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Hi friends,
Back again with your weekly shot of Friday Fuel, a collection of things that I’ve been learning from or enjoying recently.
🎙️Friday Features
Today’s guest is a good friend of mine and a fellow member of the Crashing Up family. He is the Founder and CEO of MilesAhead, a luxury hospitality company. A recent graduate of Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration (‘19), he was named one of Travel + Leisure’s International Rising Stars in 2017 and was one of Virtuoso’s Rising Star candidates for 2019. In a short amount of time he’s made a name for himself as a go-to figure in the travel industry and has grown MilesAhead into a multimillion-dollar company.
Say hello to Rob Karp.
🎧 To listen to us chat about navigating a business through COVID, the future of business travel and why now is actually the best time to own a travel rewards card, click the play button on the audio player at the top of this email.
…and whenever you do fly next, make sure to book your trip with MilesAhead. Trust me, you’ll be in good hands.
If you found this conversation interesting, I’d love it if you shared with a friend!
📕What I’ve Been Reading: So far, every guest I’ve interviewed on Friday Features has been under the age of the thirty. While I don’t intend to only focus on young change makers, this has been intentional up until this point. In all industries, but specifically tech, age is no longer a barrier to entry or success. For Generation Z (depends on who you ask, but for this case we’ll say born in ‘95 or later) we’ve grown up in the digital age and it’s all we know. This is a massive advantage, especially in early-stage tech where investors’ jobs are to bet on emerging trends.
Early-stage Gen Z investor Meagan Loyst spent time chatting with 71 young investors working in venture capital and growth equity, at accelerators/incubators, student-run VCs, and as angel investors — all aged ~18 to 25 years old. In this article she shares her findings, gathering data on their favorite brands and the emerging trends they have their eyes on. The top four trends? Prosumer / Consumerization of Enterprise Software, Social Gaming, EdTech, and the Creator Economy. If you’re interested in where the tech world is headed, take notes.
📺What I’ve Been Watching: I saw an interesting quote from David Perell that said, “A shocking number of the best entrepreneurs I know ran illegal businesses when they were kids.” This immediately made me think of Coss Marte.
I learned about his full story from this Vice Documentary. After running a cross-state, multimillion-dollar drug empire as a teenager, Coss was arrested and locked up for seven years. Upon his release, he founded ConBody, a prison-style bodyweight bootcamp that has found massive success.
The best part? He only hires those who’ve been previously incarcerated. Even cooler? Zero of his employees have been reincarcerated.
This story has quickly become one of my favorites to share as it proves that not all criminals are bad people and furthermore, that David’s idea has legs.
🤯What’s Blown My Mind: After listening to Peloton founder and CEO John Foley’s appearance on How I Built This, I’m even more impressed. To think that he started this all with little to no fitness or tech knowledge and an initial prototype of an iPad connected to a spin bike...
🧵A Thread I’ve Enjoyed: There is a massive difference between being a great writer and a great copywriter. Copywriting is a delicate process, like baking a cake. The same way too much of one ingredient can spoil the entire recipe, an addition or removal of one word can drastically change your conversion rate. The best copy is concise and sells the customer on why they need your product or service. While examples of good copy are everywhere, great ones are hard to come by. This thread gives an inside look into the latter.
🎤A Quote I Enjoyed - “The smartest person in the room is usually the person who knows how to tap in to the intelligence of every person in the room.” - Scott Kelly
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If you’re new here and want to catch up on some old editions, here are a couple of my favorites: The WATZ Stack and When In Roam. You can also follow me on Twitter or check out randymginsburg.com for more writing.
Thanks for reading and see you on Monday,
Randy
Friday Fuel - November 13th, 2020