Hey there,

How have you been?
I know. I know.
It’s been long since I published my newsletter-announcement-newsletter.
September 04th. And today is 26th. Damn.
Even if you weren’t expecting a mail from me, I was.
Not that I couldn’t have written it, I somehow chose not to. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know.
Well, a lot of things happened over the past 2-3 weeks.
Can’t add everything. Also, doesn’t make sense to do so.
Hence, adding the ones that I think would add value to you. (hope so)
And this might take a while to read.
So why don’t you grab something to eat or drink and hop on to this “I-don’t-know-if-any-of-this-would-concern-you” ride with me.
In order to keep it structured, the newsletter is divided into sections:
🏄🏻♂️ Flows & Ebbs: The good and the okayish/bad part of the week(s). Everyone has one. And more so during COVID.
😎 A cool hack I learnt: You’ll get to see it.
👨🏻💻 Long-Form recommendations: Long-form contents I enjoyed reading/watching.
📖 A book I read: If you tell me “Gopu, just STFU. I am not interested in knowing what’s happening with your life” my only response would be - “At least, check out this section and then fuck off.”
🦜 3 tweets that stayed with me: 2 gold and 1 funny.
🏄🏻♂️ Flows & Ebbs:
Flow: We closed a client.
*Thank You. Thank You.*
Immediate Ebb: And we almost lost them.
Yes, the same client.
*Shit happens*
Immediate Flow: They called Subh today (my co-founder) and gave us the good news that from the lead we generated - 2 of them made a site visit today.
😎
I won’t get into the specifics of it but I learnt a couple of things during this whole “the fuck is happening and why is this happening to us” process:
Be very clear on what you can offer to the client. Even if they say “yes we understood what you can offer”, have it in writing and make them sign it.
Always assume that clients have zero knowledge about how an agency functions. For them, social media marketing and defining brand communication are the same. Whereas both of them are different.
Make sure what you’re signing up for.
Ask upfront “How are you going to judge us and what do you expect from us at the end of every month?” and then reverse engineer. They don’t care about your plan of action or about the activities that you think will help them and elevate their brand image. They might even agree at the start of the month “yes this is exactly that we want!”
but, in the end, they only care about what they want to achieve.
Every time you bring in a client - assume, or rather know for sure that the setup time, effort and cost is going to be high. Make sure your client understands this. If they don’t, chances are high that a heap of problems are waiting to greet you at the door in the near future.
That being said, we’ve kind of retained them.
Took a cut on our costs for this month and 2x’ed the efforts to deliver what they expect from us.
Subh is working his ass off - on his patience and delivering some premium designs. Hoping it pays off.
Apart from this, I received something special in my mailbox on September 5th.
Yup.
On Teacher’s Day.
See, I had two options. Either I crib about how it’s making me feel old and shizz (which I already did) or I feel happy about the tiny impact we are able to create with our efforts.
I chose the latter.
But teacher? 🥺 Dayuuum.
Here it is for your perusal.

Damn sweet no? Thanks, Geetha :)
Other flows:
Started working out 3 times a week. Credits to Pranav, my younger brother ❤️
Read a book. More about it below.
Had a video chat with the founder of a digital agency based out of Mumbai. She is not building it anymore and currently consults with startups and brands. Got great insights on scaling, retention and building a high-performance culture.
Rolled out 2 promising proposals. 🤞
😎 A cool hack I learnt:
I love Ted The Stoner. His posts are funny, insightful, caring and loving.
You ever feel low? Open his profile and scroll through his feed.
He has this box of posts which can instantly work on your mood and make you happy.
Already happy? You’ll get happier.
It’s amazing how he has built a brand for himself with 1.5 mn followers on Insta.
So while going through his profile, I wondered what if someone wanted to look at his first post.
Or like posts from his early days.
The problem is there are 9000 of them and if you go via the normal route of scrolling manually, it’ll take you hours.
So I googled to see if there’s any quick hack to this.
This is what I found and it’s super cool and easy.
In fact, you can use this to stalk your crush who have their Instagram filled with 1000s of pictures.
🎼 Started from the bottom, now we're here. 🎼
Paste the code and let it do the work.
👨🏻💻 Long-Form Recommendations:
No specific genre. Just random recommendations - but long-form in structure.
Article: How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1,000 users?
Video: What is Reality? A Probable Explanation by Quantum Gravity Research
Blog: The Big and the Small - A peek into the universe that your brain can actually fathom
Article: Behind the rush and hush of India’s National Digital Health Mission
📖 A book I picked last week:
Navalmanack by Eric Jorgenson.
A pdf of this book landed on my Whatsapp chat on Tuesday night.
And by Friday I was done with 3/4th of it.
Let me tell you - this book is gold. 🏆
In fact, this is not a book in literal terms. It’s a collation of some of Naval’s best writings, tweets, interviews and podcasts.
For those of you who do not know who Naval Ravikant is, let me give you a brief:
Naval is an entrepreneur and an angel investor. He is the founder of Epinions, Vast.com and Angellist - a platform that most of you must have used in case you were applying for jobs. Or hiring. He has invested in over 100+ companies including Twitter, Uber, and Yammer to name a few. He was recognised as the “Angel Investor of the Year” in 2018.
But this is not what Naval is only known for.
I have been following him on twitter since quite some time now and every time I read his tweet, I literally get a dopamine hit.
Yes. Every time.
He’s that good.
There’s a reason why people take Naval seriously. There’s a reason why he is well-respected in Silicon Valley and in the business, venture-capital land.
Here’s an excerpt from the book - which is actually a part of the foreword written by Tim Ferris.
Sure, he’s the CEO and a co-founder of AngelList. Sure, he previously co-founded Vast.com and Epinions, which went public as part of Shopping.com. Sure, he’s an angel investor and has invested in many mega successes, including Twitter, Uber, Yammer, and OpenDNS, to name but a few.
But I don’t take his perspectives, maxims, and thoughts seriously because of the business stuff. There are lots of miserable “successful” people out there. Be careful about modelling those, as you will get all the bathwater with the baby.
I take Naval seriously because he:
→ Questions nearly everything
→ Can think from first principles
→ Tests things well
→ Is good at not fooling himself
→ Changes his mind regularly
→ Laughs a lot
→ Thinks holistically
→ Thinks long-term
→ And...doesn’t take himself too goddamn seriously.
Naval is an incredible source of wisdom. And this book is a great depiction of that.
Do read it. You will thank Naval later.
Free Download: https://www.navalmanack.com/
🦜 3 tweets that stayed with me: I ❤️ Twitter!



And with that, I end this newsletter. Hope you liked it. :)
If you have any feedback, suggestions, tips, advice, thoughts - anything you’d like to share - feel free to hit the reply button.
Have a great weekend. ☀️
Best,
Gopu
the curious kid
Connect with me on twitter here.
Loved reading it! Especially the part on clients. Signing up right away :)
Felt good reading this. Nice read, will be looking forward for the future ones.