No #173 | June 15, 2025

by Matthew Boyd

Good morning, welcome to the weekly Lead It Cool newsletter.

Learning to dance update: The “Dads’ Dance” performances have gone even better than expected. Might need to consider a career change😜

In this week's Lead It Cool newsletter:

• 😎Father's Day
• 😔OceanGate
• 🏖️Brian Wilson
• 🤣Dress Code
• 😎Cool Links

😎Father's Day

For the other parents out there, have you ever looked at your kids right after they’ve woken up, and it feels like they somehow grew and changed overnight?

You just sit there staring at them, equal parts overflowing with love and quietly panicking that they’re growing up so fast you wish you could hit pause.

And then they catch you staring and sneer, “What are you looking at? Stop staring at me.”

So, of course, you look away, but the intensity of that small moment lingers with you throughout the day.

Experiencing the passage of time through your child’s growth sparks a depth of reflection that’s hard to shake. Ask any parent whose kids are older than yours, and they’ll almost always say the same thing: it goes so fast. One minute you’re carrying them on your shoulders, and the next you’re teaching them how to drive.

There’s a haunting scene in the movie Interstellar that captures this sensation perfectly.

Matthew McConaughey’s character, Cooper, is on a space mission where time moves differently due to relativity, what feels like hours to him is years back on Earth.

After one mission, he sits down to watch a backlog of video messages from his kids. For him, only a few days have passed. For them, over twenty years. He watches them grow up in a matter of minutes, birthdays, heartbreaks, milestones, all compressed into a single devastating sequence. He breaks down. Because what parent wouldn’t?

And maybe that’s the trickiest part of parenting: it’s a slow-motion goodbye. Every day they grow a little more into who they’re becoming, and a little further from who they were.

So yeah, maybe we stare. Maybe we hold on for a beat too long. Not because we want to make them uncomfortable… but because we’re just trying to memorize the moment before it, too, becomes a memory.

Happy Father's Day everyone🍻.

😔OceanGate

Like many others, I was captivated by the OceanGate disaster in 2023.

It’s a story that taps into our most primal fears (claustrophobia, drowning, the unknown depths of the ocean) and it intersects with one of the most iconic tragedies in human history: the sinking of the Titanic.

So when Netflix released its documentary Titan this week, I watched it immediately.

What I learned was even more tragic than I had imagined. The CEO, Stockton Rush, despite warnings from numerous experts, pressed forward with his deep water exploration vision, one that ultimately led to the deaths of himself and four others.

It’s a chilling case study in the sunk cost fallacy. Time and again, Rush was presented with evidence urging caution, opportunities to pivot, and voices of reason from within and outside his team. But he couldn’t let go. The deeper the investment, the tighter he held on.

A documentary worth the watch.

🏖️Brian Wilson

Music icon Brian Wilson passed away this week at the age of 82. Best known as the creative force behind the Beach Boys, Wilson was the genius behind some of the most enduring and influential songs in music history.

This week, I went down a few Brian Wilson rabbit holes, and one of the most fascinating discoveries was his deep obsession with the Ronettes' song Be My Baby. According to those close to him, Wilson began each day by listening to the track and listened to it thousands of times over his lifetime.

Wilson once famously claimed that Be My Baby was as significant to music as Einstein’s theory of relativity was to science🤯, noting how profoundly it inspired not only him but countless other artists who built on the song's sound and feel.

If you’ve got a little time this weekend, kick back and revisit some Beach Boys classics.

🤣Dress Code

(source)

😎Cool Links

🤔Albert Einstein on Education and the Secret to Learning. That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes.

🚶‍♂️The Spirt of Sauntering: The Art of Walking and the Perils of the Sedentary Lifestyle. Thoreau argues that the genius of walking lies not in mechanically putting one foot in front of the other en route to a destination but in mastering the art of sauntering.

👎Negative reviews are your best source of feedback. Your current user base is a treasure trove of opportunity. These users have already navigated your onboarding processes and understand your product’s value. Engaging with their feedback can lead to enhancements that can make them champions of your brand.

🚀Spaceballs sequel!​

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