Dickie's Digest #69 - Cold Emails, Jet.com, Racket, Headline Mistakes, and DeFi
Hello builders, happy Sunday.
A few things from me this week. I was on the Danny Miranda podcast talking about writing, investing, and how I manage my time. And I was also featured in the Podium Worthy newsletter talking about my favorite books, influences, and advice to my younger self. And finally, enrollments are open for the June Ship 30 for 30 cohort. If you want to start writing online, we’d love to have you.
That’s it from me. In this week’s Digest:
🧵 💵 Jet.com Founder and Timberwolves owner Marc Lore on the My First Million Podcast
🧵✍🏼 7 Headline mistakes that once you see, you’ll never make again
🎧 💰 Mark Cuban on why DeFi is the future. I am officially all the way down the DeFi rabbit hole. And if you’re looking for where to start, check the last two editions of the Digest. After listening to how bullish Mark Cuban is on the space, I’m even more motivated to learn. In this episode, he breaks down the way he is thinking about the Ethereum/Web3/crypto ecosystem. He recently closed a round with Polygon, an Ethereum scaling solution (rumored to be in the 10s of millions).
I also highly recommend subscribing to the Bankless podcast if you’re looking for the best weekly podcast in the crypto space.
🧵 ✍🏼 How to write an effective cold email. I love simple frameworks for things with super high leverage like writing cold emails. This five-step framework from Growth Tactics is something I find myself revisiting whenever I need to write one. I especially like the fifth point of asking for permission, not time.
99% of the cold emails I receive finish with asking to “jump on a quick call.” A better ending is to say “if this sounds good to you, I can shoot over a few ideas I have for how it could work.” This way, you’re providing value upfront before encroaching on someone’s time. If you’re selling anything or looking to build relationships, bookmark this one and come back to it later.
🧵 💵 Jet.com Founder and Timberwolves owner Marc Lore on the My First Million Podcast. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the My First Million podcast and its quality of guests lately. It’s only a matter of time until it’s at the top of the business charts. And this episode was one that will definitely help it get there. I had never heard of Marc Lore before this episode, but he’s an absolute baller. He founded and sold Jet.com, then bought the Timberwolves and started a venture investing firm with A-Rod.
There’s a bunch of gems on hiring, decision-making, prioritization, and the future of sports in this one - give it a listen this week.
🎧⚓️ Racket.com - A new 9-minute short-form podcast app. I’m exploring starting a podcast and think I might do it on Racket, a new app I found after doing two interviews on it this week. Most podcasts are 90% noise and 10% signal because there is no time limit. But these have a 9-minute limit and force you to be concise and talk about a single topic. Plus, it’s super low-friction to start one. If you’re interested, you can check out my interviews on the root of your writing struggles and building the Ship 30 for 30 community.
If you want to explore the app, hit me up with a reply, the founder hooked me up with a bunch of invite codes.
🧵✍🏼 7 Headline mistakes that once you see, you’ll never make again. This week I took one of our Ship 30 for 30 Office Hours presentations and turned it into a thread as a preview for some of the principles we teach. Like it or not, your writing online can live or die by the quality of your headline. And with how short the consideration span is for the average online reader, you have to convince them to keep reading. There are some simple mistakes we see time and time again, and this thread helps you fix them.
🔥 Last week’s most popular link: 📖 🛠 The Ultimate No-Code Tool Guide in 2021.
I have strong feelings that 99% of books should have been blog posts and 99% of blog posts should have been tweets. And it looks like plenty of people agree.
That’s it for this week. As always, I appreciate your time and attention. Shoot anything you find interesting this week my way.
Have an epic week.
Dickie
