#087 – Passports & Marketing

Good morning everyone,

Hope you’re having a great week!

Let’s jump in.

read online on my website 

read time 3 minutes 

#087 at a Glance:

• Quote: The irony of procrastination.

• Podcast: Joe Rogan x Mel Gibson.

• Interesting Phenomenon: The 2025 Henley Passport Index.

• Video: $22,381 worth of marketing advice in 63 minutes with Rory Sutherland.

• Tweet: How a lot of problems are solved.

Quote I’ve been thinking about:

Podcast I listened to:

The Joe Rogan Experience #2254 - Mel Gibson

Joe Rogan and Mel Gibson.

Ancient civilisations, Christianity, power, spiritual warfare.

Bloody captivating and incredibly entertaining.

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.

[Podcast Length: 18 minutes]

Interesting Phenomenon I came across:

The 2025 Henley Passport Index 

The Henley Passport Index is the original, authoritative ranking of all the world’s passports according to the number of destinations their holders can access without a prior visa.

The index is based on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) – the largest, most accurate travel information database – and enhanced by Henley & Partners’ research team.

Here are some of the highlights from the 2025 report:

• Singapore was ranked 1st with visa-free access to 195 countries, followed by Japan coming in 2nd with 193.

• Finland, France, Germany, Italy, South Korea, and Spain were all tied 3rd with visa-free travel access to 192 countries.

• Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden were tied 4th with 191 countries.

• Belgium, New Zealand, Portugal, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom were tied 5th with 190 countries.

• Australia and Greece were equally tied 6th with 189 countries.

• Afghanistan was ranked last 106th in last place on the list, with visa-free travel access to only 26 countries.

You can chcek out the full index here.

Video I watched:

$22,381 Worth of Marketing Advice in 63 Minutes with Rory Sutherland

Rory Sutherland is the vice chairman of Ogilvy and is widely regarded as one of the most prolific marketers in the world.

In this brilliant new ‘Podclass’ format pioneered by Simon Squibb, Rory sits down to provide a framework on the intricacies of building a brand that people remember.

These were my favourite takeaways from the video:

• Holistic marketing impacts all of your other business units and processes.

• The cost of customer acquisition is always quicker to reveal itself than the value of keeping a customer in the long-term (LTV).

• A lot of things that marketers do are neither measurable nor attributable in conventional ways.

• At its simplest, marketing is viewing your business through the lens of someone who knows nothing about your business.

• There is a reason why a substantially large number of people who become successful entrepreneurs have grown up in a shop or a cafe or a restaurant, and that’s because working in a business like that is essentially a free MBA.

• Marketing is the science of knowing what economists are wrong about.

• There is a ‘Jack Of All Trades’ heuristic that exists which suggests that, as a business, if you only do one thing, people believe that you do it really well.

  • For example, there’s a reason why people think that fish bought from a fish monger is better than that from a mainstream supermarket.

You can check out the full video here.

Tweet I liked:

How A Lot of Problems Are Solved

Thanks for reading! Grateful for your support.

Stay hungry, stay humble, stay curious. ⚡

You can read all previous editions of Five to Thrive on my website here.

Think someone else will enjoy reading Five to Thrive?
They can subscribe here. 

Get in touch with me via email ([email protected]) or you can also find me on LinkedIn.