GOOD DAY ,

I hope you had a weekend spending time enjoying the nice heat. I've spent the last week biking a lot, I've found about two hours a day to ride and it's been awesome. You cover more distance than walking and see far more than driving.

Last Monday I wrote a post called Changes in 2020. It's about how this year has brought about changes that I think are going to affect our daily lives. My favorite is the rise of hobbies; all the things you do just because you enjoy doing them. To learn more about this I did some keyword research to verify my idea. In mid March terms like "how to sew" & "how to play guitar" doubled their search volume. And while it has come down significantly, there is still a bump in how many people are trying to pick new things up. My big takeaway was that when people have time; they will default to making things.

I love Oat Milk, it's the best milk substitute I've consumed. Early last week I read something about Oatly, a company that makes Oat Milk. They have essentially taken an unknown category of food, created a cult following around it and shook up their whole market. I was fascinated by how they used their voice to create a unique & authentic brand. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts about this article in particular so feel free to respond to this with any feedback, or ideas of other interesting companies.

Finally, I thought I would share Jeff Bezos' statement before his congressional hearing. It was a fascinating demonstration of story telling. He told the story of his life as well as Amazon in a really compelling way and even invited some scrutiny into what he is doing. I actually went through and read a bunch of Amazon shareholder letters because of this.

Thanks for reading this!

Julian 🦕