Must Reads 270

Good Morning Must Readers, This week’s newsletter is newsletter #270.

This week’s important themes summarised:

• Leadership → How do we improve leaders? Training and coaching! + Making companies aware training budget should go into actual coaching of their managers, managers of managers and “leadership” positions

• Trademarks → How Apple is taking on countries and companies with their use of apples…we will see this increase massively with AI and the protective nature of brands

• Google City 2.0 → Why smarter brands will remove mandates to win battles against big brands. Perks were levelled now it is time for mandates to be challenged & why will smart operators and savvy business people

• Reward With Travel → How China is rewarding its citizens to travel internally more but at a cost. Could rewarded social behaviour ever become a thing in the West (unlikely)

• Never Too Late → We are led to believe sports are a young person’s sport but we are seeing age not being a huge factor more frequently, could ageing work on your side for sports moving forward?

» How To Rethink Management & Leadership 👩‍💼 - Something most people don’t do is spend their training and development budget right and it’s down to how they are seen as a manager or when they become a manager of managers.

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» Looking to speak at conferences? 🗣️Here are my 81 points to help you if you are looking to speak at conferences, or want to improve your prep and improve the delivery of the best talk possible.

» Apple Fighting For Trademark 🍎- Apple (the tech firm) is trying to enforce trademarks against companies and even countries using the use of an apple…I get the brand protection and want to protect the brand but attempting to strongarm others from using apples in their own marketing or promotion of the fruit is a step too far. Expect to see big tech firms go harder into this space and use legal to control what and how their brand images are seen especially with AI

» The Story Behind The Waze Sale 🗺️ - “Everything around acquisitions is personal” Read how the news social network Post founder Noam played Facebook, Microsoft & Google off each other to sell their company Waze. This is a great read if you’re interested in corp dev (M&A/R&D), especially around age biases, and why ignorance and social connections are vital for large corporate deals.

» Pixar’s Problems 💤 - Pixar (aka Disney) are in a bit of a pickle, they’re viewed as a success or failure based on the numbers their last movie made and right now it’s not pretty for Pixar. Unfortunately with the way media has evolved if the film isn’t distributed enough and gains WOM between parents and kids it will struggle. I suspect streaming will give it a boost but it's now never a guarantee for a movie or TV show

» Patreon Free 💰 - Patreon were one of the first platforms that created easy-to-access and easy-to-manage subscriptions online. It has always had behind-the-paywall content but didn’t really embrace the free-to-view style of content that is expected to drive more subs. Patreon has struggled with keeping creators with moves to OnlyFans behind the Instagram subs-product and even YouTube. We are going to see more platforms offering every option from free to top tier to attempt to own the creator’s audience.

» China’s Internal Travel Reward 🇨🇳- But comes at a price, you have to have been good…I’m not convinced this would work anywhere else but the concept could be applied by companies and countries attempting to reward people who are hater hit with the macroeconomics.

» Google City 2.0 🌆 — Aka their second attempt at a City Within A City. Google has a city within a city approved for San Fran, it’s an ambitious 30-year project. Google failed with a similar approach previously in Canada, the biggest way to influence people is to offer cheap and affordable tech and living. I won’t be surprised if this trend is copied at smaller scales and communities are powered by brands BUT everything like this comes at a massive cost.

» The Story Behind The Fastest Accountant In The World 💨- A really interesting story of 30 years British sprinter who just became the 4th quickest Brit of all time while being an accountant and being unknown before 26. It’s never too late?

» How To Get Unstuck 🚧- Simple ways to help you become unstuck with 5 ways that might help you.

Have a great week and I’ll see you next week.

Danny Denhard