Weekly Mix #215 - Science Writing, Sustainable Houses, Optimism, Cognitive Biases & Lessons in Growth

Science Writing, Sustainable Houses, Optimism, Cognitive Biases & Lessons in Growth

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Happy Monday!

I played a lot of golf this summer. Like many subjects, golf becomes more interesting as you learn more about it. It's easy to become obsessed.

I enjoyed it enough that I want to keep working on my game through the winter, so I've been looking at options for lessons here in Montreal.

One of the coaches here has a strong social media presence, and offers coaching through an app called Skillest.

This means a couple things:

He can charge a monthly fee, instead of per hour, and a high one at that. He's no longer restricted by geography (you film yourself and upload videos to the app, which he critiques) and can charge that amount because he has more potential clients.

He can build a reputation much larger than he would be able to normally. Word-of-mouth for golf coaches is usually restricted to person-to-person. Building a reputation on an app is much further-reaching.

This creates all kinds of positive feedback loops:

He can invest in better coaching equipment for those willing to make the trip in-person, or to attract pros, which further increases his reputation

He can hire a team of coaches to expand the number of clients his team can work with

He can hire staff to manage other parts of his coaching operation, to free him up to do more work coaching himself

He can hire someone to help manage his social media, and start building followings on other platforms like Instagram and YouTube

We see power law or winner-takes-all effects everywhere these days. The top companies have the majority of the market share, and market cap.

The top creators are paid orders-of-magnitude higher than the rest. So are the top CEOs.

The internet has made winner-take-all effects more common than ever before.

So common that they even seem to apply to golf coaches.

Hope you have a great week.

Graham

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Links

📖 How Ryan Reynolds Built a Business Empire - WSJ - A long piece about one of my favourite actors and personalities, Reynolds is someone who has turned his movie success into marketing and business success as well. Oh, and he's Canadian too.

📖 Guide to Sustainable Houses - Breathe - This is one of the best guides to sustainable building I've come across. It covers a wide variety of topics and is available in PDF too.

📖 What Even Counts as Science Writing Anymore? - Ed Yong - The Atlantic - A piece that raises more questions than it answers, but discusses the limitations of science, science writing, and how it has all been brought to the fore during COVID.

📖 The Cognitive Bias Codex - If you feel like going down a rabbit hole, this is a good one. A list of 188 cognitive biases that affect us all to some degree or another.

📖 Optimism is a tool - Seth Godin - Loved this piece about optimism (and pessimism) being tools. Either can—and should—be adopted in different situations. But both can be useful.

🍿 11 sessions on growth from top teachers - Demand Curve, who puts out the best growth marketing content available, held their Growth Summit last week. These are the replays of all the sessions, available for a limited time.

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