26 October 2020
This week's additions focus on strategy, founder stories, and finance, with new digests from Noah Kagan, Joanna Wiebe, and Deep Questions with Cal Newport. Highlights include Owning your platform and pricing unlocks high-ticket course revenue. Frequent blogging drives 13x ROI — but only with enough volume to promote
Showing 12 digests for 26 October 2020.
How Tiago Forte Built a $5M/Year Online Course Business
Noah Kagan
October 31, 2020
Case studies
10
Iteration & feedback loops
7
Pricing strategy
6
Owning your platform and pricing unlocks high-ticket course revenue.
Higher prices drive completion, referrals, and compounding student outcomes.
A distinctive brand name opens doors generic category labels never will.
Content marketing
YouTube
How to write a BuzzFeed-style listicle in 10 minutes
Joanna Wiebe
October 30, 2020
Content marketing
9
Growth hacking
7
Frequent blogging drives 13x ROI — but only with enough volume to promote
One research session yields two or more publishable listicles
Speed is the strategy: 10 minutes per post, publish and move on
Productivity & habits
Podcast
Habit tune-up: notebooks, quarterly planning, focus, and burnout
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
October 29, 2020
Productivity & habits
9
Deep work & focus
8
Resilience & grit
7
Shallow work expands to fill time — constraining it deliberately frees depth
Burnout needs two fixes: less difficulty and more intrinsic motivation
Productive meditation trains focus better than mindfulness for work distractions
Gather closes first enterprise deal and relaunches services arm
Startups For the Rest of Us
October 29, 2020
Pricing strategy
9
B2B sales
8
Niche selection
7
A year-long sales cycle closes — customer-funded features, no margin lost.
Going upmarket means fewer deals but 3–5x the price per customer.
Relaunch a services arm with project pricing to survive the cash crunch.
How Frederick Smith built FedEx through near-constant financial collapse
Founders
October 29, 2020
Origin stories
10
Bootstrapping
6
Pivoting
5
FedEx launched with six packages — one was dirty laundry
Fred had to build a national network before taking a single customer order
Four hours of daily reading drove every major FedEx innovation
Founder interviews
Podcast
Twitter's hidden story: revenue, Instagram, and the road not taken
Acquired
October 28, 2020
Founder interviews
10
Competitive analysis
7
Fundraising & VC
5
Twitter invented the in-feed ad format now used by every social platform
A missed Instagram acquisition changed the competitive landscape permanently
Syndication was Twitter's untapped structural advantage Facebook couldn't replicate
Cameron Herold: Run Smart Meetings That Actually Scale Your Business
Bill Gallagher
October 28, 2020
Processes & SOPs
9
Management
8
Business operating systems
6
Bad meetings are a training failure, not an inevitable corporate tax
No agenda, no attendance — every invite needs purpose, outcomes, and timed items
Label each agenda item: info share, creative discussion, or consensus decision
Community building
Podcast
How online communities are built, shaped, and protected from day one
Masters of Scale
October 27, 2020
Community building
9
Case studies
6
Your first users set norms that propagate to millions automatically.
Not deciding who you're for hands control to your worst users.
Etsy's sellers were collaborating, not competing — the signal that mattered.
Work-life balance
Podcast
How valuing time over money leads to a happier, less stressed life
Beyond the To-Do List - Productivity for Work and Life
October 27, 2020
Work-life balance
9
Mental health & wellbeing
7
Outsourcing & delegation
6
Outsourcing one disliked task monthly equals a $12,000 happiness raise
Shifting focus to time over money boosts happiness without changing behaviour
Major life decisions give a short happiness boost; daily micro-habits sustain it
How a million-dollar agency founder quit consulting to build a SaaS
Startups For the Rest of Us
October 27, 2020
Case studies
9
Business models
7
Pricing strategy
6
Agency cash flow makes it nearly impossible to prioritise a side SaaS
Letting go of the whole team was the only way to go all-in
Granular pricing increments eliminated upgrade friction and accelerated growth
How Airbnb got its first 600 customers: eight lessons for founders
Noah Kagan
October 26, 2020
Origin stories
9
PR & media
7
Pivoting
6
First 600 customers came from emailing small blogs, not big press.
Selling $40 cereal boxes kept the company alive and won Y Combinator.
Two failed launches taught them to pivot from conferences to vacation rentals.
Identity & self-belief
Podcast
How David Epstein built a career by learning across disciplines
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
October 26, 2020
Identity & self-belief
9
Deep work & focus
8
Long-term planning
6
Why Gladwell's 10,000-hour rule obscures more than it reveals
Taking a skill somewhere it's rare makes you extraordinary overnight
A monthly five-question journal that stops career autopilot