1 June 2020
This week's additions focus on mindset, strategy, and product, with new digests from Joanna Wiebe, Masters of Scale, and Noah Kagan. Highlights include Over-niching collapses your market and kills referral-driven growth. Record traffic meant nothing when all your advertisers are physical businesses
Showing 10 digests for 1 June 2020.
How to Choose a Freelance Copywriting Niche Without Going Too Narrow
Joanna Wiebe
June 7, 2020
Niche selection
9
Prospecting & outreach
6
Over-niching collapses your market and kills referral-driven growth.
Pick one broad category — copy type or client type, not both.
Market size and demand frequency should drive the decision, not gut feel.
Cash flow management
Podcast
BuzzFeed's Jonah Peretti on surviving record audience growth with collapsing ad revenue
Masters of Scale
June 6, 2020
Cash flow management
9
Pivoting
8
Business models
7
Record traffic meant nothing when all your advertisers are physical businesses
Why founder-led companies have a structural edge in a crisis
Big tech's free-content strategy is now their biggest misinformation liability
How to start a side business while keeping your day job
Noah Kagan
June 5, 2020
Business models
7
Identity & self-belief
6
Customer discovery
5
Stay employed until your side project earns real money first.
Expect zero meaningful profit for at least one year.
Ask what people with money spend time or money on — then do that.
24 business ideas over 20 years: lessons from building AppSumo
Noah Kagan
June 4, 2020
Case studies
10
Pivoting
6
Resilience & grit
5
20 years of mostly failures before AppSumo made real money
Your first dollar earned creates momentum nothing else can
Consistency and people matter more than any single idea
Founder interviews
Podcast
How I Got Rich: Lessons from a Self-Made Magazine Magnate
Founders
June 4, 2020
Founder interviews
9
Bootstrapping
7
Identity & self-belief
6
Built a media empire from nothing by trusting instinct over conventional wisdom.
Wealth demands ownership, ruthless cost control, and relentless execution—but rarely brings happiness.
Young people are richer than millionaires because they have time; question if the chase is worth it.
Resilience & grit
Podcast
Navigate crises by building networks and seizing emerging opportunities
Masters of Scale
June 3, 2020
Resilience & grit
8
Identity & self-belief
6
In chaos, established patterns break—exploit the openings for emerging opportunities.
Build networks early; their compounding value over decades determines career trajectory.
Seek roles at industry hubs where smart people and momentum concentrate.
How keyword difficulty scores work and when to trust them
Ahrefs
June 3, 2020
SEO
9
Product-market fit
5
Ahrefs KD measures link quantity only — not brand, intent, or quality
The same KD score means different things depending on your site's authority
High-KD keywords reveal link prospects, not just hard-to-rank queries
How asking for help unlocks growth when self-reliance becomes the bottleneck
Bill Gallagher
June 3, 2020
Delegation
9
Resilience & grit
8
Hiring & recruitment
6
Self-reliance that saved you as a child caps your company's growth
Childhood patterns — not bad strategy — are usually what blocks founders
Tools only work once the leader does the inner work first
Getting your first 1,000 customers: a stage-by-stage playbook
Noah Kagan
June 1, 2020
Growth hacking
10
Influencer & partnerships
6
Product-market fit
5
Four distinct growth stages each demand a completely different marketing approach.
Giveaways and daily emails outperformed social posts and gamification every time.
Marketing cannot fix a bad product — diagnose the real problem first.
Deep work & focus
Podcast
Cal Newport on concentration training, deep work culture, and choosing what to focus on
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
June 1, 2020
Deep work & focus
10
Processes & SOPs
6
Productivity & habits
5
Concentration is trainable via boredom tolerance, reading, and timed sprints
Ad hoc email workflows structurally prevent deep work — fixing culture requires fixing workflow
Choosing what to focus on deeply requires reflection, experimentation, and high information intake