Brad's Brief - Building an Idea Factory, Career Pages, How Ads Work, The Business of Sports, and The Problems Facing the World
Hey everyone,
This week started with a bang. On Monday morning, news broke that Tesla had invested $1.5B in bitcoin. As most of you know, I've been in the crypto space for a long time. I never could have imagined that Fortune 500 companies would be putting bitcoin on their Balance Sheets. It didn’t even cross my mind. That said, if anyone was going to do it, it's Elon Musk. He continues to be a visionary and push the envelope of the status quo. We need more people like Elon Musk running the world.
Ok, enough Elon. Let's dive in to this week's Brief. It's loaded. We cover advertising, hiring, sports, the problems facing the world, and how to come up with ideas. Check it out. 👇
Brad
What I'm reading
Ads Don't Work That Way by Kevin Simler
Cultural imprinting is the mechanism whereby an ad, rather than trying to change our minds individually, instead changes the landscape of cultural meanings — which in turn changes how we are perceived by others when we use a product.
The Super Bowl is a massive opportunity for brands to make in impression on millions of people at one time. In honor of brands spending an average of $5.5M for a 30-second ad spot this year, I dug in to this article about how ads really work. In it, Kevin Simler argues that ads don't work through emotional inception (planting an idea in your mind subconsciously), rather they work in a much more rational way. They work through cultural imprinting.
Cultural imprinting changes how we are perceived by others when we use a product. So for the Nike ad below, we buy Nike's because of what our peers will think of us when we shows up wearing Nike shoes (vs. wearing some other brand). Peer pressure is an extremely powerful force, and if advertising can tap into it even a fraction of that power, it can have a sizable effect.
Stripe Has The Only Good Careers Page On The Internet by Paul Millerd
Hiring well is the most important thing you can do as an early stage company. At Skin Pharm, we are in the process of doubling our employee count from 20 to 40 in 2021. I am constantly looking for good advice for hiring well. This article by Paul Millerd in his Substack, Boundless, digs deep into the career pages of many well known brands and deciphers what they are telling their future workforce. In the last 15 years, companies started to market working at their companies and use language like “find your calling” or “do the most important work of your life.” This is all BS. Check out Paul's keys to writing a great career page:
Don’t make bold claims, especially about people’s lives outside of work
Don’t promote an outdated mission that is too vague to mean anything
Say what you are great at; be specific
Say what you need help with
Describe who succeeds at the company and who doesn’t
Take all the spam, location tracking and opt-ins off the page
Or simply, do the opposite of what every other company does
What I'm listening to
Chamath Palihapitiya on Invest Like the Best - The Major Problems Facing the World
Chamath is a Rockstar Billionaire who is always very insightful and entertaining in his podcast appearances. His interview on Invest Like the Best was no exception. My key takeaways from this conversation were:
There is a massive difference labor vs capital. If you want to be successful, you have to be the capital vs being the labor. If you are making $2M or $3M per year and you think you are making a lot of money, you aren't. There is someone above you making $20M or $30M. Time takes care of things if you become part of the capital class.
The major issues of our time are personal finance, inequality, climate change, and skills and education.
When deciding who to work with optimize for integrity over capability.
Being smart does not require complexity.
Joe Pompliano on Polymathic Audio
In just six months, Joe Pompliano has built a Twitter following from 0 to 80,000 followers and has a daily newsletter that is now cited by mainstream media. His focus is on the business of sports and he's a great follow if you don't already. This episode discusses the business of consistency, how his career in finance prepared him for the rigors of media, building a Substack community, and the future of his business. And who he’d sell to, if they asked. Hint: It rhymes with bar pool shorts.
What I'm watching
Building an Idea Factory with Ali Abdaal and David Perell
When two of my favorite content producers get together on one video, I'm going to take note. David Perell and Ali Abdaal dive in to what it takes to have a successful YouTube channel, how to collect, connect, and create ideas, and the workings of Ali's "Idea Factory."
The originality of an idea depends on the obscurity of the sources.
-John Hegarty
Tweet of the Week
I loved Jack's analogy of what Product-Market-Fit feels like:
Qualitatively, it’ll feel like chasing a boulder down a hill, not pushing one up.
Check out the rest of his advice for anyone starting a business.
I recently did a similar post. Here are my insights:
Thanks for reading!
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