Good Morning Must Readers!

I hope you have had a great week. Newsletter 234 is packed full of great reads. Keep an eye out for (1) Brené Brown Adam Grant and Simon Sinek's podcast together, (2) WhatsApp becoming a place for more scams, (3) living in water pods in paradise, (4) the chess cheating scandal broken-down and lastly, (5) my mentor process.

Must Read Stories Of The Week

Work Must Reads

> Essential Workplace Listening 👂- What happens when workplace powerhouses Brené Brown, Adam Grant & Simon Sinek all have a podcast part 1 & part 2 together, the trio cover the current issues in the workplace, why the return to the office is awkward, why employees are struggling and grieving and have a fundamental mistrust of internal surveys.

> My Mentor Process ⚙️- I share my process of being a mentor, why it is so important to take it seriously and why getting to know the person first not the professional is essential!

> How Amazon, Shopify & Wayfair Went Wrong With 2022 Planning 😓- Here is something you don't hear often about how companies went wrong, especially the largest tech brands in the world. Here is how the pandemic misled these companies into thinking e-commerce was going to take over IRL shopping. FWIW I am a big advocate of blended shopping and experiences, and I believe Amazon went wrong and will regret closing stores and Shopify will be kicking themselves as they didn't do enough to help small shops get discovered just being a platform is never enough.

> WhatsApp Spam Issues ✋- WhatsApp increased their group limit to over 1000 people (this is where they will charge for community and make money IMHO) but the problem many are seeing is WhatsApp being spammed especially in the most used market India. WhatsApp's biggest issue is trust, as it is the gateway to talking to and keeping connections, all the privacy ads won't help them if they don't control black hat practices and learn from what happened to email. This is going to be a trend in the market abusing communication tools to make another channel work. However cool the ads appear if people abuse the system (like no-one uses email for personal comms anymore) they will lose users regardless of how essential it is.

> Meetings The New Battleground for AI 🤖 - Not something that is being reported but an important theme, even useless and time-wasting meetings have their benefits, translating and transcription meetings automatically. The next order of thinking will be how Microsoft and Google compete against Zoom etc with features that don't improve the meetings specifically but that selfishly help to improve their own tech products in their portfolios.

> The Wikipedia Volunteers Beating News Editors 📰 - The fascinating world of volunteers who dedicated their time and energy for free to ensure the news is reflected on Wikipedia often beating mainstream media. The power of Wikipedia pages is often overlooked until big news hits or something crazy happens. FYI despite many editors say they aren't paid but many are (FWIW it's a grey hat tactic that operated for years) -- BTW here's a cool tool to see most popular wiki pages by date.

> How Liquid Death Water Grew 💧- Disruptive (and very smart) water brand liquid death founder talks through his journey and on his design background on how it helped to lead to huge investment and become a superfan product (including those getting tattoo 👀) and now one of the most popular waters in the US. Above is a prime example of wacky marketing by Liquid Death.

Almost three years and mute still seems to be an issue...

Life Must Reads

> Living In Water Pods? - Is the world ready for humans to live on top of water in pods? 

> Has The Genius Era Gone? - Is the era of finding and embracing geniuses like Einstein now gone? 

> Mix Of The Week 🪩 - multi-genre mix from garage to techno brought to you from Conducta

& Must Watch Of The Week How the cheating scandal rocked chess and why it's having a huge impact

Have a great weekend and if you want to chat about stories just hit reply or message me on twitter!