Must Reads 259

Lifetime Deals

Good Morning Must Readers, this week's newsletter aka #259 dives into some core themes impacting us today and for the next 5-10 years.

  • Lifetime Deals: Why sports brands are investing millions into sport stars after their playing career is up. Hint: All chasing that Jordan cultural moment & attempting to move away from their reliance on artists like Kanye

  • Perk Problems: How limiting all old hero perks is bad business and shows how out of touch some companies are with their company culture and what connects staff (FYI a survey won't help if you're disconnected from your teams)

  • Independent Business: Many businesses are opting for independence and bootstrapping especially in more rural towns, this is a theme that will continue to happen but the question is how can they survive in a world owned by super brands

  • Scams: The online world has become a hotbed for scams, while we concentrate on the internet as a hub for scams, many are still falling for SMS, phone calls and in person scams. It's time there is action and more education

  • Cultural Clash: How tech platform are enabling fame even within communities that are against it. We have experienced this for years and will for years to come but are platforms protecting their creators from backlash, still no...

>> My 1 Hour Per Day Learning Experiment ⏰ - For the last nine months I have been undertaking an hour-a-day learning experiment, one hour of the day dedicated to learning specific topics, and themes or touching on skills I may have allowed to lapse. Read about my process and why it's been essential for my coaching system

➕➕Game Time ➕➕What was Coca-Cola's annual revenue for 2021? Was it (A)$38 billion (B) $38.65 billion (C) $39 billion (D) $39.65 billion?

>> Perks Problems ❌ - Google, Meta, Amazon etc are famous for office perks, Google being known for their tactical approach to perks = longer hours from their staff. In cutting costs Google is removing perks and reducing many others factors that once made them famous Google will be hurting themselves as their packages won't be as competitive as others and work environments and equipement matter more. Forcing employees to use chromebooks will be an interesting learning curve for Google. Perks can be expensive luxuries when companies start to see and not control declining revenue or see drops in revenue per head, large companies reduce perks to "save jobs" but it is a cost cutting exercise many went through without the PR show.

>> Going Viral To Cancel Final Exams 🤪- Going to leave this one here, a college professor set a task to go viral on TikTok (of course its on TikTok, know your audience ;-) w) and he will cancel the final exam... — this will be a trend for a few months & something that's happened on and off different platform for years

>> Be A Leader With These 6 Steps -

>> Monks Vs MonkTok - TikTok is a discovery entertainment engine, it can seamlessly create and drive fame in the most niche areas, unfortunately, it has been a catalyst within the Buddhist faith by enabling fame (some will side with it is helping to spread the faith others will say it goes against the faiths beliefs). When you are a platform with the discovery engine and entertainment engine as powerful as TikTok, how do you not create conflict between and within one of the oldest faiths in the world.

>> Be Inspired 🥤 - Often we feel like we can only be inspired by successes, history shows us we should also be inspired by "failures", this is a great museum of all of those flops that can inspire us (like Crystal Pepsi or New Coke).

>> Lifetime Sponsorship 🏀 - Many pro athletes are now being sponsored for life, including Michael Jordan, David Beckham, Ronaldo, Lebron and now NBA player Steph Curry. This is a prime theme that has been playing more recently and something many companies understand the influence they have over sales and brand adoption. In the near future, we will see this continue unless there are major press issues. I predict we will see this happen with female sports stars who have children and retire early and then are supported fully by these major brands

>> Advertising Issues 🎯 - Roblox has been super popular on must-reads since its inception. Mostly for the positive impact, it has had but also unfortunately for some bad tactics, it has. This week they finally announced they are going to stop advertising to under 13-year-olds, like last week's coaching moment, we are seeing major firms slowly weening themselves away from ads and what this means is likely more pay-to-play options or subscriptions coming to Roblox and similar games.

>> Lessons From Opening An Indie Book Store 📚 - What Ryan Holiday learnt from opening his bookstore in Texas in the middle of the pandemic. Some gold nuggets in here on mission, diversifying your income, how important energy is and is more than a bookstore

>>  Online Scams 😮 - It is really interesting how the UK public has fallen for fraud from the evolution of mail scams, to phone scams to internet and counterfeit scams. Unsurprising so many fall for quick rich quick in this macro-environment.

>> How Quantum Computers Will Help Us Answer & Crack Things In Minutes That We Have Struggled With For Hundreds Of Years (Also includes how AI is part of this bigger shift) 👇

>> The Most Power Press Photos Of Last Year 📸 - Incredibly powerful and somewhat harrowing pictures from the press from last year.

>> Why Primates Love Spinning 🐒 - Why humans and other primates loving spinning themselves around (hint, it's for fun)

➕➕ Answer Time - It was an incredible (B) $38.65 billion (it's actually declined in recent years)

Thanks, Danny Denhard

How I Can Help Your Further 🚀 I advise startups including a preloved marketplace (created by parents for parents), consult and coach. I currently have limited capacity to help you. Email me at [email protected] and let's discuss how I will help you.