17 May 2021
This week's additions focus on founder stories, operations, and strategy, with new digests from Bill Gallagher, Founders, and Silicon Valley Girl. Highlights include A fully subcontracted team lets you match expertise to each client Dyslexia forced delegation — and delegation built a $2 billion empire.
Showing 15 digests for 17 May 2021.
Founder interviews
YouTube
Building a content marketing agency on relationships and process
Bill Gallagher
May 23, 2021
Founder interviews
9
Processes & SOPs
6
Content marketing
5
A fully subcontracted team lets you match expertise to each client
Raising retainer rates becomes easy once you set an internal target
Undocumented processes are unfair to the team trying to replicate your work
Founder interviews
Podcast
Paul Orfalea: How a Dyslexic Dropout Built Kinko's into $2 Billion
Founders
May 23, 2021
Founder interviews
10
Delegation
7
Customer experience
6
Dyslexia forced delegation — and delegation built a $2 billion empire.
Customers weren't buying copies; they were buying relief from anxiety.
Selling at peak success left partners depressed and identity-less.
How to start delegating when you're overwhelmed and can't do it all
Silicon Valley Girl
May 22, 2021
Delegation
8
Productivity & habits
7
Outsourcing & delegation
6
Knowing your superpower makes everything else eligible to delegate
Cultural guilt about cooking or cleaning is not a reason to keep a task
A generalist first hire beats a specialist for getting started fast
LinkedIn Ads First Run: What Worked, What Flopped
Joanna Wiebe
May 22, 2021
Leads were 5x cheaper than LinkedIn's own platform average.
Simple 'guessing' ad beat wordy value-list variant by 4x.
Retargeting converted 10x cheaper than Facebook on day six.
Eight passive income streams that generate $40k per week
Noah Kagan
May 21, 2021
Unit economics
8
Bootstrapping
6
Passive income never replaces active work — it scales wealth you already built.
Return on time beats ROI: one-time effort compounding forever is the real goal.
Software and index funds outperform Airbnb and affiliate blogs for consistent yield.
Content marketing
YouTube
How MrBeast spends $60 million a year on YouTube
Noah Kagan
May 20, 2021
Content marketing
9
Business models
7
Outsourcing & delegation
5
Reinvesting every dollar into bigger videos creates an unstoppable flywheel
Cheap North Carolina HQ frees $14M+/year for actual content
Giveaway taxes alone cost an estimated $6.7M per year
Choosing jobs, time blocking, and productivity tools: Cal Newport Q&A
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
May 20, 2021
Time management
8
Long-term planning
6
Automation eliminates context-switching; enhancement tools only give 10–20% gains.
Passion is cultivated over time — stop searching for your calling.
Plan next day at shutdown; use rough blocks with built-in buffers.
Complete SEO Course for Beginners: Rank #1 in Google
Ahrefs
May 19, 2021
Niche selection
7
Motivation
6
Traffic potential beats search volume as the reliable keyword targeting metric.
Ranking is predictable when intent, content depth, and backlinks align.
Personalised outreach with a clear value exchange earns the best links.
Building multiple self-funded businesses without investors
Bill Gallagher
May 19, 2021
Case studies
10
Bootstrapping
8
Outsourcing & delegation
6
Profits from each business fund the next — no investors ever
Keep your day job longer than feels comfortable to stay solvent
Hire for transferable skills, not industry experience
Business operating systems
Podcast
Obama on keeping mission constant while tactics evolve at scale
Masters of Scale
May 18, 2021
Business operating systems
9
Management
8
Case study
7
Transitioning from campaign to presidency is a startup reverse-takeover of General Motors.
The ACA was designed as a minimum viable product — a starter home, built to iterate.
Healthcare.gov failed due to procurement rules, not incompetence — and fixed it fast.
Customer experience
YouTube
Using Net Promoter System to bring focus and calm to CEO decision-making
Bill Gallagher
May 18, 2021
Customer experience
8
Processes & SOPs
7
Long-term planning
5
NPS surveys on every invoice replace reactive firefighting with a clear signal
Separating systemic detractors from bad-fit customers reveals where to act
CEOs who track NPS can delegate daily chaos and focus on strategy
Three years of grinding to six figures in ARR with CloudForecast
Startups For the Rest of Us
May 18, 2021
Case studies
9
Bootstrapping
7
Product-market fit
5
Bootstrapped founders rejected VC offers to stay independent and profitable.
Iterated product ruthlessly while building organic search and referral channels.
Turned Tiny Seed rejections into actionable feedback that shaped execution strategy.
Founder interviews
YouTube
How Mint.com reached one million users in six months
Noah Kagan
May 17, 2021
Founder interviews
10
AI strategy & adoption
9
Pivoting
8
Build your audience and email list before the product exists
Target people already doing the behaviour — don't try to change it
Sponsor niche creators early for the highest ROI you'll ever find
Deep work & focus
Podcast
Managing email overload, deep work rituals, and the deep life
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
May 17, 2021
Deep work & focus
9
Processes & SOPs
8
Work-life balance
6
Fix the underlying workflow process, not just the email behaviour.
Assistants amplify structure — they can't replace it.
Book sales hinge on the book's quality, not platform size.
Jeff Bezos: building Amazon from bookstore to global empire
Founders
May 17, 2021
Origin stories
9
Business models
8
Processes & SOPs
6
The same playbook that sold books built AWS, Alexa, and a $20B ads business
Bezos only pours money on winners — and never lets mature businesses coast
Self-service, high margin, revenue faster than headcount: his business selection filter