20 October 2025
This week's additions focus on mindset, leadership, and strategy, with new digests from Matthew Volkwyn, Cameron Herold, and Rob Walling. Highlights include Curiosity about the client's business beats any sales script. Your second-in-command should cover exactly what drains you as a founder
Showing 56 digests for 20 October 2025.
Deep work & focus
Podcast
Writing is thinking: why putting pen to paper sharpens the mind
The Daily Stoic
October 21, 2025
Deep work & focus
9
Productivity & habits
7
Writing forces you to finish thoughts — not just record them.
Eisenhower's 300-word memo shaped America's entire Pacific war strategy.
Amazon banned PowerPoint; six-page memos replaced brainstorming sessions.
Stoic wisdom as preparation: build up, don't tear down
The Daily Stoic
October 21, 2025
Management
9
Resilience & grit
6
Wisdom can't be faked when high-stakes moments finally arrive
Tearing people down destroys the confidence leaders need from others
Persuade and inspire — demanding and yelling signal lost self-control
AI go-to-market, pivoting, and early hiring for founders
Y Combinator
October 21, 2025
Pivoting
9
AI strategy & adoption
7
Hiring & recruitment
6
Automate-rate matters more to investors than revenue in AI firms
Pivot when conviction dies, not just when growth stalls
Hire only when specific functions are visibly breaking
Resilience & grit
YouTube
Overcoming inner resistance: Steven Pressfield on the war of art
Andrew Huberman
October 20, 2025
Resilience & grit
9
Deep work & focus
8
Productivity & habits
6
Fear of a project is proof it's the one you should do.
Turning pro is a free mindset shift — amateurs feel, professionals do.
Suppressed creative energy turns malignant if you never answer your calling.
Using story intentionally to lead culture change
Coaching for Leaders
October 20, 2025
Culture building
10
Communication
8
Announcing a culture change has zero correlation with it succeeding.
Leaders must live the story first — countercultural behavior spreads through the system.
Stories aren't proof of culture; they actively create the behaviors within it.
Competitive analysis
Podcast
OpenAI's Sora app and the threat to social media's survival
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
October 20, 2025
Competitive analysis
10
AI strategy & adoption
7
Social media giants abandoned their moats by chasing TikTok's engagement model.
Sora out-slops TikTok — but $200/month pricing starves its recommendation engine of inventory.
OpenAI's pivot to ads and erotica signals GPT-5 didn't deliver the promised leap.
Why Facebook ads fail: messaging, creative volume, and attribution
StoryBrand With Donald Miller
October 20, 2025
Paid ads
9
Copywriting
8
AI tools & automation
6
Weak survival sound bites kill ads before budget is ever spent
AI compresses weeks of customer research into 30 minutes
Attribution models mislead — new customer acquisition is the only metric that matters
How Jensen Huang runs NVIDIA: 19 principles from three decades
Founders
October 20, 2025
Management
9
Case studies
7
Business operating systems
5
Jensen treats complacency — not competition — as NVIDIA's greatest threat.
60 direct reports, no one-on-ones: why radical flatness beats org charts.
A two-decade GPU bet, held through an 80% stock crash, created the AI era.
AI strategy & adoption
YouTube
How CX professionals can win the AI era by going all in on both extremes
GaryVee
October 20, 2025
AI strategy & adoption
8
Customer experience
7
Branding
5
CX teams are already running AI while most companies still debate it
Freed-up AI time should go into human gestures competitors cannot automate
Brand is the only moat left when product and data are fully commoditised
Founder interviews
Podcast
Chip and Joanna Gaines: building Magnolia from house flips to household name
How I Built This with Guy Raz
October 20, 2025
Founder interviews
10
Business models
7
Why they survived near-bankruptcy with no investors and no plan
Ending a 19-million-viewer show was the right bet
Saying yes before it makes sense is their core business strategy
Identity & self-belief
Podcast
The good life pivots on virtue, not wandering
The Daily Stoic
October 20, 2025
Identity & self-belief
9
Resilience & grit
7
Wisdom is cultivated through failure and suffering, never inherited
The four cardinal virtues are the hinge of a meaningful life
Your actions — not your questions — are the answer to meaning