Gauge Theory, Cold Wisdom and Charisma

The Weekly Variable

Author

Jay Peters
January 12, 2024

The Weekly Variable

Each week I’ll have a curated list of links from the latest tech to just interesting reads or videos, as well as updates on my own entrepreneurial endeavors. Thanks for joining on this journey!

Topics for this week:

Productized Services

I keep coming back to this model of productized services, offering a very clearly defined service outcome for a monthly fee. I’ve run across a few examples and it makes the most sense in terms of building a business that can be up and running quickly. Below are a bunch of example services I’ve found, and 2 podcasts that cover web based productized services which I’ll be using for inspiration.

And here’s a podcast with the creator and owner of those services:

Brett’s DesignJoy success story may be the origin of the popularity of productized services since he’s now making more than $100k a month by himself:

And here’s a podcast with the creator of DesignJoy:

And the host of this podcast, also Brett, has taken inspiration from these guests and created his own productized service:

And he explains it in this video:

Finally, another example of a productized service I’ve run across lately used by another creator:

This list has been growing in my head for some time now so I’ll be sifting through these examples and using them to create my own version of a productized service similar to what they’ve created, but feel free to do your own research. More updates from me on this to come!

Cold Wisdom

Cold plunges and cold showers are a growing trend lately. Andrew Huberman has an entire podcast on the benefits of cold, and basically the idea is that it can help with motivation and weight loss. Sahil Bloom has embraced this trend and is now creating daily videos of his cold plunge where he offers advice whilst suffering through the cold. I’ve only tried a cold shower in the morning once so far, but it may be part of my regular routine in the near future, and this video series is good motivation to try it out:

Charisma Isn’t What You Think

I thoroughly enjoy Dr. K most likely due to his down to earth nature, and also partly because of his gaming background, but I thought this was a interesting take on Charisma. It’s a useful characteristic for business and life in general, and Dr. K explains 3 aspects of Charisma that you can actually practice and get better at: Vision, Authenticity and Communication. He further breaks down what he means by those and how to improve with them. In particular, he highlights at the end of the video, that he’s a more effective communicator in his videos because he writes about what he wants to communicate first, which enables him to more clearly speak about it since he’s had time to write down his ideas and process the information. Can’t seem to get away from the idea that writing is important… Full video below:

Not the first time I’ve linked to Ed from Creator Booth, as he has some great advice. This video highlights some quick math to show that if you have affiliate links to other products rather than your linking to your own product in your socials, you could be missing out on quite a bit of money. It’s not something I’d thought about before. Most advice or common trend is to fill out your profile with a number of affiliate links to all the different offers you use or support, but it would be a more profitable strategy to reprioritize only offering one link to your own product. Worth considering if you are in the situation that you have a product you could be driving toward and you have the traffic. Only an 8 minute commitment for the full explanation:

Gauge Theory and Geometric Unity

I have to include some heavy math or physics every once in a while. I listened to a few podcasts with Eric Weinstein and found his passion for leaving planet Earth interesting, but his take on how we’re approaching it wrong, is truly fascinating. He contends current physics is focused on the wrong problems, like Quantum Gravity and should be looking at thing as they are, not as subsets of easier problems to solve. He’s tried to combat this with his own theory of geometric unity which I haven’t looked into much yet but will be checking out, always up for looking at something from a different perspective.

In another podcast he talks about something called Gauge Theory and how that theory is really what should be the main approach to understanding a complicate system like economics. I’d never heard of the concept but it made sense at a high level when he briefly explained it. It essential describes how smaller parts of the system can change without changing the entire system.

Just a couple mind-bending ideas to think about over the week if you’re curious!

Naturally he also has some hard political views, but I’m primarily concerned with the math and physics talk. Full podcasts with Eric Weinstein and Chris Williamson, and then Lex Fridman below:

And that’s it for this week! Another newsletter with a little AI, but some more diverse topics this week.

Those are the links that stuck with me throughout the week and a glimpse into what I’m personally gearing up to work on.

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