Category: positivity

Why You Should Embrace Last Minute Opportunities.

I have some friends who produce and host a TV show. They call me when a planned guest cancels and they need a replacement on short notice. (And no, the show is not Cops.)

There is a teacher in my kids’ school district who has me on speed dial when they need a last-minute classroom speaker. Even though my kids are not in their class and I can’t barter favors for grades.

I was once asked if I could speak for 15 minutes to a company meeting of 1,000 people, just an hour before I was supposed to be on stage. I had nothing prepared. But I did it anyway. I figured that even if I crashed and burned, it would make for a good story. But if I crushed it, I imagined there was an outside chance that I would earn a lifetime supply of ham.

Recently, a woman who has hired me 3 times to speak recommended me to a colleague who had a speaker cancel a week before her big event. I had never given a talk on the topic they were looking for. (But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express.)

And over the course of my advertising career, I have had too many last-minute requests from clients for even Count Dracula to count.

Be At The Top Of The Go-To List.

I step up and say yes to last-minute requests all the time.

Because I am a problem solver.

Because, like a firefighter, I can be ready for action on short notice.

Because I am prepared.

Because I stay ready.

Because I figure it out.

I have a process that allows me to deliver on short notice. Or nearly no notice.

Being the go-to backup plan when things go wrong is an honor.

People don’t forget those who helped them out when they were in a tight spot.

Throughout your life, you will have many opportunities to save the day.

Save it for others whenever you can.

Plus, more repetitions make you better at what you do.

So you improve through the process, too.

It bolsters your brand reputation.

And I have heard there are better accommodations in Heaven for those who help others here.

Key Takeaway

Be at the top of other people’s last-minute list. Save the day whenever you can. Be the person others turn to when they really need help. You will always help yourself in the process.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media. And consider subscribing to Adam’s Good Newsletter.

This 4th of July, Remember That You Come From Brave People.

Happy 4th of July!

I love everything about this holiday.

The parades and fireworks.

The American flag swimsuits.

The hot dog eating contests, and imagining the parade and fireworks they must cause at the other end of the GI tract.

America

This year, as we celebrate the 249th 4th of July in America, my mind keeps returning to a piece of art I saw several years ago in California.

My family and I were celebrating my son Magnus’ birthday at Ivy At The Shore in Santa Monica. In the restaurant, there was a large image of a sailing ship with all sheets fully winded, plowing through rough seas.

Over the image were the words. ‘Brave Men Run In My Family.’

Ed Ruscha originally created this idea. I’m not sure who to credit this version to.

This piece really speaks to me.

Not because I come from a sailing family. (I come from more of a rummage saling family.)

I love it because the painting reminds me of all the brave decisions my forefathers and foremothers made to come to America and risk so much for a better life.

Their brave decisions gave me and my fellow American offspring better opportunities than we would have had in the non-American countries my people came from.

However, this truth is not unique to me and my family.

All Americans are descendants of brave Grandcestors who bet on themselves and came to America for the freedom to create better lives. Amazing lives. The kind of lives Robin Leach would have profiled, up close and personal.

As we celebrate Independence Day, remember that you come from brave men and women.

They left home, family, friends, and all that they knew to come to America, the land of the free, for the chance at something even greater.

Make sure to honor them by doing great things with your life.

Be brave and courageous.

Take calculated risks.

Live into your own dreams.

Bet on yourself.

It is the safest bet you will ever make.

Do if for yourself.

And do it for your family members who did it for you first.

Happy Independence Day.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.And consider subscribing to Adam’s Good Newsletter.

Master Your Mindset: The Power of Thought Choices

Your brain is an amazing engine.

It is the ultimate hybrid machine. (Sorry Prius)

It runs on whatever you feed it. 

Positivity. Negativity. Enthusiasm. Cynicism.

Any ity, asm or ism.

Any octane.

Just pour it in the tank.

Your brain can churn it and burn it.

Or shake it and bake it.

You can set your brain to run on optimism.

Or you can set it to crank on pessimism.

It fires in both criticism and support mode.

It can process the profound and the petty. (Including Tom and Richard)

You can stoke your brain with greatness or gossip.

Happy thoughts or sad.

You get to decide.

Every day.

In every situation.

And if you choose a setting and a fuel that doesn’t serve you, you can change it at any time.

Key Takeaway

Your inputs determine your outputs.

And your mode determines your mood.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

From Surviving to Thriving: The Power of Daily Commitment.

I have a plant in my office. I inherited it 25 years ago from a coworker who was leaving the company and moving to Canada. I don’t think she was dodging the draft. If I remember correctly, she had a thing for men in uniform on horses. And Tim Horton’s.

The plant in my office hasn’t been faring well.

To be fair, I have been watering the plant just enough to keep it alive.

As a result, it looks like a plant that has been watered just enough to keep it alive. Like the office plant version of a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

But a couple of months ago I altered my plant care routine.

I committed to watering the plant every day. Or at least every day that I was in the office.

And an interesting thing happened.

By day three, I saw a noticeable difference in the plant’s posture. The spindly little fella stood taller. The leaves looked fuller. And prouder. And chlorophyllier.

By day five, I noticed a new leaf beginning to grow and unfurl.

And then another.

And then another.

As I have continued to water, dozens of new leaves have emerged and added a great deal of canopy to this once-struggling office mate of mine.

It’s like I was feeding the little guy plant Rogaine.

Today, the plant is thriving. It is providing more beauty, more greenery, and more oxygen in my office.

But more importantly, it is providing a valuable lesson.

My plant has reminded me that there is a major difference between living and thriving.

The plant serves as a daily reminder that you can put the minimum effort into your relationships and get the minimum out. Or you can pour as much as you can into your most valuable relationships every day and watch them thrive.

The plant’s regeneration also reminds me that when you put more into your health, fitness, spiritual life, passions, career, business and financial well-being, you get more out of all of them. That’s a heck of a valuable lesson to relearn from an adopted office plant and a daily dose of water.

Key Takeaway

To get more out of life, put more in. Pour more into your valued relationships, your health, and your professional endeavors. And watch them all thrive. Pour more into your faith, and God knows what will happen. And don’t forget to water your plants. Because the things you take care of take care of you.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

It’s time for your next step to a great 2025.

One great day is just one great day.

But if you can string together 4 to 7 great days you have a great week.

And if you can string together 4 or 5 great weeks you have a great month.

And if you string together 12 great months you have a great year.

And if you string together great year after great year, you create a great life.

And if you string together 6 great strings, you might have a guitar. Or an afghan.

Creating A Great 2025

I am trying to make 2025 my best year ever. I call it Project 2025. (Not to be confused with any other Project 2025s you may have heard about lately.) I hope you are doing the same. And if you haven’t been thinking about creating your own great 2025, now is the time to start. Because no one can make it happen but you. (With a strong assist from God, the world’s all-time assist leader.)

As we wrapped up the first 12th of the year, I spent Friday evening evaluating my January. Here are the bullet points in my self-report:

Adam’s January 2025

  • I went skiing 4 times. (That’s an average of once per week and twice the number of times I have skied between 1990 and 2024.)
  • I read 3 books. (More to come on this. But they were all great. And none of them involved coloring.)
  • I published 10 new blog posts.
  • I published 2 new editions of Adam’s Good Newsletter. (Please sign up if you like positive stuff.)
  • I met major milestones on a special writing project I have been working on. (I assume much of the world calls them kilometerstones.)
  • I worked out 16 times (despite being sick for a week with one of those little Gremlins Americans circulated in January. Which made me appreciate my good health even more.)
  • I booked 3 new speaking engagements. (Does that mean I now have 3 new speaking fiances?)
  • I bought a new set of Rogue dumbbells from 5 to 50 pounds and an additional set of 45-pound Rogue bumper plates. Then, I put them all to good use in my home gym. (I also drove from Milwaukee to Columbus to pick them up and save $300 in shipping costs. Plus, I got to see that huge candle in Indiana. #IYKYK)
  • The Weaponry conducted 2 transformative strategy workshops for new brands.
  • My great team added some cool new clients and we have several more about to come aboard, like the opening to The Love Boat.
  • I visited 5 states. And discovered that the new Salt Lake City airport is amazing. Tom Hanks should have been stuck in that terminal.
  • I visited my great friends Amy and Todd Urowsky at their beautiful home in Park City, Utah, and then skied at Brighton.
  • I spent time with my parents Bob and Jill Albrecht, in Lafayette, Indiana. Having parents is the best. Don’t take it for granted.
  • I planned and booked a spring break trip to Arizona. I’d love to hear your favorite things in Scottsdale and Sedona. (I already know about the tall cans of tea.)
  • I spent a lot of quality time with my wife Dawn, and sons Johann and Magnus. Plus, my daughter Ava was home from college for 3 weeks in January. Which was wonderful. Like George Bailey’s life.
  • I added several great new people to my Great People collection. Great people are the most valuable things you can collect.

I share this list to encourage you to create your own. You have to look back at your wins, both large and small, to recognize the great things in your life. The successes, the adventures, the experiences, the relationships, the learnings, the growth, and the commitments kept. By reflecting on them, you both tally your wins, and you get to enjoy them all again.

Let’s Go February!

Now, it’s time for us all to create a great February. I am excited about it. I hope you are, too. It all starts simply by having a great day today, whatever that looks like to you. And then doing it again tomorrow.

Key Takeaway

A great life, a great marriage, and a great career are built one day at a time. Start by knowing what great means to you. Then, live into that every day. String together great days. They create great weeks, months and years. You have to make it happen. And it is never too late to start.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

Happy 2025! Here are my 52 hopes for you this year.

A new year is the best gift you will ever get. Because it has more hope in it than the Hope Solo documentary on Netflix.

2025 offers you an opportunity to apply all of your experiences, self-reflection and learning to help you do everything better than you have ever done it before.

I hope that 2025 is your best year ever. Like, ever, ever.

I hope that you love your work and look forward to all 52 Mondays. Even the manic ones.

I hope your boss recognizes how fricken awesome you are. (Especially if you are your own boss.)

I hope you push yourself to become a more valuable asset to your organization. Because your value is directly related to your contribution.

I hope you develop a best friend at work. A Laverne to your Shirley. Or like those brothers on The Bear.

I hope you have great relationships with your family, and that you look forward to going home to them each day. And that you appreciate having a home to go home to. And that you are not too good for your home, like Happy Gilmore said.

I hope you make the most of your commute. They are secret gifts of time to learn, connect, prepare, decompress, or try to figure out what these obscure personalized license plates really mean.

I hope you visit your doctor once and your dentist twice.

I hope you see your therapist as much as you need to.

I hope you keep your weight in your acceptable zone until next eggnog and coookie season.

I hope you enjoy exercising as much as your body enjoys the benefits.

I hope you make new memories with old friends.

I hope your new friends start to feel like old friends. (Because of the growing familiarity, not the declining eyesight, hearing, and ability to climb steps.)

I hope you don’t take things personally.

I hope you swear less this year. You always have other options. (poo, darn, fudge, heckaroo.)

I hope you laugh more.

In fact, I hope you laugh until you cry several times this year.

And I hope you laugh until you blow liquids out of your nose at least once, thanks to unexpected hilarity.

I hope you are comfortable sharing the truth.

I hope you fondly remember the people you have lost, and it hurts your heart a little.

I hope you build momentum every day.

I hope that you recognize that you are writing the story of your life every day, like Elvis Costello. And that it is your job to make it a story worth reading.

I hope that you create and maintain great new habits. And that when you have to skip a day you get right back to it the next day.

I hope you spend more time in a different room than your phone.

And that you don’t look at your phone first thing in the morning.

I hope you see your people in real life. They are better than they are on the socials. And more interesting. Remember that social media is just a bridge between in-person experiences.

I hope you share lots of compliments because you are impressed by the people around you.

If you are not impressed by the people around you, I hope you surround yourself with better people. People who are easy to compliment.

I hope you go to your place of worship. God knows you need it.

I hope you remember to wear sunscreen. And maybe a floppy hat.

I hope you get prints made of your favorite photos and hang them on your wall. Don’t just settle for pics in digital form. Eventually, those printed photos will become your most valued possessions.

I hope you enjoy more game nights. Game night is when we really live.

I hope you experience the great joy in giving your time, talent or money. Teach your kids by example. Or teach other peoples’ kids if you don’t have your own.

I hope you find something you like enough to collect in reasonable quantities. (But don’t wind up on an episode of Hoarders.)

I hope you remember all of the important dates in your life.

I hope you read great books that improve you and the way you think about the world.

I hope you struggle and suffer just enough to be reminded how tough and capable you really are.

I hope you don’t give up when things get hard.

I hope you tell your closest friends and family members that you love them while you still can. That window closes without warning.

I hope you find splurges that are totally worth it. (And then tell me what they are.)

I hope you find great new music that makes it into your Spotify 2025 Wrapped. And I hope that you aren’t afraid to admit that Sabrina Carpenter, Taylor Swift and Kacey Musgrave were all in your Top 5. (There, I admitted it…)

I hope you can understand some of the slang that kids are using today. But not all of it. Unless you are a kid.

I hope you find yourself in nature and stop to just listen.

I hope you use all of your vacation days, but none of your sick days.

I hope you get all the sleep you need.

But I hope you get rid of all the other things you don’t need.

I hope you forgive and move on.

I hope you experience thrills. Without spills.

But most of all, I hope you enjoy great happiness and share it with everyone you meet.

Happy 2025.

Let’s do this!

*If you know someone who could benefit from kicking off their 2025 with this New Year message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

You have 1 month left to make things happen in 2024.

Welcome to December. 2024 is now 11/12ths complete. Which means you have one month left to make progress on your life and yearly goals. If you are a procrastinator, you have already hit the snooze button 11 times, and it is now time to get up and go. (If you are an amateurcrastinator you are not as good a procrastinator. But I don’t know if that means you put things off more or less. #ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmmm.)

December means you have one month left to:

Finish the year fitter, not fatter. The best way to a better body in 2025 is to start in 2024.

Revisit your New Year’s resolution. You likely left it somewhere in January.

Start a new habit. (Read Atomic Habits by James Clear to check the box on this and the next item. Plus it is half-price right now. You are welcome.)

Read a great book this year. (See above.)

Get in touch with that person or people you haven’t touched in too long.

Go to church. December is the best time to go anyway, for Christ’s sake. And for the bread and juice. And to try to get off the naughty list.

Donate to charity. (And get the tax benefits.)

Start that business. (I am working on starting an Excite Hustle with my son. We have talked about it for forever. But we are going to make it happen this month! An Excite Hustles is like a side hustle, but it excites you about doing work.)

Begin writing that book. Just start by writing down a simple outline of what you know about the topic, or a paragraph summarizing the plot, like Sir Mix-A-Plot. I write my books in a Google Doc. You don’t need anything fancy. Or schmancy.

Take that trip. Or schedule and book that vacation. It’s a great time to lock in your spring or summer travel and give yourself something to look forward to this winter. Unless you live somewhere vacationy already. In which case, pick another thing to do with your 12th month.

Do a million other things. Those first ten items were just examples. I don’t have time to write an exhaustive list of everything you could possibly do this month. Because we both have more important things to do. So let’s go, Geronimo!

Key Takeaway

Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future. You have to recognize the passage of time to make its scarcity useful. The last month of the year, the last day of the week and the last hours of the day create a valuable sense of urgency, signaling it’s go time. Remember, when you hit a deadline, the opportunities afforded by that unit of time are dead. Let that motivate you to go now. There’s no better time.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

The valuable life lesson you can learn from chewing gum.

When I was a kid, I liked chewing gum. I found the whole process fascinating. And when I say the whole process, I mean the whole process. I discovered that human effort can transform gum. And through the same process, we can learn to transform ourselves. Which is getting pretty deep for a story about chewing gum. But let’s go with it and see what we land.

Chew, Chew!

Gum starts as a solid form. It’s typically a stick or a small blocky nugget of some sort. Although it could be shaped like tape or rope. It could be a primary-colored ball. (I always call gumballs Bryant or Greg.) Or your gum may be shredded like cheese if you are into Big League Chew. And I am into Big League Chew.

As you begin to chew, your gum changes form under your direction. It softens as you mash it and mold it with your molars.

During the chewing process, gum releases its embedded flavor into your mouth. Gumtastic flavors include mint, peppermint, spearmint, experiment, wintergreen, cinnamon, grape, orange, watermelon, sour apple, lemon, strawberry, blueberry and the elusive juicy fruit, the Sasquatch of fruit.

Despite the wide range of interesting flavors that are used to create and market gum, shortly after you start chewing, the flavor disappears. And when it does, the most enjoyable part of the experience is over. Boo.

Then, not long after that, the gum begins to harden. Double Boo.

At this point, the fun part of chewing gum is over for most people. In fact, most people spit their gum out somewhere between the flavor dissipation and the great hardening.

But my favorite part of chewing gum comes after most people quit it, spit it and forget it.

At that point, most people feel they have extracted all the value they could get from gum. Other than maybe sticking the hard, flavorless wad to the underside of a desk or a railing for Buddy Elf.

Most people have no idea what happens after chewing gum loses flavor and hardens.

But I know.

Because when I was a kid, I loved to keep mashing away after the thrill was gone for most kids. I felt like the gum became an opponent to beat. I felt the gum was challenging me to a showdown on the playground at high noon. And the formerly fruity gum thought it was tougher than me.

But I wouldn’t wave the white flag.

I kept chewing and chomping. Like a cow chewing cud. Or Hubba Bubba. Or Bazooka.

Then, an interesting thing happened.

The gum gave up.

The wad of gum that became so tough to chew threw in its tiny little gum towel. It softened again. And then it fell apart. It lost all shape. It lost its will to gum. It stopped resisting. And it literally liquefied.

The formerly proud gum became a runny puddle of nothingness. No flavor. No form. No function. In fact, you could no longer even hold it in your mouth. If you didn’t spit the puddle out it would leak out of your face.

I loved getting to that point. It always made me feel like I had won. I felt like I took on a difficult challenge and completed it. I felt like I took on a difficult opponent, and I beat it. Like Michael Jackson.

The Lesson

Gum chewing taught me I could do hard things. That I could push through the unrewarding muddy middle of a long process. And that if I just kept going, even when it wasn’t fun. I would win.

I have applied the gum-chewing lesson countless times throughout my life. I found the approach useful as a track and field athlete when the work felt hard and the rewards felt small. It was helpful as an entrepreneur when I started The Weaponry and found that you just have to keep chewing no matter what. The lesson served me well when I wrote What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? and the work seemed long and the finish line was nowhere in sight. And as I faced the hard and unrewarding parts of parenthood, employment and yard maintenance I reminded myself that the key to getting through tough times and past challenging obstacles it to just keep chewing.

Key Takeaway


Success and accomplishment is like chewing gum. Everyone enjoys the beginning. It’s full of flavor and quick rewards. But when those immediate rewards disappear, it’s easy to quit. You lose interest and motivation. And when things get hard, it’s easy to get soft. But if you just keep going, keep doing and chewing, you will win. You will get the ultimate reward of knowing that you are tougher than the things you face. It’s an incredibly valuable lesson to learn from a stick of Big Red or Juicy Fruit. It’s a lesson that is more valuable than the fun, the flavor or the freshening the gum provides. But you only learn that lesson by sticking around when things get hard, and chewing to the very end.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

What happens if your presidential candidate doesn’t win?

Today is the big day! Election Day 2024. Today, one way or the other, the political ads will be over, and we can finally get back to more important commercials about beer, incontinence, and the fancy new weight loss drugs.

If you pay attention to the political ads and news coverage you may believe that the outcome of the election will mark the end of days if it doesn’t go your way. The messages from the candidates’ campaigns are ominous. They all paint a stark win or lose, do or die, fail or thrive future. It is as if our very existence rests on the outcome of this election.

But none of that is true. Whatever happens, we will be fine. We can and will survive anything that comes our way. We have endured the Civil War, The Great Depression, and the Disco era. We have faced the oil crisis, the mortgage crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and the toilet paper crisis. They all did their best to sink us. But America is the Molly Brown of countries.

I have voted in every presidential election since I turned 18. I carefully studied the candidates and how their beliefs aligned with mine. I looked at how their policies would impact my personal freedoms and finances. I considered how they would act to help others in my community and country. I evaluated how the candidates would affect our relationships with other countries and world peace. Then I carefully voted for what I believed to be the best candidate. Just like a good American should.

However, the candidate I voted for has only won half of the elections. Which means that, in theory, the person who wanted the opposite of what I wanted won the other half of the contests. Yet, ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life has gone on.

It is easy to get caught up in the hype and extremism of a political election and think that there are clear winning and losing scenarios for the masses. But history would indicate otherwise. You will naturally lose roughly half the elections you vote in. And when you lose, America will still be full of moms, baseball and apple pie. And you can still share all of those things on Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok. Plus, you will still get to vote again in 4 years. And the pendulum always swings. Like Benny Goodman. And the Squirrel Nut Zippers.

So today as the last of us vote, and tonight as you watch the results come rolling in, remember, it will all be okay. There is more than one way to lead our country. There are pros and cons to each style, and each belief system. It’s why roughly half the country agrees with your thinking and half the country doesn’t understand you.

I respect that political positioning forces the campaigns to market the candidates ideas and ideals as diametrically opposed. But at the end of the day, both sides want to continue developing a great America. They just have different ways of going about it. Which means they are focused on pulling different levers, and pushing different buttons on the Wonkivator to get the machine to perform at its best.

America is a great country. Because it was founded by rebellious people who believed there was a better way of countrying. And America has attracted great and rebellious people ever since (think David Bowie and Billy Idol) who have continued to bring new and better ways of countrying.

Sure, we have unsolved problems. And we always will. Because life is one long problem solving adventure. We will continue to work towards better approaches to equality, security, safety, prosperity, health and peace. We just have different beliefs in how it is done. Neither approach is 100% right. And neither approach is 100% wrong. There ain’t no good guy. There ain’t no bad guy. There’s only Americans, and we just disagree. But that’s ultimately what makes the system work.

Key Takeaway

Things are going to be okay. There will be a lot of drama beginning tonight. It may last for months. But we will all be okay. Both candidates approaches generally work. We will continue to improve our country, our security and our economy no matter who is in the White House. Because ultimately, it all comes down to what we the people do.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

It’s amazing what you can discover when you start asking a stranger questions.

On Thursday afternoon, I was on a plane. I was flying from Detroit Rock City to Columbus. My seatmate was a friendly woman. And like that scene from Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler, we began to speak. (Although, unlike in The Gambler, no one bummed a cigarette, drank down my last swallow, or croaked.)

My goal with the conversation was to see how quickly we could go from perfect strangers like Larry Appleton and Balki Bartokomous to pals, like Forrest and Bubba.

When I meet someone new I am always Curious George’n to know who or what we have in common. So, I broke out my set of proven questions designed to discover where our Venn diagrams overlapped. The only question was how many questions it would take to get to the Tootsie Roll Center.

The conversation went like this:

Me: What’s your name? Answer: Emily. (So we did not have a name in common.)

Me: Where do you live? Emily: Granville, Ohio.

Me: Where did you grow up? Emily: Centerville, Ohio

Me What did you do after Centerville? Emily: I went to college at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Me: Cool! I had two sisters who went to OWU! They were there between 1994 and 2000.

Emily: Interesting! I was there during that time…

Me: My sisters were both on the track and field team at OWU.

Emily: I had a friend who was on the track and field team at OWU. Her name was Donielle Albrecht.

Me: Donielle Albrecht is my baby sister.

Emily: I lived with Donielle in Paris!!!

Me: OMG!

Emily In Paris (Which is how I locked her name in my memory bank): I have traveled all over the country with Donielle! And I know your sister Alison too!

Emily in Paris is also known as Emily Hughes Smith. She’s a Realtor with Remax in Columbus. But she also worked in advertising for several years. We knew many people and agencies in common. And we both have sons who are juniors in high school. Which made for a fun and interesting conversation on our relatively short hop across the contentious Michigan-Ohio border.

However, I am disappointed that during our blitz-Venning session we didn’t discover another important connection. This morning, as I visited LinkedIn and Facebook to prep for this Emily In Paris’ story, I discovered that I know Emily’s husband! Kirk Richard Smith is a Creative Director and great photographer. We have known each other for years.

Key Takeaway

Get to know the people around you. Discover your commonalities. Connect over your shared people, places and interests. It is one of my favorite things to do. Because it quickly turns strangers into friends. It grows and strengthens your friend network. It reveals that there is always a little bit of magic around us. We just need to look for it. And that’s an ace that you can keep.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.