Hi everyone! 👋

BrainPint has officially ported over to MailerLite from Revue and is sporting a fresh new look. I'm loving the increased flexibility (and hoping that this mail managed to make it into your inboxes!)

I'm looking forward to:

• Sharing more of my thoughts
• Connecting more with all of you
  
• Growing this community of curious people further
• Bringing you the best links / resources every week

In the spirit of building in public, this newsletter's format might change over the weeks as I work on optimizing it. Don't hesitate to share your feedback.

This week is an exciting one for BrainPint! I got a pleasant surprise on Sunday when I realized that I was featured on Learn With Makers. Pierre's article sheds some light into my no-code & newsletter interests. I learn best by experimenting and helping others, and never want to stop.

I also got us our first ever BrainPint exclusive discount on Rob Hope's Landing Page Hot Tips. You'll see more below.

Thanks again for reading! It makes my day to receive your emails and chat with all of you.

P.S. I've a tiny favour to ask of you - please see box below 🙏

Cheers,

Janel

Screenshot Memos
NBT created an screenshot investment memo on Canva, covering "Thesis, Risks and Why Me?"

What's a screenshot memo?
"It's an investment memo reduced to the size of a smartphone screenshot. It's more transparent than the average blog post about an investment, and it’s easier to understand the investment decision I made as a result."

I had a thought - what if we created memos for life decisions?

It could help us gain clarity in how we:
• Spend our time
• Choose which projects to work on
• Decide on career paths

If we look deeper into the reason we do things, we'll be more confident in the decisions we make. Paul McGrath added that he thinks "it pairs well with keeping a personal decision record. One view considering the future, and the other learning from the past." This is really powerful. 

I will be creating screenshot memos for personal investment & life decisions moving forward. Here's a template provided by NBT if you're keen to do the same.

Monetizing newsletters: when creators strive with ideas

A deep dive into how creators in the Passion Economy monetize their newsletters, covering opportunities, trends and platforms. The level of detail in this is amazing.

There are two broad ways to monetize: Selling To Brands & Selling To Consumers!

The Ultimate Guide to Summarizing Books: How to Distill Ideas to Accelerate Your Learning
Tiago Forte shares how to summarize books. It's a long read that's a mini course in Personal Knowledge Management.

Beyond all the actionable advice, I loved his quotes on curation. 

"We all have to become curators of the information we consume. Curation has evolved from a specialized profession to a simple matter of staying informed about your field.
But in curating information for ourselves, we also have the opportunity to surface the knowledge we’ve gained for others."

Expiring vs Permanent Skills

A wonderful list of skills that compound over time. My favourite:

"Getting along with people you disagree with. Equally smart people can come to different conclusions. Some people can be avoided. Many can’t. You have to deal with them diplomatically. People who view every disagreement as a battle that must be won before moving on end up stuck and bitter."

The Secret to Productive Group Meetings over Video

Google Docs are Tomasz Tunguz's secret weapon. Everyone gets a topic, a page to write on for a specified time and gets back together to discuss after that time is up. 

Benefits:

• Everyone writes in parallel
• No one freeloads (or does other tasks sneakily) because everyone is forced to write
• Everyone gains context by reading each others' ideas

I'm so excited to bring you the first deal for BrainPint subscribers 🎉 Rob Hope is launching a course on 100 Landing Page Hot Tips covering design, optimization, conversions and more. It's a wonderful resource for anyone looking to build landing pages for side projects or newsletters.

He's kindly given me a special $20 discount coupon for pre-orders that's applied here. In all transparency, I do get some commission from this :) 

YC's Startup Library
A collection of videos, podcasts and essays as resources for startup founders. I liked this post on essential startup advice.

Toby Mini Chrome Extension
A better way to organize your bookmarks and tabs! It enables you can access key resources in one click, which is really handy when you work on multiple projects. (H/t to Indie Letters for introducing me to this, it has sped up my workflows & improved my productivity)

Fluent Chrome Extension
Learn French while browsing the web. Or use JoinToucan to learn Spanish.

Bonus tip: Type doc.new into your browser the next time you want to fire up a new Google Doc. sheet.new, slide.new & form.new also work. pen.new works for Codepen, playlist.new works for Spotify  (h/t Stew Fortier)

Letterdrop - Do you feel like it's hard to keep up with the best of high-quality, original writing produced every day? Letterdrop is here to fix that. It's the Product Hunt of newsletters. I'm an early curator on Letterdrop and it astounds me how much good content is out there waiting to be discovered. I believe it's the future of newsletter consumption & community.

Learn From Makers - Get introduced to interesting makers and their projects every week. Pierre does the hard work of surfacing makers' best creations and content for us to learn from.

Newsletter Virtual Mall - A virtual mall of newsletters housed in Google Sheets. Take a stroll around and enjoy this wonderful new experience of newsletter discovery.