While many executives guard market intelligence as a private resource, Taylor Thomson takes the opposite approach. Each morning, the Head of Finance at performance branding agency WITHIN spends 15 to 20 minutes scanning through roughly 15 newsletters. From there, he distills the most relevant insights into a shared Google sheet accessible to his entire team. The routine, modest in time investment, has become a cornerstone of his leadership philosophy: knowledge should be democratized, not hoarded.
For Thomson, this practice transforms individual learning into organizational capability. Instead of concentrating insights in a single leader’s hands, he ensures intelligence flows across business development teams, amplifying impact far beyond his own client work.
“I read a lot. I read every morning. I probably read 15 different morning newsletters, and then I do this for my team actually. I take those newsletters. I find the most interesting or the most relevant articles, and I put ’em into a Google sheet,” he explained during a podcast interview.
Turning Personal Learning Into Team Capability
Thomson’s approach reflects a philosophy that organizational strength scales through shared intelligence, not isolated expertise. By curating and contextualizing external information, he provides his team with actionable knowledge that can be applied to client relationships, business development, and industry positioning.
The curated Google sheet serves as a persistent resource. Team members consult it before client meetings or when preparing proposals, turning what would otherwise be fleeting newsletter items into an institutional knowledge base. The system reduces duplication of effort while ensuring the entire team benefits from Thomson’s analytical discipline.
A Methodology Rooted in Analysis
The effectiveness of this practice lies in Thomson’s editorial eye. Rather than passing along every article he encounters, he filters aggressively, identifying insights that matter most for WITHIN’s client base and business context. “It probably takes me 15 to 20 minutes every morning at this point. I’m good at scanning through those newsletters and then I’ll read all those,” he noted.
The skill of rapid synthesis traces back to his time as a multi-industry analyst at Ridgetop Research, where he learned to identify key drivers across varied sectors. This analytical rigor later helped him build revenue models and dashboards at WITHIN that guided the agency’s transformation from $250,000 contract values to enterprise deals worth $1.8 million.
Multiplying Impact Across Business Development
The ripple effects of Thomson’s morning ritual are evident in his team’s performance. Equipped with curated intelligence, business development representatives can engage clients with fresh perspectives and relevant industry context without spending hours on research themselves.
“For us, it’s a lot of retail, so it’s modern retail, it’s glossy, it’s Morning Brew, it’s all those different types of sites, and 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,” Thomson explained. By framing content in ways that spark conversation, his process strengthens client relationships and accelerates trust-building.
Often, insights curated for one context prove useful in unexpected ways. What begins as a note on a competitor’s IPO may inform a strategy discussion about market positioning or provide an angle for a client pitch. The efficiency of shared intelligence multiplies as ideas are applied creatively across the organization.
Building a Culture of Shared Learning
Thomson’s practice is as much cultural as it is tactical. By modeling transparency and generosity with information, he encourages his team to view knowledge as a collective resource. “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. 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,” he said.
This perspective, embedded in daily practice, fosters a culture of continuous learning. Team members are not dependent on a single leader’s expertise but instead develop collective problem-solving habits. That cultural shift has been instrumental in WITHIN’s operational evolution, where Thomson’s frameworks generated $7.6 million in incremental revenue through tighter collaboration and coordinated client lifecycle management.
Strategic Intelligence for Long-Term Advantage
Thomson’s newsletter mix includes mainstream publications like Morning Brew alongside specialized retail and marketing technology sources, balancing broad economic signals with industry-specific developments. This curated blend feeds both immediate business development needs and long-term strategic planning.
By systematizing information consumption and sharing, Taylor Thomson ensures that WITHIN maintains a competitive edge rooted in market awareness. His philosophy illustrates a broader leadership lesson: sustainable advantage comes not only from proprietary tools or individual expertise but from the disciplined distribution of intelligence across an organization.
For Taylor Thomson, the morning routine is less about habit than principle. In a business environment where information moves quickly, he has found a way to convert personal reading into collective capability—and in the process, to turn knowledge democratization into a strategic asset.
