By 
Most executives start their day checking email. Taylor Thomson curates intelligence.
Every morning, before most people hit their inbox, Thomson reads 15 industry newsletters. He’s not just reading for himself. He’s building a competitive intelligence engine for his entire team.
“I read every morning. I probably read 15 different morning newsletters, and then I do this for my team actually,” Thomson explains. “I take those newsletters. I find the most interesting or the most relevant articles, and I put them into a Google sheet.”
The process takes 15 to 20 minutes. The impact lasts all day.
Thomson leads finance at WITHIN, a performance branding agency working with clients like Nike and Foot Locker. His role demands understanding how clients think, what challenges they face, and where industries are heading. The newsletter routine gives him that edge.
“I’m good at scanning through those newsletters and then I’ll read all those,” he says. What emerges is something rare in business: a systematic process for staying ahead of market shifts while sharing that knowledge broadly.
The Cocktail Party Knowledge Philosophy
Thomson’s approach to learning didn’t start at WITHIN. It traces back to his early career decisions.
After Davidson College, where he studied political science, economics, and Spanish, Thomson deliberately chose breadth over specialization. He worked at a financial services firm in the expert network industry, where his job required developing “a cocktail party level of understanding of as many subjects as possible.”
The goal was simple: know enough about many things to have intelligent conversations across domains. That philosophy still guides how he consumes information today.
“I got a lot of breadth of understanding of a lot of different industries,” Thomson recalls. “I think that ability to pick up on things really quickly and put myself in the mind of that person that I was talking to has been really helpful from a sales and business development perspective.”
The newsletter routine is cocktail party knowledge at scale. Thomson doesn’t just scan headlines. He reads deeply enough to understand trends, connect dots across industries, and anticipate client needs before they surface.
What Makes The List
For WITHIN’s client base, Thomson focuses heavily on retail and consumer trends. His regular reads include Modern Retail, Glossy, and Morning Brew.
The selection isn’t random. Each newsletter provides a different lens on the same market.
Modern Retail covers how retailers are adapting to digital transformation. Glossy focuses on beauty and fashion commerce. Morning Brew provides broader business context. Together, they create a three-dimensional view of consumer behavior.
But Thomson isn’t just tracking what’s happening. He’s watching for second-order effects.
“If I see that a startup is IPOing, I know that that’s not only going to affect that startup, but also every one of their competitors,” he explains. “Knowing that that company is about to get a massive influx of cash makes it easier to put myself and my team to put themselves in their position.”
An IPO announcement isn’t just news about one company. It’s a signal that competitors will face pressure to raise capital, launch new products, or adjust pricing. Understanding these ripple effects helps Thomson’s team at WITHIN anticipate client conversations months in advance.
The Google Sheet System
The curation process is deliberately simple. Thomson doesn’t use fancy tools or AI summarizers. He uses a basic Google Sheet.
Every morning, he adds links to articles his team should read. The sheet becomes a shared knowledge base, accessible to business development reps who need context for prospect calls and account managers who need industry talking points.
“That’s probably where I spend most of my time when I’m trying to just inform myself about what’s going on across the space,” Thomson says.
The simplicity matters. A Google Sheet loads instantly. Anyone can access it. No login required. No training needed. Just click and read.
More sophisticated knowledge management systems often create friction. They require categorization, tagging, and maintenance. People stop using them because the overhead exceeds the value.
Thomson’s Google Sheet has none of that friction. It’s a running list of links with perhaps a note or two about why each matters. The team checks it. They read what’s relevant. The knowledge spreads organically.
From Information to Strategy
Reading newsletters is common. Systematically curating insights for a team is rare. Converting those insights into revenue strategy is rarer still.
Thomson uses the morning intelligence gathering to understand client pain points before prospects articulate them.
“Your problems are not just that everybody is struggling in retail. That’s not a hot take,” he explains. “Everybody is struggling and people are making moves to not struggle, and that means raising money, and that means cutting prices, and that means trying to figure out how to fix supply chain.”
When a WITHIN business development rep calls a retail prospect, they’re not making cold calls. They’re armed with knowledge about what that prospect’s competitors are doing, what funding rounds just closed in their category, and what supply chain pressures they’re likely facing.
The conversation shifts from “Can I tell you about our services?” to “We’ve been tracking what’s happening in your space and here’s what we’re seeing.”
That shift matters enormously in complex B2B sales where relationships and trust determine outcomes.
The Time Investment Question
Fifteen to 20 minutes every morning adds up. Over a year, that’s roughly 80 hours of reading time. Some executives would balk at that investment.
Thomson sees it differently. The reading isn’t separate from work. It is the work.
“I think you can just pull so much interesting information from how people are thinking, what they’re doing, what their challenges and pain points are, what a lot of big companies are seeing,” he says.
His career path demonstrates why this matters. Thomson moved from financial services to MarTech to agency leadership by understanding how different industries connect. That understanding came from systematic learning, not from staying narrowly focused on one domain.
The newsletter routine is his continuing education program. It’s how he avoids becoming obsolete as markets shift and new competitors emerge.
What Other Teams Can Copy
Most companies won’t adopt Thomson’s exact system. Their industries differ. Their information needs vary. But the underlying principles transfer directly.
First, learning should be systematic, not random. Thomson doesn’t rely on whatever happens to cross his feed. He has 15 specific sources he checks every day. That discipline ensures comprehensive coverage.
Second, knowledge shared has multiplier effects. When Thomson curates insights for his team, 15 minutes of his time creates leverage across 20 or 30 people. They all benefit from his filtering.
Third, simple systems beat complex ones. The Google Sheet works because it’s frictionless. Trying to build an elaborate knowledge management system would have failed.
Fourth, secondary effects matter more than headlines. Thomson doesn’t just track what’s happening. He tracks what will happen next because of what’s happening now.
Other revenue leaders could implement a similar system with different sources. For B2B software companies, that might mean reading SaaStr, TechCrunch, and industry analyst reports. For financial services, it might be The Information, Axios, and sector-specific publications.
The sources matter less than the discipline. Read systematically. Curate deliberately. Share widely. Use insights strategically.
The Bigger Picture
Thomson’s newsletter routine reveals something larger about modern revenue leadership. The job isn’t just about managing a P&L or overseeing Salesforce dashboards.
Revenue leaders need to understand how client businesses work, what pressures they face, and where markets are heading. That understanding comes from systematic intelligence gathering.
“It makes it easier to put myself and my team to put themselves in their position,” Thomson explains. That ability to adopt a client’s perspective is what separates transactional vendors from strategic partners.
The companies that work with WITHIN aren’t buying ad management. They’re buying expertise about how to navigate changing consumer behavior, platform shifts, and competitive dynamics. Thomson’s morning routine is part of how WITHIN develops that expertise.
Fifteen newsletters. Twenty minutes. One Google Sheet. A systematic approach to staying ahead of markets while building shared knowledge across a team.
Most executives won’t copy the system exactly. But they should copy the principle: learning is leverage, and sharing that learning multiplies its value.
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