What I've Been Watching — Issue #5

A personal curation from Nishat

September started fast and ended with a big cleanup of my Watch Later list. Most of what I saved was about small businesses, creators, and where WordPress is heading. Messi showed up three times, and MrBeast showed up even more.

Here’s the 50 highlight from September’s 92 watchlist:

Money, business & creators

Behind The Scenes: How I Use Claude To Build My Newsletter — David Risley shows his full Monday routine for making WP Edge, his weekly newsletter. Claude doesn’t write it. He drops in the articles, Claude structures them, and he edits by hand. The process used to take him three hours. Now it takes about two. I use Claude for my own newsletters, so I took notes.

$2B founder reveals the niches that can make you $$$ (ft. Allison Ellsworth, Poppi) — Sam Parr and Shaan Puri talk to Allison Ellsworth, who built Poppi into a $2B soda brand. She covers what happened behind the scenes on Shark Tank and why they spent $70M on branding.

If I Started A Personal Brand In 2026, I’d Do This - Dolly Parton — Alex Hormozi uses Dolly Parton’s career to explain how he’d build a personal brand if he were starting today. Short and practical.

How do I record and release so many videos? — Imran Siddiq of Web Squadron explains how he keeps up his video output, from his recording setup to his publishing routine. Useful if you plan a lot of content and ship very little.

A high school dropout reveals how he built a $200M brand — Danny Yeung tells Shaan Puri how he built IM8, a supplement brand with David Beckham, to $100M in 11 months. He also talks about losing money during COVID and running 200 offline events.

7 things Bezos, MrBeast & Thiel do that you don’t — Sam and Shaan go through odd habits of famous CEOs. Single-tasking, cutting things all the time, and replying with one-word answers are all in there. Some are easy to copy. Some are not.

How to use your “useless” hobby to make money — People who went all in on strange hobbies and turned them into real businesses. A scent club, museum tours with a twist, and mafia tours all make the list.

Super niche businesses making millions in 2026 — Three founders share the most interesting number in their business and get advice live. The companies are Posha (a cooking robot), Mid-Day Squares (chocolate bars), and DayDream Dental.

3 low competition businesses with massive demand in America — Same format with three more founders: Hotplate, Tolan, and Overlap. Each one gets real feedback on growth.

3 low competition businesses minting MILLIONS right now — The blue-collar edition. A generator company, Smash My Trash, and TMJaw. These are businesses nobody talks about at dinner, and they make serious money.

How he turned his dad’s bakery into a $20B chocolate empire — Sam and Shaan look at how the richest man in Italy built on what his family started. Most of the episode is about how families keep wealth across generations and the short “golden window” to build something big.

3 strangers reveal how they make $10M, $20M, and $30M/year — A $10M real estate magazine, a $20M campground business, and an app that copies the trades of politicians and hedge funds. It’s long, but worth the time.

I studied creativity for 365 days & here’s what I learned. — Deya spent a year reading about creativity and shares one lesson from each book, including The Artist’s Way, The Creative Act, and Big Magic. Her point is that creativity is the edge business owners have left against AI.

98 days until 2027…Do this and you’ll thank yourself on Jan 1st — Shaan and Sam on how to finish the year strong. They cover Parkinson’s Law, why events eat your time, and a jelly bean experiment from investor Joel Greenblatt. I saved it at the end of September, right on time.

Google Is Killing the Internet Entrepreneur’s Dream — Neil Patel explains why ranking #1 no longer means getting the click. His team’s data shows organic CTR dropping by up to 61% and zero-click searches rising from 53% to 72%. If you run a blog or a content site, watch this one.

AI, tools & how things work

In five years, your salary will depend on how many AI agents you manage. — A one-minute clip of Zapier CEO Wade Foster. He thinks your value at work will come down to how many AI agents you can run well. Sales is the one exception. He still wants humans selling to humans.

Making $$$ with Grok Bot — Greg Isenberg talks to Billy Howell, who runs a local newsletter for 6,000 readers using a team of Grok Bot agents. He shows his “chief of staff” bot, his research and sales agents, and what it all costs.

AI Search Optimization (GEO, AEO): What is it, Common Errors & How to Optimize AI for Success — Aleyda Solis hosts Lily Ray, Roxana Stingu, and Chris Green to explain what AI search optimization is and isn’t, and how to set up a process for it. If you work in SEO, this is the next thing to learn.

World’s first public Tesla Cybercab ride (no steering wheel) — Sawyer Merritt takes one of the first public Cybercab rides in Austin. No steering wheel, a huge 22-inch screen, and a very smooth drive by his account.

I Made a Bet with Tesla — Marques Brownlee reacts to Tesla’s Cybercab event, which he found a little strange, and makes a bet about it. Watch it after the ride above for the more doubtful view.

toSend Review: Amazon SES Prices Without the Amazon SES Nightmare — David Risley reviews toSend, a new email sending service from the team behind FluentCRM and FluentSMTP. It costs $3 per 10,000 emails, and he walks through connecting it to WordPress and every screen in the backend.

Set Up a Forever FREE Business Email with Zoho Mail | Step-by-Step Guide 2025! — A four-minute walkthrough for setting up a free business email on your own domain with Zoho Mail. It works with any domain provider.

Stop Your Emails from Landing in Spam! | Zoho Mail Setup for 10/10 Deliverability — The follow-up. It covers the DNS records you need so your emails reach the inbox instead of spam.

WordPress, the industry

WordPress Is Eating Itself Alive — Coding with Lewis tells the full story of the WordPress and WP Engine fight, from the 2003 fork to the court injunction. He then links it to the same thing happening with Redis, Terraform, and Elasticsearch. The best single recap I’ve seen.

Why I Don’t Use WordPress Anymore — Mark Szymanski built sites with Elementor and Bricks for years. Now he builds custom sites with AI tools because custom work stopped being slow and expensive. He’s clear that this is not a “WordPress is bad” video.

Did WordPress just lose? — The WP Minute on the news that Matt Mullenweg was put on leave from Automattic, and what it could mean for WordPress.

Building Better Product Sites for WordPress Plugins & Themes — Imran Siddiq joins Matt Cromwell and Zack Katz on WP Product Talk to explain what makes a plugin or theme website build trust and sell. I saved this one three times. It’s close to my day-to-day work.

PressConf EU: WordPress Needs to Stop Playing Defense — Raquel, the organizer of PressConf, explains why she is bringing it to Barcelona and why European WordPress folks need a place to talk openly about money, risk, and the future of WordPress.

The most expensive 33 hours in WordPress history… — Fireship covers it in five minutes. Automattic’s board removed Matt Mullenweg while he was at Burning Man, and 33 hours later he replaced the board.

What is the WordPress Community? | Ganga Kafle | 5 Questions by SiteSaga - Ep. 1 — Sunita Rai talks to Ganga Kafle, who has contributed to WordPress for more than ten years and reviewed over 7,000 themes. A good starting point if you want to get involved.

WordCamp Kathmandu 2026 | Regan Khadgi | 5 Questions by SiteSaga - Ep. 2 — Regan Khadgi, lead organizer of WordCamp Kathmandu 2026, talks about this year’s theme, AI and WordPress, and what attendees can expect.

WordPress Education | Pooja Derashri | 5 Questions by SiteSaga - Ep. 3 — Pooja Derashri, one of the people who started the WordPress Education effort, explains how its programs work and how students and schools can join.

Film & pop culture

Why Some Cheap Movies Look Expensive — StudioBinder breaks down production value: camera choice, lighting on a budget, and using natural light. Fun if you like knowing how movies get made.

Which Era Has The Hottest Celebrities? — A REACT panel compares celebrity types across decades: heartthrobs, It girls, rock stars, rom-com kings, and more. Pure fun.

Do Teens Know Iconic 90s Songs? — Teens hear 90s hits and try to work out who sang them. It made me feel old.

Guess The Guilty Pleasure Song — Teens and millennials face off over the songs people love but won’t admit to.

World affairs, history & sport

This Changes Everything For Argentina — A look at Argentina’s football team on the road to the 2030 World Cup: the new young players, what Scaloni changed, and the leadership calls coming up.

Why It Sucks to Be a Brothers’ SHARED Wife (in Ancient Tibet) — An animated story about old Tibet, where brothers sometimes shared one wife. The characters are made up, but the practice was real. Strange, a bit sad, and well told.

New York City’s Hottest Day in 14 Years — Casey Neistat takes his camera out on New York’s hottest day in 14 years. Classic Casey.

How Messi keeps breaking football at Inter Miami — Messi turned down $400M a year from Saudi Arabia and picked Miami instead. This video shows how he turned an average MLS team into the hottest club in the world.

Messi Is What Mourinho Warned Us 15 Years Ago — A football story video going back to a warning Mourinho gave about Messi 15 years ago, and how it played out.

When MOCKING Messi Cost The Netherlands Everything — From the same channel. How the Netherlands’ taunts against Messi backfired on them.

Just for fun

A Week In The Life of MrBeast — Seven days with MrBeast that were supposed to be quiet. They include a big surprise for a teacher and her students.

Escape 100 Cops, Win $500,000 — Exactly what the title says. A big chase with a big prize.

Million Dollar Monaco Vacation — Natalie Noel’s first vlog: a weekend in Monaco with yachts, Formula 1, and a lot of outfit changes. Watched from a very normal chair.

The best part of my job — David Dobrik’s vlog with the same friend group from the Monaco trip, plus his 1:1 Foundation helping people out.

I Solved MrBeast’s $1,000,000 Puzzle — DoctorXOR won MrBeast’s $1M puzzle challenge. He walks through the first nine puzzles and credits the 40 people he teamed up with along the way.

How 1 Person Solved A $1,000,000 Puzzle! — MrBeast’s side of the same story. Watch both.

I Built A City To Save Kids From Illegal Labor — MrBeast and partners, including the Varkey Foundation, build a village with a school for kids who were working illegally. Big money, put to good use.

Survivor 50 - The Auction Returns Featuring MrBeast! | Episode 10 — The classic Survivor auction comes back for season 50, and MrBeast drops in with a risky surprise advantage. An odd mix, but it works.

That’s the full September month. If anything here catches your eye, let me know what you thought.

— Nishat

Previous monthly recap: What I’ve Been Watching — Issue #4 — August 2026