#AskPeshev 168: Prioritizing Learning

#AskPeshev 168: Reflection, Commerce, Holiday Week

November 23, 2022

Personally, this is one of the most turbulent weeks of the year.As someone who's heading several digital projects, Black Friday and Cyber Monday take weeks of preparation to ace the commerce season. That's in combination with Thanksgiving and the holiday mood kicking in around most of the world. This year is a bit different... due to the economic shift and some hardcore news in tech.While I don't want to mix in the gloomy news for everyone ready to celebrate, last week's newsletter was different. A few emails bounced back from corporate accounts that are no longer active. It's my mission to provide as much educational and tactical content as possible in support of learning, skilling up, and staying on top of your game.The fact that you are reading this newsletter and have been following us for some time now is a great manifestation of your hunger for learning and innovation.Here’s one good news: From hereon, we will be incorporating the following into the newsletter:

  • latest relevant statistics

  • breaking news items

Let us know what additional features you would like us to cover. Just hit “Reply” 🚀 Mario

 Business Strategy 

  • DOW: 33,700 (-0.13%)

  • NASDAQ: 11,024 (-1.09%)

  • S&P: 3,949 (-0.39%)

*Economy numbers as of November 21st*

If an executive had fallen asleep in 2019 and just woke up, she wouldn’t recognize the business world of November 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic rewrote the rules, and now a new and potent disruption seems to arrive every other day. You know the list of issues; we won’t go through them here. Suffice to say that managing complex organizations is much harder today than it was just a few years ago. And the hardest task of all for CEOs is to decide what needs to be done now and what can wait.Read more… Management 

  • Customer Data Breaches Q3 2022: 14.78(+167%)

*In millions. records taken from statista*

SmartCompany: Five Ways To Guarantee The Safety Of Customer DataIf the current news cycle has shown us anything, it’s that it’s never been more important for businesses to be serious about security. It can feel like the next data breach is just around the corner. For businesses to remain viable, they require customers to trust them with sensitive information, and the consequences of breaching this trust can cause irreversible reputational and financial damage. So how should businesses act as responsible stewards of their customers’ data and demonstrate their practices?Read more… Recruitment 

  • Unemployment Rate October 2022: 3.7% (+0.2%)

* US Bureau of Labor Statistics *

Computerworld: What Amazon, Twitter, Meta, And Others Got Wrong With LayoffsTwitter, Stripe, Coinbase, Salesforce, Zendesk, Tesla, Meta, and others have announced significant layoffs in recent months, even though unemployment rates are among the lowest in 50 years. Facebook parent company Meta announced last week it would cut 13% of its staff or 11,000 workers, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying he overestimated how long the pandemic’s e-commerce boom would last.Read more… 

 Breaking News 🚨

  • Suspect in shooting at Colorado Springs LGBTQ club charged with 5 counts of first-degree murder.

  • The charges were preliminary, and prosecutors had not yet filed them in court.

  • Elon Musk reinstates former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account

  • Whether Trump will use his previous account, which had 88.8 million followers, was not immediately known. In April, he said that he would only use his own social media app.

 Marketing 

Often new companies think about public relations at the moment of the launch and not much after that. However, PR is an ongoing effort that should always be kept alive. Public relations is not just about writing good press releases. It's about building and maintaining durable networks and relationships, providing value for your audience, and telling your brand story in the best way possible.

 Sales 

Black Friday Sales Increase Forecast 2022: (6% - 8%)

* National Retail Federation forecast *

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday on the horizon, brands are preparing to enter the busiest quarter of the year. But with economic uncertainty prompting cautious spending by consumers, what is it that makes a D2C sales strategy truly effective? Across the globe, but particularly in Europe, multiple economic factors are having a knock-on effect on consumer spending. The continuing energy crisis is one of those, with utility bills expected to hit record highs this winter.

 Featured Stories of the Week 

Are you making the right technical choices for your engineering infrastructure? The tech bubble is crowded with options - from enterprise-grade juggernauts through DIY and no-code solutions; from proprietary to open source, from hosted to self-hosted - you get it. Making the right move in terms of your tech stack or architecture is close to impossible. However, seeking feedback and thoughts indefinitely will always lead to confusion, doubt, and even... "analysis paralysis".

Risk management is the key factor I would try to gauge before picking between working on five $1 million business ideas or just one $10 million business idea. A promising, well-established $10M idea that’s easy to get into, hire for, and get funding for will be my preference. Managing one business is easier and all operational expenses are handled with less hassle. The 5 ideas may be in different segments, some brick and mortar and some high tech, some selling products on-site, and others B2B services.

It's often said that “the devil is in the details”—and getting them wrong could mean the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful project.If you’re working on a major project requiring attention to fine details, it’s important to keep your team organized and to have a plan in place. You may also benefit from prioritizing certain tasks and holding team members accountable throughout the project's life cycle.