#50 New Year's Edition PART 2

Good morning and welcome back to Part TWO of our New Year’s Series!

In case you missed Part One, here are a few of the topics we covered:

• How a “Spend-Less January” Challenge Can Boost 2024 Finances.

• Side-Hustle Reviews and Inspiration.

• A Look Back at 2023: The Year in AI.

And now, a joke to brighten your morning:

Q: What’s the difference between OTF and Times Square?

A: We NEVER drop the ball.

Here are this week’s highlights:

🤝 Expert Advice from Two Big-Time Creators.

👀 What Makes a Good Listener?

🗞️ The Top Business Stories of 2023.

➕ Much. More.

Expert Advice 🤝 

Who is Justin Welsh?

• He “teaches creators how to identify, develop, and monetize skills they already have.” He has amassed over 900,000 followers across LinkedIn and X.

• He’s a solopreneur, angel investor, mentor, and he runs a newsletter called The Saturday Solopreneur that has over 190K subs. Check it out here.

Who is Chris Williamson?

• He’s a massive YouTuber (1.5M+ subs) and the host of the Modern Wisdom podcast, which shares life lessons from some of the world’s brightest minds. Check out more here. 

• Chris also writes some 🔥 tweets, which can be found here - he’s got a modest following of 180K+.

Cool Communicator 😏 

Shifting Gears in the New Year

Much of our Cool Communicator content from last year focused on improving our speaking and writing skills: become clearer, more persuasive, more effective in general.

But communication is a two-way street: you could be the most eloquent, poetic, moving speaker on Earth, but if you’re not a good listener, how could you possibly offer a pertinent response, let alone develop meaningful relationships?

With that in mind, Cool Communicator kicks off 2024 with “16 Ways to Become a Better Listener,” courtesy of Psychology Today.

(The title is a bit misleading - it’s actually a list of 16 qualities that the best listeners possess. Scroll down to see how you stack up!)

💡TL; DR: Here are our favorite gems from the article:

• Good listening is digesting “all available information in a way that best preserves what was said AND what was meant.” This means paying attention to the literal words while also understanding and accounting for the speaker’s intent.
  

• To be a good listener, you must set your own emotions aside. This allows you to remain unbiased and focused on the conversation’s details.
  

• Attentiveness is, unsurprisingly, the top quality of good listeners. Show you’re paying attention by making eye contact, asking follow-up questions, and putting the phone away.
  

• “Being expressive” came next on the list. “It helps to express positive intention toward the other person. Feeling and understanding the other person can help make them feel better about themselves, making this an important relationship-building technique.”
  

• Finally, the following social skills also correlate to high-level listening: friendly, other-oriented, helpful, outgoing, enjoying new people, accepting, possessing high self-esteem, being calm / not nervous. How these traits connect to good listening is a bit more obvious than those in the previous bullet. It comes as no surprise that people who are confident, open-minded, and care about others are often the best listeners.

How many of these traits do you possess? Which ones can you commit to developing or improving upon in 2024? Improving even one of the 16 traits listed will make you both a better speaker and a better listener.

The Search Bar 📊 

• THE MOST SEARCHED TERM OF 2023: “you” - People looking for YouTube without needing to finish.

• THE REST OF THE TOP 15:

Full list at techopedia.com. (The numbers on the right are the Query Score - the higher, the better.)

• MOST DOWNLOADED APP STORE APPS (FREE): Several classics littered throughout the Top 10, but TEMU takes the top spot for 2023. CapCut, a video editor, slots in at #2.

Major Moves:
Looking Back on 2023

THE MOST MAJOR STORIES OF 2023

Unfortunately, stories of unrest top the list.

The article talks about five major stories, but we’re focused on three:

• The two biggest business stories of the year were 1) all the workers’ strikes across various industries, and 2) the collapses of two Silicon Valley banks that led to “worries about the strength of the U.S. regional banking system.” Hopefully, we can leave labor unrest and banking anxiety in 2023.
  

• There is also a glimmer of hope, as, according to analysis, “the elusive soft landing for the U.S economy may be in sight.” Here’s to our money going further in 2024!

If you prefer a different take on the same topic (and can get by the paywall), here’s the NY Times top business stories of 2023.

 👎️ MAJOR DECLINES:

Several big names went down, and some got back up.

When prepping Major Moves, we scour the internet for hours looking for positive - or at least neutral - business stories to share with you.

We’re here to inspire, not kill your buzz. But finding positivity in the business world seemed particularly hard in 2023, with a new high-profile bankruptcy seemingly every week.

Some that stand out include RiteAid (settling opioid-related lawsuits got a bit too expensive), WeWork (will they bounce back as companies push for more days in office?), and Bed Bath & Beyond (which was bought by Overstock and resurrected purely as a brand).

For a deeper dive on “why corporate bankruptcies were up in 2023,” click here.

For a complete list of 2023 bankruptcies, click here.

 💸 MAJOR PROFITS:

While many companies fell, others rose to unprecedented heights.

For a super deep dive on all things profits, you can click here. Or you can just enjoy the following visuals:

Most Profitable Large Companies in the World (2023):

Top 10 US Companies by Profit (2023):

🚀 MAJOR STARTUPS:

Stay up-to-date on the most promising startups in 2024

2023, like most years, saw a lot of startups come and go. Far too many to keep track of. Until now.

You can use this link to track startups through 2024 and beyond (it updates daily), but for right now, here are three we’ve never featured that show noteworthy promise:

• Retail - FAIRE “helps stores find products their customers are guaranteed to love.” $12.6B Valuation.
  

• Sustainability - SOLUGEN “creates chemicals that are safe, cost-effective, and environmentally-friendly.” $1.8B Valuation.
  

• AI (because it’s not going anywhere) - PONY.AI “is a developer of AI-based robots designed for autonomous driving.” $8.5B Valuation.

Content for your Commute

We’re kicking off the new year recommending some great content, including two entries from today’s Expert Advice features!

• ON FOOT: Listen to Chris Williamson’s “Modern Wisdom” podcast, which covers as wide a range of topics as you can find. There’s truly something for everyone. Each episode is normally between 1-2 hours.

• TRAIN TIME: Justin Welsh’s “Saturday Solopreneur” is a great read for anyone looking to start their own internet business or side-hustle. Read times are under 10 minutes, and they come on Saturdays, but we recommend saving for Monday mornings when you’re in productivity mode. 

• FIRST CLASS: Looking for something bigger? Try “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek and learn how the best leaders become so influential. Though published in 2009, it’s still one of the top-selling business books fifteen years later. 255 pages.

Food For Thought 💭 

Before You Go

Be on the look out for next week’s edition.

We got a great one for you.

Here are two sneak peak highlights:

• Our Working with AI section will showcase how to generate videos with ChatGPT.

• To anyone with flight plans in 2024, we’ll be doing a semi-deep dive into what day makes the most sense to purchase a flight and what day is cheapest to fly on.

See you then.

You are now On The Fly and In The Know.