Friday Fuel - January 8th, 2020
Welcome to all of the new Crashing Up readers who’ve joined since Monday. The best way to read is with a friend. Have someone in mind? Pass it along!
Hi friends,
In case you missed Monday’s newsletter, I wrote about the world of NFTs and interviewed the CEO of Vyber Media, Jesse Kay. It was a great conversation about how a podcast he started in high school lead to him helping professional athletes and Fortune 500 brands with their digital marketing strategies. You can check it out here.
After a whirlwind of a week, here’s something to cheer you up. A hearty serving of Friday Fuel, a collection of things I’ve been learning from or enjoying recently.
📕What I’ve Been Reading: Hermès is a perfect example of how to successfully use a color as a brand identifier. Their vibrant orange packaging provides immediate brand recognition and has become of the most valuable parts of their business. Turns out, using this now-iconic color was never part of their plan. It was actually a last resort taken in sheer desperation. Talk about a blessing in disguise.
📺What I’ve Been Watching: I’m a sucker for seeing people’s reactions to good surprises. Grace VanderWaal’s America’s Got Talent Golden Buzzer performance is my go-to for an instant pick-me-up. So with this in mind, the reaction videos of Dave Portnoy surprising small business owners with enough monetary relief to last the entirety of the pandemic have been right up my alley.
In the last few weeks, Dave and Barstool have started the Barstool Fund to raise money for struggling small businesses who have a past history of success and have continued to keep all employees on payroll despite having their businesses decimated by the pandemic. So far, they’ve raised over $20 million from 156,000+ supporters.
I’ve donated and I strongly encourage you to do the same if you have the means to do so. If you’re on the fence, just watch some of these videos.
🤯What’s Blown My Mind:
“The idea of a Devil's Advocate comes from Pope Sixtus V, who established the role in 1587. These Advocates Diaboli were responsible for speaking against candidates for sainthood.
As Don Moore writes in Perfectly Confident: “To prevent any rash decisions… it is his duty to suggest natural explanations for alleged miracles, and even to bring forward human and selfish motives for deeds that have been accounted heroic virtues.”
In the first 396 years since the invention of the term, the Catholic Church has canonized 330 new saints — less than one per year, on average.”
Quote from David Perell, Monday Musings
🧵A Thread I’ve Enjoyed:
Straight from the author of Atomic Habits, the most beneficial book I read in 2020.
This thread is a goldmine regardless of career stage or entrepreneurial aspirations.
🎤Quote I Enjoyed - “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” — Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
Enjoyed this newsletter? Let me know by comments one of the links below. If it wasn’t your cup of tea, I’d really appreciate if you let me know why this wasn’t the one and what I can be doing to keep you more engaged :)
If you’re new here and want to look back on some old editions, here are a couple of my favorites: The Art of Getting Lucky and When in Roam. You can also follow me on Twitter or check out randymginsburg.com for more writing.