12 July 2021
This week's additions focus on mindset, finance, and founder stories, with new digests from Bill Gallagher, The Daily Stoic, and Silicon Valley Girl. Highlights include Guesting on 100 podcasts beats building your own audience first Memento mori resets perspective in any situation — wins or losses.
Showing 12 digests for 12 July 2021.
How to use podcast guesting to grow your B2B business
Bill Gallagher
July 18, 2021
PR & media
9
Processes & SOPs
6
Case studies
5
Guesting on 100 podcasts beats building your own audience first
Podcast guesting is a brand play, not a lead generation tactic
A bootstrapped agency reached 20 staff in one year by prioritising quality over volume
Resilience & grit
Podcast
Ten pieces of life-changing wisdom from the Stoics
The Daily Stoic
July 18, 2021
Resilience & grit
9
Productivity & habits
6
Identity & self-belief
5
Memento mori resets perspective in any situation — wins or losses.
Anger always makes things worse; the regret hangover proves it.
Fools keep putting off living — the Stoics say seize today.
Relationships & family
YouTube
Life with a newborn and toddler: postpartum, work, and baby gear
Silicon Valley Girl
July 17, 2021
Relationships & family
8
Physical health & longevity
7
Work-life balance
6
Waking every two hours by alarm caused hallucinations; demand feeding fixed it
Two osteopath visits outperformed every other postpartum recovery intervention
Most baby gear is only useful for three months — borrow, swap, don't buy
Broken link building tested: a real campaign with honest results
Ahrefs
July 14, 2021
74 emails, one link — and it came from brand familiarity, not the pitch
Most link building tactics fail because the reason to link is inherently weak
How to build a vetted prospect list from 2,800 URLs in under two hours
Pitching investors
YouTube
Funding your SaaS company: strategies, pitfalls, and investor psychology
Bill Gallagher
July 14, 2021
Pitching investors
9
Fundraising & VC
8
Treat fundraising as a sales process, not a revenue milestone race.
Valuation is driven by how much you raise, not an arbitrary number.
Overfunding before product-market fit leads to sloppy, costly mistakes.
How Sumo.com grew to $6M ARR using six unconventional growth hacks
Noah Kagan
July 14, 2021
Growth hacking
10
MVP & prototyping
6
Bootstrapping
5
Buying neglected WordPress plugins drove 20–30% of all signups
Free alternatives to paid tools accelerate growth when demand is already proven
Telling your audience the same thing repeatedly is not optional — it works
Founder interviews
Podcast
How Sara Blakely found the idea that became Spanx
Masters of Scale
July 13, 2021
Founder interviews
10
Goal setting
7
Customer discovery
6
A decade of deliberate searching preceded Spanx's accidental-looking origin moment.
Keeping an idea secret from loved ones shields it from well-meaning sabotage.
No fashion background, no investors, $5,000 — ignorance can be a competitive asset.
Identity & self-belief
YouTube
How a hidden self-belief is capping your business growth
Bill Gallagher
July 13, 2021
Your childhood beliefs about yourself silently constrain business growth.
Seeing a blind spot is often enough to dissolve its grip.
The fastest path to scaling is working on yourself, not the business.
Thinking Through Funding as a Bootstrapper
Startups For the Rest of Us
July 13, 2021
Bootstrapping
9
Fundraising & VC
8
Business models
5
Micro-rounds reduce personal financial risk without forcing a venture-scale exit.
Use capital to hire sales, customer success, or test expensive growth channels.
Bootstrap remains best if you lack product-market fit or want a part-time lifestyle.
Naval Ravikant: how to build wealth and happiness on your own terms
Founders
July 13, 2021
Business models
8
Identity & self-belief
8
Productivity & habits
6
Work that feels like play to you is impossible to compete with.
Permissionless leverage — code and media — is where new fortunes are built.
Happiness is a skill you choose and practise, not a circumstance.
Founder interviews
YouTube
How visual leadership helps businesses cut complexity and build alignment
Bill Gallagher
July 12, 2021
Founder interviews
9
Business models
6
Live drawing in strategy sessions makes complex ideas instantly memorable
Synthesis — not illustration — is the hard skill that drives real impact
Self-funded from $1,000; now 350 engagements a year across 27 countries
Deep work & focus
Podcast
How to Become a Deep Life Radical
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
July 12, 2021
Deep work & focus
9
Processes & SOPs
6
Structured communication between teams, not unfiltered collaboration, enables coordination at scale
Meaning emerges from action and sacrifice, not from authentic self-expression alone
Career coaching beats job-switching: master your current work rather than chasing your passion