Hi everyone!

This week, Iet's read about useful & overlooked skills, how to write well & why IPOs pop, before checking out amazing free tools to help you create content and market your business. I've also teamed up with Secret to offer BrainPint readers discounts on software like Airtable, Notion, Bubble & AWS.

Thanks again for reading and sharing the word. How are you going to be spending the upcoming holiday period?

With gratitude,
Janel

Useful and overlooked skills

• Respectfully interacting with people you disagree with.
• The ability to have a 10-minute conversation with anyone from any background. (I frequently practice this when I travel. I hitchhike & take local transport to get to connect with people)
  
• Getting to the point. Everyone's busy. Be concise
• Diplomatically saying “No.
  

To listen well, get curious
How do you be interesting? Be being interested. 
Make a conversation curious & collaborative by asking questions. This will help you build a better understanding of what's going on in the head of the person you're talking to.

Who do we spend time with across our lifetime?
" In adolescence we spend the most time with our parents, siblings, and friends; as we enter adulthood we spend more time with our co-workers, partners, and children; and in our later years we spend an increasing amount of time alone."

Annual Planning Workbook
Another wonderful resource that will help you reflect, reset, and plan for the new year with intention.

Wait Who Is
A collection of essays, tweets & podcasts by interesting people, in a single place. Mostly Silicon Valley folks. Check out personality-based curation at it's best and see what Paul Graham (YC), Sam Altman (Open AI) & many more have been writing and speaking about.

How To Write Well
"To write well is to think well." A practical guide on writing well. What do you need to do?

• Identify what to write about
• Generate insights on your topic
• Rewrite for clarity, intrigue, and succinctness
• Rewrite for style and flow

The IPO Process & Why IPOs pop
Jamin Ball helps to demystify the IPO process and explain why you often see IPOs pop. If you prefer to read about this in a thread, click here.

Growth Marketing Checklists - Checklists to help founders, makers and marketers optimise your marketing efforts. Includes Product Hunt Checklist, Content Marketing Checklist, Key Saas Metrics

EzGif - This little tool helps you crop and optimize GIFs, as well as convert videos to GIFs. It's a lifesaver that goes for the wonderful price of free.

Snapdrop - Transfer files between any devices on the same network.

Product Lessons - One of my recent favorites. Linda generously shares everything she has learned at a multibillion-dollar startup to help you grow your career. I've featured many pieces of writing from Product Lessons in BrainPint.

Linda recently turned down a $375k job offer & gave up a few million in unvested stock options to learn how to bootstrap a business. Read about it, and follow along. You'll learn so much.

Crowdsourced Newsletter Recommendations - A Twitter thread full of interesting recommendations.

2020 In Photos (New York Times) - 2020 has been a historic year. Many of us have spent more time inside our homes, than out of them. Let's look back at the past 12 months in photos.

A 5-Hour Long Christmas Playlist - A list of Christmas tunes that Kyle Westaway has honed over the years, in a Spotify playlist.

The Underdog Paradox - I'm a big fan of underdog stories. This is an inspiring book filled with powerful & uplifting stories about grit, authenticity. It makes me so thrilled to say that we have an #1 Amazon Bestseller in the BrainPint community. Congrats Jamie!