Stick & Move
The deals, lessons, and questions to keep your mind active this weekend.
Substance over sizzle. I make no promises about the cadence of this email. I do promise it will be worth your time and mine. -Dave
Make Me Smarter, Dave
If you have not read The World For Sale by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy, you’re missing out.
The Return of Swoll?
The 2010s marked the modernization and rapid expansion of better-for-you CPG brands. Copy cat products have proliferated the market for the past, oh, 6 years. Nothing has been worthwhile for consumers, nor savvy investors, one might argue. Maybe, however, Create marks the return of innovation to this category?
Innovation on the Slopes
A former Apple designer turns his attention to ski poles and now I’m looking at Airbnb’s in Deer Valley in February. You too?
Desperately Seeking Something
Not since beta-testing Whoop in 2015 have I been genuinely on the prowl for another wearable, or other quasi-personalized training assistant. Maybe Valr is worth a closer look before Elon offers brain implants with every Model Y purchase?
Simple name. Sparkling. And in a can.
For those who have consumed sake with sushi since 1998, yet cannot easily recall the name of even 2 sake brands, your moment may have arrived. From the founders of wildly popular Whispering Angel rose’ comes a new sake — one that’s sparkling, served in a can, and offers a memorable, easily pronounceable name. Hello, Tessake. I might be in love. It’s a White Claw-killer.
20 Minute Experiment
You never get the time back, so use it wisely. This is what today’s consumer is weighing when their fingers inch towards booking a training session at BODY20. Is this really worth 20 minutes of my time…and more than once? Mark this down as a ‘2024 experiment’.
Make It Better
The final Stick&Move of 2023 calls for a moment of zen. The world seems more tenuous today than ever and that’s saying a lot for a writer whose understanding of the Cold War comes courtesy of Hulk Hogan (American hero) battling a contingent of Russians during replays of WWF’s Saturday Night’s Main Event. Today, America’s institutions of higher learning are unrecognizable to someone who attended not one, but two. Interest in A.I. hit a fever pitch this year, yet I’m still unmoved by a computer’s ability to write a vapid essay, or manufacture hyper-sexualized caricatures of Ivanka Trump riding a baby giraffe. America shed fat the best way it knows how — through an injection innovation — while our national security falters so frequently it lacks believability (we crashed again?!?!). Somehow, both (likely) presidential candidates are amongst the least favored citizens in a country with plenty of them, not including those who, apparently, are shuffling in by the thousands while skirting the country’s legal pathways (however inefficient they may be). There’s more, but you get it. In 2024 — and every year thereafter — America needs heroes. Giant, audacious heroes, even those made more heroic thanks to human-machine teaming. If Americans can’t find heroes, then we are stuck mindlessly chasing an aesthetic, something devoid of purpose, yet artificially crowned as ‘cool’. It’s a fleeting description pursued carelessly. Next year, I hope America renews its love of heroes, the kind who struggle, yet persevere. The kind whose beauty blossoms despite duress. The hero’s journey is far more relatable than today’s pretty-little-thing whose success derives from algorithmically earned ‘likes’. What comes of our respective interest in heroes? It’s discipline, a kind of discipline whose magic begets the very thing you’re pursuing. Those who wanted to become the next hero more often serve as the hero for someone else. In 2024, we need heroes. Maybe that means you?
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