25 September 2023
This week's additions focus on strategy, marketing, and leadership, with new digests from Cameron Herold, Rob Walling, and TK Kader. Highlights include Five factors determine whether COO is the right title Why aligning on destination matters more than any growth tactic
Showing 33 digests for 25 September 2023.
Pricing psychology
YouTube
Freelance pricing: charge for value, not the client's budget
Joanna Wiebe
September 28, 2023
Pricing psychology
9
Pricing strategy
7
Charging different rates for the same work destroys client trust
Training compounds — don't discount it when setting your rate
Negotiate by removing scope, never by discounting the work
Founder interviews
Podcast
Building Anchor, selling to Spotify, and lessons learned
Lenny's Podcast Product Career Growth
September 28, 2023
Founder interviews
9
Iteration & feedback loops
7
Management
5
How reducing friction—down to college interns manually submitting podcasts—drove Anchor's explosive hosting growth
Why dogfooding your product is non-negotiable; Maya's four podcasts taught her team what creators actually need
Killing your darlings: pivoting from success when mission demands it, then embracing features you initially rejected
Founder interviews
Podcast
Mustafa Suleyman on building empathetic AI and governing its future
Masters of Scale
September 27, 2023
Founder interviews
10
AI strategy & adoption
7
Vision & mission
6
Conversation, not search, is the new interface for all AI.
Personal AI should save time and route it back to people.
Near-term misinformation risks matter more than robot overlords.
Hiring & recruitment
YouTube
Internal vs external COO: how to decide which is right
Cameron Herold
September 27, 2023
Hiring & recruitment
9
Management
5
Write the scorecard before you pick the candidate, not after.
COO success is about people leadership, not functional expertise.
Promoting a top performer without the right skills harms everyone.
How two founders turned $4,000 into $48M selling weighted blankets
Starter Story
September 27, 2023
Business models
9
Content marketing
8
Calling every customer saved a collapsing business — and revealed the next product
A $25k Kickstarter goal raised $1M because 3,000 customers pre-validated demand
Storytelling built super fans who outshopped a funded rival 2-to-1 on opening day
How company offsites align leadership teams and surface blind spots
GaryVee
September 27, 2023
Management
9
Vision & mission
6
Offsites are the highest-leverage moment to realign a leadership team.
One question exposed that most leaders underinvest in developing their people.
Moving people from strangers to family unlocks everything you're trying to achieve.
Seven tips for writing effective email CTAs
Joanna Wiebe
September 27, 2023
Copywriting
9
Email marketing
8
One CTA per email can lift sales by over 1,600%.
Button placement, colour contrast, and whitespace decide clickability.
Best practices are based on other audiences — always test your own.
Customer discovery
Podcast
Listening to customers, not feature requests, and doing what it takes
Startups For the Rest of Us
September 26, 2023
Customer discovery
9
Resilience & grit
6
Build from the problem customers describe, not the solution they suggest.
One loud customer can hijack your roadmap — weight patterns, not individuals.
Willingness to do unglamorous work at key moments separates founders who ship.
Business operating systems
YouTube
A three-step problem-solving framework for startup founders
EO
September 26, 2023
Business operating systems
9
Customer discovery
7
Niche selection
5
Most founders solve symptoms, not root causes — fix the definition first.
Break massive solution sets down to make them actually manageable.
Each stakeholder has one North Star metric; guess wrong and you lose them.
Business operating systems
YouTube
Using a weekly scorecard to run your business on objective data
EOS Worldwide
September 26, 2023
Business operating systems
8
Processes & SOPs
5
Replace gut decisions with 5–15 objective measurables tracked weekly.
A scorecard cuts through ego, opinion, and anecdotal feedback.
When numbers still lag, the Getting What You Want tool refocuses the team.
Resilience & grit
YouTube
Three habits that cause entrepreneurs to fail or quit
Sunny Lenarduzzi
September 26, 2023
Resilience & grit
8
Motivation
6
Shiny object syndrome keeps founders stuck in the startup phase
Chasing external validation erodes focus and collapses what you built
Building new offers before the core is proven is self-sabotage
Founder interviews
Podcast
Herb Kelleher: how Southwest Airlines became the most profitable airline in history
Founders
September 26, 2023
Founder interviews
10
Business models
8
Processes & SOPs
5
Southwest was profitable 47 straight years; rivals managed five.
Low costs are a weapon that expands the market, not just steals share.
Speed and flexibility beat strategic planning in chaotic industries.
Designing remote team culture using communication, collaboration, and cohesion
Beyond the To-Do List - Productivity for Work and Life
September 25, 2023
Culture building
9
Remote teams
8
Processes & SOPs
5
Culture is 'the way we do things here' — design it or it drifts.
Three C's — communication, collaboration, cohesion — are the levers of team culture.
Shared explicit agreements are the backbone of any aspirational culture.
Long-term planning
YouTube
When to say no to press and speaking appearances
Neil Patel
September 25, 2023
Long-term planning
8
PR & media
7
Most press appearances don't drive ROI — only brand exposure.
Ask three questions before accepting: audience, content fit, reach per episode.
Saying no protects your scarcest resource: time and attention.
Building and selling a home service business in 19 months
Brett Malinowski
September 25, 2023
Business models
9
Unit economics
8
Case studies
7
Pool routes sell for 8–12x monthly revenue — a built-in exit.
SMMA owners can own the business they're marketing for 5x returns.
Subscription home services beat online businesses for speed to $10k/month.