Monday

Let’s kick off the week with a Be Better People pep talk from Seth Godin; after the pep talk, check out the Balloon Fiesta in New Mexico this week, followed by the tech tools that improve our lives. Finish the Monday letter with questions about consumer spending and whether live music can hold onto the dollars.

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🤘We are here every day, and every minute you spend with us sends ripples of gratitude through our souls! 🤘

The King of Smart Brevity: before we knew what Smart Brevity was, Seth Godin, one of the world's most consistent bloggers, threw another batch of letters at us, forming 109 words stating we should all strive to Make It Better.

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Up and away, the 2023 Balloon Fiesta in New Mexico has begun! The Sunday Brew Review edition of Morning Brew linked us up with the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta going on for the next week. If you have ever had the opportunity to see a hot air balloon in real life, they are bigger than you think. This is another in a long list of things you wonder who thought this up? Like everything else, we upped the game once we figured out how to add a basket full of people to the gigantic balloon. We created extravagant balloons and events to highlight creativity, ingenuity, and community. Thank you, balloon communities; the rest of us landlubbers enjoy the visuals.

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Progress is good, and progress in technology is everywhere these days. Can you imagine sitting on the couch scrolling through 200+ channels on your cable guide, looking for something to watch? Of course, you can; it's probably what you did 5 years ago. For some of us, it started with music; Pandora asked us to thumb up songs we liked, and based on our likes, it gave us new songs to fit with our personalized music algorithm. Next, YouTube and Facebook did it with videos, and now, when most of us go to watch TV, another personalized algorithm suggests what we might like to watch.

Nice News has a story from Marika Spitulski on several technological innovations that have changed our lives. This is a great article, and we will pick through it this week and expand on some of the innovations we are most excited about. Personalized Algorithms are high on that list; we use them in our everyday lives and in producing a newsletter about exciting news, inspirational stories, industrial designs, and music. Stay tuned!

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Two stories popped up over the last few weeks, making me wonder if they aren't correlated in some way. I link to both in this highlight, and my thoughts are more opinion than heavy research. Digital Music News wrote a great piece on Live Music and cited a few key economic points from Bank of America. The gist from BoA is consumer spending is expected to "drop significantly," but live entertainment may hold on during the drop. People are looking for experiences over things, and the era of live-streamed events failed to deliver an experience people will come back for.

The next story is more business and markets-related, but it goes back to consumer spending. Axios Markets talks about some of the same economic factors Digital Music News cited, savings depletion and student loan payments; Axios adds another factor, probably the biggest of all, the mortgage rate. Axios reports that a home mortgage rates could top 8% soon, the first time in this century that a 30-year fixed mortgage rate would hit that high. The difference between 5% (approximate average over the last 20 years) and 8% for a 30-year fixed mortgage for a $300,000 mortgage is $600 monthly. Add back student loans, higher prices, and another $600 per month for a mortgage, and it's hard to believe live entertainment won't feel some pain.

Let’s Dance!

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

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🤘We are here every day, and every minute you spend with us sends ripples of gratitude through our souls! 🤘

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

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