No #180 | August 3, 2025

by Matthew Boyd

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

The Boyd family is taking some R&R over the next couple of weeks so the newsletters might be a bit shorter than usual. Hope everyone enjoys the final weeks of summer🌞.

In this week's Lead It Cool newsletter:

• 🚗The Wonder Years
• ✈️Travel Quotes
• 😍Pie Chart Summer
• 🤣August
• 😎Cool Links

🚗The Wonder Years

“What would you do if I sang out of tune…”

Sing that line in a raspy voice, and every millennial instantly gets hit with a wave of nostalgia for one thing: The Wonder Years.

It was one of my favorite shows growing up.

The series followed the life of Kevin Arnold, a teenager navigating the late 1960s and early '70s. Told through his adult self's reflective narration, it was a coming-of-age story wrapped in the warmth of family, the pain of growing up, and the bittersweet lessons learned along the way.

Each episode captured that delicate balance of innocence and experience, with Joe Cocker’s soulful rendition of “With a Little Help From My Friends” setting the tone right from the opening credits.

That theme - leaning on those closest to you during life’s messiest, most confusing moments - has stuck with me. And last weekend, I lived my very own Wonder Years moment.

We were on our way to a camping trip, loaded up and excited, when the car broke down. Not a gentle breakdown either, this was a full-stop-nothing-working-on-the-side-of-a-major-highway kind of situation.

We were a long way from home, cars were whizzing by, and the stress levels were rising fast (EVERYBODY STAY CALM🤣).

After a few deep breaths and some initial panic, we made a call to my brother/sister-in-law, who lived somewhat nearby. Without hesitation, they jumped into action, drove out to find us, and helped get everything sorted out.

Life throws curveballs. Cars break down. Plans fall apart. But if you're lucky, like we are, you’ve got people (family, friends, loved ones) who show up when it matters most.

So thank you, NT/MT, for being our roadside heroes. And thank you to all the people in our lives who answer when we call, who lend a hand without needing to be asked, and who make the rough roads a little smoother, and just know that we'll always be there for you.

✈️Travel Quotes

If you're planning an upcoming trip and you're looking for some quotes to drop to inspire your travel-mates (or annoy your children), look no further:

"Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer." – Anonymous

"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page." – Saint Augustine

"We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us." – Anonymous

"Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world." – Gustave Flaubert

"Does anyone know where I put the sunscreen?" - Matthew Boyd

😍Pie Chart Summer

Stunning. (source)

🤣August

🤣 (by Ali Solomain)

😎Cool Links

🤔The Inconvenient Way: Why the future of leadership is slower, deeper and more human. There’s a quiet unraveling happening in our companies, boardrooms and personal lives, a slow erosion of what used to work. Leaders feel it first. A little more tired. A little more overwhelmed. A little more disconnected. For decades, we’ve built business leadership on the promise that knowledge, speed and certainty were our greatest assets. That if we just mastered more — more analysis, more credentials, more tools — we’d find meaning, mastery and control. But the game is changing. And for those of us who’ve built our identities around propositional knowing, our intellect and our cleverness, this shift doesn’t just feel professional. It feels existential.

🤔Escaping the "When-When" Trap. "When something happens, then I'll finally be happy." This is the 'when-then' trap, and it's a common fallacy we have in our pursuit of finding happiness. Oftentimes after we achieve the 'when', we find out that we're still dissatisfied.

♠️Five easy card tricks that you can do today. Everyone should be able to do at least one magic card trick. Here are some easy-ish ones to learn.

⛳You hit a hole in one playing golf but you're playing alone and nobody witnessed it. What do you do?

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Let’s connect! 💬 You can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter