Good morning to all new and old readers! Here is your Wednesday edition of Faster Than Normal, exploring one short story about a person, a company, a high-performance tool, a trend I’m watching closely, and curated media to help you build businesses, wealth, and the most important asset of all: yourself.
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Today’s edition:
> Stories: Huda Kattan & IBM
> High-performance: Worm's Eye View
> Insights: Work conquers skill
> Tactical: Superficial understanding of complex topics
> 1 Question: Direction over outcome
Cheers,
Alex
P.S. Send me feedback on how we can improve. I respond to every email.
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Stories of Excellence
Person: Huda Kattan
Huda Kattan is a beauty mogul who transformed her passion into a billion-dollar empire. Born to Iraqi immigrants in Oklahoma, she left a finance career to pursue makeup artistry in Dubai. Kattan started a beauty blog in 2010, which exploded in popularity. She launched Huda Beauty in 2013 with a line of false eyelashes. The brand now offers a full range of cosmetics and skincare products. Kattan's success stems from her authenticity and social media savvy. She has 50.9 million Instagram followers and regularly shares makeup tutorials and personal insights. "I took a $6,000 loan from my sister Alya to get the business started," Kattan reveals, highlighting her humble beginnings. Today, Huda Beauty is valued at over $1 billion, and Kattan is recognized as one of America's richest self-made women by Forbes.
Key Lessons from Huda Kattan:
On internal validation: "Only once I was operating from a place of passion and purpose again, and I could value my own success internally, did I feel fulfilled."
On self-talk: "One of the most important things you, as a leader, must learn is unlearning the habit of negative self-talk."
On self-reflection: "Personal reflection is the only way to deep dive into the 'why' of what you do."
Company: IBM
IBM, originally known as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R), was founded in 1911 by Charles Ranlett Flint through the merger of four companies. Thomas J. Watson Sr., a former NCR executive, joined as general manager in 1914 and became president in 1915. Watson's sales experience and emphasis on employee loyalty transformed the company. In 1924, C-T-R was renamed International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). The company survived the Great Depression by diversifying into electric typewriters and other office equipment. During World War II, IBM's punch card technology was used for military logistics and census data. By the 1960s, IBM had become a leader in mainframe computers. Today, IBM is a multinational technology corporation with over $60.5 billion in revenue and over 350,000 employees worldwide.
Key Lessons from IBM:
On longevity. Adapt or die. IBM has reinvented itself multiple times over its century-long existence. From tabulating machines to mainframes to PCs to cloud services. Never get too comfortable with your current success.
On building product. R&D is not a cost center. IBM has consistently invested heavily in research, even during tough times. Five Nobel Prizes and countless patents later, it's paid off.
Something New
You read the newsletter. Now search the library. Faster Than Normal has 350+ founder playbooks and 380+ company breakdowns — every one structured, searchable, and cited to the source.
Try asking: "How did Steve Jobs think about product focus differently than his peers?"
Try it free for 7 days →Accelerants
High-performance tool
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Worm's Eye View
Whether you’re a techie, politician, or corporate executive, you can’t fix a problem just by taking a top-down view.
You also need to look at the world bottom-up, through the workers’ eyes.
Be curious like a child and walk in others’ shoes.
Insights
Sam Walton on the value of hard work:
"If you take someone who lacks the experience and the know-how but has the real desire and the willingness to work his tail off to get the job done, he'll make up for what he lacks. And that proved true nine times out of ten."
Tactical reads
⎯
> When avoiding superficial understanding of complex topics
Guessing the Teacher's Password (Read it here)
> When optimizing learning and knowledge acquisition
The Throughput of Learning (Read it here)
1 question
The question is not, "Will I succeed?" but rather, "What should I attempt?”
That’s all for today, folks. As always, please give me your feedback. Which section is your favourite? What do you want to see more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know.
Have a wonderful rest of week, all.
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