30 November 2020
This week's additions focus on leadership, marketing, and operations, with new digests from Joanna Wiebe, Masters of Scale, and Noah Kagan. Highlights include Undocumented results get forgotten — clients reassign you to blog posts Lonely workers are less productive and more likely to quit
Showing 13 digests for 30 November 2020.
Metrics freelance copywriters must track to prove client results
Joanna Wiebe
December 4, 2020
Public speaking
9
Closing techniques
7
Undocumented results get forgotten — clients reassign you to blog posts
Nine funnel metrics cover every stage from CAC to churn
Ask for year-over-year and month-over-month baselines on day one
Loneliness at work: causes, costs, and what leaders can do
Masters of Scale
December 3, 2020
Culture building
9
Mental health & wellbeing
7
Relationships & family
5
Lonely workers are less productive and more likely to quit
Open-plan offices make employees feel more isolated than cubicles
Valuing care explicitly — meals, rewards, leave — drives real ROI
What Apple's product ads teach about effective marketing
Noah Kagan
December 3, 2020
Branding
9
Copywriting
7
Content marketing
6
Show the result, not the feature — lead with aspiration
Each ad targets one emotion, one customer, one contrast
Micro-influencers and emerging creators replicate Apple-level impact cheaply
Productivity & habits
Podcast
Cal Newport on overload, PhD guilt, retirement, and deep procrastination
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
December 3, 2020
Productivity & habits
9
Deep work & focus
9
Resilience & grit
6
Treat deep work and shallow maintenance as two separate part-time jobs.
PhD students burn out by manufacturing busyness to mask a light task load.
Deep procrastination requires fixing both overload and extrinsic motivation simultaneously.
Outsourcing & delegation
YouTube
How to build and outsource an SEO team using a three-step framework
Ahrefs
December 2, 2020
Outsourcing & delegation
9
Processes & SOPs
8
SEO
7
SOPs must come before hiring — document every step in detail first.
Hire specialists per task, not one freelancer for all of SEO.
Kanban boards map SOP steps to columns, keeping remote teams aligned.
How a daily manifesto reading drives company-wide alignment
Bill Gallagher
December 2, 2020
Culture building
8
Vision & mission
7
Processes & SOPs
5
A 30-second daily manifesto reading aligns hundreds of employees fast.
Four elements to include: purpose, core values, brand promises, BHAG.
Random reflections after the reading turn passive listening into engagement.
Building a family business that survives generational transition
Bill Gallagher
December 2, 2020
Case studies
10
Management
7
Equity & cap tables
6
Separate family, employee, and owner roles to fix collapsed compensation.
Send successors outside the business before handing over the keys.
An external coach must raise the hard valuation and exit conversations.
Founder interviews
Podcast
How Kind's Daniel Lubetzky built bridges to scale a food brand
Masters of Scale
December 1, 2020
Founder interviews
9
Pivoting
6
Scaling infrastructure
5
Grit without strategy wastes a decade — wit matters as much as persistence.
One bad product flavour can permanently destroy customer trust in physical goods.
Confronting the FDA head-on reversed a ruling and built a lasting partnership.
Using a daily manifesto to align teams around company values
Bill Gallagher
December 1, 2020
Culture building
9
Vision & mission
7
A 30-second daily read can align hundreds of people fast
Four manifesto elements: purpose, values, brand promises, BHAG
Random reflection prompts — not lectures — build shared context
How MrBeast builds a $100M YouTube business
Noah Kagan
December 1, 2020
Growth hacking
8
Unit economics
7
Content marketing
6
74% of MrBeast's revenue comes from merch, not ads.
Limited-edition drops with personal touches drive 20% conversion rates.
Committing to 100 videos is the compounding bet that pays off.
How a bootstrapped invoicing app taught me to build without a model
Startups For the Rest of Us
December 1, 2020
Case studies
9
Bootstrapping
7
SEO
5
How one $11,000 bet on a broken invoicing app became a masterclass in bootstrapping
Why pricing power and niches matter more than capital when revenue already exists
The founder era with no playbook: when funding seemed inevitable even for modest goals
Deep work & focus
Podcast
Organizing massive projects, taming IM, and the deep life canon
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
November 30, 2020
Deep work & focus
9
Productivity & habits
8
Processes & SOPs
6
Pandemic disruption creates the rare silence needed for genuine life reset
Parallel IM conversation tracks are untenable — scheduled check-ins fix this
Twitter rewires your subjective experience of the world toward constant warfare
Resilience & grit
Podcast
Theodore Roosevelt: how a sickly, grief-stricken young man forged an extraordinary life
Founders
November 30, 2020
Resilience & grit
9
Identity & self-belief
7
Repeated catastrophic loss drove Roosevelt to ferocious action, not retreat.
His father's deathbed command — 'make your body' — shaped everything he became.
Acting fearless in the face of real danger is how courage actually gets built.