Dickie's Digest - Frameworks, Sharing, Finds, Amazon, and Mushroom Coffee
Hey there - happy Sunday.
Welcome to November. Hands down October was the fastest month of the year. I’m hoping things slow down for a nice, peaceful holiday season. But if 2020 has anything to say about it, that feels unlikely.
A couple of things from me this week. I published an essay on what jumping rope taught me about speed and consistency. It’s a quick read on how something that started as a frustrating workout taught me a lot about consistency and moving fast.
I’m also thinking about starting a 30 essay in 30 days challenge. If you’re looking to start a writing habit and want to do it with me, just respond directly to this email and we can get a group set up.
That’s all from me! In this week’s Digest:
😎 Cool Things Corner (my new favorite coffee)
Have an epic week!
Dickie
🛠 11 Frameworks Everybody Should Learn with Shaan Puri
This week, host of the My First Million Podcast (and esteemed Digest subscriber!) Shaan Puri released an incredible resource of frameworks. Known as the “king of frameworks,” Shaan has a unique ability to make ideas stick in your head. This PDF is a breakdown of 11 of his top frameworks he thinks everyone should learn.
These frameworks span an array of topics, from productivity to marketing to overcoming plateaus to building an audience. I love exploring ideas like these, and it makes me want to create something just like it (stay tuned..!)
Even better than the PDF is listening to Shaan describe them in audio format. You can check out this episode of My First Million to hear them first hand. This tweet thread also does a great job summarizing them.
Here’s my favorite framework:
Big Mario Marketing
Say your businesses sells the “boosts” that take Little Mario to Big Mario.
No one cares about your product. They care about becoming Big Mario.
Don’t sell your product. Sell the type of person your customer will become when using your product.
Read more: 11 Frameworks Everybody Should Learn
🎨 Show Your Work! with Austin Kleon
This week I finished Show Your Work by Austin Kleon, a quick, light read on the importance of working, building, and learning in public. I’ve written before about the leverage you unlock by sharing work you’re already doing. With just a little additional effort, you can take all the work you’re already doing and start sharing it with others. This could be online, within your organization, or with your friends.
By letting the world know what you're interested in, you attract like-minded people. This book drives these points home and then some. There’s no better way to lever up your efforts than to start sharing.
Read more: Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon
🔬 David Perell’s Friday Finds Compendium
Warning: if you have any plans for the next few hours, don’t click on this link.
David Perell is a prolific online creator. His Friday Finds newsletters is one of my favorites for its range of topics and unique finds (something I hope the Digest accomplishes as well.)
This link is a curation of every link he’s ever plugged in his newsletter. It’s broken up into Business/Tech, Society/Philosophy, Psychology, and Miscellaneous Odds and Ends. There’s a ton of good stuff buried in here, enough to keep you occupied for hours.
I’m thinking about creating something similar for the Digest. Would you be interested in a Notion table that has every podcast, article, tweet, and book recommendation from the past 44 editions of the Digest? If you are and you’re one of the first five people to respond to this email, I’ll shoot it over to you.
Read more: David Perell’s Friday Finds Compendium
🏬 What is Amazon? with Zack Kanter (Long Read)
This was a fascinating long-read from Stedi founder Zack Kanter. It’s a deep dive into what makes Amazon, Amazon. Zack starts with a breakdown of Walmart’s business model and how it optimized around a single constraint: shelf space. But when Amazon came along, it leveraged the unbounded scale of the internet to remove that constraint.
From there, Amazon has systematically identified the bottlenecks to its growth and removed them one by one. Even better, they’ve turned those bottlenecks into massive streams of revenue with AWS, Amazon Logistics, Amazon Marketplace, and Amazon Catalog. Amazon is a story of broad tinkering, finding what works, doubling down on it, then tinkering again. Experimentation and exploitation at a massive scale.
But we haven’t yet seen all of the consequences of this meteoric growth. Towards the end, Zack explores Amazon’s Promoted Products business and how, left unchecked, could compromise Amazon’s commitment to customer experience. Given everyone on Earth is bullish on $AMZN, I found the points he presents worth thinking about.
Read more: What is Amazon?
🎧This Week in Podcasts
This week I listened to three epic podcasts which served as the inspirations for three tweet threads.
Seth Godin on the Tim Ferriss Show [HIGHLY RECOMMEND]
Seth Godin is one of my favorite writers and thinkers. In fact, I talked about him in the very first edition of Dickie’s Digest (44 weeks ago..!) In this episode, Seth and Tim talk about impostor syndrome, learning to juggle, writing a blog post every day for a decade, telling great stories, and all things marketing. This one is a gem.
Anthony Pompliano on the Creator Lab Podcast [HIGHLY RECOMMEND]
The Creator Lab podcast has been pumping out fire recently. Esteemed Digest reader Bilal Zaidi has been lining up quality guest after quality guest. In this episode, Bilal and Pomp talk about building an audience, becoming a prolific creator, building wealth, and managing your time. Keep this podcast on your radar - Bilal is doing big things.
😎 Cool Things Corner
For the past few weeks, I’ve been running a coffee experiment. I’ve been alternating between my regular ground coffee and the Four Sigmatic Mushroom Coffee as recommended by Tim Ferriss. I was looking to see if there is any difference in my jitteriness and alertness between the two.
After running the experiment, I’ve concluded that Four Sigmatic leads to a much more stable, smooth caffeination than regular coffee. There was no midday crash, no jitters, and I felt absolutely locked in. I was skeptical at first of the “mushroom” aspect but trust me, it tastes like a premium dark roast coffee with none of the negative side effects.
Don’t just take my word for it. I reached out to Four Sigmatic and they hooked the Digest readers up with a discount code. You can use code “DICKIE” at checkout to get 10% off your order. I highly recommend the Morning Routine bundle if you’re looking to up your focus.
🧠 Idea Corner
Here are the six books I’m working my way through at the moment. I highly recommend each of them!
🥃 Sunday Chaser
For some reason, I always get quite the “kick” out of these.
Thanks for reading!
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Be sure to follow me on Twitter or respond directly to this email to get in touch. And should you come across anything interesting this week, send it my way! I love finding new things to read through members of this newsletter.
