Tom's Top 3: June 11, 2024
Coffee, Quotes, and Crash Courses
Hi everyone! Welcome to the first installment of Tom’s Top 3 Tuesdays, where I highlight three pieces of content (Podcasts/Shows/Songs/Articles/etc.) that I found interesting or noteworthy from the prior week.
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Lets get into it:
[Podcast] Acquired: Starbucks (with Howard Schultz)
I am a huge fan of the Acquired podcast, so this probably won’t be the first pod I share with you all. This episode is unique in that the history and facts section was accompanied by the founder-in-kind, Howard Schultz, who provides an insider view through color commentary.
But there was one part of the interview that particularly fascinated me. At around the two-hour mark, when the gang is discussing the famous Starbucks app, Howard says:
Now if we fast forward [to] what it’s become, it is the biggest Achilles Heel for Starbucks. And [there’s] not even a close second. (emphasis mine)
This made me pause, pick my jaw up off the floor, and rewind to make sure I heard correctly. Here is the former CEO saying that the golden goose of the company is indeed its largest weakness.
While the Starbucks app has a number of benefits, including:
simplifying and expediting the purchasing experience, leading to higher engagement and revenue
providing an unprecedented float that would put it among the top decile of major banks
and allowing Starbucks to evade innumerable credit card fees,
Howard believes that it degrades the customer experience. In his view, Starbucks is an “experiential” company. The transactional, fast-food-esque nature of mobile ordering via the app has supplanted the Third-Place culture that Howard fought so hard to create.
At this point, the genie is out of the bottle, and Wall Street undoubtedly does not share Schultz’s romantic view of what Starbucks ought to be.
[Quote] From Tim Ferriss’ famous book, The 4-Hour Workweek:
Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all.
I have a lot of admiration for Tim and am a big fan of his books and podcast. This very newsletter series, Tom’s Top 3 Tuesdays, is largely inspired by his longstanding newsletter.
I was revisiting my old highlights from T4HW, and this really stuck out to me. I feel like we are all inundated with click-baity headlines about the new happiness algorithm developed by pick-your-Ivy-league professor that promises to deliver unwavering life satisfaction. Trust me, I open these articles (you never know), but happiness is such a fickle thing that optimizing for it is almost a futile goal.
That’s why I like Tim’s framing. Using excitement as a proxy for happiness gets you most of the way there, and it is a much easier thing to gauge. Going forward, I plan on using excitement as a north star for my decision making.
[YouTube] CrashCourse - Film Production with Lily Gladstone
I stumbled upon this amazing YouTube series with (now Oscar nominated) actor Lily Gladstone, and I’m really happy I did. For anyone with film aspirations, or just interested in what goes on behind the camera, this series is a must watch.
In each episode, Lily lightheartedly lays out the role and responsibility of a different party involved in the making of a film. I particularly enjoyed the video on producers, which provided some clarity on the various types of producers and how the scope of their work fluctuates with the size of the project (check it out below).
That wraps up this edition of Tom’s Top 3 Tuesdays. I hope you find at least 1 of the 3 interesting — I come from a baseball background, so I’d take a .333 batting average any day. I’ll be back next week.