9 May 2022
This week's additions focus on mindset, founder stories, and strategy, with new digests from Deep Questions with Cal Newport, TK Kader, and The Daily Stoic. Highlights include Producing valuable work and working efficiently are separate — optimising the wrong one destroys value. Calling yourself CEO too early is a distraction, not a signal of leadership.
Showing 16 digests for 9 May 2022.
Deep work & focus
Podcast
Deep work, meaning gaps, and managing attention in modern knowledge work
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
May 15, 2022
Deep work & focus
9
Processes & SOPs
6
Resilience & grit
5
Producing valuable work and working efficiently are separate — optimising the wrong one destroys value.
Millennial burnout is best explained by a meaning gap, not capitalism or Instagram hustle.
Activity selection — what enters your system at all — is the ignored lever that drives everything else.
When to call yourself CEO: a three-stage framework for founders
TK Kader
May 15, 2022
Management
8
Identity & self-belief
6
Calling yourself CEO too early is a distraction, not a signal of leadership.
Your sacred cow — the function you never hire for — will hold the company back.
CEO's job is recruiting people better than you, not being the best yourself.
Resilience & grit
Podcast
Eight lessons from Epictetus on living a Stoic life
The Daily Stoic
May 15, 2022
Resilience & grit
9
Identity & self-belief
6
Most suffering comes from focusing on what you cannot control.
Gut instinct is only trustworthy after real training and study.
Every situation has two handles — choose the one that makes you stronger.
Identity & self-belief
YouTube
Building executive confidence through your highest values
Dr. Grace Lee
May 14, 2022
Identity & self-belief
9
Motivation
8
Communication
6
You are already outgoing — just not where you think.
Aligning work with your true values builds confidence automatically.
Emotional volatility, not personality, causes mind-blanks in meetings.
Resilience & grit
Podcast
AJ Jacobs on Puzzles, Curiosity, and the Meaning of Life
The Daily Stoic
May 14, 2022
Resilience & grit
8
Motivation
7
Mental health & wellbeing
5
The puzzle mindset builds epistemic humility and probabilistic thinking.
A mechanical puzzle needing decillion moves reframes mortality and legacy.
Life asks us the question — our actions are the answer.
Business operating systems
Podcast
Mark Leonard's Constellation Software: lessons from 27 years of shareholder letters
Founders
May 13, 2022
Business operating systems
10
Business models
8
Case studies
7
$25M compounded to $40B by owning small software businesses forever.
Holding one person accountable for initiatives slashed wasteful R&D spending.
Hundreds of autonomous units create an experiment machine competitors cannot copy.
Building a process improvement mindset for SOPs and teams
Layla at ProcessDriven
May 13, 2022
Processes & SOPs
9
Delegation
6
Blindly following flawed SOPs buries confusion under layers of guesses
Document your assumptions in the SOP instead of keeping fixes in your head
Each handoff should leave the process slightly clearer than you found it
Grow by Acquisition: Fund, Buy, Consolidate, and Exit
KeyPersonOfInfluence
May 12, 2022
Business models
9
Fundraising & VC
8
Founder interviews
6
Female founders get under 1% of UK VC despite 5% of pitches.
Buy at 3.5x EBITDA, integrate at 7x — instant multiple arbitrage.
Good governance alone can double your exit valuation.
Founder interviews
YouTube
Grow your business through acquisition: David Horne on funding and diversity
KeyPersonOfInfluence
May 12, 2022
Founder interviews
9
Fundraising & VC
7
Acquire businesses to multiply value, not just sell more
Four-part model: fund, acquire, consolidate, exit
Most funding flows to white males — Horne wants that changed
Bill Ford: how a company lifer drives transformation from within
Masters of Scale
May 10, 2022
Culture building
9
Founder interviews
7
Vision & mission
6
An insider can refound a company — outsiders aren't required
Every green initiative needs a business case to silence naysayers
Ground-level contacts give leaders the honest truth hierarchy hides
SaaS metrics explained from first principles with an 11-year-old
Startups For the Rest of Us
May 10, 2022
Unit economics
9
Business models
5
SaaS jargon hides how simple the underlying concepts actually are
10% monthly churn wipes out 90% of customers within a year
CAC by channel reveals where growth spend is efficient or wasted
Conversion rate optimisation
YouTube
Five reasons your online business has stopped growing
Sunny Lenarduzzi
May 10, 2022
Conversion rate optimisation
9
Copywriting
8
Niche selection
7
One focused offer beats multiple offers every time for scalable growth
You need 20 qualified leads per month, not 25,000 followers
Low pricing attracts the wrong clients and keeps the business stuck
Conversion rate optimisation
YouTube
Critiquing startup landing pages: design lessons from Instacart's first designer
Y Combinator
May 10, 2022
Conversion rate optimisation
9
Copywriting
8
SEO
5
Use your users' exact words in headlines, not your internal vision.
One call to action above the fold always beats a cluttered page.
A 15-second customer video builds more trust than paragraphs of text.
How Rob Walling grew a struggling SaaS from $1,500 to $30k/month
Rob Walling
May 9, 2022
Case studies
10
Retention & loyalty
9
Bootstrapping
8
Fix retention before scaling — churn compounds faster than growth.
Tracking code install rate jumped from 20% to 75% with concierge onboarding.
HitTail profits funded Drip, which sold for a life-changing sum in 2016.
Why moving away from home was the best career decision
Dan Martell
May 9, 2022
Origin stories
10
Resilience & grit
8
Quitting a good job and moving west with no plan built his empire
Asking for help when broke is a strength, not a weakness
Adventure compounds — each move brings people and opportunities money can't buy