less.

There are many aspects of the course that I haven’t thought through. The name is one. “Write with AI” is clear and great but 1) Every took that name, 2) Dickie Bush and Nicolas Cole have a Substack with that name, and 3) Paul Millerd also has a course within his community with that name. I’m tinkering with “Prompt to Publish”, though the value proposition for that is less clear.

Distribution is another major one. I like the idea of it being free, but also know that a free course means that it’s perceived at a lower value by viewers and therefore people may not be as incentivised to follow through with a curriculum that is designed to be followed through. But I’m also uncomfortable with paywalls and charging for stuff (note: bring this up in therapy). But , whom I lovingly sent a Loom about this just a few hours ago, told me to not worry about this yet and just focus on building the course and the Looms first.

Another worry I have is doing too much. At the moment my biggest personal projects are revising my Bite-Sized Creativity book, launching my Cheat at Your Job essay series. I also just started a podcast, am working on bigger writing pieces, levelling up my photography, learning how to vibe-code…

But I do like dabbling in many projects. It’s fun. And I know that the kind of person I am is one that doesn’t necessarily need to time block stuff because I will get what I want to get done done by the time it needs to get done. And since nothing is truly urgent, I’m just following my curiosities and impulses and have fun building things.

Plus, isn’t the point of being able to create things is to make something you wish to see in the world that doesn’t exist yet? And I want to have a space that I can send people to when they ask “How do you write online?” and “How do you write with AI?”. What better way to show them that than by building something myself.

So, it comes down to this: I’m building a course. Hoping to record one of the tracks (beginner/intermediate) within the next week. More details to come.

Book a call: Have a bite-sized creative project? Let’s give you a starting line boost a la Mario Kart - https://calendly.com/beckyisj/

Some links are affiliate links, meaning that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through the links at no cost to you.

]]><![CDATA[May creative updates]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/may-creative-updateshttps://beckyisj.substack.com/p/may-creative-updatesThu, 01 May 2025 00:00:56 GMTThis month in my creative life:

  • Done with Bite-Sized Creativity v2

    • Didn’t feel like my best work, which , being the great editor he is, pointed out

  • Hyrox

    • Doing yet another race (why…) in Bangkok at the end of the month!

  • The day job

    • New role as a YouTube producer

    • Learning from the greats like

    • Also just trying to level up e.g. joining ’s Build Your Own Apps course

  • Launching a new podcast

    • , focusing on being a small creator on the internet

    • Co-hosting it with

The rest of my video logs are here.

Book a call: Have a bite-sized creative project? Let’s give you a starting line boost a la Mario Kart - https://calendly.com/beckyisj/

Some links are affiliate links, meaning that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through the links at no cost to you.

]]><![CDATA[April 2025]]>https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/april-2025https://beckyisj.substack.com/p/april-2025Sat, 12 Apr 2025 13:17:42 GMTBooks read:

📕 The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by

📕 Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green

📖 Hell Year or No by Derek Sivers

📖 The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Posts published:

April 30

📰 How We’re Profit Sharing on Metalabel by

  • Kickstarter works by getting a small number of fans to spend a lot of money. The average publishing project has only 1,000 sales but averages $100 per sale, with artists earning $50,000 and up for successful projects.

  • Metalabel is just the opposite: It works by getting a large number of fans to pay a much smaller amount. Strickler told me projects at the $30 price point or lower tend to do the best on the platform, attracting around 500 unit sales on the high end. Sales at $100 or more only work for artists with a strong connection to their fans—Strickler points to a release by the musician Brian Eno as an example.

📰 Your Next Best Friend by

📰 A Birthday Meal and Concert to Feed Them All... by Joanne Molinaro

  • Recently, someone asked me what I want my legacy to be, how I want to be remembered. I'd never thought of this question before in my entire life and I realized it was because I don't really want a legacy. I just want to love and be loved.

📰 28 Slightly Rude Notes on Writing by

  • Apparently Sir Arthur Conan Doyle considered his Sherlock Holmes stories “a lower stratum of literary achievement” and thought his novels were far better. (Can you name any?) Borges once remarked, “I think of myself as a poet, though none of my friends do.” (Didn’t even know he wrote poems.) Sylvia Plath derided *The Bell Jar* as “a pot boiler”. (That is, a piece of art produced to keep the heat on.) Elizabeth Barrett Browne wrote poems about slavery and politics, but now the only poem anyone remembers is the one about how much she loves her husband (You know it: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”). After he published *The Structure of Scientific Revolutions*, Thomas Kuhn spent the rest of his life arguing with his critics (and—purportedly—throwing ashtrays at them).

  • whenever I finish a draft, my first few paragraphs almost always contain ideas that were necessary for *writing* the rest of the piece, but that aren’t necessary for *understanding* it.

  • making art is painful because it forces the mind to do something it’s not meant to do. If you really want to get that sentence right, if you want that perfect brush stroke or that exquisite shot, then you have to squeeze your neurons until they scream. That level of precision is simply unnatural.

  • Writers are addicted to the particular kind of pain you feel when you’re at a loss for words, and to the relief that comes from finding them.

  • Most writing is bad because it’s missing a motive. It feels dead because it hasn’t found its reason to live. You can’t accomplish a goal without having one in the first place—writing without a motive is like declaring war on no one in particular.

  • This is why it’s very difficult to teach people how to write, because first you have to teach them how to care. Or, really, you have to show them how to *channel* their caring, because they already care a lot, but they don’t know how to turn that into words, or they don’t see why they should. (View Highlight)

  • What I really want to know is: why do *you* care? You could have spent your time knitting a pair of mittens or petting your cat or eating a whole tube of Pringles. Why did you do this instead? What kind of sicko closes the YouTube tab and types 10,000 words into a Google doc? What’s *wrong* with you? If you show me that—implicitly, explicitly, I don’t care—I might just close my own YouTube tab and read what you wrote.

  • There’s something special about every word written by a human because they chose to do *this thing* instead of anything else. Something moved them, irked them, inspired them, possessed them, and then electricity shot everywhere in their brain and then—crucially—they laid fingers on keys and put that electricity inside the computer. Writing is a costly signal of caring about something. Good writing, in fact, might be a sign of *pathological* caring.

  • We’ve got a once-in-the-history-of-our-species opportunity here. It used to be that our only competitors were made of carbon. Now some of our competitors are made out of silicon. New competition should make us better at competing—this is our chance to be more thoughtful about writing than we’ve ever been before. No system can optimize for everything, so what are our minds optimized for, and how can I double down on *that*? How can I go even deeper into the territory where the machines fear to tread, territories that I only notice *because* they’re treacherous for machines?

  • lots of people think they need to get better at writing, but nobody thinks they need to get better at thinking, and this is why they don’t get better at writing.

  • For example, after Virginia Woolf finished the first part of *To the Lighthouse*, she jotted in her diary, “Is it nonsense? Is it brilliance?” In his own diary, John Steinbeck wrote: “Sometimes I seem to do a good little piece of work, but when it is done it slides into mediocrity.” (That work was *The Grapes of Wrath*.) Francis Bacon, the father of modern science, begins *The Great Instauration* by wondering whether he’s got a banger or a dud on his hands: “The matter at issue is either nothing, or a thing so great that it may well be content with its own merit, without seeking other recompense.” The first page of the book does make it clear, though, which way Bacon ultimately came down on that question

  • I see tons of essays called something like “On X” or “In Praise of Y” or “Meditations on Z,” and I always assume they’re under-baked. That’s a topic, not a take.

April 28

🎧 Grandma Is a Thief - Beautiful/Anonymous

  • Gethard recommends reading Derek Thompson's 'The Anti-Social Century' in The Atlantic. It explores how Americans are increasingly choosing to be alone, impacting everything from restaurant layouts to marriage rates. Reading it'll help you reflect on your life choices, especially regarding family, and the structuring of your kids’ lives.

    • Transcript: Chris Gethard There's an article that came out in The Atlantic, just came out. It's called The Antisocial Century by Derek Thompson. I think it's a very brilliant article. I think everyone will be healthier for reading this article. I think it will help to find some of the choices you make for yourself, especially those of us with families. I think it will help you think about how you're kind of structuring your family life, your kids' lives. And the whole focus of the article is just that every statistic they're finding is that Americans in particular right now are just on this dedicated scramble to be alone. And there's been a lot of talk of this idea that there's a loneliness epidemic. The article gets nuanced about that in a way that's not just a catchphrase, but does put out some stark looks at restaurants now have to dedicate so much more space to takeout orders and Delivery orders because people aren't going out and eating socially in restaurants. Memberships in churches and unions and community organizations are way down. Anything that necessitates being around other people is down. And that the way you see this showing up in people's lives as far as the age at which they're getting married, if they're getting married at all, is shifting so quickly in a way that is at The very least fascinating and probably concerning. And the article is really well written. I think there's some aspects of it that are so jaw dropping. And I think everybody would be well served to read the anti-social century by Derek Thompson, which just came out in the Atlantic, because I think it's brilliant.

April 26

📰 Do What You Enjoy by

  • Whenever I want to learn how to do something, I lean into searching for individuals who have done it well before. And then I carefully study what they did.

  • I spent one night watching a talk by Wes Kao, taking notes on what I love, what I hate, and what I wished to have seen in the session. Then I watched a few more afterwards. After the third episode, a pattern started to emerge, and I started seeing what makes their Lightning Lessons great.

📰 AI Can Fix Social Media’s Original Sin by Every’s Dan Shipper

  • Social media served whatever our gaze grazed and our fingers clicked—what we call *revealed preference—*because that’s all the intent it could discern.

April 25

🎧 Picking a New Name - Beautiful/Anonymous

  • Chris is jealous of younger people who don't understand the hustle culture. They don't get why you'd want to be gone all day, take pride in working to the point of panic attacks, or raise your blood pressure for a pat on the head at work. He admires that they've figured that out.

    Transcript:

    Chris Gethard

    And i am envious of people who are younger than me who look at the hustle vibe with outright confusion. They are confused. Why do you want to be gone all day? Why do you take pride in working yourself to the point of panic attacks? Why do you take pride in raising your blood pressure all so that you can get a pat on the head in a workplace environment why i'm jealous that younger people figured that out

🎥 How to Quit Your Job - Simon Squibb and Ali Abdaal

  • you want to first sell the product and then build it

  • Dan Priestley also talks about before building anything you know you want to validate that the demand for the thing actually exists so you get people to sign up for a wait list

🎥 How to Get Rich - Ali Abdaal

  • everyone who has a top 1% or above outcome in anything tends to have an unhealthy obsession with the thing

  • how many hours a week would you say you are devoting to the goal of getting rich?

  • the idea of mental bandwidth and content diet

  • The other 90% of my content consumption was about getting rich. It wasn't explicitly about getting rich back in 2020; there wasn't that much content available, but it was about business. It was about how to grow a YouTube channel. I was listening to literally all of the podcasts about how to grow a YouTube channel. I was listening to all of the podcasts about how to build a business and how to market a business — the Smart Passive Income podcast, the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast, Noah Kagan's podcast. I was Reading all the books, listening to all the audio books about business, the E-Myth Revisited, Traction, and dozens and dozens of books and audio books about how to get rich. Ninety percent of the stuff that I was consuming, that I was listening to every single day at like two times and three times speed was content about how to get rich. The way you get rich is by having an unhealthy obsession with getting rich.

  • What that unhealthy obsession looks like is that in your discretionary time, in your spare time, the thing that you are thinking about, the thing that you're consuming, content about, the thing you're reading, about the thing you're listening to, and the thing you are watching videos on is on how to get rich.

  • if you’re at this point in the video and you would like to get rich, it’s really worth asking yourself: do you have an unhealthy obsession with getting rich? Would your friends and family say that you have an unhealthy obsession with getting rich? Does your content diet reflect an obsession with getting rich? Does the way you spend your time reflect An obsession with getting rich. If the answer is no, then you have two options. I think all of this is just my opinion. Whatever, I think you have two options here. Either you can decide to develop an unhealthy obsession, or you can change your content diet.

  • You can start consuming all the content about getting rich; you can start waking up two hours early before your day job, putting in effort towards building your business. You can start while you're at your day job, taking slightly longer lunch breaks and using squeezing in half an hour of work on your business here and there in the evenings. You can not go out with your friends every night or whatever the thing is. You can stop playing video games, stop watching Netflix, stop watching random YouTube videos, even videos like this one, and only ever work on your business while you're going on a walk, while you're doing the dishes. You can switch your content diet so that you are listening to audiobooks, podcasts, and videos about getting rich. On weekends, you can be like, "Ah, weekends are incredible! I've got like 16 full hours on Saturday and 16 full hours on Sunday where I can Literally, just wake up, lock myself in a room, work for 16 straight hours on my business." That is what an unhealthy obsession with getting rich looks like. That is often what it takes. Getting rich is not easy. That's option number one.

April 24

📰 ChatGPT's "Faster Horse" Problem by

  • I was recently listening to OpenAI’s Chairman Bret Taylor (on The Knowledge Project Podcast). He was describing a world where websites were quickly becoming obsolete. Taylor explained that, over the past 30 years, a company's website had become “the universe of everything that you can do with that company” — what he calls “the digital instantiation of the company.” But consider how your use of “the web” has changed since the arrival of ChatGPT. I basically only use the web to read the news and to buy stuff on Amazon. I barely use Google Search anymore. Any “knowledge transfer” (searching, learning, researching) happens in an LLM. (If I want to look up a consumer company’s homepage, I’ll usually go to Instagram.)

  • How do I future-proof myself in an AI-first world? Whether you’re an investment analyst or marketing specialist — it’s imperative to think about these second-order implications on your role, career and industry. But second order thinking is notoriously challenging. Here’s a question to kick off that process. Begin by asking yourself: > *How do I add value?* If it seems like it’s a simply innocuous question — don’t worry. It gets more complicated. Next ask: > *How does my boss add value?* Keep going: > *How does my business unit add value?* And finally: > *How does my firm add value?*

📰 Impressions: When Challenging Conditions Offer a Creative Invitation by

  • When conditions verge on monochrome to begin with, I find I lean into black and white photography. When colour is removed from the scene, the textures, contrasts, and subtle emotions can take centre stage, offering us impressions of a moment.

📰 The 3-Step Formula for Writing Better Videos by Ali Abdaal

  • HOT formula (thanks to Holly on my team for that 😅). ... Hook, Outline, Takeaway.

  • but hooks don’t stop at the 30 second mark. You’ve actually got ‘mini-hooks’ throughout the video - opportunities to re-engage your viewer with each point and that’s where the H comes in within this HOT formula.

  • Once you’ve got your viewer’s attention, next you want to give them more detail. Flesh out the idea in more depth and add additional context—but keep these explanations as compelling and succinct as possible.

  • then end with the final takeaway. This is where you drive home the key lesson, making sure your audience finishes that part of the video feeling like they’ve learnt something valuable or something actionable they can implement.

April 23

📰 Call Me Charlie Issue 256 by

  • I don’t know how or when but I’m certain these Memoir Snob deep dives will lead me to my publisher. So I still have to write a fantastic book, I still have to publish weekly so that I can connect with my true fans, and equally, I have to record more deep dives and share them with the authors, editors, and publishers.

📰 On Sitting Around and Reading a Novel by

  • “Reading really is subversive because no one can see what is going into you,” says Percival Everett. “They can look over your shoulder and see all the words you see, but they will never know what they mean to you.”

📰 Photo Insider: The Hidden Danger of Digital by Cody Mitchell

  • bumping up your in-camera contrast. ... It’ll simulate the feel of a lower dynamic range. You’ll be forced to make stronger decisions when shooting—but your RAW files still give you flexibility if you want it later.

    ​

    It’s a simple trick. But it changed how I shoot digital. It made me *think* again.

April 22

📰 Henry David Thoreau's Economic Notes by

  • These journals were an essential component of Thoreau’s writing process. He always tried out ideas in his journals first. Then, he would harvest thoughts he wanted to keep by transcribing them into new journals. In one of his journals, he described his plan: > *To set down such choice experiences that my own writings may inspire me and at last I may make whole of parts.*⁹ This is precisely how Thoreau constructed his best-known work, *Walden—*by taking pieces out of previous journals and revising his writing

📰 Small Race, Big Weird 🏁 by The Publish Press

  • Bartlett said Flight Story, the media company behind *The Diary Of A CEO*, now employs nearly 100 people full-time and has “every capability in-house,” including strategy, data, production, partnerships, newsletters, and more.

April 21

🎧 Invite Chaos by Beautiful/Anonymous

  • Chaos can be a fertilizer for growth. Chris Gethard reflects on how his seemingly chaotic life, filled with diverse projects like a public access TV show, books, and an HBO special, wasn't random. Instead, instability shook the foundation, allowing him to see what could grow from the cracks. Although chaos might seem random, hard work, seeking feedback, and leveraging previous success (like the TV show's hype to pitch a book) are key to making the most of it.

    • Transcript: Chris Gethard Back when I had my TV, Oh, this guy's got a, a public access TV show. Nobody does that. And then, Oh, and then that when I was writing books, that's cool. That's different than that. And these things start to come up and, you know, and then the HBO special. And one thing out there is I go, my life appeared to be very chaotic, but all these things kept happening. They weren't happening randomly. I'm like you. I was someone who went chaos is fertilizer that makes good things grow for a certain type of person. And I think it sounds like you and I have that in common of, I need things to feel a little unstable so that it kind of shakes the foundation and I can see what grows out of those cracks. And I was also smart enough to go, well, you don't wind up just publishing a book. You work hard and you write it and you do second drafts and you ask for opinions from people on what's working and what's not. And then when something like the TV show started to catch some hype, it meant that I had a little bit of this calling card that I could also turn around to small publishers and go, any interest In publishing a book? Hey, here's an article about my weird comedy. I also got a book. I got a manuscript. You kind of have to sell yourself. You want to read it? You want to read this thing? And then they go, yeah.

  • Birds singing may improve mental health as it signals a safe world without predators, according to a listener named Andrea. It is an evolutionary response to feel safer when birds are singing.

    • Transcript: Chris Gethard Andrea just said, I think bird calls are... I love this. I think bird calls are literally good for mental health. It's like an evolution thing. Birds singing means the world is safe and no predators are around.

  • You'll start defining things for yourself as you navigate the balance between info and entertainment. The news became a 24-hour ticker after 9/11.

    • Transcript: Chris Gethard You can start to define things for yourself as far as navigating this balance of information and entertainment. And then you, you know, you start to see him after it's very well documented after nine 11, the news becomes 24 hours and it's a constant ticker scroll.

April 20

📰 The Selfish Reason for Befriending a Lawyer, the Halfway Rule by Cam Houser

  • What is The Halfway Rule? It's simple: When you're 50% through any project, task, or engagement where someone is paying for your time or expertise, pause and ask, out loud, for feedback.

📰 Books I'm Excited About by

  • Evan Osnos is one of my favorite writers at the *New Yorker*, particularly when he turns his gimlet pen on the ultra-wealthy. Learn about luxury apocalypse bunkers! And how to hire Flo Rida (or Beyoncé) to play your Bar Mitzvah! And modern-day Hollywood swindlers! The rich are different than you and me - they make for better copy. Out June 3.

  • Nick Thompson is the CEO of *The* *Atlantic* magazine, a former editor at *Wired* and *The New Yorker* - and, somehow, the American 50k record holder. (When he marathons, he runs a sub-6 minute mile.) So, how does a guy with a day job and three kids find time to become one of the fastest people in the country? By running from a past of troubled fathers, cancer, and the science of pushing yourself farther than you thought possible. Out October 28.

April 19

📰 Trump's Impact on Creators - Jon Youshaei

  • merch has always been more of brand move than a money maker.

📰 Springtime Experiments: Cultivating Curiosity in the Season of Change by

  • Spring offers an ideal period for personal experimentation.

  • “How might I expand my social circle?” Research suggests that shared activities create effective foundations for new connections. Join community-based outdoor activities where interactions occur naturally. Test “social diversification” by introducing different social groups to each other. Experiment with different ice breakers when meeting new people.

  • “How might I engage with my environment differently?” Implement systematic curiosity by noticing one natural element daily – maybe it’s a flower, a tree, a woorden bench you’ve never noticed.

  • “How might I incorporate more sensory experiences into my daily life?” Try going barefoot to test the effects of direct contact with natural surfaces such as grass and soil (I’ve seen this referred to as “earthing”). See how it feels to wear natural fabrics. Make your own candles. Experiment with getting a massage every week. Or massage yourself with different oils and take notes of the massage protocols that seem to help.

  • “How might I experiment with my creative expression?” As a liminal moment of renewal, springtime is great for creativity. Experiment with dancing, painting, drawing, singing, writing. Produce some form of easy creative work each day. Take inspiration from nature by incorporating natural patterns and principles into your creative project.

📰 AI Created This Keynote Speech by

  • Why Claude over ChatGPT? In general, I’ve found Claude to have a more delicate approach to creativity. To me, Claude has the vibe of a Brooklyn-based liberal arts grad while ChatGPT has that of a Silicon Valley engineer.

📰 How to Choose What to Pursue by

  • A new idea often feels exciting, cool, and unique. But before jumping in, you want to imagine a little and ask yourself:

    • What does the world look like if this idea succeeds?

    • Do I want to live in that version of the future?

    • Am I overvaluing being different?

    • Can I be different *within* something bigger?

April 18

🎥 Trixie and JOOLS LEBRON Get Very Demure!

  • I've learned over the years like I used to be all about the business and then at this stage in my life I feel more about the artistry is good You

    learn over time the balance of too much business not enough art you get bored Yes Yes And the balance of too much art and none of business you get broke

🎧 The Future of Nonprofits, Moving to a New City in Your 20s, and Advice for First-Time Managers - Prof G Pod

  • Be a player coach. Set up incentives and provide feedback. Help people improve, don't just critique. Demonstrate excellence, and be willing to share your expertise to upskill your team. Catherine Dillon helps people do their jobs, she doesn't just say 'this wasn't great'.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway My partner in the business, Catherine Dillon, has always been what I call a player coach. And that is rather than managing people, you got to set up an incentive structure that works, got to provide feedback. That's really important. But what she does is she helps people do their jobs instead of, in addition to saying, okay, this wasn't great. She will actually, she can do that. And she can do that almost as well as, or better, almost everything in the company as well or better than anyone else. And she doesn't provide just feedback. She provides learning. She sits on, I don't have the patience for that. If I say to someone, when I send feedback, like this edit on this podcast sucked, I don't call them and then say, okay, let's edit it together and let me teach you. I just say it sucked. That's not that inspiring or that helpful. They demonstrate excellence and they're willing to share that excellence with their team. They take the time to try and teach people and upskill them.

April 17

📰 Vibe Check: O3 Is Here—And It’s Great - Every’s Dan Shipper

  • It’s agentic. Someone at OpenAI referred to o3 as deep research-lite to me, and that’s exactly what it is. Set it to do a task, and come back in 30 seconds or three minutes and get a thorough answer.

  • My highest compliment for o3 is that in one week, it has become my go-to model for most tasks. I still use GPT 4.5 for writing and 3.7 Sonnet for coding in Windsurf, but other than that, I’m all o3, all the time.

  • I’ve been saying for a while that we haven’t come close to using the full power of frontier models. It’s like we’ve invented jet engines, but we haven’t invented a jet. If you drop a jet engine on my doorstep, I probably wouldn’t be able to do much with it. But attach it to a plane and give me a pilot’s license… now we’re talking. With o3 inside of ChatGPT, it finally feels like the engine and airframe have matched up.

  • This output is similar to what I would get with deep research—which itself is powered by a version of o3—but it’s much faster. Deep research sometimes feels like sending a probe into space. You’re going to get a good answer, but it takes 10-20 minutes, and there’s not a lot of room to course correct. By contrast, o3 will return comparable results in anywhere from 10 seconds to around five minutes, so you can do many back-and-forths with it in the time it would take a single deep research query to return.

  • Predicting your future I’ve been asking ChatGPT to predict my future since 2022, and o3 is the best at it. Combined with ChatGPT’s new memory feature, it’s incredible:

  • Analyze meeting transcripts for leadership analysis One of my favorite things to use o3 for is leadership coaching. Because it’s agentic, it can read extremely long files and pull out detailed and insightful analysis. At the end of last week, I fed it a file containing transcripts from every meeting I was in over the past five days and asked for its thoughts:

  • It does an incredible job of pulling out themes, helping me understand what I’m focusing the team on and where I might be falling short by, for example, avoiding conflict. And because it can reference the exact points in the transcript where this is happening, it helps me sharpen my skills in context—a huge (and hugely expensive) lift for a traditional leadership coach.

  • But now we can talk to algorithms—we can state our preferences. I used o3 to generate a YouTube playlist that reflects what I actually want to watch (like I said, it loves tables):

  • Then I clicked on those videos to tell YouTube what to serve me, and voila—instant feed cleanse.

  • This is the biggest “wow” moment I’ve had with a new OpenAI model since GPT-4. The company has successfully lengthened the leash that an AI gets in order to do its tasks. Now you can reliably let it work for minutes at a time to get higher quality answers, with no intervention.

April 16

📰 3 Ways to Amplify Your Creator Gravity by

  • Build Dense Things

  • When I say dense, I mean something that doesn’t have a 24-hour life cycle and can’t be plucked from the top of your head. It should:

    • Challenge you

    • Push the edges of your thinking

    • Be impossible to build overnight

  • Note how these examples exist on owned channels (community, job board, online courses). That’s a big part of amplifying your gravity—creating value independently of a testy algorithm. Otherwise, your planet is constantly under threat of being extinguished.

  • If you want to stand out, you have to map a new territory. And you can’t do that without venturing where others haven’t, risking being wrong, and experimenting with ideas that might fail spectacularly.

  • The idea from this section came from reading Anu Atluru’s incredible piece, Make Something Heavy. I would highly recommend you read it!

📰 Finishing the App by

  • there's also something unsettling about this new relationship with creation. Unlike Georges Seurat meticulously placing each dot of paint, I'm orchestrating rather than crafting. The AI handles the tedious parts while I direct traffic. I wonder if this is still art. And as amazing as channeling this tidal wave of creative energy feels, it would also be good if I remembered to eat dinner.

  • Without the natural pauses provided by research, learning curves, or even the limitations of skill, there’s nothing to slow you down or force you to step away and reflect. The dopamine rush becomes constant and relentless. As a result, the very thing that feels like progress—making something new—can easily slip into compulsion. And compulsion can tilt all too easily into something even more destructive.

  • This is the paradox of unfettered creativity: without resistance, without friction, the creative impulse doesn't find its natural rhythm—it accelerates until it derails. What makes AI-assisted creation so seductive is precisely what makes it dangerous: it removes the natural constraints that have always forced creators to pause, reflect, and return to the world around them. The hat gets finished, but at what cost?

📰 Staying Sane in 2025 by

  • I’ve been delving into history, looking for inspiration of those who silently protested their intellectual age and I’ve become fascinated by the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Less famous than his existentialist peers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty seemed to do a better job of resisting the madness of his age, Communism. He was able to clearly see the horrors of Stalin and the Soviet Union and directly criticized his friend Sartre for excusing violence. For this, he lost a friend and withdrew from the intellectual scene in France. Despite this, he never seemed to really get caught up in the popular political fights of his age. He shifted his attention toward his work, toward philosophical inquiry.

📰 The Book That Changed My Life by Ryan Holiday

  • Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (Hardcover) (Leather) (Paperback) ​Why do I like the Gregory Hays edition so much? Because it’s alive and accessible. Hays uses clear, modern, plain English, but still manages to capture the power and beauty of Marcus’s writing and wisdom. There are no “thou’s,” “shalls,” “thys” or “thees,”—nothing old-fashioned to confuse you and slow you down.

📰 Finding Your Intuition and Changing Your Personality by

📰 A Science-Based Guide to Thinking Creatively—With LLMs by Every’s Rhea Purohit

  • In her 2003 book *The Creative Mind*, Boden described creativity as the ability to come up with ideas that are new, surprising, and valuable. She also classified creativity, dividing it into three types—combinatorial, exploratory, and transformational.

  • Combinatorial creativity: Great ideas come from unexpected but meaningful connections This type of creativity is about creating unfamiliar combinations of familiar ideas, with the added requirement that there’s a clear conceptual link between the ideas. The resulting combination has to “make sense.”

  • Exploratory creativity: How to find new ideas in familiar places Exploratory creativity is about discovering new possibilities within a conceptual space—a style of painting, a genre of music, or a branch of mathematics, for example. Each of these spaces is defined by rules, and exploratory creativity doesn’t break them. Instead, it plays within them in surprising ways. It’s about seeing new patterns in familiar places.

  • Transformation creativity—bending the rules until a new reality emerges Transformational creativity goes a step beyond exploratory creativity. Instead of exploring a conceptual space, it fundamentally alters its structure by changing one of its core rules. Boden takes the example of the composer **Arnold Schoenberg**, who made atonal music by altering the rule that a piece of music must begin and end in the same key.

  • Here are three ways LLMs can support your creative process in practice.

  • Make feedback loops shorter One of the most practical ways LLMs can support creativity is by dramatically shortening feedback loops. For example, it reduces the time I take to come up with a good analogy (combinatorial creativity) because I can prompt it to come up with, say, 20 examples of metaphors that describe the concept I want to express. From there I can identify the ones with potential and refine them myself. Exploratory and transformational creativity, on the other hand, often require deep familiarity with a conceptual space. Here, LLMs save time by acting as intelligent research assistants. Tools like OpenAI’s deep research can help you get a clearer sense of the landscape you’re working within, as well as a stronger foundation from which to push its boundaries.

  • Push past the obvious—and you might surprise yourself Since LLMs can rapidly iterate on a given idea, they’re good at revealing directions and nuances you might not have noticed on your own. Finding adjacent but unexpected ideas is an important aspect of both exploratory and transformative creativity—and LLMs make it easier for you to see the spectrum of creative possibility.

  • Another way to practice this kind of thinking is by prompting the model to challenge your assumptions—for example, by asking it to present an opposing perspective, or a critique from a voice unlike your own.

  • Articulate your taste We’ve talked about how LLMs are powerful tools to help you put words to your aesthetic sensibilities before. Taste—in books, music, clothing, people—is notoriously hard to define without resorting to a string of examples. I find it hard to put words to the kind of books I like to read, but I can tell you that I enjoy Vladimir Nabokov, David Sedaris, and Jon Krakauer—three wildly different writers. An LLM, however, detected underlying patterns across those choices: a tendency for precise word choice, a mordant wit, and a fascination with the intensity of the human experience.

📰 The Subtle Art of Showing Up by

  • “Just showing up over and over again is kind of my way that I get over everything, over my laziness, over my apathy, over my despair at what might be going on in the wider world,” Kleon shared.

📰 AI Phobia Is Just Fear That ‘Easier’ Equals ‘Cheating’ by

  • The next time someone reflexively rejects AI-assisted work, we might gently ask: Are you concerned about the quality, or just uncomfortable with the ease?

📰 A Simple Vision for the Future of Media Organizations by

  • The most successful media organizations of the future will provide a structure that supports and invests in talent while sharing the financial rewards.

🎧 Tariff Twists and Turns, Meta Antitrust Trial, and Blue Origin Girls' Trip - Pivot Pod

  • Companies don't fail because they're invaded; they fail because they become bankrupt.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway Countries don't go out of business because they're invaded. They go out of business because they go broke.

April 15

🎧 Is Elon Musk Failing Shareholders? Teaching Kids About Money, and Scott’s Wildest Fan Encounter - Prof G Pod

  • Corporate governance involves shareholders electing a board, which then acts as a fiduciary, representing the interests of others after agreeing to their compensation. Being asked to be someone's fiduciary is a compliment, indicating trust in your skills and integrity to prioritize others' interests. Humans' capacity to act as fiduciaries, representing even those they'll never meet, distinguishes us.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway This is how corporate governance works. Shareholders elect the board and the board really has two jobs. They, what does it mean to be a fiduciary? I love the word fiduciary. I think it's a fantastic word, and that is once you have your deal, once you say, okay, I'm getting paid X, your job is then as a fiduciary to represent the interests of others. I love that. When someone asks you to be their fiduciary for their estate, that's a real compliment because what they're saying is, I think you can represent other people. I think you have the skills to represent somebody else. And also you have the integrity to think about or look at the lens of decision-making through other people. It's very difficult. Other than the instincts, one of the things that separates us from the animals is that we have the ability to be just better fiduciaries. We can represent society. We can represent people that we will never meet.

April 14

📰 How to Write Online by

  • If you’ve ever thought about writing online or been tempted to publish an opinion, let me teach you all that I know. Here are the four principles I’d like to share:

    • 1. Craft at every level matters.

    • 2. Pursue your curiosity, but acknowledge the lizard brain.

    • 3. People will misinterpret you.

    • 4. AI is a terrible writer, and a wonderful thought companion.

  • carefully editing at the individual word or sentence level can create a smooth, waterslide-like flow where readers glide effortlessly from sentence to sentence, unable to stop themselves. Many writers mistakenly think achieving this effect means using elaborate language, complicated grammar, or ornate sentences. In reality, especially in online publishing, it typically means simplifying—shorter sentences, direct language. People behave differently on the internet than when they sit down to read a book. You need to work harder to hold their attention.

  • The challenge with simple sentence structure is that you can attract an audience that is only casually engaged in what you’re writing about. The more broadly accessible your work, the more explanatory you’ll have to be, and the less subtlety you’ll be able to employ.

  • A merely good piece can get away with containing either a great idea *or* great sentences. But if you really want to be in the top one percent, you have to be excellent at both sentence-level craft and ideas.

  • It makes me uncomfortable to say, but if you wanted to have a consistently performant publication, you should probably find a way to tie everything into sex, sports, gambling, or outrage.

  • At some point you just have to acknowledge that everyone has lizard brains. Your task is to embrace it or write work that is so good people overcome their more primal interests.

  • The hard truth is that your readers will misinterpret what you do. People are more interested in confirmation of their biases than nuanced argument. You cannot take it personally.

  • people will misinterpret what you say. When you are making an expansive, detailed argument, you need to repeat your central point over and over again throughout the piece. Every section has to clearly support your central thesis. If there is an iota of ambiguity, readers will insert their own bias and your writing will not be nearly as impactful.

  • The best way to use AI is as a mental lubricator. It can edit, advise, partner, and transcribe. It’s the world’s most flexible intellectual assistant. It should reduce the delta between the words you can type per minute and the *publishable* words you can type per minute. You'll know that you're using AI well when your total publishable word count creeps up per day. In my own practice, I found that I was slowly but surely able to go from 1,500 to 1,600 to 2,000 to, these days, 2,500 words of publishable content in a day. The ultimate sign of success is that you are able to create great work faster that feels like it is yours, not the AI’s. Writing with AI means that you no longer worry about publishing enough content; you only worry about publishing the *right* content.

April 13

📰 Inside MrBeast's Creative Process by Jon Youshaei

  • For 14 years, he made 3,000+ videos that got 20 billion views. Here's how he did it: ​

    • Every Monday, while in college, King gathered his roommates and had them pitch video ideas.

    • King awarded $100 to the best ideas he made into videos. ​

    • Years later, now with a staff of 20+ employees, King does a similar process. ​

    • “Everybody comes to the table with a concept. Somebody from finance is there, an assistant is in there," King told me. "Anyone can have a great idea.”

  • What’s a T-Sheet? Ah yes, glad you asked. Grab some paper. Draw a big T. ​

    • On top, write your video’s headline. ​

    • On left, describe the concept. ​

    • On right, sketch thumbnail or intro scene.

📰 3-2-1: Two Steps for Better Results, the Qualities of a Great Career, and How to Handle Good Luck - James Clear

  • "The 2-step process for exceptional results: 1. Spend a little time each day thinking about the highest leverage activity available to you. 2. Spend a little time each day working on it."

  • "The feeling of progress is one of the best feelings of all. This is true even when progress is small."

  • "The 4 qualities of a great career:

    • 1. I enjoy it

    • 2. I'm good at it

    • 3. I make good money

    • 4. I’m around fascinating people

  • Answer in reverse order:

    • 1. Where are fascinating people?

    • 2. In what ways can I make money with them?

    • 3. Which ones am I good at?

    • 4. Which ones do I enjoy?"

🎥 I quit my job, then made $70k in 2 months by

  • the entrepreneur apprenticeship, and that is a name I got from Daniel Priestley, or that Daniel Priestley came up with. Daniel Priestley is like a serial entrepreneur, an epic businessman. I love pretty much every single thing that he says and read all his books and all that kind of thing. And he's really cool, and he has this idea called the entrepreneur apprentice. To explain this, I'm just going to read something that Daniel Pry wrote about it. Uh, so he said, "If you're at all confused about starting a business, I recommend doing a year as a direct report to an entrepreneur. You'll learn, you'll earn and you'll build confidence. I've had a dozen of my ex-employees go off and start seven-figure businesses. These people worked closely with me for several years and felt ready to do their own thing. Only 7% of businesses hit $1 million, and almost all of my previous reports have achieved it. Being an apprentice to an entrepreneur is part of the entrepreneur journey.

  • However, my energy started to lean towards this whole group coaching program thing, where I help YouTubers—YouTubers who've already got an audience—build the business side of their YouTube channel. Basically, a couple of weeks ago, I was like, "I should just test it out," and I just made an application for them to see if people were interested, and I just shared it in my newsletter. I got a whole load of applications. I called the program the "$100,000 YouTuber." That's still what it's called. I think it’s a fun name; it kind of accurately describes what the program is about, and so I just made this form, and a bunch of people applied. Then, I was just like, "I guess the next stage is to talk to these people and see if they want to join the The first person I spoke to, I didn't even have a sales page or anything. I just spoke to them and then I thought I needed to pay to describe what I was talking about, so I then kind of made a page and hopped on about 25 sales calls with loads of people who had applied, whom I thought would be a good fit for the program, and a bunch of them joined. That is basically the main source of revenue for February. The last couple of weeks, and so now my job is to help them get results over the next couple of months. It's a six-month program, and I'm going to be very committed to working with them, showing up every week, you know, helping them get results and delivering all that.

April 12

📰 All Is Not Well! by

  • “What else can I get away with?” is the professional motto of writer and director Noah Hawley. (To quote *The Medium is the Massage*, “Art is anything you can get away with.”)

📰 Drowning in Inch-Deep Water: The Art of Meeting People Where They Are by

  • As I sit with clients in therapy, I continuously fight the temptation to pull them underwater before they're ready. Instead, I try to meet them on the shore where they stand. I've learned that everyone's definition and experience of "drowning" is different. What feels like ankle-deep water to me might feel like a tsunami to someone else. Their perception is their reality, and my role isn't to correct it but to honor it.

📰 Your CEO Just Said ‘Use AI or Else.’ Here’s What to Do Next. by Every’s Alex Duffy

  • This five-step guide is for anyone trying to understand what Shopify’s new AI expectations mean in practice. What does “reflexive AI usage” look like? How do you go from feeling behind to feeling fluent? Most importantly, how do you make AI work for you—without it feeling like more work? Let’s dive in.

  • Step 1: Start using AI now

    • Pick something you already do—writing a weekly update, sorting tasks, summarizing calls—and try doing it with AI:

    • One trick: Have AI ask you questions first. Instead of just saying “rewrite this,” give it a prompt, like, “Interview me about my goals for this project,” and let it interview you. That back-and-forth helps it understand what you actually need.

  • Step 2: Know how you provide value

    • Before AI can multiply your work, you need to know what’s worth multiplying.

    • if you know your edge, AI becomes a point of leverage. Try writing on a blank piece of paper or in an Obsidian note:

      • What would your team miss if you disappeared for a week?

      • What problems do people ask you to help solve?

      • What feels easy for you but hard for others?

      • What do you, yourself, want to accomplish?

    • Now pick one of those strengths and ask: How could AI help me do this faster, better, or in a different way than I could have before? Generic AI usage leads to generic results. Push yourself to put your subject matter expertise into words.

  • Step 3: Develop a documentation habit

    • If there’s one underrated unlock for getting more out of AI, it’s this: Write things down. Not for posterity, but for performance. When you combine good documentation with AI, you’re not just saving time—you’re setting up automation.

    • The next time you are doing something you do often—writing a changelog, triaging bugs, launching a campaign— write down:

      • What kicks off your process?

      • What steps do you take?

      • What does a “good” output look like?

    • You can capture that context and those expectations in whatever system you normally work: Notion, Google Docs, Voice Notes, Slack, a notebook. The most important thing is creating reusable context, because that document becomes:

      • A ready-made AI prompt

      • A prototype brief

      • An onboarding document for a new teammate

    • A starting point for automation Good documentation turns one-off experiments into repeatable processes, and repeatable processes into opportunities for automation.

  • Step 4: What you repeat, you can automate

    • Once you notice you’re doing something more than once—and it’s working—you're not just experimenting anymore. You’re building

    • Block one hour this week to review how you’ve used AI in the past month and ask yourself:

      • What have I used AI for more than once?

      • What worked especially well?

      • What took less time than it used to?

    • Then ask: Can I turn this into a repeatable thing?

      • A Claude or ChatGPT prompt template?

      • A Slackbot that handles a recurring task?

      • A Notion button that auto-generates your weekly update?

      • A product that makes you a custom podcast each day?

    • If it worked once, it can work 10 times, and if it works 10 times, it’s probably worth sharing—or automating. Just make sure it's worth building according to the value you defined in step two.

    • Can you turn this conversation into a reusable template? Include the key instructions I gave you, the structure of the output, and suggestions for how someone else could adapt it to their own use case.

  • Step 5: Share what you learn

    • Pick one thing—an AI-powered workflow, a lesson learned, or a prompt that surprised you—and post it in a public Slack or Discord channel. Or run a 15-minute “here’s what I tried” session at your next team meeting. It doesn’t have to be formal—your goal is to show your process, not just your outcomes. These show-and-tell sessions create vital bridges: The people closest to the problems can explain their needs and solutions, while technical teams can identify opportunities to automate and scale what's working. Sharing your experiments builds trust and visibility. When performance reviews include questions about AI usage (as Lutke says they will), you won’t be guessing at answers. You’ll have receipts.

  • Learn AI like it’s your job

  • You don’t need to build an agent or master prompt engineering. You just need to start the loop: Try, reflect, document, share, repeat.

  • The people who do that—the ones who start small, learn fast, and make their work visible—are going to define what this AI-powered version of work becomes.

📰 We Don't Have Time, We Are Time. by

  • From the time we can speak, we're conditioned to view time as a commodity similar to cash: something we can save or spend, to be used wisely or wasted.

  • I do not own my time, and I get so much more by giving it away than trying to conserve it.

  • An enormous amount of modern life is predicated on the illusion that we should—or even can—try to completely master our time, that we can dominate our to do list, that we can get sovereign power over our clock and our calendar. In reality, we don't have time, *we are time*. You are a series of moments chained together, not someone with a series of moments to master and put in the bank. Not only is this kind of mastery most likely impossible, but even if it were possible, it would be supremely alienating. Almost all of the most worthwhile things in life—love, friendship, community, success—come with a little bit of sacrifice. You turn over some of your control of your time to other people.

📰 The Worst Book Cover I’ve Ever Designed by

  • Authors want to sell books, but in hybrid publishing, selling books is not necessarily the only, or even primary goal. The goal of this sort of publishing is often to establish oneself as an expert in a particular field. To book speaking gigs and gain clients. The book becomes a calling card or a sales tool. The cover becomes a sales tool for the sales tool.

📰 What Can Finland Teach Us About Happiness? by

  • The wealth effect is real, so now may be a good time to take a good hard look at your emergency fund and overall spending.

📰 Why I Love Overcast Light by

  • In art school you don’t often get a chance to paint overcast light conditions because there’s no way to simulate it perfectly indoors. A very large north-facing window comes close, but studio north light is still quite directional compared to actual overcast light. Even a bank of fluorescent fixtures across the ceiling doesn’t match it exactly because the light needs to be coming equally and evenly from above.

🎧 What Is America’s Brand? How AI Is Changing Work, and How Scott Records From Anywhere - Prof G Pod

  • This is what you want. You want a second screen at work. You want your screen, your typical computer screen, and then you want a second screen that has nothing but AI on it, that has mid-journey, that has Anthropic, that has ChatGPT, and a Bunch of the other cats and dogs. And every time you do a task, you want to turn to your second screen and think, how can my second screen help my first screen? What additional insight, data, research, ideas really get good at prompting? And before you know it, your head's going to spin around all the different shit you can do. Turn this into a chart. What is a different way to frame this? What types of visuals might better display this information? What additional data, parables, historical, anthropological evidence can you do to support the following argument that I'm making in the above two paragraphs, right? I just, just so incredibly powerful. But your job and you sound, you know, you are young, you're 34, you need to be a weapon.

🎧 The Secret Strategist Behind the Biggest YouTubers - Paddy Galloway on The Colin & Samir Show

  • Five minute haircut versus 50 minute haircut

  • if they don't click, they don't watch that. The goal is that your video should be familiar to the audience, but also unexpected.

  • Even our format here of like, maybe it's a $1 versus $10 versus $100 golf club or something like that. You can apply formats in so many niches. And it's honestly, it sounds simple, but so much of our success through my consulting company, through the other things we do, it's just seeing what is working in all these different Niches and what our niche what are in our niche that we're currently focused on what is a format that other people are not doing yet that we could bring over and adapt and also i think there's Always like this feeling of like well we want to be original we want to try something new but there's a big difference between taking a format in your existing niche and doing it yourself Because then that competing channel might be like hey i did that first or one of your audience members is like that's not original if you take like if you're the astrophotography channel You take that over it feels fresh it feels new and

  • Paddy Galloway mentioned a method called 'be a magician,' inspired by a magician who said he doesn't need new tricks, just new audiences for existing ones.

    • Transcript: Colin There's this method that we talk about quite a bit, uh, called be a magician. And it's because one time we had a conversation with a magician who said to us, I don't have to come up with new tricks. I just have to show my tricks to audiences who haven't seen them before.

  • To find the right packaging, push your concept to its most exaggerated form. Then, dial it back to something you're comfortable with. Explore the extremes first.

    • Transcript: Colin It's a really interesting exercise to, uh, this is actually something Jimmy said to us the first time we ever went to Greenville. He told us with our packaging, he said, pull it to the most exaggerated version of what it is, and then pull it back to what you're comfortable with, but, but explore the most exaggerated Version of the concept. Uh, and, and I thought that was a really interesting mental framework and exercise.

  • Use ideation frameworks like superlatives (fastest, biggest, smallest) and 'versus' to capture attention. To be seen, learn to see by analyzing how others capture your attention on YouTube and noting the frameworks they use. Also, consider offering exclusive access to something unique.

    • Transcript: Colin There are some really interesting frameworks to start with when it comes to ideation. Like one is superlatives. So fastest, biggest, smallest. You see these a lot on YouTube. And I think superlatives are really easy visual words to latch onto. And I think think that's, that's important, right? The other is versus versus is a classic, like Ford and F-150 versus Rivian, right? Like immediately you peg two things against each other. And then we just talked about like the three step that, that we talk about quite a bit, the like $1, $10, $100, right? Those like three steps. So I think you start to, the most important thing, there's a Seth Godin quote that says, in order to be seen, you must learn how to see. And I think spending time on YouTube, just clocking what is the framework, like what are they using in this framework to capture my attention is, is the most important and just writing It down. Being like, oh, interesting world's smallest X. How many times do I see superlatives show up like that? Paddy Galloway Another one that I've been seeing a lot that we've had some success with over the years is like getting exclusive access or getting access to something that most people don't get access To.

  • Consider a YouTube video as a title, thumbnail, and list. This provides an interesting perspective on how to structure content.

    • Transcript: Colin What do you think about lists? Like six financial tips or six, you know, like what do you think about lists? Ali Abdaal is like a very forward man. Yeah. Ali, if you're listening, hopefully you like that. Samir I called you a list man, but he refers to himself as a forward thinking list man. Colin So he, I mean, he said to us, he was like a YouTube video is, is a title thumbnail on a list. And, uh, I thought that was a really interesting perspective.

  • Don't just create generic listicles. Make your listicle unique, especially if it has fewer than 10 items. Instead of 'seven money tips,' try 'seven underrated saving tips' or 'seven money tips the top 1% are using.' If your listicle is short, it needs a unique angle to feel less generic and more like a puzzle.

    • Transcript: Paddy Galloway Let's say in the finance niche and you made a video, which is like seven money tips, you know, to grow your wealth, it's kind of a bit generic and broad and probably lots of people covered It before. But if you say like seven underrated saving tips or seven money tips, the top one percent are using that you don't know so like yeah i think there's nothing wrong i think the actual formative List and listicles is really effective and it's very easy to consume as well but i think if it's a low number so like between like three things and like 10 or 12 things i want there to be a Really unique thing if it's a really big number sometimes that can be just like a bit more generic because you're just getting so much in one video. So you see these videos, which are like 40 pieces of life advice I learned before turning 40 or something. You see this like real quick fire, like life advice type videos. So, I mean, even, I always think about listicles as well. If your listicle is like under 10, I think you can start to see it as less of just a listicle, but more of like a puzzle.

  • Think of thumbnail branding as the color of the text or font. It could be the t-shirt color the guest is wearing. Control what you can in the thumbnail to drown out the noise.

    • Transcript: Paddy Galloway I always think of like thumbnail brand is more like you know could be color of text i've seen a lot of people like copy your sort of yellow color but could be color text could be font it could Be just like sometimes i think about even the t-shirt or color that the guest is wearing like it's difficult to control but maybe in the thumbnail that can control it but overall I think It's just about trying to drown out that noise

  • The 'creator brain' focuses on replicating successful content, while the 'creative brain' emphasizes uniqueness. Balancing these two perspectives is crucial, although they can sometimes conflict.

    • Transcript: Colin The creator brain is actually look at what's working and repeat what's working the creative is how can I be unique And sometimes those are at odds with each other

  • Paddy Galloway recommends the '80% rule' for YouTube channels. Aim to interest at least 80% of your audience with each video. This helps diagnose channel problems.

    • Transcript: Paddy Galloway Building almost like a bingeable format so they watch one and they can watch another right so i like to think of this framework that I call the 80% rule, but it's not like the classic Pareto Principle 80% rule, which is like, we should aim to interest 80% plus of our audience with every upload. That sounds kind of basic when you hear it said, but it's a great way of diagnosing problems with the channel.

  • Use the 80/20 rule: Aim to interest at least 80% of your audience 80% of the time. This allows for experimentation in one out of every five videos and can lead to innovation. From a strategy perspective, always milk a successful format instead of undermilking it, because others will likely copy it. Don't let the view maximizer stop you from milking a format.

    • Transcript: Paddy Galloway The 80% strategy reel says you should try to aim 80% of your audience. But the second part of it is 80% of the time. So you try to aim to interest 80% plus overlap with your audience in every video. But you do that 80% of the time. So you get one in let's say every five videos that you can just try something different and go and break that rule. And I think that's where you kind of innovate. Cause if you just, there are channels that just focus down on like milking a certain format so much that then when that format dries up, they don't really have a bridge to cross to go to Another place. I will say from a strategy perspective, I'm always more in favor of milking something than under milking something. It's like, what if I milk this too much? It's like, well, what if you don't milk it too much and everyone else copies it and you've just wasted all these, you know, views. The view maxer is not going to tell you to stop.

  • Don't only rely on metrics. Start valuing anecdotal feedback by tracking who reached out after releasing a video, who engaged in your inbox, who DM'd you, and what episodes people discuss when you're at an event.

    • Transcript: Colin We also have started to value anecdotal feedback, which is really intangible, but like who reached out after we made that video, who was in our inbox, who DM'd us, who, when we're out At an event, what episodes are they talking about?

  • Don't just create vlogs; make them concept blogs. Instead of a simple '24 hours me' vlog, try a 'day in the life of an NFL player' or similar concept.

    • Transcript: Paddy Galloway I like the idea of like concept blogs. So not just a vlog, but like there's a concept behind what you're doing. So it's like, instead of just like, um, 24 hours, me, it's like day in the life of like an NFL player or something.

  • If you're tryin' to improve your titles, make it a daily habit to write 'em. Generate a high volume of titles to pull from different formats. Write 30 titles for each video; it shouldn't take too long. Alter previous titles, even if most aren't great. You'll learn what a bad idea looks like.

    • Transcript: Colin Whether you're a brand or you're a creator and you're trying to get better at this, like writing titles as a daily exercise is probably the most important thing you could do. Like it is just the whole thing. Thinking of titles, writing them, taking a title that you see on YouTube and reshaping it a hundred times, you know, or just like, and now there's so many great tools to help you do that Too. But just like getting a high volume of titles through your brain is so important because then you can pull from formats that you have. Right. Paddy Galloway I sometimes tell creators like, write 30 titles for your video. Yeah. Like Patty, that's overwhelming. It's too much. I'm like, is everyone just experiencing things different to me? Because 30 tiles, like we can write 30 tiles and like, we could do that together in like 10 minutes. Right. Not even like, it doesn't mean, I think people always think that when we say like, come up with a huge volume of titles or thumbnail concepts that they all have to be like, great. No, like it's about like putting things together, trying different words, seeing what looks interesting, studying other people, like what are they doing? Try to adapt that. So for a lot of the clients we work with, like we're sitting down and me and my team will write, yeah, 30, 40 titles for a video. And like, that doesn't take that long. Colin And five of them are slight alterations of a previous one, right? That's just like one word difference or something. So it's not, it's not like you're coming up with 30 brand new ideas in a row you're writing one and then altering that and then altering it and altering it and altering it and like you said Actually if 29 of them are awful that's actually totally fine because you'll also start to learn what a bad idea looks like right and like that that's also important.

  • Nast created easily repeatable formats on YouTube, like '10 things you can't live without,' similar to Architectural Digest's format or the '73 Questions' format.

    • Transcript: Colin Condé Nast has created some of the most easy to repeat formats on youtube 10 things you can't live without right or architectural digest yeah or uh the the 70 was a 73 question 72 or 73 73 Sounds it could be 71 weirder no no i think it's guys we look this up right now no no let's let everyone put it let's not look it up. Samir 73. Everyone put it up. I'm saying 72. Yeah.

  • Galloway suggests immediately delivering on the promise made in the title within the intro, visually or verbally. Make viewers feel they've made the right choice and avoid making them feel foolish. Provide necessary context without overdoing it. Tease intriguing story elements and seamlessly transition into the first storyline.

    • Transcript: Paddy Galloway My intro formula is like immediately try to deliver on the promise in some sense. So like if you make a promise in your title film now, in your intro, can you deliver on that visually or verbally? Some way to just make like a nice frame I like to think about is like, just make your viewer feel like they made the right decision. Don't make them feel like an idiot. You said the same thing. Yeah. Make them feel like they they made the right decision. Um, and then it's like, you know, the necessary context, not over context. So some credits put too much context in that intro. So what's the necessary context? What are the intriguing, like parts of the story or parts of the, the video that you can kind of tease or highlight in that intro? And then how do we just kind of flow into the, the first storyline, the first action point like this big gap. Like I like being able to look at an intro and say, I don't really know where that intro starts and ends. It just flows into the content.

  • Use this framework to maximize video retention:

    • 1. Confirm the click by ensuring the video aligns with the thumbnail.

    • 2. Establish the video's context in the first seven seconds.

    • 3. Introduce a new hook by 30 seconds to hold the viewer's attention.

    • 4. Deliver an expectation of value that the viewer will get towards the end.

    • Transcript: Colin We have a bit of a different framework for that. Basically how we think about it is like the first thing is confirm the click. So you click in, you have to go, okay, that is the thumbnail that I clicked on. The first seven seconds is establishing the video and kind of laying the context and the foundation for it. And by 30 seconds, we want to introduce a new hook. So we want to introduce something that you didn't expect from the thumbnail that is going to make you stay until the end. Samir And deliver an expectation of value. Colin If you stay towards the end, you will get these loops closed.

  • Use multiple questions in the title, promising an answer to intrigue viewers. For example, for a video about the megalodon, pose questions like its extinction despite being a top predator, then promise to explore the reasons in the video.

    • Transcript: Paddy Galloway Like a former, I think is really successful as well and works really well is like multiple questions and then a promise of an answer. So it could be like, yeah, you could make, let's just think of an example. Like you're saying, a megalodon which is like a giant prehistoric shark so you might say like the megalodon was like the fiercest president predator in the oceans yeah it was like five Times the size of great white shark it killed everything it's on site and yet somehow it went extinct how how could this shark go extinct how could this thing happen and then you sort of The viewer like yeah how could that happen and then're like, is there a mysterious reason behind the disappearance of the Megalodon? And then suddenly you're like, okay, that's intriguing. And then it's like, in this video, we're going to dive into it.

April 11

🎥 YouTube Masterclass 2025 with MrBeast, MKBHD & Casey Neistat - Jon Youshaei

  • Our first tip is to use visual anchors. So here's the truth: too many creators make videos that are way better off as articles or written posts on X or LinkedIn.

    • show versus tell. Showing bills so worthless that people are making sidewalk origami out of them is much more powerful than a reporter just telling you about inflation

    • the napkin test, which I talked about in my interview with Cleo Abram, who is one of the fastest growing YouTubers right now. You know what a good video is if you and I sat down for coffee, and I was telling you a story about something interesting. The moment when I need to pull out a napkin and draw a diagram, or show you something on my phone and pause it, and be like, you see? This, like, that’s a good video. Otherwise, it should just be an essay because that's much easier to write.

    • the napkin Test works like this: imagine you're explaining the idea for your next YouTube video to a friend. Do you have to one, draw anything on a napkin to prove your point; two, pull out your phone to show them a photo; or three, repeat words like this or that to point out anything? As you explained, if the answer was yes to any of the above, congrats! You have a visual anchor.

  • imagine there was a place where you could sort through a bunch of anchor visuals for your niche every single week. Well, that place exists, and it’s called Reddit. You just have to know how to use it in the right way. So here’s the tactic: go to Reddit, type in your niche or topic, and check out the subreddits or forums that show up. For example, here’s a subreddit that I used to check all the time when I made videos about the best marketing and advertising campaigns. The first time you go to your subreddit, this is key: make sure you filter by top and all time, so you see the best posts. The best visuals are upvoted in this case by over 450,000 members of this subreddit. It's basically a pre-vetted visual anchor if you want to make a video about marketing and packaging, and it's so cool to see that because it just starts giving you more ideas for longer videos. Then here's where things really start rolling. You can literally go back to that same subreddit every week or every month. Just change all time to a weekly, and you can see all the best visuals showing up over time

    • Note: https://www.reddit.com/r/productivity/top/?t=month - add Reddit to "idea generating machine"

    • when something gets posted on Reddit on Monday, it ends up on BuzzFeed on Tuesday, then it gets picked up on social media on Wednesday, and then it shows up on Facebook next month.

  • next tip is to make your intros rainy on YouTube. Great videos are killed by boring intros all the time, so remember to make it rainy. R-A-I-N-Y. Hear me out: this means your intro has to check the following five boxes, or at least as many of them as possible, and I’ll show you how I did it with a few examples of intros that got 74% retention and 60% retention. So, R R stands for result up front in your intro; you’ve got to tease the result. Get if they watch your video, like where is it going? What are you going to deliver? The value or at least pose the question that your video will answer. Highlight the stakes and make sure it peaks enough curiosity to watch; and again I'll show you a few examples of how to do that for both unscripted and scripted videos here in a moment. A stands for address the objection. Call out the elephant in the room before your viewers even think about it. Listen, viewers today are sharper than ever before because they have more options than ever before, and that means their BS detectors are on high alert. Like you can say the result of your video and your intro, but they're already calling BS in their minds, whether it's subconscious or conscious; and you need to address it. I stands for instant. For long form, your intros should be around 45 seconds or less. And don't worry, we'll talk about what that means for short form. N stands for why now? Like why is your YouTube video relevant right now? Is there a trend, a change, or something in the news that makes your video more timely? And why stands for why you? Like why are you the person to deliver this? Message, and don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean you have to change who you are for a YouTube intro. That just means you have to highlight the right parts about your background.

  • what I titled the video as well, which is another way to communicate the result

  • think about how you can make the intro part of your video stronger.

  • thumbnails, but I actually think there are five, and I call it the five C's: composition, context, clean, curiosity, and color. The first C is composition, meaning does the framing, or the angles, or the leading lines draw you in? The first thumbnail here is so captivating because it comes from the point of view of a person holding on to those chairs for dear life, and the leading lines down the corridor. I mean, this is just a masterpiece of a thumbnail. The second one comes from Isaiah Photo, and it’s so well composed, with the camera being positioned above his head, the prime bottles all around him. You could tell that he took time to frame. And compose this shot properly. The second "C" is context. Too many creators design their thumbnails without any context of where it'll show up. They design it on a giant screen, so it may look good on desktop, but like Marquez says, it has to look good when small on mobile. So here's a rule I like to use: If you scale down your thumbnail to 18%, can you still read it? If not, you have to simplify it. You can see in these examples, you can clearly see the headphones, the ball, the text, the spider. It still pops even when it's smaller. The next "C" is clean. Too many thumbnails are a cluttered mess. The rule to remember is: Does your thumbnail have three elements or less? This first one has the head, the text, the pink foam. The second one from Tyler Blanchard has his head, the text, a grenade. It's simple and clean. The next "C" is curiosity. Meaning, does your thumbnail pose a question that viewers immediately want answered? This could be done with blurring or blocking out an element, like Unbox Therapy did, or contradicting something, like you've seen this fake model thumbnail that Zach did. Again, this one has great composition too. Those leading lines just draw your eye in, so the more C's you can check off the list, the better. The last C is the most powerful, and that’s color. Meaning, do you pair colors in a way that draws the eye? For that, you want to refer to the color wheel and pair primary colors with the complementary ones. Like Ryan Tran’s hair and shirt in this thumbnail are yellowish gold, so it’s not an accident that he made the chairs around him purple. Or Michelle, pairing the primary color of blue from her blazer and glove with an orange jumpsuit and the orangish-brown background. Brilliant! And you know, I was playing around with the new Chat GPT 4.0, and you could literally take these thumbnails, or any thumbnail that adheres to the 5 C's, and then take a selfie of yourself. Um, then put in a prompt that’s like, "Please replace the person in this thumbnail with me and keep their wardrobe and facial expression the same." Then you look at this, and this is crazy! You’ll get these thumbnails and to be clear, I’m not recommending you do this at all. I’m just showing you how powerful these tools are becoming. Especially if you know the 5 C's

  • The next tip is to test macro rather than micro. So YouTube recently launched a thumbnail testing tool, and there's a really clever way to use it that few creators have caught on to.

    • Step One is he uploaded three thumbnails with macro, big changes like the angle of the shot, his face, and the different items from the gun, the clothing, and the bomb. Step Two, he let YouTube select the best-performing thumbnail after a few days. Simple. Step Three, he then made micro changes to the winning thumbnail, like a different shirt or a person on the boat — very small, and then Step Four, he typically will continue to make micro changes until the test results aren’t that different.

  • next tip is to fix your first frame. Most of what we've covered until now is for long-form videos, but this tip is specifically for shorts

  • Whenever possible, use props like printouts to show it physically, not just digitally with graphics like most creators do with all the editing tools.

  • Perfection erases humanity. When something is truly perfect, there's no kind of the human hand in it

  • what I like to do is, if I see something going viral across multiple formats all across YouTube, then it's like, okay, that seems to be something people really like, and you know they're really interested in that content. So maybe I should just do that. I get a really big way on the channel, and sometimes creators like Nick Giovani, who's one of the biggest food creators out there, don't even bother with certain ideas if they're not outliers or haven't already performed well on other channels, because this is a sign that viewers may not be interested.

    • Actually, Patty Galloway told me how he does this with his creators like Jesser to help him grow past 25 million subscribers. It’s just a simple question of, you know, what are the five or six best performing videos I’ve made on my channel? Could I make them again in some form? Could I adopt them?

    • to find an outlier in your niche, all you have to do Is this number one? Open up your YouTube app and search three to four words related to your niche. Then go to search filters and sort by view count video. Anytime, this is key because, essentially, you’re asking YouTube to turn off its algorithm for just a moment to show you the videos that have the most views. Then scroll and click on these top videos and then click one more time to see the subscriber count of the channel that uploaded the video. What you’re looking for here are videos that have over five times more views than the subscriber count of the channel that uploaded it. If you make a list of these outliers and reference them, they'll help you so much when you brainstorm your ideas.

  • next tip is to copy with taste. So once you find these ideas and outliers, don't just copy and paste; do what I like to call copy with taste. And here's a little spectrum I created to remember it: put your own spin on it, adapt from outside. Your niche meld it with other ideas.

    • there’s this great quote from the late Virgil Abloh, who said you only have to make a 3% tweak to an existing concept for it to be innovative.

  • next tip is to find popular problems. Here’s the thing: YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine after Google, and it’s estimated that there are over six billion searches per day of people trying to watch videos to answer a question, to get advice, solve a problem, and so forth. So, as a creator, especially if you’re just starting out, And growing, you'd be crazy not to try to make content to meet that search demand.

    • how do you find the most popular problems in your niche to make content about? Well, there are three ways to do that. First is the incognito mode method. Two is the Quora method, and three is to poll your audience. The incognito mode method, well, for that one, you just have to go to incognito mode in your browser, then go to YouTube and start typing in video ideas or search queries, and let autocomplete tell you what most people are searching for. You see, by doing this in incognito mode, you're not letting your past searches change the autocomplete, so you're seeing the autocomplete based on the masses, based on their searches. Second, you can go to Quora and figure out what are the most popular questions that people are asking in your niche. All you have to do is search your topic and filter by all time. I love Quora because it's literally a place where people ask questions, and votes tell you what the most amount of people need help with. Answering, and if you make content about that, you're golden. Third, and perhaps the most underrated tip is to poll your audience. You know you could use the poll features on Instagram, YouTube Community, LinkedIn, and so forth to treat your audience like a focus group. I mean, if you follow me on Instagram, you'll already know that I ask for your thoughts on topics for my next videos, or even thumbnails you like best. I constantly go through our Discord community to see if there's a pattern of questions or problems that I could help with in my next video. Basically, the goal is to make content that falls in the middle of this Venn diagram, where what you know and what you're excited about matches up with what people want to hear. Whereas so many creators don’t even ask their audience and just make content that feels totally out of touch.

  • next tip to remember is that what's interesting is interesting. All right, I know, I know we've talked a lot about data, but sometimes you just have to say, screw the data, screw the algorithm,

    • it all started by being so interested in something that it became interesting to all of us. And I still believe in all the tactics and the data that we discussed so far, but the big caveat to all of this is this: if you can barely contain your excitement about a video idea, then just make the damn video! Trust me, the audience will feel it.

  • next tip is to avoid eye fatigue

  • Most creators jam way too many visuals on screen that cause your eyes to dart all over the place and get fatigue, which will inevitably lead to viewers clicking off.

  • next tip is to remember the paradox of production. So few creators understand.

    • Simply put, the smaller you are, the more your production value matters. The bigger you are, the less it does.

    • let's say you do have a bigger audience. What do your viewers want to see? They want to see you, but raw and unedited. I think that's one of the reasons why our behind the scenes videos with MrBeast took off, because people rarely see him in an Unedited context

    • that's also why we love docuseries or even these FaceTime TikToks of celebrities, because after seeing them so overly produced everywhere, we want to see it all stripped away.

  • next tip is to simplify your speech.

    • Three B's: basic, bold, brief. You could probably tell by now that I love alliteration. So, the first B stands for basic. Make sure you translate jargon into simple words. For example, instead of “leverage,” say “use.” Instead of “optimize,” say “perfect.” Instead of “competencies,” say “skills.” The second thing is to be bold. Remove words from your speech that can undermine your authority without you realizing it, such as “possibly” or “I think.” There's a time and place for that, but most times, it just undermines your authority. Be more assertive. The third thing is to be brief. These are just rules of thumb, but they'll become instinctual over time when scripting your videos. Avoid more than 25 words in a sentence, because you'll start to ramble. Avoid more than three sentences in a paragraph, because you're jumbling a lot of thoughts into one section. My biggest pet peeve by far is to avoid double descriptions. You don't need to say “the room was clean and tidy”; just say “the room was clean.”

  • hone your off-camera craft so there's There are two parts to being a good YouTuber: being good on camera by doing all the things we're talking about here, improving your production, your speaking, your thumbnails, and your editing. But the second thing, the X Factor to all of this, is having a skill off camera, and the more uncommon that skill or craft is, the easier it is to honestly have a real career on YouTube.

    • Dr. Mike, who keeps treating patients even though he’s well past 10 million subscribers. I can’t give up practicing clinical medicine because it makes me understand better the problems people have. It allows me to relate better to people, use better language where I can actually see one-on-one if they’re understanding what I’m saying, and it just makes you more valuable but also happier. Even when the channel's not performing as well as you hope, going to the office and having someone tell you your notes are late or your patient is mad that you’re five minutes late to their appointment, that's valuable, and people will always belittle it. So, being able to see the exact outcome of your work right there in the moment is so valuable. It’s what keeps him sharp, because he’s in the trenches. He’s hearing about the latest problems from his patients, and that could spark a content idea that could help even more people.

    • all this stuff on camera, to be honest, the speaking, the editing, the packaging, that’s a must; you need that to survive on YouTube. But it’s the stuff off camera that helps you thrive. It’s the stuff that happens in Dr. Mike’s office, or Nick’s kitchen, or Matt’s autoshop. That’s what gives them their edge and ideas.

  • next tip is to earn the right to rebel. So this one has more to do with making money and brand deals, which I I actually think this is one of the biggest pitfalls for creators as they grow. I want you to imagine, for a second, that a brand wants to give you $225,000 to make a sponsored video for them, and here's the kicker: you barely have to mention the brand's product at all. On the surface, I know this makes no sense at all, but I got to bring back Casey Neistat because he does this all the time.

    • the key is what Casey did before pitching brands his wild idea, and he earned what I like to call the right to rebel. To do that, he started by creating free ads for Nike, and soon he got their executives attention. If you're not willing to do the work without getting paid a hundred times, then chances are You're never going to find the opportunity to do the work and get paid for it, and that's how you know that’s how I was able to, you know, get the thumbs up to make it count. That’s how I was able to get the thumbs up to make the Mercedes campaign or the Walter MIDI campaign that eventually led to a brand deal with Nike, where they asked him to make three videos to make it count for Nike. Yeah, I think what's underappreciated about that video is I deal with Nike to make three videos for the FuelBand, and the first two videos had significantly more emphasis and significantly more budget. When it came time to make the third video, I called up Alex Lopez at Nike and I was like, "Look, I want to do this differently." I want to do something that’s way off the book. I’m way different from what we initially scripted. I won't spend any more money, but I think I can make something much better. And he was like, "Okay, just like don’t screw me over, don’t leave me in the lurch. But if you want to run wild with the creative, go for it." The video was Casey spending Nike's budget to fly all around the world with their Nike FuelBand. It was his way of living. Their slogan, "Make it count," was pitched by Casey. He probably would never have gotten the green light for the crazy idea first.

  • last tip is to be more like Mozart.

    • the importance of posting your work instead of spending time perfecting it, even if you feel insecure about it. I was surprised to learn that Casey did.

    • Even if you go back over 200 years to Mozart, because Mozart wasn’t this automatic masterpiece-making machine that history makes him seem to be. Some of his early critics called his music far too noisy, but Mozart just kept working, kept putting out work, and made over 600 compositions before he died at age 35, which is far, far more than his Peers who only averaged 150 compositions despite living much longer.

    • here’s the thing about Monet that just crushes my soul and reminds me of so many creators, including myself: that number, 2,500, should be way higher. But Monet was such a perfectionist that this one time he spent three years working on a set of new paintings until at the last moment he noticed these slight imperfections in the corners of those paintings. So he took out a butcher knife and slashed through every single one of them because they weren’t perfect enough for him.

🎧 The Secret Strategist Behind the Biggest YouTubers - Colin and Samir

  • Only 12% of YouTube videos get over 1,000 views. It's a good reminder of how difficult it is to achieve even modest success on the platform.

    • Transcript: Colin Only 12% of YouTube videos crack a thousand views.

  • YouTube's become more competitive, but a compelling title, thumbnail, and video can lead to huge reach, even for small channels, due to YouTube's algorithm.

    • Transcript: Paddy Galloway It's more competitive than it's ever been, but it's also, if you can deliver a really interesting title thumbnail and video, the kind of multiplier effects of YouTube's algorithm And how far that can reach, even as a small channel, has never been greater.

  • Video content needs to cater to three audience types: the core audience, the casual audience, and the new audience.

    • Transcript: Paddy Galloway CCN fit, which is it's the core audience, it's the casual audience, and it hits the new audience

  • Paddy Galloway illustrates the difference between a short and long YouTube video using the analogy of a one-minute haircut versus a fifty-minute haircut.

    • Transcript: Paddy Galloway Five minute haircut versus 50 minute haircut

  • Make your videos familiar yet unexpected to grab audience attention. If they don't click, they won't watch, so focus on intriguing elements.

    • Transcript: Samir Too, if they don't click, they don't watch that. The goal is that your video should be familiar to the audience, but also unexpected.

  • Transplant formats from other niches into your own. It feels fresh to your audience and avoids direct comparison to competitors in your niche. Don't obsess over being 100% original; adaptation can be powerful.

    • Transcript: Paddy Galloway Even our format here of like, maybe it's a $1 versus $10 versus $100 golf club or something like that. You can apply formats in so many niches. And it's honestly, it sounds simple, but so much of our success through my consulting company, through the other things we do, it's just seeing what is working in all these different Niches and what our niche what are in our niche that we're currently focused on what is a format that other people are not doing yet that we could bring over and adapt and also i think there's Always like this feeling of like well we want to be original we want to try something new but there's a big difference between taking a format in your existing niche and doing it yourself Because then that competing channel might be like hey i did that first or one of your audience members is like that's not original if you take like if you're the astrophotography channel You take that over it feels fresh it feels new and

  • Paddy Galloway mentioned a method called 'be a magician,' inspired by a magician who said he doesn't need new tricks, just new audiences for existing ones.

    • Transcript: Colin There's this method that we talk about quite a bit, uh, called be a magician. And it's because one time we had a conversation with a magician who said to us, I don't have to come up with new tricks. I just have to show my tricks to audiences who haven't seen them before.

  • To find the right packaging, push your concept to its most exaggerated form. Then, dial it back to something you're comfortable with. Explore the extremes first.

    • Transcript: Colin It's a really interesting exercise to, uh, this is actually something Jimmy said to us the first time we ever went to Greenville. He told us with our packaging, he said, pull it to the most exaggerated version of what it is, and then pull it back to what you're comfortable with, but, but explore the most exaggerated Version of the concept. Uh, and, and I thought that was a really interesting mental framework and exercise.

  • Use ideation frameworks like superlatives (fastest, biggest, smallest) and 'versus' to capture attention. To be seen, learn to see by analyzing how others capture your attention on YouTube and noting the frameworks they use. Also, consider offering exclusive access to something unique.

    • Transcript: Colin There are some really interesting frameworks to start with when it comes to ideation. Like one is superlatives. So fastest, biggest, smallest. You see these a lot on YouTube. And I think superlatives are really easy visual words to latch onto. And I think think that's, that's important, right? The other is versus versus is a classic, like Ford and F-150 versus Rivian, right? Like immediately you peg two things against each other. And then we just talked about like the three step that, that we talk about quite a bit, the like $1, $10, $100, right? Those like three steps. So I think you start to, the most important thing, there's a Seth Godin quote that says, in order to be seen, you must learn how to see. And I think spending time on YouTube, just clocking what is the framework, like what are they using in this framework to capture my attention is, is the most important and just writing It down. Being like, oh, interesting world's smallest X. How many times do I see superlatives show up like that? Paddy Galloway Another one that I've been seeing a lot that we've had some success with over the years is like getting exclusive access or getting access to something that most people don't get access To.

  • Consider a YouTube video as a title, thumbnail, and list. This provides an interesting perspective on how to structure content.

    • Transcript: Colin What do you think about lists? Like six financial tips or six, you know, like what do you think about lists? Ali Abdaal is like a very forward man. Yeah. Ali, if you're listening, hopefully you like that. Samir I called you a list man, but he refers to himself as a forward thinking list man. Colin So he, I mean, he said to us, he was like a YouTube video is, is a title thumbnail on a list. And, uh, I thought that was a really interesting perspective.

  • Don't just create generic listicles. Make your listicle unique, especially if it has fewer than 10 items. Instead of 'seven money tips,' try 'seven underrated saving tips' or 'seven money tips the top 1% are using.' If your listicle is short, it needs a unique angle to feel less generic and more like a puzzle.

    • Transcript: Paddy Galloway Let's say in the finance niche and you made a video, which is like seven money tips, you know, to grow your wealth, it's kind of a bit generic and broad and probably lots of people covered It before. But if you say like seven underrated saving tips or seven money tips, the top one percent are using that you don't know so like yeah i think there's nothing wrong i think the actual formative List and listicles is really effective and it's very easy to consume as well but i think if it's a low number so like between like three things and like 10 or 12 things i want there to be a Really unique thing if it's a really big number sometimes that can be just like a bit more generic because you're just getting so much in one video. So you see these videos, which are like 40 pieces of life advice I learned before turning 40 or something. You see this like real quick fire, like life advice type videos. So, I mean, even, I always think about listicles as well. If your listicle is like under 10, I think you can start to see it as less of just a listicle, but more of like a puzzle.

  • Think of thumbnail branding as the color of the text or font. It could be the t-shirt color the guest is wearing. Control what you can in the thumbnail to drown out the noise.

    • Transcript: Paddy Galloway I always think of like thumbnail brand is more like you know could be color of text i've seen a lot of people like copy your sort of yellow color but could be color text could be font it could Be just like sometimes i think about even the t-shirt or color that the guest is wearing like it's difficult to control but maybe in the thumbnail that can control it but overall I think It's just about trying to drown out that noise

  • The 'creator brain' focuses on replicating successful content, while the 'creative brain' emphasizes uniqueness. Balancing these two perspectives is crucial, although they can sometimes conflict.

    • Transcript: Colin The creator brain is actually look at what's working and repeat what's working the creative is how can I be unique And sometimes those are at odds with each other,

  • Paddy Galloway recommends the '80% rule' for YouTube channels. Aim to interest at least 80% of your audience with each video. This helps diagnose channel problems.

    • Transcript: Paddy Galloway Building almost like a bingeable format so they watch one and they can watch another right so i like to think of this framework that I call the 80% rule, but it's not like the classic Pareto Principle 80% rule, which is like, we should aim to interest 80% plus of our audience with every upload. That sounds kind of basic when you hear it said, but it's a great way of diagnosing problems with the channel.

  • Use the 80/20 rule: Aim to interest at least 80% of your audience 80% of the time. This allows for experimentation in one out of every five videos and can lead to innovation. From a strategy perspective, always milk a successful format instead of undermilking it, because others will likely copy it. Don't let the view maximizer stop you from milking a format.

    • Transcript: Paddy Galloway The 80% strategy reel says you should try to aim 80% of your audience. But the second part of it is 80% of the time. So you try to aim to interest 80% plus overlap with your audience in every video. But you do that 80% of the time. So you get one in let's say every five videos that you can just try something different and go and break that rule. And I think that's where you kind of innovate. Cause if you just, there are channels that just focus down on like milking a certain format so much that then when that format dries up, they don't really have a bridge to cross to go to Another place. I will say from a strategy perspective, I'm always more in favor of milking something than under milking something. It's like, what if I milk this too much? It's like, well, what if you don't milk it too much and everyone else copies it and you've just wasted all these, you know, views. The view maxer is not going to tell you to stop.

  • Don't only rely on metrics. Start valuing anecdotal feedback by tracking who reached out after releasing a video, who engaged in your inbox, who DM'd you, and what episodes people discuss when you're at an event.

    • Transcript: Colin We also have started to value anecdotal feedback, which is really intangible, but like who reached out after we made that video, who was in our inbox, who DM'd us, who, when we're out At an event, what episodes are they talking about?

  • Don't just create vlogs; make them concept blogs. Instead of a simple '24 hours me' vlog, try a 'day in the life of an NFL player' or similar concept.

    • Transcript: Paddy Galloway I like the idea of like concept blogs. So not just a vlog, but like there's a concept behind what you're doing. So it's like, instead of just like, um, 24 hours, me, it's like day in the life of like an NFL player or something.

  • If you're tryin' to improve your titles, make it a daily habit to write 'em. Generate a high volume of titles to pull from different formats. Write 30 titles for each video; it shouldn't take too long. Alter previous titles, even if most aren't great. You'll learn what a bad idea looks like.

    • Transcript: Colin Whether you're a brand or you're a creator and you're trying to get better at this, like writing titles as a daily exercise is probably the most important thing you could do. Like it is just the whole thing. Thinking of titles, writing them, taking a title that you see on YouTube and reshaping it a hundred times, you know, or just like, and now there's so many great tools to help you do that Too. But just like getting a high volume of titles through your brain is so important because then you can pull from formats that you have. Right. Paddy Galloway I sometimes tell creators like, write 30 titles for your video. Yeah. Like Patty, that's overwhelming. It's too much. I'm like, is everyone just experiencing things different to me? Because 30 tiles, like we can write 30 tiles and like, we could do that together in like 10 minutes. Right. Not even like, it doesn't mean, I think people always think that when we say like, come up with a huge volume of titles or thumbnail concepts that they all have to be like, great. No, like it's about like putting things together, trying different words, seeing what looks interesting, studying other people, like what are they doing? Try to adapt that. So for a lot of the clients we work with, like we're sitting down and me and my team will write, yeah, 30, 40 titles for a video. And like, that doesn't take that long. Colin And five of them are slight alterations of a previous one, right? That's just like one word difference or something. So it's not, it's not like you're coming up with 30 brand new ideas in a row you're writing one and then altering that and then altering it and altering it and altering it and like you said Actually if 29 of them are awful that's actually totally fine because you'll also start to learn what a bad idea looks like right and like that that's also important.

  • Nast created easily repeatable formats on YouTube, like '10 things you can't live without,' similar to Architectural Digest's format or the '73 Questions' format.

    • Transcript: Colin Condé Nast has created some of the most easy to repeat formats on youtube 10 things you can't live without right or architectural digest yeah or uh the the 70 was a 73 question 72 or 73 73 Sounds it could be 71 weirder no no i think it's guys we look this up right now no no let's let everyone put it let's not look it up. Samir 73. Everyone put it up. I'm saying 72.

  • Galloway suggests immediately delivering on the promise made in the title within the intro, visually or verbally. Make viewers feel they've made the right choice and avoid making them feel foolish. Provide necessary context without overdoing it. Tease intriguing story elements and seamlessly transition into the first storyline.

    • Transcript: Paddy Galloway My intro formula is like immediately try to deliver on the promise in some sense. So like if you make a promise in your title film now, in your intro, can you deliver on that visually or verbally? Some way to just make like a nice frame I like to think about is like, just make your viewer feel like they made the right decision. Don't make them feel like an idiot. You said the same thing. Yeah. Make them feel like they they made the right decision. Um, and then it's like, you know, the necessary context, not over context. So some credits put too much context in that intro. So what's the necessary context? What are the intriguing, like parts of the story or parts of the, the video that you can kind of tease or highlight in that intro? And then how do we just kind of flow into the, the first storyline, the first action point like this big gap. Like I like being able to look at an intro and say, I don't really know where that intro starts and ends. It just flows into the content.

  • Use this framework to maximize video retention:

    1. Confirm the click by ensuring the video aligns with the thumbnail.

    2. Establish the video's context in the first seven seconds.

    3. Introduce a new hook by 30 seconds to hold the viewer's attention.

    4. Deliver an expectation of value that the viewer will get towards the end.

    • Transcript: Colin We have a bit of a different framework for that. Basically how we think about it is like the first thing is confirm the click. So you click in, you have to go, okay, that is the thumbnail that I clicked on. The first seven seconds is establishing the video and kind of laying the context and the foundation for it. And by 30 seconds, we want to introduce a new hook. So we want to introduce something that you didn't expect from the thumbnail that is going to make you stay until the end. Samir And deliver an expectation of value. Colin If you stay towards the end, you will get these loops closed.

  • Use multiple questions in the title, promising an answer to intrigue viewers. For example, for a video about the megalodon, pose questions like its extinction despite being a top predator, then promise to explore the reasons in the video.

    • Transcript: Paddy Galloway Like a former, I think is really successful as well and works really well is like multiple questions and then a promise of an answer. So it could be like, yeah, you could make, let's just think of an example. Like you're saying, a megalodon which is like a giant prehistoric shark so you might say like the megalodon was like the fiercest president predator in the oceans yeah it was like five Times the size of great white shark it killed everything it's on site and yet somehow it went extinct how how could this shark go extinct how could this thing happen and then you sort of The viewer like yeah how could that happen and then're like, is there a mysterious reason behind the disappearance of the Megalodon? And then suddenly you're like, okay, that's intriguing. And then it's like, in this video, we're going to dive into it.

April 10

🎧 Meta Tell-All, Elon's Daughter Speaks Out, Cybertruck Recall - Pivot Pod

  • When the US was perceived as the 'good guys,' other countries wanted to be allies and help them. However, now that the US is perceived as mean, other countries might plot against them or not help them, like ignoring an enriched uranium shipment to Iran.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway When you're big and strong and a good person, people want to be your friend. People want to be your ally. People respect you. People want to help you. When you're weak and small and when you're weak and kind, people might be nice to you and feel sorry for you, but it doesn't have the same implication. When you're big and strong and mean, people start plotting against you behind your back because you're seen as a threat. People start thinking, you know, I'm going to ignore those funds being funneled to terror cell groups in the U.S. I am going to I am not going to be as kind. I'm not going to help or protect American tourists when I see them under threat. I'm not inclined to do business with American companies. When you go from big and strong and trying to do the right thing to big and strong and just

April 9

🎧 Roberts Criticizes Trump, FTC Firings, and White House Installs Starlink - Pivot Pod

  • It's boring, but one of the biggest issues facing the economy is the concentration of power in a few companies across various sectors. This allows them to charge higher rents to both corporations and consumers. A robust FTC and DOJ are needed to combat this, but they're not effective enough. M&A activity, while seemingly capitalist, can stifle competition. Google's acquisition of Wiz, a fast-growing cloud security startup, is an example of taking out a significant competitor, impacting the market.

    • Transcript: Scott Galloway One of the biggest issues facing our economy is really boring. It's the boring stuff that moves the needle. And it's the fact that across everything from home renovations to chicken to things like fertilizer, much less digital media, there are a small handful of companies that control the Entire market. And the result is in concentrated industries, they can charge higher rents on corporations and on consumers. So if you want, I mean, it sounds really boring, but if you want inflation to come down over the medium and the long term, you want a really robust FTC and DOJ. And they're no longer that. They're basically there to say, okay. Jonathan Cantor, who I had on the podcast, was more optimistic. He said that a lot of people still at the FTC and the DOJ are not exactly, they're not just going to roll over. Yeah, especially the DOJ. We still haven't been able to effectively on the left communicate that M&A, while it feels like capitalism and it's more macho and get out of the way of companies, there are a surprise. We have seven companies basically driving the stock market right now. Kara Swisher Google bought the whiz for $32 billion, should people don't know. It's a security cloud company, cloud security startup. I think it's the biggest acquisition ever. It is. It's enormous. So it really is anti-competitive because it's one of the most fast-growing software companies in the world right now. So it's taking out, again, a really robust competitor, which is really something.

April 8

📰 Book Announcement, Moving (Back) to Asia, AI = More Work?! by

  • I believe that the future of publishing will be author-first, where authors will seek to build direct relationships with readers, offering things like bundles, signed books, and premium editions that readers want. Right now, publishing is built around the needs of random companies in New York and one giant one in Seattle9

April 7

📰 Inside Morning Brew’s Creator Strategy by

  • While older media companies like BuzzFeed and Bon Appétit have recently faced a creator exodus, newer companies like Morning Brew, Barstool, and NewPress are focused on evolving with the shifting creator landscape. Many are providing incentive structures and rev share based on content performance, and some are even handing over IP.

📰 The Mantra of This AI Age: Don’t Repeat Yourself by Every’s Dan Shipper

  • This shift in how we see the world aligns with what I've previously called the allocation economy. As AI takes over these repetitive tasks, our role changes from doing the work ourselves, to deciding what work needs to be done and how to best allocate our resources to do it. In the allocation economy, the key skill becomes knowing how to effectively leverage AI to handle these repetitive elements, freeing us up for more creative and strategic thinking.

📰 Tried AI? You Are Not ‘Most Americans’ by Every’s Alex Duffy

  • Sixty-six percent of U.S. adults have never tried ChatGPT, according to Pew Research. If you're reading this, congrats—you're an early adopter.

  • Five influential AI thinkers (including Slate Star Codex’s Scott Alexander) captured the minds of readers this week with AI 2027, dramatic predictions of the possible end of times brought upon us by AI (in the form of a blog post-as-website—an emerging medium).

April 6

🎥 Trixie Mattel Eats Her Last Meal

  • I just sometimes am amazed that they give us so much credit that they think we're like plotting and grooming. I'm like, we're not; we're not plotting the way you think we're plotting. I mean, we are plotting for things like being able to marry who we want or if I died, make sure my husband could, uh, make sure he can still be a parent to your children or we want these normal things. We're not like gunning to go jump split in, for in an elementary school.

📰 Is Your Writing Helping or Hurting? by

  • In a recent editorial meeting, we discussed the delicate task of informing authors, “Hey, I’m glad you’re telling this story, but you may be oversharing here.” Or similarly, “This feels more like you’re getting something off your chest than saying something helpful.”

  • “The problem arises when people write from the wound, not the scar

  • Admittedly, it feels good to write from the wound. To spill your guts onto the page. There’s certainly a time and place for cathartic writing, especially if it helps you process. However, like an open wound that’s left uncovered and untreated, impulsive words can turn toxic and cause harm—even when you’re trying to be honest or helpful. To write from the wound is to bleed on your readers. It’s raw and real, yes, but it’s also unsettling.

  • While wounds gush with unprocessed pain, *scars*, on the other hand, mark the spot where hope sprouted from the hurt. If you’ve fallen into the deep valley, it’s fitting to take readers there, to let them feel the darkness. Perhaps they're there now, and need a reminder they're not alone. But don't leave them there. Lead them back to the heights, where, glimmering faintly on the horizon, joy is spreading its light once more. Show them healing is possible, even if it's slow. Show them your scars.

April 3

📰 Are YouTube Shorts worth it? by

  • if your goal is building a business around your channel, then Shorts are not high on the priority list.

    • ~60%+ of Shorts viewers won’t convert to long form.

    • Shorts viewers are less likely to buy products long term.

    • They spend less time watching your stuff.

    • They have shorter attention spans.

    • They learn less than from watching long form content.

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