⫹⫺ The Mundanity of Excellence + subscriber chat launch 🗣️
CMMN WLTH 129 - Cheat Codes for Creators, Makers & Doers
Hello my friends,
Thank you for the feedback on Friday’s 🔮 Opinions Are Not Ideas.
It sounds like it struck a chord with many of you.
Building on the momentum, I thought now is as good a time as ever to launch CMMN WLTH subscriber chat.
It will serve as a central point for further discussion and hopefully create some likeminded connections for you.
My goal has always been to turn this into an infinite discussion on product, process and people (+how ai is changing it all).
Please drop some thoughts in there and let me know if you find it valuable.
In this week’s newsletter:
(1)Passions combine into a unique product proposition, (2)fighting bureaucracy with meritocracy and the (3)mundanity of excellence.
If you find CMMN WLTH useful, I’d appreciate if you shared it on your social media↓
– Andy
*Product
District Vision - Where Passion & Product Intersect
"We were the only ones with long, greasy hair”
- How the founders met each other at business school
District Vision started as a creative agency (District Projects) which founders Tom Daly and Max Vallot parlayed into a successful eyewear and sportswear brand.
Both founders were creatively frustrated while working in the fashion industry and were looking for an escape. Combining their passion for running and meditation resulted in a unique value proposition for the consumer.
On distribution strategy - One of the first running brands to be stocked at high-end fashion retailers such as Mr Porter and SSENSE.
*People
Frank Slootman - Behavior is a Choice Not a Skill
“Ambition comes from a lack of adjustment. If you were perfectly balanced you wouldn’t have any ambition”.
Not every business is the same. Be careful not to think that a proven formula or “playbook” will work elsewhere.
Fight bureaucracy with meritocracy - judge ideas on their quality not on where or who they came from.
Legacy is: helping people advance beyond their station and the way they feel in his organizations - “10 years from now they should feel like it’s the best thing they ever did”
*Process
The Mundanity of Excellence - An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers
“People don’t know how ordinary success is.”
Excellence requires qualitative not quantative differentiation. Increased training time, per se, does not make an athlete swim faster. Focus on quality vs. doing more of the same thing.
Talent is indistinguishable from its effects. In reality, the amount of talent required for Olympic success is surprisingly low.
Bigger, more dramatic motivations like winning an Olympic medal are only effective when broken down into smaller, more manageable tasks. Seeing friends, having fun, practice being rewarding are more effective in achieving longer term goals.
*Out of Office
A playlist I’m enjoying in the sun↓
*Editors note: Last week’s Out of Office highlighted the Make America Healthy Again report. The White House has subsequently noted that 7 of the 500 citations were inaccurate (The problematic citations were on topics around children’s screen time, medication use and anxiety.)
Weekly Subscribers: 610 (+13) ⬆️
Open Rate: 55% ⬇️