Hey Must Readers, I hope you have all been well!
July was hot, full of sports (anyone else miss the football and tennis?) and I wished I’d brought more ice cream…

➕ WORK WITH ME - I am coaching and consulting with CEOs, CMOs & Product leaders, so if your company growth has slowed, not hitting the mark with marketing or just need some help, hit reply or email me → [email protected]

A big thanks to Chris for being my human editor, AI just isn’t cutting it for Must Reads editing

I set myself a challenge to run a daily series this year for a daily series, I started about a month ago with “Daily Dose”, a swipe file I share everyday - ideas from the marketing & business world that will inspire, educate and entertain you. 

I haven’t turned this into a daily email - that would be a step too far, but give it a flick through, I bet there is something to inspire, entertain or educate you:

LONG FORM OF THE MONTH: Back in my day I loved to read & it was a great escape and way to learn, but times have moved on and are now dominated by screens and devices - the question we keep coming back to is ‘have we lost kids to these behaviours?’ Or can/should we bring them back? I take a lot of pleasure and importantly nuance from reading that is often lost in video consumption, video often takes all of your senses and too much attention vs reading.

When everything kids consume is snippets and clips, should we be surprised that they struggle to read or won’t choose to read for entertainment? Do we embrace or do we tackle with…tech?

Galaxy Brain is one of those podcasts that always piques my interest, covering pop culture or upcoming themes, this podcast helping us package our attention challenges or in most cases attention deficit and how our curiosity has changed since social media and now interest media. My favourite quote comes from Stephen King “Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent”

✅ If yes, copy and paste www.mustreads.co.uk/p/july-2026 into your favourite chat

👀 If not, keep on reading…

Sophia is the other side to call her daddy, the story (and importantly her story) is basically a movie (I think it might become one after the book launch). It’s a quick look at what happened and how Alex Cooper went on to tell her stories (and a story of someone who was destined to be a star, watch the disney+ documentary, she’s a born storyteller and relentless/ruthless). The head tells me not to feel so sorry for Sophia but the heart and gut tells me she got played by a ruthless operator.

Expect A LOT more stories to come out about creators who turned into business empires, especially those who have prolonged careers and continued wealth.

Discover why Krispy Kreme is struggling to fully automate its donut production despite facing significant pressure to boost efficiency and profitability. Their CEO Josh Charlesworth explains the critical role human touch plays in decorating their limited-time designs that robots simply cannot replicate (let’s say yet). This is a good look at how KK is navigating its turnaround strategy while balancing innovation with quality that defines their brand

We have heard of apps and ads suggesting women are pregnant before but are we about to see another wave of wearables and AI devices notifying people they or their partners might be pregnant. Something we have seen before is the lack of second and third order thinking by these companies.

I predict we might see more problems than benefits for the next 12-18 months, especially with how notifications and updates work on phones, smart watches and smart glasses.

One of the largest media outlets outside the US (has +120 titles) is moving away from quantity. This is important in terms of traffic coming from Google and actually influencing how people consume “news”.

I have an educated and working hypothesis that the majority of stories were never read and even when it was on screen it was skimmed.
When you build your goals around a channel like Google or social media platforms their goals never match yours and when they do they make you pay for the pleasure.

Dave Portnoy is often at the centre of one 💩storm or two, usually at the same time, he divides opinion as does Pomp who interviews him here.

Dave has a rollercoaster story, from starting Barstool sports years ago, selling it for $550m, then being fired and then buying it back for $1.
I suspect there will be a lot of consolidation in the coming months this might be a similar theme, founder sells to big brand, big brand can’t keep the culture and maximise profit and make it corporate, then sells it back to original owner or smaller group for a lot less.  

Dave was at the centre of call her daddy podcast drama and got in the Alex Earle vs. Alex Cooper beef (which turned out to be nothing interesting). Dave is promoting his new book and its full of drama and untold stories. Worth a listen if you are into media and new media

In last months must reads I spoke about the impact of GLP-1s. Eli Lily is one of those brands that went big into the trend and appears to be thriving in an industry that lives and dies by their big bets. 

Here are 4 important takes, 2 on either side on why culture is so hard to define and implement. It’s actually how it works together to create better workplace environments:

New Culture: James Timpson has a unique take on work culture, his company hires people straight out of prison, they can charge less, they call everyone colleagues not employees, they give away things for free (if you are going for a job interview and struggle to pay they will do it for free), his idea is simple, give people freedom and get hired for having a personality. This is a great listen or watch for anyone interested in work culture and for some this will be a challenging listen

Behaviour Based Culture: Friend of Must Reads Bruce Daisley also goes deeper into behaviours and why behaviour is a better indicator (few leadership teams understand how to shape behaviour and have agreed behaviours and principles) and creating guardrails beats just saying culture and having culture sessions.

Team Culture: How team sports can be leveraged in the workspace to get ahead. There’s nothing radically new here, but we often overlook what we learned in team sports and are told that sports and work aren’t as closely linked as they actually are. Risk is an important factor in sports we are conditioned to reduce but in the sporting world taking risk is often the difference between winning and losing

1 Decided Controlled Culture: This is the counter argument (with the CEO of Opendoor & Shane Parrish) if you aren’t someone who likes to disagree and cannot adapt to a challenge first culture you will struggle with this idea of how culture works.
There is a lot in here that you will want to take note of:
(i) Commitment to Truth Over Feelings,
(ii) Radical Transparency and Disagreement,
(iii) Outcome-Oriented Ownership,
(iv) In-Person vs Remote and
(v) Take The Pain: This will be an eye opener for those who haven't worked in this sort of environment.

Kaz Nejatian argues (below): Excellence is defined as the capacity to endure and navigate pain. Whether it is admitting mistakes, correcting deep-seated operational failures, or making difficult decisions, the most successful people are those who can hold their "hand over the fire" the longest rather than seeking easy, short-term satisfaction. If you lead a company or a senior leader, this is an investment of time you’ll learn from:

Footballer Erling Haaland arguably won the creator space recently, replying to comments, meme’s and being weirdly funny on his YouTube. In a world where have too much content, Haaland’s team have worked out how to gain cut through. Sponsors take not of how you will want your athletes to appear relatable and often weird ↙️

If you listen to podcasts and like deep dives you will have heard an acquired episode. This is by far the best they have recorded. Last months episode was edited down from ~10 hours down to just over 4 hours (go for quality not quantity), I listened to it in and around a dentist trip and it gave me a tonne of ideas and reminded me - dream BIG!

Something that is bubbling under the surface is how do companies leverage the AI boom before it a lot of it goes bang. A handful of AI companies have moved towards education and into ed-tech, targeting accuracy of the AI checkers, targeting helping the students cheat (there’s definitely many there) and helping teachers and lecturers evolve their teaching competing against movements like Alpha School (as covered in April). Where there are futures and guaranteed cycle of “users” there will be tech firms more specifically AI firms looking to cash in.

Keep an eye on the news in the coming weeks to months it will be full AI wins and fails.

Got any questions or comments on any of the Must Reads shared today, hit reply or email me on [email protected]