#18: Don't launch before you read this

Happy Friday 🎉 My streak of never paying full price for Blankets & Wine tickets continues. Thank you to the brave soldier on here who made it happen. Same place next time?

Screenwriters in Hollywood are on strike for better pay. Turns out the wave of streaming came for more businesses than just the old video library I used to try and steal “blue” movies from as a kid.

But why should you care?

Because the writers should get paid what they deserve. Duh!

But also, without screenwriters, there will be even more—but shittier—reality shows on TV.

Also, we might have to wait longer for some of our favorite American-made shows to return—Imagine waiting 5 years for Season 2 of The Diplomat…

I hope you like subtitles.

Kamsahamnida 🙏🏾

🧹 Housekeeping…

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Okay, let’s get into it 🚀

💡 1 thing I've learned this week

Do this before launching that product 💄

After a couple of years of making videos on the internet and writing for free, I’m ready to make more money from all this.

I’m creating a course. Or two.

Hundreds of one-on-one client consultations and several “Hey I really like your channel; do you have a course?”—s later, I’m ready to risk it all.

But what took me so long?

1. Procrastination

2. Value: Figuring out if people actually need a course from me and what that course looks like

3. Trimming the fat: Zeroing in on the critical course content. Most ideas start out bloated. Chop them down; Make them simpler

4. Pricing: Figuring out the value of the product and determining the right price. This was hard but worth it. I’ll share tools on this soon

5. Marketing and distribution: how would I sell the product and get it into the right hands? Helps to think about this before the product arrives, not after

This thread summarized the product pre-launch homework well.

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🙏🏾 1 thing I'm grateful for

My health.

There’s a bug going around and I caught it last week. Got the vestiges of a cold sore just below my lower lip to show for it.

Every time I get sick, I lie in bed reminiscing on the good times when I wasn’t sick. I think about grabbing life by the horns when I’m better.

Then I get better and just binge-watch TV shows instead.

🚀 Pro-tip

Create scannable barcodes in Excel

Yep, everything is possible in Excel. Seriously. Everything.

Let’s start with a product list that was probably made when UEB was still a thing (IYKYK) ⤵️

To get barcodes for each product, type the following formula into the first cell in the “barcode” column, corresponding to the “Geisha soap” product.

The formula adds asterisks on either side of the “Product code.” The ampersands (&) glue everything together:

Now, for the magic:

Done! The resultant barcodes are fully scannable and ready for use.

Will this ever be useful to you? Probably not. Do you now know something everyone else doesn’t? Hell yeah!

🧩 Games

Brain teaser

Brought to you by Braingle.

In English, "re" is a prefix usually meaning "again", such as in "rebuild" (build again). However, there are many words starting with "re" which have a totally different meaning without the "re".

You will be given two definitions, one for a word starting with "re", and one for the remaining word without the "re" (either definition could be given first).
Example: vehicle wheel / cease employment
Answer: tire / retire

1. newspaper employee / hotel employee
2. one who belongs / bring past event to mind
3. unit of money / not long ago
4. money for the poor / kingdoms
5. income / event location
6. couple / fix
7. arrived at / felt long-term pain
8. at ease / cause sharp pain

Answer below

🔥 What's hot

Latest YouTube video

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▶️ Shem’s picks

🦸🏾‍♂️ How to be extraordinary 

🧃 Does anyone advertise quite like Red Bull?

🤔 You read therefore you are: a philosophy reading list

❓Riddle answer

Answer:

1. reporter / porter
2. member / remember
3. cent / recent
4. alms / realms
5. revenue / venue
6. pair / repair
7. reached / ached
8. resting / sting

Have a great weekend,

— Shem

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