17 June 2019
This week's additions focus on leadership, mindset, and strategy, with new digests from Founders, Masters of Scale, and StoryBrand With Donald Miller. Highlights include Why $250 million and eight years produced zero net profit Follow passion, but validate it against real market opportunities and competition.
Showing 13 digests for 17 June 2019.
Steve Jobs at NeXT: eight years of strategic failure and hard lessons
Founders
June 23, 2019
Post-mortems
9
Market research
8
Management
6
Why $250 million and eight years produced zero net profit
Too much money at founding kills urgency and financial discipline
The right pivot — hardware to software — came from everyone but Jobs
10 Rules for Big Career Changes
Masters of Scale
June 21, 2019
Goal setting
9
Resilience & grit
7
Work-life balance
6
Follow passion, but validate it against real market opportunities and competition.
Think in tours of duty, not lifelong careers—sideways moves and pivots are the norm.
Build grit by learning from failure and adjusting strategy, not by repeating what doesn't work.
Teach your team to decide well by always explaining why
StoryBrand With Donald Miller
June 20, 2019
Bad team decisions are a leadership failure, not a talent problem.
Explaining your reasoning 8–10 times duplicates your judgment across the team.
Even gut-instinct leaders gain clarity by articulating their own "why".
Resilience & grit
YouTube
How to handle being fired without damaging your career
StoryBrand With Donald Miller
June 20, 2019
Resilience & grit
8
Communication
6
Lashing out forces your employer to justify firing you more strongly
A positive soundbite repeated consistently protects your reputation long-term
Keeping quiet after one exit secured an executive a multi-million dollar CEO role
Resilience & grit
YouTube
How to stop emotions derailing your career and decisions
StoryBrand With Donald Miller
June 20, 2019
Resilience & grit
8
Communication
6
No clear goal is the real reason emotions hijack you.
You can lose every battle and still win the war.
Write down your war — use it as a daily filter.
How Zoom went from ignored underdog to the most successful IPO of 2019
Acquired
June 19, 2019
Origin stories
10
Product-market fit
8
Business models
6
Why Zoom's founder rejected visa nine times before building a $26B company
End users becoming buyers made happiness the only defensible enterprise moat
Profitable at IPO with 9-month payback — while competitors burned cash
Prospecting & outreach
YouTube
How to generate referrals without asking, tracking, or gimmicks
Bill Gallagher
June 19, 2019
Prospecting & outreach
9
Referral programs
8
Referrals close faster because trust arrives before the first call.
Asking for referrals fails — relationship-tending and language work instead.
Referrers act from their own need to help, not your need for business.
Make School: income share agreements and the future of higher education
Y Combinator
June 19, 2019
Business models
9
Founder interviews
7
Bootstrapping
5
School only gets paid if graduates get jobs — every decision follows
Elite education is a luxury good; 75% of Stanford students are top-income families
The autodidact myth hides survivorship bias — most great engineers need structure
Physical & cognitive performance
Podcast
How metabolism adaptation explains fitness plateaus and how to break them
Beyond the To-Do List - Productivity for Work and Life
June 18, 2019
Physical & cognitive performance
8
Physical health & longevity
5
Your metabolism adapts to whatever you do — that's why progress stalls.
Contrast, not restriction, is the lever that forces the body to change.
Coaching style matched to personality type shifts outcomes significantly.
How to Recover From Big Mistakes at Work
StoryBrand With Donald Miller
June 18, 2019
Communication
8
Conflict resolution
7
Mistakes are inevitable — recovery speed and boldness define you.
Overdoing the apology signals respect louder than the slight did.
Silence earns a blacklist; pursuit earns forgiveness every time.
How wealthy people think about money
StoryBrand With Donald Miller
June 18, 2019
Pricing strategy
9
Goal setting
6
Wealthy people work to buy assets, not to spend income
Invest 10% of earnings in things that pay you passively
Reinvesting passive returns accelerates wealth compounding dramatically
Product-market fit
YouTube
Why your business isn't growing: create a clear first step
StoryBrand With Donald Miller
June 18, 2019
Product-market fit
9
Business models
8
B2B sales
6
A missing entry point is silently killing your business growth
One simple first step can double revenue in 24 months
Complexity without a clear on-ramp locks your front door
How to build a brand people love by making them feel good
StoryBrand With Donald Miller
June 18, 2019
Branding
8
Customer experience
7
Brand love comes from making customers feel good about their life.
Chick-fil-A turns cleanliness and cheerfulness into competitive advantage.
Fix what your industry makes people hate — that is your opening.