Must Reads 255

Live On A Cruise Ship?

Good Morning Must Readers, newsletter #255 is packed full of 10 brilliant must read articles. This weeks themes are:

  • Career: How to get the best out of work with a coach, mentors and sponsors

  • Influencers: We have reached a new high or low in influencers, with numerous therapists now embracing influencer life

  • Anti Social: How Google, Apple and others are leveraging social media's decline in being actually social and offering guaranteed views (engagement)

  • Sea: How the sea treaty is a positive step into sustainable growth

  • Apple Dominance - Apple had 8/10 most sold smartphones in 2022, its dominance has gone unnoticed. The next platform is what many of big tech are battling for (away from AI), the smart money is on Apple

>> What Does Your Team Need, A Mentor, A Coach Or A Sponsor? 👨‍💼👩‍💼 - A quick guide on what leaders should be doing for their team, hint if you aren't a department head or manager, you should be looking for a mentor, seeing if your firm will invest in a coach and seek opportunities with internal sponsors

>> Work Privacy? 🕵️‍♂️ - Seth Godin with another short piece of brilliance about how AI could be useful but highlights the issue of work privacy (you rarely have it). 

>> Erasing Your Past ❌ - In recent years we have seen a huge uptick in companies and professionals needing a service where it erases large parts of your past, the question being raised now is, is reputation management a positive? Having worked in the space and helping large companies reshape their reputation across search results and re-shape their social media, maybe it's just bad practice but while there is significant money involved it will continue to work.

>> Mileage Runs 🛩️ - Airline miles and points creates weird behaviour, like fliers who don't leave the airport to ensure they keep their status. Kinda madness if you ask me.

>> Peak Influencers 🆘 - A fascinating piece on therapists becoming influencers and is it right with privacy concerns. Therapy can be an incredible tool especially if you find a proactive therapist. The more famous an industry becomes it either improves or they lose sight of the goals, in this case helping to guide people back on track or to improve people, I hope it's done for the right reasons...

>> Apple Dominated Phone Sales In 2022 📱  Apple’s dominant 2022 performance highlights how the upcycling of phones has reduced but many are upgrading their apple devices. With the lack of “demand” we might just see this pattern again this year

>> Are You A Myers Briggs Believer 🤔 - There are two camps of people, true believers of the Myer Briggs personality tests and those who treat it like horoscopes. If you have ever worked in large corporates they ask the management team to take a version of it and then seeded through the business by one new department heads discovery and then spreads throughout the business, while everyone gets a 4-letter short code (from 16 different types of personalities) they bond over or discuss and ripples through the business for around ten days. The link is an interesting push towards horoscope but when people are bad at understanding others a personality test can be quite useful.

🔊 Term to look out for "premiumization" - it's motivating consumers to pay more for their brand or products (& services) to go up market and appeal to broader audience and charge more for growth reasons. We are seeing this every day with brands going up the stack..

>> Google Photos Bumper Year 📷 - Something I have heard a lot of lately is friends and family members sharing albums and pics away from social media and links to albums. I know quite a few that are now using and paying for storage with Google Photos, this means that Google is making more money on app downloads through needing more cloud storage because social media sites aren't offering what users want, privacy and guaranteed views of content. I expect this theme to continue with social apps becoming less social and understand less about what users want, connection with friends, less with brands and ads.

>> Super Interesting Story This week 🇺🇸 - Utah’s state flag change and how it evolved

Utah redesigned its state flag. Who's next?

Why Utah's new flag could signal a transformation for state flags across the U.S.

https://yello.substack.com/p/utah-redesigned-its-state-flag-whos-7ad?utm_source=pocket_saves

➕➕ Must Reads Trivia: How much did Airbnb spend on Marketing in 2022? Was it (a) $50m (b) $78m (c) $110m or (d) $114m? (scroll to the bottom to find out how you did)

F1 returned this week, here is a good breakdown of McLaren & F1 economics (FWIW I often nap to F1 so far from a fanboy but its a fascinating business to observe and learn from)

>> Live On A Cruise Ship For 30k Per Year? 🛳️ - Yes, it's true and people want to do it, and it's designed for passengers to spend a longer time exploring cities. Would you do it? Hit reply to let me know

>> High Sea Treaty 🐢 - Finally good news that our seas are becoming more protected

Must Reads Trivia Answer: Airbnb spent $114m (D) on Marketing last year, that's up $14m on 2021 numbers. Source: Airbnb 10k statement.

Thanks,