Good morning and welcome back. As you know, we’re all about getting smarter and better together. If this edition emphasizes anything, it’s the smarter portion of that mission. This week, we’ve got:
💡 Tips to boost your IQ courtesy of a supremely intelligent bot.
💲 A lesson on Annual Percentage Rate.
🗣 Two experts who align perfectly with our goals.
And much, much more…so let’s take off!
Experts’ Advice 🫡
Who is Amanda Goetz? She’s a mom of 3 and blowing up on twitter. She gets the On The Fly vibes as she is an advocate for personal and professional growth. She also writes a newsletter for founders, leaders, and builders so you can live an ambitious life. Sign us up! More about her here.
Who is Robert Greene? He’s a NYT Bestselling Author of a handful of books, including a favorite of ours: The 48 Laws of Power. For more on him, click here.
Cool Communicator 😎
Back That Ass..ertion Up: We live in a time where hot takes and misinformation reign supreme, and that’s fine if you’re a talking head or a soulless influencer, but for most of us, it doesn’t pay to make baseless claims. In fact, it does way more harm than good.
In a meeting, out with a client, having a casual conversation - only make claims that you can support (with evidence, common sense, etc). Because if you make those other claims, you will get fact-checked. And if it turns out you’re full of sh**, your reputation may never recover.
Finance 101 🤑
What the heck is an Annual Percentage Rate?
Short & Sweet: It’s the yearly rate charged for a loan or earned by investment.
Why It Matters: Because it’s important to know your “APR” when, say, getting a loan. Let’s go deeper:
Imagine that a loan’s APR is 12%, and the loan compounds once a month. If an individual borrows $10,000, their interest for one month is 1% of the balance, or $100. That effectively increases the balance to $10,100. The following month, 1% interest is assessed on this amount, and the interest payment is $101, slightly higher than it was the previous month. If you carry that balance for the year, your effective interest rate becomes 12.68%.
Conversation Starter 🗣
Want to be "financially comfortable?" Duh! Who doesn't? Here's what it takes to achieve it in 13 major US cities, according to a national survey 💸
Chattin’ with GPT 🤖
Let’s see if ChatGPT can help our natural intelligence approach the artificial level. This should be interesting…
Major Moves 🗞
💻 IBM:
An old company is making MAJOR moves to modernize: “[IBM] will pay $4.6 billion in cash to buy Apptio…to further its services and systems integrations businesses, in particular giving it a much stronger set of tools to focus on one of the bigger concerns that modern companies have today.” Apptio provides cloud-based business solutions and earned almost $189 million in revenue last year.
🛀 BED BATH & BEYOND:
They filed for bankruptcy back in April, but two months later, their stock is on the rise? “It was recently announced that Bed Bath & Beyond’s intellectual property and digital assets had been purchased by Overstock.com for just $21.5 million…shares have rallied about 22% on the back of Overstock’s IP offer.” The stores may be closing, but the brand lives on!
🤖 mosaicML:
We made it two stories without mentioning AI - not too shabby. This acquisition isn’t too shabby, either. “Databricks [has] agreed to acquire AI startup MosaicML in a mostly stock deal valued at $1.3 billion.” MosaicML provides software that makes the utilization of AI cheaper and easier.
🗾 JSR:
Usually our acquisition news is about one business buying another; this one’s about a country buying a business. “A fund backed by the Japanese government proposed a $6.3 billion acquisition of semiconductor materials giant JSR, underscoring a strategic emphasis governments around the world are putting on the critical technology of chips.” This is interesting and worth monitoring folks.
Food For Thought 🤔
2 Do This Week 💡
Set Clear Goals: You’ve got three months (depending on your climate) — what do you want to accomplish this summer? Be specific!
Balance Productivity with Pleasure: As you make your summer plans, try to strike a good balance between hustling and fun in the sun.