Since I first launched The Weaponry, the advertising and idea agency I lead, I have learned a lot of interesting lessons. I didn’t become an entrepreneur for the life lessons. But entrepreneurship has a funny way of teaching you new things, whether you want to learn or not.
The Learnin’
Over the past few months, we have had to replace several computers. The Weaponry’s computers are not cheap. We are all Macs all the time. Like Roni and Cheese.
Many of our computers are supped-up machines built for high-end design, art, and video work. The kind of creative work we do requires serious machinery and significantly more storage than your garden-variety Apples. (Or would that be orchard-variety?)
But with all the computers we have had to replace lately I am not mad, frustrated, or worried. After all, this isn’t a quality problem. The computers were not stolen. And they did not run away to join the circus. (Do computers still do that?)
The reason we are replacing so many machines is the best reason of all.
We simply wore our computers out. We worked them hard. Our Weapons have kept our machines busy with demanding work for a long time. We have been slinging advertising, branding, videos, logos, design and illustration work for 8 years.
Many of our team members have been with us for 6 to 8 years now. All that work has been crushing our equipment. And like that popular TV show from the 70s with those classic hairstyles, it seems that when it comes to computer hardware and software, eight is enough.
Replacing our computers is a sign of success, demand and longevity.
And I am grateful for it all.
Key Takeaway
Businesses require investments in equipment and resources. One great reward of success is staying in business long enough to wear out your stuff. Don’t lament the new expenses. Recognize them as a sign of demand and longevity. You have earned the privilege of replacing your resources because you are still here. Still needed. Still sought after. The same is true in our personal lives. When you have to replace equipment it means you have outlived your stuff. That is a blessing not to be taken for granted.
*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.
Last week I was talking with my good friend Charlie Wills about business. Charlie and I met through The W-Club, the University of Wisconsin varsity athlete alumni group. Talking with Charlie is a pain in the neck. Literally. Because Charlie is really, really tall. He is a former University of Wisconsin standout basketball player, who played in the 2000 Final Four against the Flintstones. #IYKYK
Today, Charlie towers over the real estate world in Madison, Wisconsin where he has been putting people before profits for over 20 years. Not only is Charlie a close friend of mine, but he is also a client of The Weaponry, the advertising and ideas agency that I lead.
Charlie shared an interesting statistic with me about where his clients come from. He told me that 96% of his organization’s clients come from within their sphere. That includes current and past clients, recommendations, friends, family and acquaintances.
If you are good at math, you also realize that only 4% of opportunities came from outside their sphere. Which is a shockingly small number. In fact, if that number was 4 sizes smaller it would be nothing.
I love the fact that Charlie uses the term sphere instead of network or circle. It’s very basketbally of him. And it gives the group more dimension.
Charlie’s Rule: The vast majority of your opportunities in business and in life originate within your sphere.
This rule, while surprising, is also logical.
People in India whom you have never met and have no real connections to, are highly unlikely to come to you with a life-changing opportunity. (The same goes for the dude from the royal family in Nigeria.) But your past client, your cousin, and the person you know from that thing you do in your spare time are likely to think of you when they need a You-Like person to help solve the kind of problem you are great at solving.
Armed with the knowledge that we all benefit from some variation of Charlie’s Rule, what are you supposed to do about it?
1. Develop more relationships. Whenever you are dealing with success as a percentage game, and it always is, increase the base number. The more people you know the more opportunities will come your way. Because opportunities come to you through humans. Kinda like COVID-19 and invitations to Tupperware parties.
2. Maintain the relationships you have. Not all relationships are equal. The kid you knew from kindergarten who you haven’t spoken to since you stopped napping together in class is not very valuable. So stay in touch with your people. Reach out via phone, email, text, or social media to keep your relationship active. Write a newsletter, blog, or other way to share what’s happening in your life. Social media is great for maintaining relationships across a broad spectrum of familiarity. Use this amazing resource.
Key Takeaway
Your relationships are critical to your success. Remember, Charlie’s Rule says that the vast majority of your opportunities in business and in life originate within your sphere. So bring more people into your sphere. Keep the relationships in your sphere active by staying in touch through any appropriate means. As a result, more good opportunities will find their way to you. Just like Charlie said.
*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.
I met with an entrepreneur earlier this week who has a startup. My friend is in the early stages of his newborn business where you don’t get much sleep and you change a lot of diapers. (Your own.)
As my entrepreneur friend talked about his startup experience, I realized I had advice that would help with each of his challenges. I shared some actions to take, resources to employ, strategies to consider and helpful materials to read. I also shared the relative merits of Zantac, Tums and Rolaids for heartburn and upset stomachs. Because I know what Rolaids spells.
I could tell that my friend found my guidance valuable. Both because he told me it was useful and because he later texted me and said the same thing. (I’m quick like that.)
However, what I shared wasn’t complicated, specialized or exclusive knowledge. It was simply logical common sense. Or so I thought. Until I thought about it more.
The Insight
It’s important to recognize that much of what feels like logical common sense to you today was once completely foreign and unknown.
You improve your logic and common sense every day. It is a byproduct of your experience and education. The more logic and common sense you accumulate the more valuable you become to others, both as a user of your own knowledge and as acoach, mentor or advisor. (Those are all different things. My friend Stacy Sollenberger taught me that in the book Guide Coaching.)
Since you were a wobbly, pooping-you-pants toddler you have collected a lifetime of logic and common sense. You have racked up far more than you know, and in more areas than you recognize. Realize that others don’t know what now feels obvious and commonplace to you. That makes you a valuable resource to people who are one or more steps behind you. You can offer tremendous help when you pass your baton of wisdom to them. (And good job not pooing yourself anymore.)
Examples
-As an entrepreneur, you can share your wisdom with anyone who is behind you.
-As a career haver, you can pass your knowledge to anyone junior to you to help them advance their learnings at a faster pace than they could through their own experience alone.
-As a married human you can share your learnings with anyone considering getting married, newlyweds and others passing through the various phases and challenges of the most important relationship you will ever have. This is true even if you are bad at marriage because you have discovered what doesn’t work. Like Edison said about his lightbulb moment.
-As a parent, you can pass along great insights and approaches to both new parents and parents who are passing through phases you have already passed through, like the valley of the shadow of death. Or raising 3-year-olds.
Key Takeaway
As you accumulate knowledge and experience it can camouflage itself as common sense. It is not. It just feels like logic because it has become an obvious truth to you. Recognize the value of your earned wisdom and share it with those trailing behind you on the learning curve. It will help them accelerate their own growth and impact. It will help them accumulate wisdom that will increase their value to the world. And as the people you share your knowledge with pass your baton of wisdom to others your positive impact on the world compounds without end.
*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.
I have heard countless times that time is our most valuable commodity. I believe this. After all, you can’t buy it. It constantly running out. And despite what Mick Jagger said, it’s not really on your side. (No it’s not.)
But right up there alongside time on the Mt. Rushmore of Most Valuable Commodities are inspiration and motivation.
They light your fire. Like Jim Morrison.
They lead to growth and improvement.
They create the empire state of mind that builds empires. Like JAY-Z and Alicia Keys.
They change the world.
Yet to be effective, both inspiration and motivation require you to act. To move. To do! Do! Do! (Not da-da-da.)
Unfortunately, both forces burn bright for a moment, then the moment’s gone. Like dust in the wind.
Which means when you feel the powerful heat of inspiration and motivation you have to go.
You have to cook while the heat is on, Glenn Frey.
You have to jump on the action you feel inspired to take.
Take steps to start that business.
Start writing that book.
Plan that remodel.
Create that art.
Build the prototype.
Plan that travel.
Create that event.
Get to the gym.
Enroll in that class.
Reach out to that person that could change your day. Or your life.
Acting on the heat of inspiration is how I started The Weaponry.
And it is how I worked out last night at 10 pm after a 15-hour work day.
Key Takeaway
Take advantage of those precious sparks of inspiration and motivation. They don’t last long. But if you take action while your mind is in the red, the impact can be felt long after your time is up.
*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.
I love to share stories. That’s probably why I started blogging in the first place. Over the 1001 blog posts I have published, I have shared a small country library worth of stories. But recently I sat down for a fun podcast interview to share stories with Kory Dogs, of ActionCOACH. (I kept thinking he sounded like the action hero Kory whose superpower would be saving Corey Feldman and Corey Haim from themselves.)
Kory asked me questions I don’t often get asked. Which means you hear some little-known details about my life.
9 Things You Learn About Me In This Podcast
The 5 States I lived in as a kid.
My connection to the Shawshank Prison.
My unique experience on a bull stud.
The surprising comment my boss made 2 years into my career that inspired me to start my own advertising agency. (No, it was not You’re Fired!)
How I describe my leadership style.
What I would do differently if I could go back and do it all again. (Which sounds like a Garth Brooks song.)
The new things I want to learn.
The book I recommend to all entrepreneurs.
Who I would give a shoutout to at the end of a podcast when surprised with the question, ‘Who would you like to give a shoutout to, right now?’
During the podcast I talked about a book I suggest every entrepreneur, or aspiring entrepreneur, or spiraling entrepreneur should read. Here’s the excerpt, in case you don’t have time to watch, read or listen to the full podcast:
Kory:What advice do you have for business owners trying to do everything on their own?
Adam: I often advise business owners and entrepreneurs to read The E-Myth by Michael Gerber. This book offers a fantastic framework for developing your business through systems and processes. It teaches you how to structure your business so that it can operate on a larger scale, similar to a franchise.
By thinking through your business in this way, you ensure that all aspects are well-organized. You create a mature system where you’re not overwhelmed by every detail. Instead, you take on specific responsibilities and avoid getting bogged down by tasks outside your main role.
For example, you don’t want to be the person who not only bakes pies but also handles HR, sales, and operations. The book helps you define your role clearly and understand what additional roles are needed in your organization.
I read The E-Myth before starting The Weaponry, and it provided a strong foundation for me. For any business owner feeling stuck in a cycle of chaos, I recommend this book to help you assess and address your challenges effectively.
For those who aren’t familiar, the book is called The E-Myth and its subtitle is “Why Most Small Businesses Fail and What to Do About It.” Essentially, it argues that if you don’t get the business fundamentals right, it won’t survive. But if you do, it can thrive. The E-Myth refers to the belief that only certain people are born to be entrepreneurs. Michael Gerber challenges this idea, asserting that anyone can be an entrepreneur. He presents a process and approach that can make entrepreneurship work for everyone.
Thank You!
Thanks to Kory Dogs of ActionCOACH for the interview. And for making me feel like I know a real-life action hero.
Thank you blog readers for reading this blog. It’s the only way to earn your title.
Tonight is one of my favorite nights of the year! It is the peak of The Perseids Northern Hemisphere Meteor Tour. Every year at this time the Earth passes through a cloud of space rocks. We Earthlings see this as streaks of light slashing across the sky. We call this a meteor shower. Which is better than both the baby and bridal variety. Tonight you could see 60 meteors an hour. If you are a math genius you might be able to figure out how many that is per minute.
How to see it:
Find a place with as little light pollution as possible. Times Square and The Vegas Strip are terrible meteor viewing spots. If you are there, watch the people instead. For best results try a more rural location. Like Vermont. Or the Mountain Time Zone.
Go outside. You probably knew this, but I don’t want any confusion.
Look up: The sky, especially the eastern sky is where the fun is. But don’t stare at a single spot, Mama. The streaks can happen all over the place.
Wait until after the moonset. Once you stop getting mooned the sky will be darker, making the meteors meatier, and easier to see. Check your local listings to see when the moonshine stops in your area.
Keep off your phone. Checking your little device of digital addictions will mess up your eyeballs. You want your pupils fully dilated and dialed into the light show from far, far away.
My family and I watched the meteors last night. Which is kind of like watching the Homerun Derby or the Slam Dunk Contest before the All-Star game. In fact, The Perseids can actually be seen from July into September. Last night I was reminded why watching The Perseids is one of my favorite things to do. (I smell a list coming on.)
7 Reasons I love watching The Perseids meteor shower.
It happens in August. It’s an amazing time to be outside looking up at the sky. There are other major meteor showers that happen in the winter, but I don’t love a cold shower. And this one you can watch with no shirt, no shoes and no problems.
Stop, Hammock Time! I watch the meteors just taking it easy, laying in my hammock where it’s nice and breezy. I have a free-standing hammock. Which means it is not tied to trees which would block the sky. Watching meteors streaking the quad from a hammock is a heavenly experience. Blankets and chairs also work.
The Wow! When you go outside tonight and check out the stars you are going to be wowed by just how many stars there really are. The view is spectacular, even before you start seeing the streakers. If the sky full of stars doesn’t inspire your creativity and sense of wonder you can ask Coldplay for your money back.
Recalibration: Staring up at the stars at night is like stopping to smell the roses. Most of us don’t take nearly enough time to do such things. While you’re watching the wonders of the night sky I hope you regain perspective. We are all lucky to be here. Those big things you are stressing about are really tiny in the the scale of the universe.
Thinking Time. As you stare at the night sky you can’t help but think. The stars will make you wonder how far away they are, and who else is out there, and do they have their own hammocks? Then there are the planes. Where are they going? What is their view like? And the satellites, in my eyes, like a diamond in the sky. They are crazy to see. Oh, you didn’t know you could see satellites? You can! Up to 100 each night. And they will make you think about how they got there and what they are doing.
The Meteors While in theory, these are what you will go outside to look for, they are the icing on the cake. But these shooting stars are absolutely magical. They surprise. They delight. And they will make your mind sparkle. There is a Disneyesque magic to them. And if you were alive during the ‘The more you know” era the shooting stars are also nostalgic.
Time with Family Watching with family or friends makes it all even better. Watching last night with my wife Dawn and my kids Ava, Johann and Magnus was one of the highlights of 2024. We’ll watch again tonight.
Key Takeaway
Get outside tonight and watch the meteor shower. These shooting stars are better than anything on TV or your phone. Watching the night sky will remind you how amazing our world really is. It will make you think and ideate. It will make your problems feel smaller. It is a great experience to share with your family and friends. And it’s free. As are most of the best things in life.
*If you know someone who would enjoy seeing some shooting stars, please share this with them.
In 2015 I read a book titled The Little Black Book of Connections by the self-proclaimed King of Sales, Jeffery Gitomer. One of the important tenets of the book is, Success is not about who you know, but who knows you. (Who knew?)
Gitomer goes on to share that the best way to have more people know you is to share your knowledge, expertise, ideas and experiences broadly. Which is what Kim Kardashian did with her first home movie back in 2007. And look how well that worked out for her.
Gitomer points out that platforms like blogs, vlogs, podcasts, editorial columns and books enable you to share your ideas with many people at once. In fact, it allows people you would never meet face to face to discover your ideas and be positively impacted by your knowledge and expertise.
What started with a single blog post has gone farther than I ever imagined.
Gettin’ Bloggy With It
In the fall of 2015, I began planning to launch a new advertising agency. So I decided to take Gitomer’s advice and start blogging to share my ideas about advertising, branding, and creativity. I also wanted to share what I was learning about entrepreneurship. Success leaves clues. And I wanted to share breadcrumbs for other entrepreneurs to follow. (It seems I failed to learn the downside of leaving breadcrumbs from Hansel and Gretel.)
I wasn’t sure how the whole blogging thing would go. I had tried it before. In fact, I had started 5 or 6 different blogs and quickly stopped. But this time I felt more inspired. I had Gitomer’s encouragement. I had a strong desire to succeed as an entrepreneur. (And I wanted to be able to feed my family.) I believed that writing a blog would be a great way to share my expertise, let people know I was starting The Weaponry, and share our growth and success.
I have always enjoyed writing. I started my career as a copywriter. So I figured that writing a blog would be fun. It would enable me to tap into my strengths. And most importantly, it would allow me to write funny things without a client or editor telling me no.
So I began writing in November of 2015. And like Forrest Gump, I just kept going, and people started to follow. I began slowly, with a blog post every week. Then I moved to 2 posts per week. And finally, I developed a 3 post-per-week habit, writing 5 days a week, and publishing on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, when Chick-fil-A was closed.
Today, less than 9 years later, I have published 1000 blog posts!
My writings have generally fallen into 3 buckets:
Marketing: This covers the topics of marketing, advertising, branding, creativity, design, writing and yes, blogging. Which is totally meta. (Non-Zuckerberg meta.)
Business: This includes entrepreneurship, startups, sales, network development, professional development, and my personal favorite, funny business.
Self-Improvement: This was unintentional. But I have written a lot about personal development and motivation. I have learned so much over the past 9 years about how to do better and be better (through trial and error) that I felt I had to share these lessons.
These are all the countries where my blog has been read. North Korea, Iran and the croissant in Africa are holding out on me.
What Do 1000 blog posts look like?
111 blog posts every year.
More than 2 new blog posts every week.
The equivalent of 10 full length 50,000 word books
A minimum of 2000 hours of writing time.
The equivalent of one full year of 40-hour work weeks spent writing blog posts.
The equivalent word count of writing The Old Testament of The Bible. (Truly I say to you, this fact hath blown my mind.)
Blogging created a pathway to publishing books. And holding books I published.
5 Benefits Of Blogging
It provides original content I can share on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Medium and Reddit (Although Reddit readers hate everything, like Mikey.)
It provides a great collection of well-considered and well-organized ideas and stories that are ready to be adapted to books. The hardest work of writing my books happens in the blog stage. The easiest work is collecting blog posts with related themes to create chapters and books.
Blogging created a path to professional speaking. The blog posts led to a book. The book led to speaking opportunities. The speaking opportunities have created the best source of income in my Information Creation + Communication Ecosystem.
Blogging organizes great ideas, lessons and stories to share as a professional speaker.
The blogs have allowed me to share far more jokes and humorous asides than I would be able to share any other way. This is really the thing that keeps me writing.
I was excited to hit 200 posts back in 2018 when I was just a baby blogger.
6 Things I Want Everyone To Know About Writing 1000 Blog Posts
Anyone can do it.
There are no barriers.
There are tons of tools and templates that make it easy. (I use WordPress to write and publish my blog.)
The 2 key steps are: 1. Get Started 2. Don’t Stop.
To sustain a blog you have to create a regular writing habit. Write at the same time for a set duration every day, or every weekday, or every Friday or whatever works for you. The habit is how it happens. (Which is also how you know someone is a nun.)
Don’t do it for huge numbers of readers. You can’t predict who will read your posts, or how many people will read what you write. If you are like most people, including me, your reach and readership will always be lower than you would want. And my blog has been read in over 160 countries. But you can create good information that can have a huge impact on one reader. That’s the real win of blogging.
Key Takeaway
As the saying goes, the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. And the best way to write 1000 blog posts is one post at a time. Find a topic or topics that you are really interested in. Get started. And just don’t stop. Write at a regular time each day or each week. And when people tell you they enjoy reading your posts, or somehow benefited from your writings, use that as fuel to keep going. The world needs more good ideas, lessons, and stories. You have them. So start sharing. You’ll be surprised by how many lives you can positively impact. And that is the real benefit.
*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.
Adam Albrecht Blog 