A cabin in the woods + Lessons from TV industry
+ Reid Hoffman on AirBnb
Hi Friends.
In this edition of Steal My Marketing, I want to talk about:
A Tweet thread on how Walt Hickey built a content engine taking lessons from the Television industry
Reid Hoffman - Airbnb Reflections
How a trip to India led to a cabin in the woods, a business idea, and an antidote to endless Zoom meetings
Talking to Andrew Warner from Mixergy podcast and Alex Lieberman from Morning Brew
How Walt Hickey of Numlock News expanded to multiple newsletters
The best thing I listened to this week, summarised in a tweet thread.
.@WaltHickey has built a content engine that he learnt from the Television industry. 📺 Some of my notes from his incredible talk @SubstackInc ... THREAD 👇👇 How does Television work? 🧐Reid Hoffman - Airbnb Reflections
My friend Sid Jha shared this article in his newsletter and I loved reading it. It’s easy to look back on the Airbnb’s of the world and connect the dots. They were always meant to be successful, right? Wrong. Everyone knew they’d be the winners, right? Wrong. This week I might have read 50+ articles/tweets on Airbnb. The best ones were written by those who knew Brian Chesky and the team when they had no traction, few users, and $400/week or so in revenue. Crazy how far they’ve come.
How a trip to India led to a cabin in the woods, a business idea, and an antidote to endless Zoom meetings
I went into this episode thinking I'd learn about travel during covid and the tiny homes movement. I came out learning about habits, reading books, journaling, meditation, engineering luck, and much more. Last year, Hector Hughes was working in a startup as the head of growth and getting burned out when he went to a 10-day silent retreat in the Himalayas. He returned to chaos. The latest round of funding had fallen through and half of the company was fired. That's when Hector decided to try his idea -> a 3-day experience in a cabin in the woods, with your phones locked away in a box, among birds and grass and books and binoculars. National media loved it, the customers are booked for all of 2020 and they're expanding. One of the joys of doing the podcast is talking to founders very early in their journey. This was one :)
The podcast is also available on Apple podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, and all major podcasting platforms. Show notes available in description wherever you’re listening, Please 5 stars on Apple Podcast. It helps me reach more listeners :)
You can connect with Hector on Linkedin, and subscribe to his newsletter.
Random Shit
I talked to Andrew Warner of Mixergy Podcast. After replying to one of his tweets we shared a few DMs, got some tips on growing the podcast from the legend. I also talked to Alex Lieberman of the Morning Brew newsletter, exchanged a few messages. Spoiler Alert: He might come up on the show ;)
3-4 previous guests have reached out to offer consulting gigs for social media stuff. A few others have been interested in learning stuff too. I’ll keep you updated on this ;)
Thanks for reading!
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Have an epic week!
Abhishek