1 January 2024
This week's additions focus on mindset, founder stories, and leadership, with new digests from Lenny's Podcast Product Career Growth, Cameron Herold, and TK Kader. Highlights include Coddling engineers backfired — accountability unlocks real senior roles Prospects only register one in three impressions — so hit them 27 times.
Showing 28 digests for 1 January 2024.
Live Oak Bank: how a niche SBA lender became America's small business bank
Business Breakdowns
January 3, 2024
Case studies
9
Fundraising & VC
8
Business models
7
A 75% government loan guarantee created 35%+ returns on equity from day one
Internal software spun out into a $3B+ company and a $650M acquisition
Fewer than 10,000 customers against 5–6 million addressable small businesses
Cash flow management
YouTube
How COOs should approach budgets and cuts
Cameron Herold
January 3, 2024
Cash flow management
8
Processes & SOPs
6
Zero-based budgeting forces teams to justify every project quarterly.
Cut bottom 10% of performers without replacing them and still scale.
Default to no — say yes less often than you say no.
SEO foundations for a new website in the first 30 days
Semrush
January 3, 2024
Delegation
9
Communication
8
Resilience & grit
6
Fix SSL, mobile, and speed before any keyword work
Keyword gap analysis reveals 200+ competitor terms you can target
Industry relationships beat directory spam for early link-building
Arnold Schwarzenegger's seven tools for a useful life
The Daily Stoic
January 3, 2024
Motivation
9
Goal setting
7
Founder interviews
6
No phone before the gym — mornings run on autopilot, not willpower
Gave up $20M/year salary to govern California, with zero regret
Took zero salary on Twins; earned far more than any studio paycheck
Founder interviews
Podcast
Masters of Scale team picks: five favorite moments from 2023
Masters of Scale
January 2, 2024
Founder interviews
9
Resilience & grit
6
Why simplicity without stagnation is every brand's hardest discipline
AI makes a better kitchen assistant than a head chef — tested live
Steve Jobs's humour evolved; his growth unlocked Apple's biggest products
Work-life balance
Podcast
Rob Walling's 2023 year in review: record growth and approaching burnout
Startups For the Rest of Us
January 2, 2024
Work-life balance
9
Resilience & grit
8
Post-mortem
6
SaaS Playbook sold 10,000 copies in seven months — fastest book yet
Six work trips in ten weeks pushed the whole team toward burnout
Catching fatigue early is the only fix — full burnout takes months to recover
How to build a scalable online business by packaging your expertise
Sunny Lenarduzzi
January 2, 2024
Business models
9
Content marketing
6
Pricing strategy
5
Freelance and service businesses always hit a time-income ceiling
Packaging your method into a program breaks the hours-for-dollars trap
200 clients at $5,000 outperforms 2,000 clients at $500 with less effort
Identity & self-belief
Podcast
How to reconnect with others across difference using three core practices
Beyond the To-Do List - Productivity for Work and Life
January 1, 2024
Identity & self-belief
9
Community building
6
Walking 12 feet across the street dismantles years of built-up bias.
Conviction without action frees no one — proximity and relationship do.
Being too productive can block you from being fully human.
How to reconnect with ambition and stop settling
Brendon Burchard
January 1, 2024
Goal setting
9
Identity & self-belief
8
Mid-day motivation crashes are caused by disconnection from ambition, not energy
Ambition anchored to past circumstances is always too small to grow
Raising ambition above yesterday unlocks people and outcomes you can't yet imagine
How COOs can avoid burnout through delegation and boundaries
Cameron Herold
January 1, 2024
Delegation
9
Work-life balance
7
You will never finish your to-do list — stop trying.
Delegate everything except genius to grow your team.
Hard cap at 50 hours; no nights, no weekends.
Productivity & habits
Podcast
How to learn hard things and build lasting expertise
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
January 1, 2024
Productivity & habits
8
Deep work & focus
7
Identity & self-belief
5
Mastering hard things is a time problem, not a brain power problem.
Sustainable slow-paced learning beats intense sprints over one to two years.
Everyone needs one professional skill and one personal connoisseurship to flourish.
Founder interviews
YouTube
How Pat Walls built Starter Story to $1M working two hours a day
Starter Story
January 1, 2024
Founder interviews
10
Deep work & focus
8
Content marketing
5
Two daily focused hours beat a full-time job for building a business
A $12,000 cold sponsorship email forced the decision to quit
Daily consistency creates luck — the idea alone changes nothing
How Paige Mycoskie built Aviator Nation from a sewing machine to $130M
How I Built This with Guy Raz
January 1, 2024
Origin stories
9
MVP & prototyping
6
Zero investment, no influencers: $27M to $130M through COVID virality
Why keeping manufacturing in California is a strategic moat
Turning down hundreds of millions to stay in full control