No #148 | October 6, 2024

by Matthew Boyd

Good morning, welcome to the weekly Lead It Cool newsletter.

A friendly reminder that the start of October also marks the start of something else😁🍲:

In this week's Lead It Cool newsletter:

• 🤼‍♂️Blue Ocean Wrestling
• 🎳Bowling Alone
• 🐻Out of Office
• 🤣Movie Questions
• 😎Cool Links

🤼‍♂️Blue Ocean Wrestling

In the 1990s, I was a teenager.

And like many other teenagers during that era, there was one form of entertainment that I loved watching: wrestling.

The 90s was a ridiculously entertaining era for professional wrestling. Royal Rumbles, the Undertaker’s ominous entrance, or Bret "The Hitman" Hart’s sharpshooter putting his rivals in excruciating pain. It was a memorable era.

So, when Netflix announced the series Mr. McMahon, chronicling the story of the WWE under Vince McMahon’s leadership, I was nostalgically intrigued. I've only watched a couple episodes so far, but what I find most captivating is the story of how McMahon grew the company.

To grow his company, McMahon unknowingly employed what we now call the Blue Ocean Strategy.

What's the Blue Ocean Strategy?

The Blue Ocean Strategy is a business approach outlined by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. The concept is simple yet profound. Most companies compete in “red oceans,” industries where there’s intense competition, and businesses fight tooth and nail for market share. In these “red oceans,” the market is crowded, and profits are often squeezed.

Blue oceans, however, are markets that are uncontested. They are spaces where companies create new demand, making competition irrelevant. Instead of trying to outperform rivals, companies that follow the Blue Ocean Strategy make the competition irrelevant by carving out entirely new market spaces.

McMahon’s Blue Ocean Play

Professional wrestling in the late 1970s, before McMahon’s leadership, was very much a niche industry. Each territory had its own set of stars, and wrestling was seen as a local event rather than a national spectacle.

But McMahon envisioned something bigger.

He saw the potential to merge wrestling with entertainment. In doing so, he created a new form of content: a blend of sport, theater, and drama that was made for television. The introduction of WrestleMania in 1985 was McMahon’s first major blue ocean play.

This wasn’t just a wrestling match, it was an entertainment spectacle. Celebrities like Mr. T and Cyndi Lauper were involved, adding mainstream appeal. McMahon didn’t just create another wrestling event, he invented an entirely new category of entertainment.

The competition? There wasn't any. He had the market all to himself and the rest is history as he grew the company to a multi-billion dollar value.

His competitors didn’t see it coming. While other wrestling promoters were stuck in the “red ocean,” fighting over their piece of the pie, McMahon created a blue ocean and sailed WWE into a completely different stratosphere.

🎳Bowling Alone

I stumbled across this tweet the other day:

It reminded me of the book Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam.

In the book, Putnam introduces the concept of social capital, a crucial element in understanding the fabric of our society. Social capital refers to the value derived from social networks, bonding over shared interests, and active participation in community activities, which collectively contribute to individual and communal well-being.

Two decades ago, Putnam made a simple yet profound observation: the decline of bowling leagues in America as a metaphor for our growing social disconnection.

This observation laid the groundwork for the book which provides a comprehensive analysis of Americans' evolving social habits over the years, demonstrating a troubling trend towards isolation from family, friends, neighbors, and vital social structures like the PTA, churches, clubs, political parties, and, notably, bowling leagues.

Bowling also gives you an opportunity to recreate the greatest meme of all time.

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🐻Out of Office

I love the idea of replacing out of office messages with images.

🤣Movie Questions

This week's meme is dedicated to my wonderful wife 🥰🤣

😎Cool Links

✍Write Simply. There's an Italian dish called saltimbocca, which means "leap into the mouth." My goal when writing might be called saltintesta: the ideas leap into your head and you barely notice the words that got them there.

🚪Reversible and Irreversible Decisions. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, considers decisions like doors. He asks himself if the decision is a one-way door or a two-way door. What’s the difference Once you walk through a one-way door, you can’t come back. It’s irreversible. With a two-way door, on the other hand, you can walk through, look around, and easily come back to where you started.

🤔The 10 Reasons Top Founders Are Building Personal Brands. The stats back this up. 77% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company when its CEO uses social media. 82% trust companies more when their senior executives are active online. Plus, in showing up, you’ll reach infinitely more people in the first place. The numbers don't lie and your personal brand matters. But what are you doing about it?

👂AI audio wearables have an awkward problem. But finding those situations where a voice recorder app wouldn’t suffice—and where recording the conversation doesn’t come off as creepy or awkward—can be tricky, especially if you’re not in an office setting that involves regular meetings.

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Let’s connect! 💬 You can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter