Are you a challenger?
A prime example of an ambiguous societal norm is being a good citizen. Compliant, collaborative, eager to support the community forward.
But we often miss the mark on critical thinking.
It’s one of the key traits that strategic leaders possess. A sign of intelligence. The growth seed we seek.
Without critical thinking, we end up lost in propaganda, misinformation, or outright conspiracy theories.
Fact-checking and seeking sources of truth is key to developing integrity – and a key value map.
In the digital realm, we can easily train our critical thinking muscles… Through experimentation.
One of the most popular top sellers out there, “The 4-Hour Workweek”, found its title through A/B testing different headlines. Tim Ferriss ran many Google Adwords titles and monitored clickthrough rates, identifying what works at scale before going live.
If you aren’t a marketer yourself, here’s a simple process to launch a test in an hour and get results delivered in a simple dashboard:
- Define your service/topic/form/product idea
- Sign up for a landing page creator like Instapage, Unbounce, Leadpages, Carrd.
- Run some creative copy ideas with ChatGPT
- Grab some images from Unsplash – or generate them with AdCreative.ai
- Measure results. Form submissions for a form test, a thank you page for a click button, or a Google tag/pixel event you can set up with UI in Facebook Event Manager as well.
- Spend $20 on an ad – Facebook, Twitter, Google AdWords.
Or, you know, launch a poll on Twitter and promote your post for 24 hours.
Continuous experimentation brings incremental improvements. Being 1% better daily for a year will make you 37.78 times better.
This newsletter’s goal is to make you 5% better every week. What is the biggest value prop I can deliver to you?
Mario
My Take
✍️Leaders and Self Improvement – Last week I was mentioned by Lions Pride’s “The Law of the Lid and Your Team’s Development” regarding my stance on leadership and their focus on goals and improvement.
✍️Rush.app CEO announcement – Last If you missed it last week, I have been officially appointed as CEO of Rush.app, helping the brand scale its already incredible results, like generating up to 7% more revenue per month with post-purchase automation for 2,700+ stores.
✍️WordPress Ecosphere and Economy – Had a great conversation with Remkus de Vries about topical WordPress topics such as running WP agencies in the EU, Marketing, AI, and general challenges in the e-commerce space. If you’re interested, have a look at the Within WordPress Podcast.
✍️Tech Investor Academy – Last month I led an insightful panel with Dimitris Matsakis and Andrea Piazza about Angel investing. We highlighted the importance of patience and collaboration in angel investing, the significance of strong management teams, as well as topics like the impact of staying up-to-date with the market.
Business Strategy
📝FTC New Endorsement Guides – The FTC has announced the final version of the Endorsement Guides, which include more prescriptive disclosure requirements and liability for all parties involved in advertising transactions.
📝China’s Manufacturing Sink Effects on Asia – Manufacturing in Asia continues to decline as a weak Chinese economy dampens demand for the region’s goods, with factory activity contracting in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. The sluggish global economy, coupled with high borrowing costs and elevated inflation, is hindering growth, and a recovery in the manufacturing sector depends on improvements in global economic conditions and more robust demand from key markets like Europe and the US.
📝PitchBook’s European Private Capital in 2023 – PitchBook has released its “2023 European Private Capital Outlook: H1 Follow-up” report, offering insights into the current state of European venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) in relation to the predictions made at the end of 2022. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the trends and challenges shaping the European private capital landscape in 2023.
📝 Fewer Tweets in Google Results – Twitter’s recent alterations, including blocking unregistered users from browsing tweets and implementing temporary limits on tweet consumption, seem to have affected how Google crawls and indexes Twitter content, resulting in fewer tweet carousels appearing in search results.
📝Neil Patel on Marketing – Yet another value bomb from Neil Patel regarding 7 Marketing stats that changed the way he tackles marketing. He gives actionable advice on topics like omnichannel marketing revenue, your first keyword being your brand, marketing in all countries, companies being unaware of how to spend the money they have, and many more topics in the constantly-changing world of marketing
📝NY lawyers sanctioned because of ChatGPT – US judge imposed sanctions on two New York lawyers and their law firm for submitting a legal brief with six fictitious case citations generated by an AI chatbot. The lawyers were ordered to pay a $5,000 fine in total for acting in bad faith and making false statements to the court.
Global News
The layoff-verse has been truly quiet this week. I’ve been following the numbers every week since Q4 of 2022 and I can say this is one of the quietest means. Could this mean a normalization?
- 2023 Companies with layoffs: 830
- Employees were laid off in 2023: 212,958
📈Chinese indices are taking a bit of a hit following China’s Manufacturing slowdown.
- HSI: 19,110 (+1.57%)
- SSE: 3,222 (+0.69%)
- CSI 300: 3,868 (+0.77%)
📈The global economy rises for the second week in a row, despite the tension from the tech wars between China-U.S.
- DOW: 34,418 (+0.03%)
- NASDAQ: 13,816 (+0.20%)
- S&P: 4,455 (+0.11%)
📈Engine Land recording a dramatic shift in Twitter indexing from Google:
- Friday Index results: 471 million
- Monday Index results: 180 million
Housing prices declined for the first time since 2012. To add up, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index of home prices fell 0.2% in April. While this does not mean that the 3% mortgage rate is coming back, it’s a development considering the recent trends.
📰 Happy Independence Day to my readers from the USA! I decided to keep this week’s breaking news US-centric for the US audience, so they can reflect on what makes them proud and what they think can be changed:
- Supreme Court agrees to take up the issue of whether people accused of domestic violence can own firearms.
- July Fourth Weekend breaks travel records across the U.S.
- Biden to create an “on-ramp” repayment program so borrowers of the student loan will not be subjected to penalties
Investing Updates
With SeedBlink partnering up with Equidam, both platforms significantly help strengthen the connection between founders and investors when it comes to valuations. So let’s see what’s happening this week:
- Weavy – Recently gaining the support of Atlassian Ventures, Weavy is raising nearly 3 Million in order to empower tens of millions of developers.
- Nuumi – If you want to be a part of a company that helps people quit their addictions like smoking, join Nuumi’s 1.5M round.
- ADASTEC – A business that helps deliver pipeline contracts. If you’re interested in joining, they are raising a $20M round.
Note: Got a round going that you want to feature – your own business or a portfolio company? Get in touch.
Need My Help?
I’m involved with a number of initiatives – here’s what I can do to help you:
🌐 Scalable and secure WordPress? DevriX provides WordPress retainers to SMEs, publishers, eCommerce, SaaS, and more. Our plans start from $1,200/mo to $40K/mo for anything from support through engineering, CRO, performance, security, to fractional CXO services and managing the data stacks of large corps.
🛒 Running on Shopify? Set up Rush now and increase your revenue with post-purchase orders automatically!
🚀 Want to scale and optimize your business? Growth Shuttle offers personalized advisory plans starting at $350/hr. Tap into my personal pool of business know-how and my data warehouse of industry data.
👥 Want access to my blueprints/books and a weekly Slack planning session? Join my Community and grab my Entrepreneurship book.
💼 Looking for investment opportunities? Check out SeedBlink.
💡 Eager to incorporate my recommended solutions? Track my angel investments. Sharing, applying for open roles, or writing reviews helps a ton. And anything else I try to publish on my blog and my courses here!
🔥 Need support turning strategy into measurable value and outcomes? Visit Value Creation Partner for tailored growth and value creation services.
