History has such rewarding lessons, if we bring our selves to learn them.

Did you know?

American Express started as a train company in 1850

They transported freight and people from state to state, but soon realized there was a much larger business opportunity: Helping travelers spend money in new places.

Interstate commerce was difficult because states had different currencies. American Express invented the Traveler's Check to solve this problem. Amex is now a $115 billion company that solves this same problem 173 years later.

Just be married to the problem. Solutions can be enhanced over time and continue to make money. If any thing, persistence and having the right exam question to solve should be your personal marker for defining your trajectory.

Outcomes

Other Peoples Ideas. Wants. Desires. Product Features

Most times we build things bounded by our own imagination and experiences. But some times out of the box, other OPIs(Other Peoples Ideas) really can help us. Even if it is to explore the "what could be", every idea doesn't have to be executed or built, some times it best to just explore the "what could be" element.

This though was invoked in my mind this week as I saw a suggestion about a product I am very familiar with, a user suggested a tweak to it. To my mind it was a solid ideas as a user of the product but, in real life it would lead to havoc for the brand, site and most of its constituents. What was that thought/idea?

It is always a great idea to look at these possibilities so you know how your outcomes can change when simple things change.

One New Thing (that I learnt some yrs ago)

In 2017 a man created a fake restaurant on TripAdvisor, got people to post good reviews, and making the fake restaurant the #1 restaurant in London which triggered hundreds of calls for reservations. So for 1 day only, he set up a 'cafe' in his backyard and served frozen food... to rave reviews. Gaming outcomes when you know the rules people apply to a problem(in this case scarcity leading to rave reviews) is some thing that sheds light on how fickle we are as humans. It should also teach us how to objectively decide what outcomes to dial down and which to dial up because not all have the same results.

Boring Stuff that Scales

Self Governance... What?

The Shopping Cart Theory states whether a person places their cart back into the rack rather than leaving it wherever they please determines the goodness of that person. Sylvan Goldman invented carts in 1937 to get groceries from the store to the vehicle to help the customers save energy and also surreptitiously encourage them to buy more. Carts seem like a great service. All the customer needs to do is place the cart in the handy rack near their parking spot when finished.

The Theory claims that since there is no punishment for leaving the cart next to one’s auto, the only pressure is societal norm. People who are innately “good” will return the cart to its resting place, and those who aren’t won’t.

My first discovery of anything involving carts was noticing when anyone left his or her cart in an unacceptable place someone else would soon leave a second cart next to it. A subtle permission slip since the second guy only copied another person’s dubious action.

These kinds of insights whilst boring help us design better systems, better versions of our selves and better tests that allow us to scale our outcomes. Read a fantastic piece by the New York Times below on the subject

What you should be Watching

The Mediterranean Sea is crisscrossed by traffics of every kind, some legal, others lethal. Over the last five years, we have been putting together the pieces of a tragic and terrifying story of the merchants of death. Lethal Cargo covers the escape of refugees from war regions in leaky boats, the spilling of toxic waste into the depths of the ocean during goods transportation and in our two most recent episodes, the illegal handling of drugs and weapon across the Mediterranean. Shockingly, the governments that should be trying to stem the tide of this illegal trades are the very ones involved in a tangled web of corruption!

This is a hard-edged look at the complex movement of weapons across the Mediterranean. The documentary reveal the tangled web woven by politicians, gun runners, arms dealers, weapons manufacturers, and all too often, the very governments tasked with preventing illegal arms trafficking. In this 4 part series if you time to just watch one. Watch Episode three.

Episode 1 Migrants

Episode 2 - Toxic Waste:

Episode 3 - Weapons:

Episode 4 - Drugs:

Monetize your time

By not missing out on the ChatGPT wave. If you were under a rock or just lazy, you need to read this thread and bring yourself up to speed. I have now automated at-least 10% of my weekly response based tasks and cut down my research time by a 1/3 using ChatGPT.

Here are the most helpful pieces of content out there to understand how it can help you get better outcomes.

A serious take

A different take

Made in Pakistan

Experts in many fields who can share their experiences with any one and every one and monetize their brain being picked. If you want to enhance your outcomes, share your experiences. Monetize them, also learn from other people's experiences so you can use the sum of the collective learnings to more conversations that you can monetize over time. You have the potential to build the perpetual dollarized pay-out engine to let people pick your brains. How you ask? By going to pickmybrain.world

One Last Thing

Zero Paid Advertising can result in 10m$ in Sales. How? Where? Who? You ask. The ecom store Mini Katana makes ~$10M+/yr selling mini Katanas (aka the sword) without running any paid ads. How? Just by posting TikToks & youtube shorts. Are you missing out on your outcomes as a seller/promoter/biz by not taking advantage of TikTok and YouTube shorts? Some times just putting out the right content is more than paying the wrong people to see it.