Wise Exec

Helping you find your why and crush your goals. Providing daily insights on mindset and productivity.

[Wise Exec @wiseexec_]

"A man is great not because he hasn't failed; a man is great because failure hasn't stopped him."

- Confucius

[Michael McFadden @McFads]

The brands that grow year over year aren't doing anything sexy.

They have a clear offer, a site that loads fast, and a reason compelling enough to make someone buy twice.

No secret channel. No viral hack.

Just the boring fundamentals executed more consistently than everyone else in their category.

The problem isn't that you don't know what the tactics are.

The problem is you keep skipping past the basics to get to them, and wonder why nothing sticks.

Fix the boring stuff first. The problem is nobody wants to do it.

[Matt Hunter @MattHunterCoach]

Most people mishandle conflict because they think they're only allowed to feel one thing.

In reality, the toughest situations bring conflicting emotions at the same time: frustration and empathy, disappointment and support, anger and care.

Most of us cancel them out.

We pick the "nicer" emotion, suppress the rest, and then stew on it privately.

That's where problems start.

Tough Enough leaders (the ones we talk about in our book) do something different. 

They slow down, feel each emotion fully, and then communicate all of it clearly and directly.

Not as an attack.

Not as a performance.

Just the truth of what's there.

That's how you avoid resentment.

That's how you stay clean in your relationships.

And that's how you handle complexity without losing yourself in it.

[Tanya Eves @tanya_eves]

SpaceX IPO discussions often focus on Elon. But Gwynne Shotwell is one of the most powerful and influential women in aerospace — and a key force behind SpaceX’s success.

Her journey is a reminder that leadership, vision, and execution know no boundaries. Gwynne showed an entire generation of women that even space is not the limit

[Austin L Wright @austinlwright_]

One thing I’m really excited about is the shift toward oral peptides and microdosing.

I think it dramatically expands the market because it reaches people who would never consider giving themselves an injection.

It also opens the category beyond people who are clinically obese and into a much broader group focused on energy, inflammation, recovery, and long-term health optimization.

Check out your options at Kora MD below:

[Fivos Aresti @fivosaresti]

Anyone can now send 100,000+ personalized cold emails/mo through a terminal with Claude Code.

And it's easier than you think.

3 things change when you make the switch:

1. UI: terminal replaces InstantlyAI and HeyReach dashboards
2. SOPs: get rewritten as Claude skills with fixed output formats
3. Tools: Apollo(.)io, Clay, DiscoLike, Findymail, BetterContact connect via MCPs

Here's the 5-step build for the full motion:

1. Account Sourcing (Apollo + Ocean(.)io + AI Ark)
2. Data Enrichment (Discogen + Exa)
3. Stakeholder Mapping (Clay + Findymail)
4. AI Personalized Copywriting (one skill per segment)
5. Campaign Creation (InstantlyAI + HeyReach MCPs)

The game is changing FAST.

[Josh Graham @truejoshg]

The fastest way to spot a Meta account heading for a plateau:

Look at how the team cuts ads.

If every ad gets judged against the same ROAS target, growth is already slowing.

The team just doesn't see it yet.

Top-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel ads have different jobs.

• Cold-traffic ads bring new audiences in.
• Retargeting converts the ones already there.
• Hold both to the same ROAS target and the cold-traffic feeders get cut before they return their cost.

The funnel narrows and frequency climbs.

Performance looks fine for a while, until it doesn't.

I put the 4-Stage ROAS System we use on accounts spending $100K-$1M/month on Meta into a free guide.

Swipe the carousel for how it works 👇

(and comment "ROAS" below if you want the full resource guide)

[Richard Illingworth @RCIllingworth]

i sell cold email inboxes for a living.

every deliverability complaint i get starts with me looking straight at our OWN setup first.

the diagnostic order is non-negotiable for us:

1) audit our infrastructure first → did anything actually change on our side?
2) audit how the customer's been using that infrastructure → volume, ramp speed, sending behaviour
3) audit the copy plus the lead list → what is actually being sent and who is receiving it

most vendors flip this entire diagnostic order on its head and start by blaming the copy or blaming the lead list, then maybe finally look inwards when the damage is already done.

that reversed order is exactly how providers stay wrong and lose the whole customer relationship.

[Dan Rosenthal @dan__rosenthal]

Struggling with outbound?

These 3 campaigns are working on 250+ GTM motions for us:

1️⃣ Volume campaigns

The goal is to reach out to the TAM every 60 days with a "cold traffic offer" e.g. low friction ask or risk reversal.

Since this can be automated, it's a low-cost way to guarantee impressions across your TAM.

Deliverability is the main challenge, but having a system like this running in the background is a no-brainer.

2️⃣ Micro-campaigns

A good copywriter can make 1:few messaging feel 1:1 (without AI), since the targeting should create a unique messaging angle.

Event campaigns, re-engagement campaigns, and TAM micro-segments are a good place to start.

3️⃣ Signal-based campaigns

Evergreen campaigns that are always running in the background, triggered by an intent signal.

This could be 1st-party data (e.g. website visitor deanonymization with RB2B), 2nd-party (e.g. ad engagements with Fibbler) or 3rd-party (e.g. job posting mentioning a competitor).

Since signal campaigns capture intent, you trade volume for a higher conversion rate.

And it's not uncommon for these campaigns to drive more overall results.

Each of these campaign types serves a unique purpose.

That's why running all 3 has saved us on many occasions.

One campaign type may underperform, but the others are always there to pick up the slack.

If you're outbound motion isn't working...

You may just be focusing on the wrong types of campaigns 👇

[Atishay @axtalks]

Every cold email needs to answer 4 questions in the first few sentences:

Why you (targeting)
Why now (relevance)
Why this (offer)
Why me (credibility)

If you can't answer all four, your email is getting deleted.

[Josh Graham @truejoshg]

There's a REASON every brand you talk to in 2026 is asking for diverse creative...

Statics only is not near enough to scale an account.

This is something that shows up across hundreds of audits.

When you ONLY run statics:

• Frequency increases
• Reach plummets
• The brand calls it a media buying problem when the actual gap is upstream.

There's NO creative pipeline producing the diversity they keep asking for.

Either you stand it up yourself, or you hire a team that will.

[Matt Orlić @MattOrlic]

High performance behaviours:

- Staying in shape no matter what
- Cutting people with bad energy off
- Saying NO more than yes without guilt
- Being charitable without yapping about it
- Journaling even when you have nothing to say
- Sleeping by 10 PM instead of midnight consistently
- Never holding grudges with family
- Taking a moment in your week to realise that everything you have now once felt completely out of reach, the things you lost sleep over barely cross your mind anymore, and the moments you thought would break you are the same ones that built you

[Austin Armstrong @SocialtyPro]

Who's going to #UFC250 this weekend?! This is my first time going to a live UFC event!

[Ryan McKenzie | Co-Founder Tru Earth @RyeMcKenzie]

The exact steps to scale your DTC brand to $100M+ (from someone that bootstrapped there):

>run a dry test. Make a landing page, send people from facebook, see if anyone buys before you commit money to a product.

>design your packaging before you think you need to. changing it in retail or on amazon later is expensive. i made this mistake

>build your creative engine around all five stages of consumer awareness. Focus on media diversity so you're in front of people however they consume content

>optimize your offer before you scale spend. whoever generates the most revenue per sale can afford to outspend everyone else on acquisition

>get on amazon around $5M and don't chase side quests until $20M. facebook, google, email, SMS. every new tactic needs a person to run it

>add specialty retail before big box. if you blow a large retail order, the cash flow hit can bankrupt you. learn the system at smaller stakes first

>once you're in big box, maximize unit velocity before adding SKUs. 10,000 locations accepting a new product at once is where the real scale lives

>repeat for each new market.

[Alex Fedotoff @FedotOff90]

Sat next to a 34-year-old at a tapas bar in Barcelona last month.

Catalan. Soft accent. Wearing a navy linen shirt. Asked what I do.

He laughed and showed me his Shopify dashboard: €1.4M last 30 days.

Single brand. Premium anti-aging skincare for women 40+. Sells exclusively in Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Colombia, and the US Hispanic market. One product. Spanish-language ads only.

Started 4 years ago with €25K from his savings. Bootstrapped. No outside investors.

CAC €42 blended across the 5 markets. AOV €74. Subscription mix 34%. Refund rate 3.8%.

His team: 6 people. A creative lead in Barcelona, an ops manager in Madrid, three customer service VAs in Mexico City (handles Spain + LATAM timezones), and his sister doing email retention from Valencia.

He told me his real insight wasn't the product. It was that Spanish-language creative tested in Spain works across the entire 600M Spanish-speaking world with minor regional copy adjustments. Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, plus the 60M+ US Hispanic market all consume the same hooks and benefit framings.

"American founders test in English first then translate to Spanish as an afterthought. I test in Spanish first. My addressable market is 20x theirs the moment I press launch."

Take-home roughly €170K/month after taxes. Works from a 2-bedroom apartment in Eixample. Sleeps 8 hours. Never been on a podcast.

The serious ecom entrepreneurs in 2026 aren't building English-first brands.

They're building Spanish-first brands and quietly out-earning everyone you know in US ecom.

[Alicia Lyttle @alicialyttle]

AI agents are about to create a whole new class of opportunity. And I want you to be on the right side of it.

Right now, there are two groups of people:

Group 1: Uses AI to answer questions.

Group 2: Uses AI to actually get work done. Research. Writing. Scheduling. Follow-ups. Customer calls. Presentations. Idea to execution. Without hiring a full team.

One group has an assistant.

The other has a business team.

I am in group 2.

Have been for a while now, and it’s how I run a multi-figure operation without hiring an entire department.

AI for the win!

[Future Finance @futurefinc]

SpaceX went public yesterday in the biggest IPO in history, closing up 19% at a valuation of over $2 trillion.

Here are 5 things to understand before the market reopens on Monday:

1. A day-one price measures demand, not value.

At the roadshow, $250 billion in orders chased the $75 billion in stock SpaceX actually offered. When that much demand squeezes through that small an opening, the first print tells you how hard people pushed to get in.

Never judge what a business is worth by where it trades on its opening day.

2. The pop was not money you missed.

The run from $135 went to the people who were allocated shares Thursday night, before the stock ever opened. Buying at Monday's price is a different trade than the one that just paid off, and knowing which trade you are actually making is the whole game.

Name the trade before you take it.

3. New supply is already on the calendar.

People who own most of SpaceX are not allowed to sell their shares yet, and the IPO covered only about 4% of the company. The dates that the restriction expires (the lockup, the window after which insiders can finally sell) are published in the prospectus, and the float can multiply when those dates arrive.

Before buying any IPO, find out when more shares hit the market: it is public, and almost nobody checks.

4. A loss-making company at $2 trillion is a story price.

SpaceX reported a $4.3 billion net loss last quarter, and that alone does not make it a bad company. A price like that asks you to bet on a specific future, and the business, as it stands today, does not yet support that number.

For any story price, ask what has to go right, and for how long, for the number to make sense.

5. When professionals disagree this much, the gap is in the information.

Morningstar values SpaceX at $780 billion. The market paid over $2 trillion. A 2.5x disagreement among people who are paid to know tells you how wide the real range of outcomes is, and the wider that expert gap runs, the less anyone knows yet, including you.

The last company to hold the title of largest IPO was Saudi Aramco. It rose 10% on day one, then sat below its offer price for months.

Day one decided nothing then, and it decided nothing on Friday.

Read the squeeze, name your trade, know the supply dates, question the story price, respect the gap.

[Chase Dimond | Email Marketing Nerd 📧 @ecomchasedimond]

Wild story:

[Shri Kanase @EcomShri]

claude's fable 5 just got banned by the US government.

i tested it against Opus 4.8 across 30+ active ecom client accounts that did $21M in revenue last month before it went down.

opus 4.8 gives you the same results when you know how to prompt it.

so i put together the exact 5 prompts we use internally to print money on google ads.

follow + comment "GOOGLE" and i'll send it over.

(repost for priority access)

[Matias Perelli @EmailEngineers]

The average brand in this industry generates $7 per subscriber that enters the welcome sequence.

We do $27.

This means we're extracting 3.8 times more revenue.

Every single dollar going to ads is now suddenly "worth more".

They have a healthier cash flow and finally experienced the "breakthrough" they'd been looking for for years.

I've audited 100+ welcome flows for 7, 8 and 9-figure brands.

Some of them are optimized.

Most of them are not. They're just a series of emails dropped into one sequence that are left untouched for 2 years.

Here are 3 ways to increase a welcome flow's sales by as much as 200-300% – ranked by potential impact.

1) Improve the front-end offer.

10% off vs $10 off vs a $10 COGS product valued at $90. The last one is way more likely to get more subscribers AND buyers.

This trickles down into every email in the sequence.

2) Make current emails better.

The first email is arguably the most important one.

Before adding an 11th email, it's worth optimizing the first one a couple of times.

Put it through 3-5 rounds of big-lever A/B tests (entire emails against each other, not just subject lines tests).

3) Add more emails.

Only after you've found what works, it makes sense to send more of that.

​Hope that helps.

-Matt

[Sarvesh Shrivastava @bloggersarvesh]

realizing you just found the most important AI article on X you'll read all year, and your competition will bookmark it and never open it again.

(you're about to make generational wealth while they doom scroll)