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- The Connection Newsletter 68 - I’mma let you finish
The Connection Newsletter 68 - I’mma let you finish
The Connection Newsletter 68 - I’mma let you finish
Hello!
This is edition #68 of
The Connection
, the weekly email I send family, friends, and future friends (hello!) Glad you're here.
Kamaru Usman is the current undisputed Welterweight champion of the UFC. He’s not known for sensational knockouts, but something far worse: dominating his opponents every second of every round.
Source: Hans Gutknecht | Vibe.com
If you’ve ever been in that position, you know
it’s easier to get knocked out. Usman will smother you like the desert heat - for 25 minutes straight.
After becoming UFC champ, he was talking about work life balance in an interview. Early in his career, he’d wake up, do a double training session, eat, nap, then train again. That was his whole day. His mentor would occasionally ask him to go out and have fun with him.
“I was always like, "Nah, man I gotta train on Monday. I don't want to do all of that. I don't want to go out.”
“Rashad (Evans) would be like, ‘Bro, you gotta have balance in this. There's gotta be a balance.’ And I always thought at that time, ‘Fuck that, you say that 'cause you at the top, you the champ. You the best, so you say that.’
“My whole day was, ‘I just need to work. I need to catch up. I need to catch up to these guys.’ So I was just doing overtime.
“But now I understand what Rashad was saying. There has to be balance.” (source: JRE MMA Show #59 - 51:52)
The irony of course, is it seems Usman is only saying since now that
he’s the champ
, and
he’s on top
.
Balance didn’t transform a “skinny Nigerian kid” into an NCAA Division II All-American wrestler who won honors three years in a row. Balance didn’t make him the NCAA Division II national champion or UFC Welterweight champion.
Work made him those things.
Work life balance is such a personal thing. It’s useful to observe how others balance their lives (or probably more often than not, not balance) and do your best to emulate those you look up to. But it’s difficult to get tangible advice.
Ask someone on the come-up and it’s #hustle all day everyday. Ask someone on top, and they’re preaching their daily meditation practice and a 7-day ayahuasca retreats.
The answer is likely somewhere in the middle.
Books
Unrelated: I finished reading The Operator by Tom King, a terrific biography of David Geffen, one of modern Hollywood’s moguls. I first heard about the book in a profile of Scooter Braun featured in a previous
Connection
- Braun mentioned the book inspired him to enter the music management business.
- required reading if you’re interested in a Hollywood career as an executive.
The most interesting thing about Geffen (from a business perspective) was how time and time again, with 20% strategy and 80% sheer will, he put himself into deals where he captured enormous upside with virtually no downside. There was one exception -- a film he produced called
Personal Best
, that he financed by putting up his homes as collateral (eventually, he laid off the debt to a studio that owed him a favor).
Onto this week’s articles:
Technology & Pop Culture
Source: The Washington Post
Those 15 seconds during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards would intertwine the fates of Taylor Swift and Kanye West in ways neither would anticipate… for
years
. A terrific analysis on how Kanye’s interruption affected pop culture for the next 10 years.
The Washington Post did a terrific job bringing this story to life. Even if you’re not a Tay Tay / Yeezy / pop-culture fan, it’s worth checking out the animations they put together.
How did Kanye spent his year out of the public eye to avoid the ire of the Internet?
Finally, we saw how the 2009 VMA debacle vilified Kanye and sent him on a self-imposed exile. First to Japan, then Rome, and finally to Hawaii.
Here, Kanye indefinitely black booked all three session rooms of the Avex recording studio in Honolulu. He would import some of the world’s best producers, emcees and artists to form what he called “rap camp”. He would rarely sleep, working long hours through the night, moving from room to room, as he directed what would become his comeback album. His back-hand apology album. The album many argued to be one of the greatest albums ever created.
Of course, we’re talking about Kanye West, My Beautiful, Dark, Twisted Fantasy.
(source:
)
And how did Taylor react to the “cancel Taylor” campaign sparked by Kim Kardashian West?
“A mass public shaming, with millions of people saying you are quote-unquote canceled, is a very isolating experience. I don’t think there are that many people who can actually understand what it’s like to have millions of people hate you very loudly.
“I realized I needed to restructure my life because it felt completely out of control. I knew immediately I needed to make music about it because I knew it was the only way I could survive it. It was the only way I could preserve my mental health and also tell the story of what it’s like to go through something so humiliating.” (source: Vogue’s September cover story by Abby Aguirre)
---
Another cool way media companies are using technology and data to bring stories to life. Here’s an example of where the method of storytelling is more interesting than the story itself. The NYT explains its methodology:
The New York Times reached out to each candidate’s campaign team for his or her full playlist. For the ones who did not provide the playlist — President Trump, Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Bernie Sanders — Times reporters went to each candidates’ rallies to obtain the list of songs using an online application that helps instantly identify music.
The Times then analyzed a total of 306 songs on the candidates’ playlists. The pop music editor determined the genre of the songs. For race and gender of an artist or band, The Times took into account only the lead singer. For gender analysis, if there was no lead performer and the group features both male and female members, a separate category was created. For the word frequency chart, The Times analyzed the lyrics in each song, leaving out filler words like “the,” “yeah,” and “bam.”
(h/t Amy for sharing the story :)
---
Source: Amazon
(
paywall
). Studio chief Jennifer Salke committed most of Amazon’s budget for 2019 to bring in writing and directing talent, and
no new projects could start unless existing projects were delayed or canceled
. As a result, Amazon has scrapped or delayed numerous TV shows or movies.
Why is Amazon struggling to make hit shows? Two stand-out reasons:
(1) Ambiguous direction
. Most networks telegraph clear mandates about what type of programming they’re looking for to the larger Hollywood community (e.g. FX, edgy, half-hour comedies). But Amazon has given less direction, asking for projects “you’re passionate about.”
(2) Less spend.
Compared to Netflix and traditional entertainment companies, Amazon is heavily outspent on film and TV production. The company doesn’t disclose its annual film and TV spending, but financial disclosures by Amazon and Netflix show that Netflix has recorded nearly $21 billion in film and TV spending as an investment on its balance sheet, about five times what Amazon has recorded.
Amazon’s foray into the television/movie space will be an interesting case study for Apple. Apple’s new series, The Morning Show, is reportedly spending more than
$15 million
…
per episode
(that’s more than the epic Game of Thrones’ finale). source:
---
. More and more restaurants exist solely in food delivery apps (UberEats, Doordash, Grubhub, and the like). Then, they use existing or shared kitchen space to produce the orders, and delivery drivers pick-up the food and bring it to their hungry customers.
Reading one chef’s critique on these “ghost restaurants” makes me even more convinced that if you’re a restaurateur and you’re not thinking through your delivery strategy, your business is in trouble:
“A chef can occasionally walk out of the dining room and observe a diner enjoying his or her food,” said Shawn Quaid, a chef who oversaw a ghost kitchen in Chicago. Delivery-only facilities “take away the emotional connection and the creative redemption.”
Going to eat at a restaurant where the chef might walk out to observe diners is not the same use case as ordering food on your phone. There’s bound to be some cannibalization, but one is not killing the other.
Parenting
Source: Melissa & Doug
. I loved these ideas, and cool to think you can start as early as three-years-old. The next day at Target I found myself browsing the toys at Target and found a great looking grocery store set by Melissa & Doug - literally the only time I’ve ever been excited to be in a Target store.
---
. The pros: Lots of things to do, great food, warm weather, no traffic, reasonable real estate… what’s not to love? The big sticking point seems to be the poor public school system, but the writer addresses that as well.
---
. The author’s son befriended neo-Nazis on Reddit and 4chan, then went to meet his internet heroes in real life at a 2017 rally.
---
. Someone once said to me, “My greatest fear is growing old and having no friends. I happened to my parents and it terrifies me.”
That really struck a chord with me, and I’ve taken a more active role in maintaining my friendships. This article offers a pretty good framework for thinking through the different ways of how to do that.
---
Education and Fighting
. A new company called Outlier (founded by one of the MasterClass founders) offers online classes with the caveat that those classes will actually be worth college credits. The company will start by constraining the market and focusing on two classes, and will differentiate themselves in the market with 4 factors:
(1) High production value
(2) Low cost
(3) College credit
(4) Interactivity
I’ve spent a lot of time working in the online education space, and I think it’s easy to overestimate the value-add of high production value. Often, good enough is good enough. The combination of low cost and college credit is certainly enticing, though.
If they can unlock the interactivity piece, in my opinion, that’s the greatest value-add, hands down. But it’s hard. Requires a lot of product work and experimentation (at Reforge, we run experiments on this each time we launch our programs, and there’s still a lot we have to learn).
Source: Espn.com
. I started this week's newsletter talking about one reigning UFC champ, I thought it appropriate to finish talking about a former champ.
Daniel Cormier recently lost his heavyweight title to former champ Stipe Miocic. Win or lose, Daniel is one of the greatest fighters in the sport and perhaps the greatest ambassador in the history of the UFC. He’s someone who’s genuinely admired by fans, the MMA media, and fighters alike. In this interview, he talks about lessons learned in his decade long career in the UFC.
“That first fight I lost to Jones, I left the Octagon, I was mad. No tears. But then when I walked out of the Octagon, Bob looked at me and goes, "I usually get a better guy in the gym and tonight I didn't get that." That's why I started crying. He broke me. He told me this right when I was walking down the stairs. I felt like I let him down and it broke my heart, because I know how much they put into me. But he does that win or lose. He tells me the exact truth, and that's exactly what I need. He keeps me in reality.”
Thanks for reading!
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