21 February 2022
This week's additions focus on strategy, founder stories, and finance, with new digests from TK Kader, Dr. Grace Lee, and EOS Worldwide. Highlights include Why your ICP — not your instincts — should choose PLG vs sales-led Self-doubt shrinks when you know yourself beyond job titles.
Showing 21 digests for 21 February 2022.
How Aquifer Motion chose sales-led over PLG and grew 100x per quarter
TK Kader
February 27, 2022
B2B sales
8
Business models
8
Niche selection
6
Why your ICP — not your instincts — should choose PLG vs sales-led
Hire salespeople only after you've closed deals yourself
Enterprise sales gives richer customer data than product-led ever can
Prospecting & outreach
YouTube
Five principles for effective self-promotion without feeling salesy
Dr. Grace Lee
February 26, 2022
Prospecting & outreach
9
Deep work & focus
7
Retention & loyalty
7
Self-doubt shrinks when you know yourself beyond job titles.
Believing promotion is arrogant creates a block that kills results.
Frame self-promotion around the audience's goals, not your credentials.
Business operating systems
YouTube
What life looks like as an EOS implementer
EOS Worldwide
February 25, 2022
Business operating systems
8
Work-life balance
6
Hard session days balanced by real freedom the rest of the quarter
Primary motivation must be helping people, not income
EOS life enables personal pursuits — horses, flying, farm living
Business operating systems
YouTube
EOS business operating system drives rapid growth for accounting firm
EOS Worldwide
February 25, 2022
Business operating systems
9
Case studies
7
Overwhelmed leaders scaled from 50 to 300 clients with EOS.
A basement business became a global company in years.
EOS removes growth barriers without adding founder chaos.
Business operating systems
YouTube
How an EOS implementer helped a founder find her starting point
EOS Worldwide
February 25, 2022
Business operating systems
9
Case studies
7
You don't need a plan — just an implementer and a start.
EOS converts tribal knowledge into documented processes everyone follows.
A focused day lays foundations; quarterlies drive ongoing growth.
Automation & tools
YouTube
Using ClickUp to manage consulting clients and build sellable systems
Layla at ProcessDriven
February 25, 2022
Automation & tools
9
Processes & SOPs
8
Business models
6
Map certification requirements directly onto ClickUp's hierarchy — no translation needed
Complex structure replaces automations: build it right, run it simply
Your client system becomes a sellable product for others in your niche
Founder interviews
Podcast
Betterment CEO Sarah Levy on crypto, first principles, and scaling fintech
Masters of Scale
February 24, 2022
Founder interviews
10
Business models
7
Pricing strategy
6
Why Betterment finally bought a crypto platform — and how diversification decides it
Passive investing paired with shareholder activism: no longer a contradiction
From product-led to brand-led: what changes when a founder hands over the keys
Productivity & habits
Podcast
TikTok, information overload, and deliberate practice in sales
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
February 24, 2022
Productivity & habits
8
Prospecting & outreach
5
TikTok signals the end of mandatory social media usage for everyone
A three-bucket system prevents information overload without willpower
Impressiveness in competitive admissions comes from depth, not activity count
Hiring & recruitment
YouTube
How to choose and use recruiting assessments in HR
HR Party of One
February 24, 2022
Hiring & recruitment
9
Compliance & regulation
6
Screening filters quantity; assessment judges quality — don't conflate them.
Myers-Briggs should never be used for hiring decisions.
Every assessment must prove job-related necessity or it creates legal exposure.
Link building for affiliate sites without paid links
Ahrefs
February 23, 2022
SEO
10
Content marketing
6
Links to money pages are hard — target linkable content and use internal links instead.
Some topics naturally attract links from Google traffic; you can identify and target them.
Data studies and HARO let you earn high-authority links without cold outreach at scale.
The New York Times: How a 170-year-old newspaper reinvented itself digitally
Business Breakdowns
February 23, 2022
Case studies
9
Business models
8
Unit economics
6
How the Times bet subscriptions over ads — and won.
Print revenue peaked in 2000; digital rebuilt it from scratch.
Perceived political bias is now the biggest growth constraint.
How to get people to listen to your ideas: the ABC framework
Dr. Grace Lee
February 23, 2022
Attention is earned by leading with listener benefits, not your idea
Active listening reveals the values that make your pitch land
No idea yet? Build on someone else's to enter the conversation
How PayPal was built: lessons from Musk, Thiel, and Levchin
Founders
February 23, 2022
Case studies
10
Hiring & recruitment
8
Pivoting
7
PayPal survived four years of near-death by moving faster than their crises.
Inexperience was a feature: bankers would never have invented real-time fraud ML.
Raising $100M just before the dot-com crash eliminated every rival payment startup.
Identity & self-belief
Podcast
Arthur Brooks on happiness, professional decline, and the four true investments
The Daily Stoic
February 23, 2022
Identity & self-belief
8
Relationships & family
8
Work-life balance
7
Satisfaction equals haves divided by wants — managing wants is the only lever.
Money, power, prestige, and pleasure are false idols that compound dissatisfaction.
Success addiction is socially rewarded but structurally identical to any other addiction.
Why investors cannot fix your company
Y Combinator
February 23, 2022
Fundraising & VC
8
Product-market fit
6
Identity & self-belief
5
Every investor type gives advice shaped by their own background, not yours.
Pre-PMF failure is usually zero customers, not inability to raise a Series A.
Investors with no financial stake give the most honest, useful feedback.