Tools of Titans Archives - The Blog of Brent Crowley

B.J. Novak Sketchnote from Tools of Titans

BJ Novak is a former writer of the American Office show. He is also the author of the One More Thing short story series. On the podcast he spoke about a list app called li.st. Googling has told me that it was rebranded to Kiyo, but I’m not having much love with it here in Australia. How To Use Systems To Push Through Fear Of Failure I’m going to make a rhyming link with Novak and Evacuation. Evacuation means to abandon or leave a situation and that’s what Novak did after his first standup appearance which he said was terrible. …

Sophia Amoruso Sketchnote from Tools of Titans

by Brent

Sophia has humble beginnings. She was a thrift shopper back in the early 2000s and flipped them online on eBay. She grabbed a copy of eBay for Dummies and got to work. The two most defining factors that led to the success were the name of the item and the image. So copywriting and knowing how to take a good photo. Comically, she started commenting on the feedback of her purchasers that she was starting nastygal.com, which eBay frowned upon. You don’t want people in your community sending traffic away from your marketplace. So she was banned. This leads us …

Peter Diamandis Sketchnote from Tools of Titans

by Brent

What’s the magnitude of your thinking? According to Peter, you, me and the other person are part of the 99.9% of people who aren’t focussing on the big problems. Peter Diamandis is worth listening to. He’s rates in the top 50 of the world’s greatest leaders according to Forbes. He is founder and executive chairman of X Prize among other notable prizes. He is author of the books Bold and Abundance. According to Peter, the best way to find out how your company will be disrupted is to pay a 20 year old entrepreneur to reveal how they would take …

Justin Boreta Sketchnote from Tools of Titans

by Brent

Justin Boreta is known as a founding member of the electronic group Glitch Mob. He has no formal knowledge of traditional instruments so is an outlier when it comes to success. I like this as it’s a demonstration of an obscure way to get to the same destination. He is a well-spoken and thoughtful speaker and I would encourage a listen of the podcast in its entirety. Tim’s DiSSS in Action The interview is an example of Tim’s learning process in action due to his curiosity around audio equipment and production. DiSSS stands for deconstruction, selection, sequencing and stakes. The …

Mike Shinoda Sketchnote from Tools of Titans

by Brent

Mike Shinoda is a rapper, rhythm guitarist, keyboardist, principal song writer, artist, producer and mixer of Linkin Park, which has pulled in two Grammys. His side project is Fort Minor of which Tim is a fan. Interestingly, prior to listening to this podcast, I thought to myself that I ought to watch the Godfather series as I’ve never seen it before. Guess what Mike referred to as one of his favourites? Yep, you got it, so now I’ve scheduled it in. We seem to have similar film tastes as he also referred to Se7en, Fight Club and even Wall-E. S …

Neil Strauss Sketchnote from Tools of Titans

by Brent

Neil is one of Tim’s good mates. He appeared as a guinea pig in Tim’s book 4-Hour Body. He’s the author of 8 New York Times best sellers and has edited for high profile magazines such as Rolling Stone. I’ve gone for a different flavour here. In terms of my recall, I’m trying to limit one bit of information per card as it makes it a little easier. Of course, this eats into production time but I’m going for a simple cue then response. I can see that eventually I’ll tire of creating more cards, so I’ll improve my visual …

Kevin Rose Sketchnote from Tools of Titans

by Brent

Kevin is a pal of Tim’s and was the first guest on “Tim Tim, Talk Talk.” This was the name Kevin suggested that Tim use to title his podcast. Kevin is a proven investor and the co-founder of Digg. He’s been named in Bloomberg’s Top 25 angel investors. He and Tim also co-host a random show podcast. Kevin’s LITMUS Test To Identify Trends The Rose component of Kevin’s name will be used to seeds the biggest of wisdom from his interview. The rose flower is a plant and plants grow. Kevin has a knack of identifying things before they takeoff. …

Luis von Ahn Sketchnote From Tools of Titans

by Brent

What’s the most popular language app in the world? Duolingo. Luis is its co-founder and CEO at the time of the writing of Tools of Titans. He is a computer science professor who is from Guatemala. Amusingly, in one unit he taught, he created a fake website of a solution to a problem he asked his students to solve. What his students didn’t know was that he tracked their IP addresses thus revealing who took to Google to ‘cheat’. He is also the founding father of those annoying captchas on the Internet. The origin story is from Yahoo where some …

Kaskade Sketchnote From Tools of Titans

by Brent

Kaskade is a five time Grammy nominated music artist from the States. He has headlined Coachella 4 times and is considered one of the founding fathers of house music. How Did Kaskade Get His Break? What immediately comes to mind when I think of Kaskade is a cascading waterfall. A waterfall can start off kind of slow, but once it has established momentum it’s just about impossible to avoid travelling along its path. I link opportunity to this metaphor as when it’s identified, there is a ‘cascading domino effect.’ In the case of Kaskade, his big break came when he …

Noah Kagan Sketchnote from Tools of Titans

by Brent

Noah is a legend but I haven’t always held that evaluation. He can come across as rather brazen but he wants you to win. He was the #30 employee at Facebook and #4 employee at mint.com that was sold to Intuit for a pretty penny. He’s the chief sumo (Founder) of appsumo.com and sumo.me. The former of which I frequent for deals on tools. The Antidote to Fear and Rejection So much goodness to place onto a Sketchnote but let’s start with his first name: Noah. No is linked to his coffee challenge and asking for a 10% discount on …