July 2025
Books, articles, podcasts, and thoughts throughout the month
Books 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:
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.
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:
Identify features with low usage OR high support costs
Remove them without announcement
Monitor complaints for 14 days
Analyze who complains (revenue value, customer tenure, LTV)
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.
"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.”
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.
Becky, that way you take notes and pick up nuggets is amazing. Underrated superpower