20 March 2023
This week's additions focus on mindset, strategy, and marketing, with new digests from Rob Walling, TK Kader, and Lenny's Podcast Product Career Growth. Highlights include Pivoting to marketing automation saved a flatlining, high-churn SaaS Fix the earliest broken flywheel stage before investing in later ones
Showing 33 digests for 20 March 2023.
How Rob Walling built and sold Drip without venture capital
Rob Walling
March 26, 2023
Case studies
10
Bootstrapping
8
Product-market fit
6
Pivoting to marketing automation saved a flatlining, high-churn SaaS
Out-executing bloated enterprise incumbents on UX beats out-funding them
The 13-month acquisition process cost more in mental health than money
Building a B2B SaaS go-to-market strategy using the flywheel model
TK Kader
March 26, 2023
Business models
9
Growth hacking
7
Product-market fit
5
Fix the earliest broken flywheel stage before investing in later ones
High churn often means wrong customers at the top, not a retention failure
ICP, manifesto, and Broadway show are the three levers that drive the flywheel
How Gojek built Southeast Asia's largest startup from scratch
Lenny's Podcast Product Career Growth
March 26, 2023
Case studies
10
Business models
8
Processes & SOPs
6
Outgunned 100x on funding, brand loyalty kept competitors at bay.
Doing hard things — cash vaults, private security — is itself a moat.
Super app cross-sell rarely works without a unifying concept customers grasp.
Neil Patel on avoiding common marketing mistakes and scaling smart
Neil Patel
March 25, 2023
Niche selection
8
Retention & loyalty
7
Bootstrapping
6
Repeat customers drive most revenue — stop obsessing over new traffic
Spreading across too many ventures kills compounding growth
Keep spending on profitable marketing regardless of economic conditions
Building a powerful CEO-COO relationship and the systems behind it
Cameron Herold
March 24, 2023
Management
8
Vision & mission
7
Identity & self-belief
6
Why most employees make bad decisions — and how a vivid vision fixes it
CEOs must know systems exist; COOs must know how to run them
ADD and bipolar tendencies aren't liabilities — they're the entrepreneurial edge
Founder interviews
YouTube
Fall in love with the problem, not the solution: lessons from Uri Levine
GaryVee
March 24, 2023
Founder interviews
9
Product-market fit
8
Vision & mission
7
Defining the problem in human terms is your biggest adoption lever.
Fire within 30 days or your best people will leave first.
Product-market fit: watch users, then ask them why.
Resilience & grit
Podcast
Two plagues: protecting your character in a crisis
The Daily Stoic
March 24, 2023
Resilience & grit
10
Identity & self-belief
8
Crisis leadership
6
Every crisis spreads two plagues: one kills bodies, one kills character.
Personal experience — pandemic, parenthood — unlocks philosophy's deeper meaning.
Small acts within your control can ripple far beyond your own sphere.
Process vs SOPs: how they differ and work together
Layla at ProcessDriven
March 24, 2023
A process defines the outcome; an SOP covers one path to it
Most processes need multiple SOPs to handle real-world variations
Not every process needs an SOP — automation can replace them
Content marketing
YouTube
Blogging, SEO, and brand strategy for long-term marketing growth
Neil Patel
March 23, 2023
Content marketing
9
SEO
8
Niche selection
6
Organic reach on every platform shrinks once it hits mainstream scale.
Personal brands have a ceiling — and die with their owner.
Two to three years of consistent posting is where most marketers quit too early.
Content marketing
YouTube
Zero-click content: giving value upfront to earn clicks over time
Rob Walling
March 23, 2023
Content marketing
9
Growth hacking
8
Every major platform actively punishes outbound links — stop teasing, start delivering.
Giving value away for free consistently drives more traffic than asking for clicks.
One piece of content can become a thread, webinar, slides, and a conference talk.
On-page SEO: the essential practices for ranking in 2025
Semrush
March 23, 2023
Matching search intent matters more than any other on-page factor.
Exact spots to place keywords: title, URL, H1, alt text.
Reverse-engineer top-ranking pages to determine content depth and topics.
Identity & self-belief
YouTube
Gratitude, positivity, and why perfectionism is an excuse
GaryVee
March 23, 2023
Identity & self-belief
9
Motivation
8
Resilience & grit
6
Gratitude is the only framework that makes every problem smaller
Reinvesting all profit — not ego — built VaynerMedia
Calling yourself a perfectionist is avoiding accountability, not achieving it
Identity & self-belief
YouTube
Curiosity as the core skill for navigating the AI and Web3 era
GaryVee
March 23, 2023
Identity & self-belief
9
Vision & mission
6
Opinions on AI without 50 hours of real use are worthless
The next 20 years will dwarf the last 15 in technological change
Approaching the unfamiliar with 'maybe' unlocks more opportunity than expertise
Resilience & grit
Podcast
Stoic acceptance, Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, and output quality
The Daily Stoic
March 23, 2023
Resilience & grit
8
Deep work & focus
7
Modern comfort makes Stoic acceptance harder — and more necessary.
Marcus Aurelius chose Commodus after losing six sons to early death.
Assign your best hours to your best work, not to everything equally.
The four-day workweek: pros, cons, and alternatives for HR teams
HR Party of One
March 23, 2023
Management
9
Processes & SOPs
6
Work-life balance
5
The 40-hour week was a business decision, not an immutable standard
Hourly workers and seasonal demand make four-day weeks unworkable for many
Flexible hours and no-meeting days deliver similar retention gains at near-zero cost