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A Thread - What to read in 2021?

Wisdom via @EricJorgenson via @naval via @illacertus... from @Navalmanack a book I’ll be rereading in 2021.

Here’s why.

“I don’t want to read everything. I just want to read the 100 great books over and over again.” - @illacertus

 “I think there’s a lot to that idea. It’s really more about identifying the great books for you because different books speak to different people. Then, you can really absorb those.” - @naval
It was a few years back I started thinking about the idea of rereading books vs trying to “keep up” with the constant consumption of new material rolling off the book publisher’s assembly lines.
I believe the consept first landed on my radar from that very @farnamstreet podcast where @naval shared the quote referenced above.

It immediately made sense to me.
It’s crazy to think about how much the world has evolved in just the last decade.

Technology is creating shorter attention spans with the constant bombardment of bite-sized “click bait” headlines and iPhone notifications.
For those who haven’t watched the Netflix doc The Social Dilemma, look no further than the algorithms designed to constantly keep our eyes glued to our phones and in turn the ad dollars being spent there.

Which leads me to a thesis I believe to be more and more true.
I believe the ability to focus...

to absorb...

to go deep...

is becoming a true super power.
Which brings me back to the idea of compiling a short list of books that you want to truly absorb and reading them over and over until you understand them to the level you’ve acquired all they have to offer.

With that in mind...
Today marks my third time reading through @RyanHoliday & @SteveHanselman’s @dailystoic.

Pictured is my copy below, which I grabbed back in 2016 when it came out.

As you can see, it’s got some miles on it as it’s literally traveled with me mostly wherever I’ve gone since.
All cliches aside, this book has made me a better version of myself.

More patient.

More accepting.

Less anxious.

A better listener.

I can honestly say this year’s reading was by far the most impactful.

Yes, maybe some of that was due to the year that was 2020.

However...
Looking back, I simply wasn’t ready for many of the passages my first few times through.

“When the student is ready the teacher will appear.” - Tao Te Ching
Also, with multiple readings, I’ve benefited from the “compound effect” of absorbing, putting into action, and building upon that which I’ve read before.

So...
Here’s to distilling your list of books/ideas/goals down to what is essential this year.

Go deep.

Absorb.

Make those “words become works” in 2021.
If you could choose only 1 book to reread this year, which one would it be?

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On startups, investing, marketing, and career advice:

👇👇

"I learn more from speaking with others than reading" is complete nonsense.

The smartest people in the history of the world have distilled their life's work into a few hundred pages.

No, a 30 minute convo with your buddy won't teach you more.

The best businesses in the world expand their target market

-Nike convinced the world that everyone is an athlete
-Apple convinced the world that everyone is a creator
-Shopify is convincing the world that everyone is an entrepreneur

Champion customers and they will reward you

"Follow your passion" is complete complete crap.

People are passionate about things they are good at. Get really good at something, and you will become passionate at it.

Then you will make enough money to follow your original passion in your free time.

There is no industry in the world that is easier to get to an 8 figure exit than digital media.

There is also no industry harder to get to a 10 figure valuation than digital media.

Understand your industry and plan accordingly.
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2/23: The foundational reason why this matters from day 1 is that building a franchise of loyal customers is difficult for any #startup to pull off but the challenge is amplified if the #startup has to rebuild its franchise as it scales.

3/23: Broken or unfulfilled promises lead to customer behaviors that have real consequences. Poor ratings and reviews. High customer service costs. High complaint volume. Low engagement. High attrition/returns/cancelations. Low organic growth.

4/23: Undoing damage takes time and sometimes is nearly impossible. Convincing inactive customers to “retry” your product isn’t easy. Overcoming bad reviews can be a Herculean task. And resources will be thrown at fixing past sins at the expense of new functionality.

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There are 5.14 billion Google results for "how to build a startup."

Most are a waste of time.

Here are 5 that are pure gold:

1) Learn from Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and other top entrepreneurs.

Essays, videos and interviews on startup topics including fundraising and growth from the best founders of our

2) Join a community of like-minded entrepreneurs.

Success stories, case studies and camaraderie as hustlers build side projects and MVPs in public, sharing what they

3) Find the right freelancers to get your product off the ground

Graphic designers, software engineers, content creators, marketers and more.

I've hired great people from around the world using this

4) Learn how to market your business

Facebook's Ad library lets you see the ads running for any company in the world.

It's a powerful tool to understand your competition and get ideas on how to position
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I scaled my last SaaS startup to $2M/yr in <18 months with 0 paid ads.

Steal the 6 step blueprint I used:

Many startups over-rely on paid advertising.

I can tell you 1st hand, this is risky.

• Platform policies change
• Costs increase overnight
• Your audience gets ad fatigue

Which is why, you should consider organic marketing…

Organic marketing attracts customers...

But in a different way.

Paid ads = lead generation
Organic marketing = lead nurturing

You nurture people from social media followers,

Into community leaders, brand ambassadors, and loyal customers.

These 6 steps will show you how:


1) Create consistently

Organic marketing starts with consistency.

• Post daily
• Test ideas

Do your best to provide content your audience finds valuable.

And make sure it feels native to each platform.

At this point, your focus is daily action, not performance.

2) Leverage analytics

Leverage analytics to see what’s working.

Recommended metrics to measure:

• Likes
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How to run a company (in priority order):

1: Define a crystal clear north star

Great companies know their destination.

Everyone rowing in one direction.

The best north star? A SIMPLE, measurable metric.

Get it right, and watch the magic unfold! 💫

2: Hire uncomfortably good people

Ah, my favorite line!

Hire people you have no right to hire.

Who are so good it makes you nervous.

Who force everyone to step up their game.

Always level up 🦾

3: Create a culture of urgency

Nothing is more powerful than a group of people making every day count 🔥⚡️🚨

4: Make sure no one gets blocked

You’re paying good people good money.

Make sure they don’t get stuck!

Demotivating for them 🤦

Disastrous for the bottom line.
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1/ new essay: What's next for marketplace startups? Reinventing the $10 trillion service economy, that's what. Co-authored with @ljin18 https://t.co/fgKbrHTnH5. A short thread 👇

2/ Marketplace startups have done incredibly well over the first few decades of the internet, reinventing the way we shop for goods, but have been less successful services. It's bc services are complex, subjective, fragmented, and often in real life. Makes it hard

3/ There's been 4 major eras at making the service economy work online. The Listings Era, the unbundled Craiglist era, the Uber for X era, and the Managed Marketplace era


4/ Each era has added more value than the last, and utilized technology innovations, from internet to social / "read/write web" to mobile. The "Unbundling Craigslist" era was particularly epic at generating startup ideas


5/ The problem is, all the low-hanging fruit has been picked off. The techniques that got us to here won't get us to the next phase. So we have to do some pretty different things. That's why "Managed Marketplaces" have been a big deal - hire folks as W-2s, certify quality, etc.
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Ok, I'll hop on this Elizabeth Warren/Native American testing bandwagon (gently and non-politically).

I've been a @23andMe customer for a while, and have followed their ancestry updates closely.

All is more or less as expected....except for this bit about Native American.


The family is almost completely composed of Spanish peasants (from various regions) who emigrated, along with a massive wave in the late 19th-cent./early 20th-cent., to Cuba back when it was a booming economy (richer than Spain's) and worth emigrating to (Communism killed that).

Also, the native population of Cuba was annihilated early on---was the first place the Spanish colonized after all. Having a native background in Cuba would be like having the same in, say, Massachusetts, particularly if you're (say) mostly Irish. Just really, really unlikely.

(Note: the North African/Arab background is less mysterious. The Iberian peninsula was part of the Muslim world for centuries. It would be odd *not* to have some Arab/Middle Eastern background coming from Spain. Given the family is mostly from Northern Spain, it's small though.)

I have a Spanish passport, have been back to the ancestral villages in Spain, seen the church where my grandmother was baptized, my grandfather told me stories about growing up as the child of Spanish colonists in rural Cuba. The native bit just clashes with all the family lore.
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2. Start growing your audience before you’ve a product or an idea.

You should start promoting yourself and building your audience before you have a finished product or even before you have a great idea that you want to build.

3. Don’t wait to start building your audience after you’ve launched a product.

Most first-time developers actually ignore marketing.

They’re oblivious to the challenge of attracting people to take a look at something they’ve created.

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There are so many times that I have seen developers spend countless hours building something, releasing it with no fanfare...

5. and only then trying to figure out how to promote it by asking marketing questions on Indie Hackers, Quora or Hacker News. Don’t make that mistake.
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'Therefore a man shall leave [יַֽעֲזָב] his father and his mother and hold fast [וְדָבַ֣ק] to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.'

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2. In previous threads I have looked at 🇮🇪 key players in the Trilateral Commission as well as 🇮🇪 people who have attended the Bilderberger meetings. I also looked at the 🇮🇪 in the Young Global Leaders which is a site run by the WEF. You will see a lot of crossover between them.

3. The purpose of this thread is to compile all the Irish members into one thread for ease of access and reading rather than having to dive through the WEF site. This is by no means definitive and I will be adding more over time when they pop out of the woodwork.

4. Ireland’s WEF members are drawn from all walks of life but can be split into 2 separate areas. The WEF calls the first category “people” and the 2nd one “agenda contributors”. In total Ireland has a minimum of 61 members. Some of the names will be familiar and others will not

5. In this thread I’m just going to concentrate on the 21 people (there are probably a lot more). There are also 40 “agenda contributors” which I will cover in a separate thread. The agenda contributors are those who write articles or do research for the WEF site.
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