#169 – Opportunities & Faster Learning

Quote, Podcast, Mental Model, Hack, X.

Author

Dimitri Gremos
September 30, 2026

Good morning everyone,

Hope you’re having a great week!

Welcome to the October edition of Five to Thrive.

Here are 5 things to make your morning a little more interesting.

Let’s jump in.

read online on my website

read time 5 minutes

#169 – The Rundown:

  • Quote: Three rules.

  • Podcast: From bankruptcy to Champions League in 9 years.

  • Mental Model: Finding opportunities inside opportunities.

  • Hack: How to learn anything faster.

  • X: SpaceX, Anthropic & OpenAI.

Quote:

Three Rules

“I follow three rules: Do the right thing, do the best you can, and always show people you care.”

Lou Holtz

Podcast:

From Bankruptcy to Champions League in 9 Years | The Como Story

Back in August, I shared a brilliant interview with Ryan Shelton, Chief Business Officer at Como 1907. A club which went from bankruptcy and the bottom of Italian football to the Champions League and fighting at the top of the Serie A table in just 9 short years.

It is a truly remarkable story, and a feat perhaps only surpassed by the club's financial performance off the field.

Enter: President of Como 1907, Mirwan Suwarso.

This interview was truly exceptional.

I was blown away by Mirwan's knowledge of the most intricate details of the business, particularly as someone who comes from a creative filmmaking background.

But in my opinion, it is exactly this non-footballing perspective which has allowed Mirwan to steer the club so brilliantly over the last few years.

Here’s just one example.

When Como were in Serie B, TV rights brought in around €5 million a season, while the average club was spending €11–15 million. With a 5,000-seat stadium in a town with a population of 85,000, ticket sales weren't going to bridge that gap.

So Mirwan opted for an unorthodox approach: "Maybe we shouldn't be a football club. Maybe we should be a sports tourism destination."

And all strategic decision-making effectively stems from that primary vision: a sports tourism destination.

Rather than adding seats, they rented the lakeside villas behind the stadium and turned them into pre-match hospitality. Ticket revenue roughly tripled, while tickets for locals stayed at €20.

Rather than just selling jerseys, they sell the famous ‘Lake Como’ destination through wide-ranging apparel. Merch revenue jumped from around €2.7 million to €13.7 million in a year, and only 38% of that was jerseys. The rest? Hiking, sailing and running collections.

Rather than renting out the shirt to sponsors, they became operating partners. Their Uber front-of-shirt deal went from under €1 million to more than €10 million in a single season, with the club also obtaining the licence to operate Uber in northern Italy, including the ability to operate ‘Uber boats’ on Lake Como.

Truly redefining what it means to be a football club.

Could not recommend this one more highly.

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.

[Duration: 1 hour 17 minutes]

P.S. I made a Spotify playlist with every podcast I’ve ever recommended. I hope they bring you as much value as they’ve brought me.

Mental Model:

Finding Opportunities Inside Opportunities

I came across an awesome story online that captured a way of thinking about life that I've been trying to put into words for a while.

It's about someone whose older mate keeps nudging them to ask for one thing more than feels reasonable, and what happens every time they actually do it.

Have a read.

“I've got a good mate who's about 20 years older than me and he's annoyingly good at finding opportunities inside other opportunities.

A few years ago, I got selected to represent Surf Life Saving Australia on an exchange to Japan and I was gone for over a month teaching life saving, traveling around the country and to me, that was the opportunity.

Then my mate goes, you should get in contact with the Australian Embassy while you're there.

And I remember basically thinking, why the hell would the Australian Embassy want to meet with me?

And he just said, it's always a good opportunity, which wasn't a particularly satisfying answer.

But after a bit of convincing, I found an email, sent them a message, and they actually said yes.

I ended up meeting one of the counsellors getting shown around the embassy, and apparently it went well enough that the embassy visit became part of the exchange for the groups that went after us the following years.

And he's done this to me a few times now.

I make the national surfboat team, and he told me to ask about commentary.

Now I commentate state and national competitions every year, even though I've actually taken time away from rowing itself.

And I'm literally in Canberra right now because I got invited down for a kids' camp researching curiosity and AI and how the two intertwine.

When I told him I was coming down here, of course, he goes, you should get in touch with the Brumbies.

And I think I'm finally starting to understand how his brain actually works.

An opportunity doesn't necessarily have fixed edges.

If you're already somewhere unusual doing something interesting, sometimes you've got a reason to knock on a door that would have felt completely random a week earlier.

And I used to self-disqualify from that stuff because I thought, who am I to ask?

But most of the time, asking cost me basically nothing.

The embassy got something out of that relationship, and Surf Lifesaving did, and I certainly did.

The best opportunities seem to create more value than they consume.

And then sometimes they create another opportunity, which creates another one.

So I'm trying to get better at asking, if this door's already open, what else can I reach from here?

Tom Barrett

I really love the essence of this.

And maybe the best thing about it is that it doesn’t require a grand plan – just a step outside the boundaries of what we have previously convinced ourselves is ‘possible’.

Reminder to self: If the door is open, what else can I reach from here?

{h/t Tom Barrett}

Hack:

How To Learn Anything Faster

This is easily my latest and greatest learning hack to absorb any new concept or major block of information.

Step 1: Go to ‘Gemini Notebook’ online (freely accessible if you log in with your Google account).

Step 2: Click ‘New Notebook’.

Step 3: Go to ‘Add Sources’ and upload a PDF document(s) of whatever it is you want to learn or understand. I often upload my notes from uni classes or an output from Claude Research I’ve generated on a certain topic.

Step 4: With the document(s) now uploaded, click ‘Audio Overview’.

Step 5: Customise your settings based on your preferences (format, length, etc.)

Step 6: Hit ‘Generate Now’.

And voila, a comprehensive podcast between two people discussing the exact content you wanted to learn based on the sources you have provided.

Here’s an example of one I made recently when I was revising for my corporations law exam at uni.

This has been such an unlock for me over the past few months when wanting to learn anything on the go.

Give it a try.

X:

SpaceX, Anthropic & OpenAI

A truly wild stat.

Beyond curious to see where we go from here…

Thanks for reading! Grateful for your support.

In case you missed it, last month’s newsletter covered the AI writing policy every company needs, how Gen Z considers sports betting part of their long-term financial plan & more.

If you enjoyed this edition, it would mean the world if you could forward it to a friend or send them my website.

This goes a long way to helping me reach more people :)

See you in November,

Dimi

P.S. the best ways to get in touch with me are via email or LinkedIn