Monthly Archives: May 2020

Here’s Why Economic Downturns Are Good For Innovators and Bad For Everyone Else

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All the way back in 2008, I wrote a piece about why economic downturns are good for innovators and bad for pretty much everyone else. 

As we face a recession in 2020 due to COVID-19, this is still true. The pressures of an economic slowdown actually benefit certain innovative companies that had trouble getting wide-spread adoption before the recession. 

Here’s an excerpt from my article from 2008, Recessions promote breakthrough innovations:

When the economy is booming, little pressure is put on expenses. Large organizations often penalized innovators…[and] companies are ok with spending more money on the same software, the same hardware, and the same advertising mix. 

But…economic downturns force companies to reevaluate how they spend money. Companies need to cut expenditures dramatically yet are expected to have the same level of service as when times were good. This forces firms to look for alternatives to what they are doing.

Revenue pressure forces large companies to get creative. And it’s those smaller companies that are already innovating or can pivot quickly that take advantage. This was true in the Great Recession of 2008 and will be true in the recession forming in 2020. The only difference is where the innovation is taking place. 

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5 Ways To Actually Improve Your Life & Your Work During Quarantine

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There are a lot of articles out there about self-improvement during the quarantine. These can be a bit exhausting to read. You’re probably not focused on growth if you have kids at home and are just trying to manage your life and job under the new COVID-19 world order.

But, there’s still value in attempting to take up some positive habits during this bizarre time. Even if they are just in the back of your mind, they could impact your behavior. 

So, here are a few ideas if you are interested in personal and professional growth during the lockdown: 

1. Watch less news. 

TV news is worse for you than cigarettes. It is designed to get people riled up and elicit extreme emotions to keep you glued to the channel. It is not designed to help to deliver or inform the news. It is all noise and no signal. 

All daily news is bad.

The U.S. networks that deliver daily news are all bad. CNN, FOX, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, CNBC, ABC … and even things like the Daily Show … are terrible for you. Eliminate it all. These programs are designed to get you frustrated, angry, and emotional. Just like smartphones, they are created by brilliant people to keep you addicted to the network 24/7. 

If you watch 10 hours of TV news, you will learn almost nothing. It might mildly entertain you … but you can watch a great TV show (like Breaking Bad) for entertainment.

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TV: The Honourable Woman — great show if you stuck at home

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If you are looking for a great mini-series to watch and you love political thrillers (which is my personal favorite genre), go no further than The Honourable Woman.

“The Honourable Woman” (which is spelled “The Honorable Woman” in the U.S. release) is a BBC mini-series starring the amazing Maggie Gyllenhaal (who is incredible in the show). Gyllenhaal plays a member of the British House of Lords who also happens to be the daughter of a famous Israeli arms dealer.

Intrigue and incredible twists and turns accompany every episode. There is a deep plot about the Mi6, CIA, Mossad, Hamas, and more. And, of course, no one is what they seem and everyone has a deep back-story.

In the U.S., you can buy the show on Amazon Prime, iTunes, Google Play, etc.

Summation: highly recommend the “The Honourable Woman” — especially if you like political thrillers. Rating: 5/5

How Can You Become a 10xer?

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Many people say they want to be a 10xer, but very few people know how to become one. 

This post outlines how you can become a 10xer in your own organization and how you can identify other star employees in any business. 

What is a 10xer? 

A 10xer is someone who brings 10 times the value to their company as compared to their peers. 

They impact the business almost immediately. The organization is improved in a matter of weeks, and their peers notice very quickly that they’ve found someone special. 

Here are the 4 things you can do to become a 10xer:

1. See opportunities where others only see threats. 

The ability to understand and analyze threats to a business is important. This is especially true if it’s a large, established multi-billion dollar business that needs to focus on protecting its downside. 

Companies have entire teams focused on identifying and neutralizing potential threats. Sometimes this is necessary, but oftentimes it’s not. Many threats are not as severe as they initially seem. And if a business spends all its focus on threats, it will no longer innovate and no longer grow.

If you want to be a 10xer, you need to be the one discovering massive opportunities for growth. And the younger the business, the more time should be spent on growth vs. threats. 

This is hard because the threats are real. They are important. They could really hurt the company. And the big threats should definitely be tackled head-on. But not every threat needs to be addressed. And even those that do need to be addressed don’t need to be addressed fully.

It takes experience to discern which threats are important to mitigate and which threats are less severe. Employees with large company experience are often in “threat-mode” more than they should be. This gives you a potential advantage. 

Smart employees at start-ups often spend over 80% of their time on threats and less than 10% on opportunities. But the 10xers spend over 50% on opportunities.

That’s how you can start to become a 10xer; spend more time on finding opportunities than you do identifying threats. 

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How To Write a Great Cold Email That Will Actually Get a Response

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Photo by Kon Karampelas on Unsplash

One of the best-kept secrets in the start-up world is that you can access almost anyone you want to with a great cold email. Well, almost anyone… see more below.   

CEOs are remarkably accessible and easy to reach. 

Most CEOs and VCs personally read every well-formed email they get, even if they don’t know the sender. This means that if you send a great cold email to your favorite CEO, chances are it will get read.

If you don’t know the CEO’s email address, it’s easy to guess. The email address of 90% of company executives follows the company’s normal email convention. If you wanted to guess the CEO of Apple’s email address, for example, you could start with [first initial]lastname@apple.com and iterate from there. 

When I was in college in the 1990s, I would send cold emails to people like Steve Jobs, then the CEO of NeXT, and Steve Ballmer (then #2 at Microsoft). Both of them would reply within hours… to a college student. And if you’re wondering, yes, I would usually send them from my berkeley.edu email address at 3 am while in the computer lab waiting for a program to compile.

But just guessing someone’s email address does not make your email worth sending. 

If you want to start a meaningful conversation with the person you’re trying to reach, you need to write a great cold email. 

There are three things you need to do to write a great cold email:

  1. Personalize and send it to the right person. 
  2. Emphasize how responding will benefit the reader. 
  3. Make it short and clear. 

That’s it. That’s all you need to do. 


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