Tag: entrepreneurship

Why You Should Always Be Taking Tests.

When was the last time you took a test?

Yesterday?

Last year?

During your last eye appointment? (U R B A F)

Once you get to a certain point in life, you can stop taking tests.

But don’t.

Even if it’s the spring of your senior year of high school, and you have already gotten into your first-choice college. (Sorry, that was meant for my son.)

One of the great ways to live a full, adventurous and successful life is to regularly test yourself.

Test your mind, your body, your resolve, your endurance, your focus and your dedication.

Test your willpower. And test your won’tpower. (I think I just made up a word with a contraction in it!)

It’s not hard to avoid testing yourself. You can stay within your natural bounds. You can refuse to push against your outer limits. You can easily live a life of comfort, without stress, tests, or growth. And it would be boring and sad.

When you stop testing yourself, you replace growth with shrinkage. And nobody wants shrinkage.

While you are still able, test yourself often.

Take on hard challenges.

Take on physical challenges.

Get certified in a new skill.

Or licensed in a new practice.

Sign up for a competition in anything.

Try the ski run that is a degree above your comfort level.

Or a cold plunge that is a degree below your comfort level.

Start a business.

Try to sell things.

Join Fight Club. (But don’t talk about it!)

Write a book. Or screenplay. Or a non-screen play.

Learn a new language with tests involved to prove what you are learning. (Capiche?)

By testing yourself, you are forcing learning, skill development, and growth.

You are pushing yourself to become a better, stronger, smarter version of yourself.

You are elevating your game. Like Milton Bradley, on an elevator.

And you are expanding and improving as an organism.

Testing…Testing…

Aside from parenting, nothing has forced my growth like starting a business. (The Weaponry.) The way that entrepreneurship tests you, you quickly realize that you are the greatest limiter of your company’s success. And if you want to grow the business, you have to grow and learn new and better skills too.

I also commit to an annual Misogi Challenge. These are difficult personal challenges with a high likelihood of failure. You create them to test your limits and push yourself and to spur confidence-boosting growth.

In 2020, I challenged myself to write a book during the COVID lockdown. And I did it. Which taught me how much I could accomplish when focused on a meaningful personal challenge.

The key to my happiness, life satisfaction, and self-esteem is directly related to the fact that I keep taking tests. I keep pushing myself. And I am learning, growing and expanding my skills, abilities and knowledge. And in the process, I am strengthening my character, values, resolve, grit and confidence.

Key Takeaway

If you want to maximize your own happiness, keep pushing yourself, testing yourself and forcing your own growth. It’s the best way to the best you. And the best way to experience your best life.

The Defining Characteristic Of The Successful Entrepreneur.

I have been on an entrepreneurial adventure for 10 years.

And over the past decade, I have been writing down what I have learned along the way.

In the process, I have accumulated a Costco warehouse full of breadcrumbs for future entrepreneurs to follow.

If you are thinking about starting your own business (and I hope you are), it’s important to know that the most distinguishing characteristic of the successful entrepreneur is not that they know more than everyone else.

It’s not competency.

Or experience.

Or education.

Or confidence.

Or risk tolerance.

Or charisma. (Or any other isma.)

Or a false sense of superiority and a bulging trust fund.

Or the ability to create a list of 7 lines that start with ‘Or’.

The most distinguishing characteristic is that the successful entrepreneur is willing to move forward in the absence of information, knowledge and experience.

The successful entrepreneur doesn’t need to know more than anyone else.

They are simply willing to do.

To go.

To start.

To try.

Half the time, they don’t know what they are doing.

But they do anyway.

The doing is what leads to the knowing.

The great entrepreneur is comfortable with ambiguity. Because they realize that actions create biguity. (I assume that is the opposite of ambiguity.)

Key Takeaway

When you don’t know what you are doing, just start doing anyway.

Because the doing will help you figure it out.

Simply taking a step reveals the next step.

Do this over and over and over again.

It’s amazing what you can create or accomplish if you start and just don’t stop.

How to create more urgency to get more done.

One of the most powerful forces on human life is urgency.

Urgency, quite simply put, is importance that requires swift action.

But too often we take swift action on the unimportant things in our lives. Like social media, and the other things dinging and blinging on our phones.

Or we take swift action on other people’s important issues. (If you have kids or an underprepared boss, you know what I’m talk’n bout, Willis.)

However, we fail to take swift action on the things most important to our lives, our success and our most valued projects.

I bet that you have big dreams, goals and ideas that, if completed, would make a massive impact on your life.

Maybe you want to start a business, travel to amazing places, organize a fun event, get together with family or friends you haven’t seen in a long time, or create that art thingie that only you understand. Maybe you have something big you want to take on at work that would change your organization in a major, positive way.

But I am also willing to bet that you took no steps towards making that a reality yesterday. Or in the last week. Or in the last year. Or maybe ever. Like ever, ever.

The problem is that you have ideas, visions and goals, but you don’t have a motivating deadline.

Remember: It is the deadline that creates urgency.

It is the deadline that requires swift action.

But not just any old deadline will do, Buckaroo.

Most self-selected deadlines are far too far off.

Short deadlines drive action.

There is a very simple test for the effectiveness of your deadline.

Your deadline must require you to do something today to stay on pace.

If your deadline doesn’t require anything of you today, your deadline is too long, Duk Dong.

If your deadline doesn’t create a feeling of discomfort for work undone today, it is not effective.

If your deadline doesn’t influence your actions or your schedule today, there is too much slack in it.

Your deadline has to create constraint. It must create a friction that prevents you from letting important activities keep on slippin, slippin, slippin, into the future.

Key Takeaway

To force dreams, goals and great ideas to life, you need shorter deadlines. A loose deadline has no power. Create deadlines that demand action today. Tighten your deadlines to force yourself into action. The tighter the better. Unreasonable deadlines can drive remarkable results. So trade in someday for this year, this week or this afternoon. And you will discover just how much you are capable of accomplishing.

*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.

Achieve More In 2026 By Doing Less.

By now, you have taken a Giannis Antetokounmpo-sized step into 2026. And if you are anything like me (I hope for your sake you are not), you are hoping that this year is your best year ever. But great years don’t just happen on their own. You need to force your year to be great.

That may sound hard.

But it’s not.

The indisputable law of the universe to focus on right now is The 80/20 Rule. This rule dictates that 80 percent of your results will come from 20 percent of your actions. It’s a valuable reminder to focus on the vital few activities that really matter. And to forget about the trivial many that don’t.

I am always inspired by lazy but successful people. They are not the rise and grind types. They are not workaholics. They are more like the Mayor of Lazytown. But they are also intelligent. And they get ahead by doing less. Sometimes much, much less than others. Yet, they keep rising and shining. What’s up with that, pussycat?

The key to their success is that they do the right things. They spend their time focused on the vital few activities that return 80% of the desired results.

The right things are often relationship things. They are about developing and maintaining relationships with the people who can have a major impact on your opportunities. (I leave this broad, because I don’t know what kind of opportunities you are after.) But opportunities of every sort come through connectors, endorsers, gatekeepers, and inviters.

In addition to developing the right relationships (and showering), the other 3 things that tend to have an outsized impact are:

  • Doing only the things you do best.
  • Showing up at the right places.
  • Asking for what you want.

People often spend a lot of time doing hard things that reinforce the value we put on a strong work ethic. But those efforts can divert time and attention from the little things that make the biggest difference. So in 2026, learn a lesson from the lazy successful people. Work smarter. Not harder. And get greater results by doing more of what matters most.

Key Takeaway

Boil down all the things you could be doing in January to the few things that create the greatest impact. Develop and maintain relationships with the people who can support your goals, spend the majority of your time doing the things you do best, show up to the places and events that matter most, and ask for what you want. If you get those things right, you are 80% of the way to an outstanding year.

*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.

The Ultimate Cure For Boredom.

Do you ever feel bored?

I never do.

Because the foolproof cure for boredom is to have big goals.

And I am the fool with the proof.

Big goals, and many of them, help fill your days with purpose.

I have so many goals that they govern my days. (In a non-political governing kind of way.)

From the moment I wake up, my routine is constructed to help me achieve my goals.

Because when you have a strong vision for your future, it shapes your now.

And you see time as a tool for you to use to achieve your goals.

Fitness goals inspire you to exercise. Even when you would rather TexMexercise.

Travel goals squash boredom with planning, adventure, reflection and memories.

Career goals inspire you to work harder, more focused, and with more zeal. (Or a more contemporary word for zeal.)

Financial goals drive you to save and invest. Even when you have the urge to splurge, Virg.

And your financial goals will inspire you to explore and discover smarter things to do with your money, honey.

Entrepreneurial goals mean you are never bored. Ever. Like ever, ever.

Reading goals mean that you always have a good reason to log off of electronics and fill your time with something that adds value to your life. (And increases your vocabularium.)

Writing goals drive you to sit down and write every day. And it is hard to be bored when you are creating. Just ask God. Or Tyler Perry.

Domestic goals around improving your home, and yard keep you busy and productive. Not bored.

Relationship goals influence the way you invest your time, the way you treat the important people in your life, and the hashtags you use on social media.

Your goals help you make decisions all day long about the things you should and shouldn’t do with your time. Which means that goals enhance productivity, decision making, time management, and relationships. Not to mention the positive impact they have on your happiness, adventurousness, and good old-fashioned usefulness. (Basically all the nesses.)

Key Takeaway

The next time you find yourself bored, think about the goals that you could be working towards. If you find that you don’t have any, set new ones that you can work towards right now. Boredom is a signal that you need more meaningful activity in your life. And goals are the greatest way to make that happen.

*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.

Why you should spend 1 hour each week working on building your own business.

You know who is great at starting a business? (Besides Richard Branson.)

Someone who already works in a business.

Someone who has seen how their employer’s business runs.

They know how their current business wins and how it gets beaten.

They see the flaws to be fixed and the opportunities to improve.

In other words, the best people to start their own business are people just like you. (And Richard Branson.)

Always Be Planning

You should always be thinking of what your own business would look like.

  • Think about the systems and processes.
  • Think about the customer you will serve.
  • Think about your values.
  • Think about your culture.
  • Think of who would be on your team.
  • Think about the epic company parties that aren’t yet restricted by a buzz-killin’ CFO. (I hope Kid Rock, Beyonce and The Rolling Stones are all playing at your party, and asking you to sign their foreheads, because they know you are a rock star!)

Imagining the details of your own business is how you build your own life raft. That way, it will be ready to use when you are ready to jump. (Or if your current business sinks or you get thrown overboard.) You can use your boat to save yourself, create your own epic adventure, or sail off into the sunset.

1 Hour Per Week

Spend an hour per week thinking about building your own business.

Take it from your InstaSnapTok time.

Then, every year, you will spend 52 hours working on your own business.

10 years into your career, you will have spent 520 hours working on your business.

And 2 decades into your career, you will have spent 1,040 hours on your own business. #mathwhiz

That’s how a steady drip of thinking, formulating, and crafting turns into a business started by a veteran with 20 years of experience, a vision, and a valuable network of industry experts, coworkers, partners and suppliers.

I know this approach works. Because it is how I started The Weaponry nearly 10 years ago. And it was the best career move I ever made.

Key Takeaway

Spend a little time each week thinking about what your own business would look like. Capture your ideas in a notebook or a Google Doc. Add a little bit each week. It is a great way to slowly plan your own business before you need it. And if you never need it, it will provide a great roadmap to improve the business you are currently in. It is a win-win that could lead to the greatest adventure of your career.

*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.

Act As If.

Go through life as if all of your dreams have come true.

Or are coming true.

Act as if you are the you that you imagined you would be.*

Do the things that the person you want to be would do.

Make the decisions your ideal you would make.

Act as if you have the role you want. And maybe the roll you want. (Kaiser, Lobster, Tootsie)

Act as if you are the person who does what you want to do.

Talk the talk.

Walk the walk.

Think the way you want to be.

And you will become the person you think you are.

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.

*The quadruple-you sentence. The Triple Lindy of sentences.

The Power Of Client Friends: Maximizing Your Professional Relationships.

I use a term I never hear anyone else use.

It’s not gazoinkers. Or tootsnickers. Or zwerp. All of which I use as well.

The term I use regularly that others don’t is client friend.

Even Grammarly tells me this is not a thing.

Oh, Grammarly, but it is a thing.

The term client friend is an important addition to my vocabulary, necessary to accurately describe many of the important people in my life.

Client Friend helps me express the duality of my relationship with many of my clients.

The Origin

Early in my career, I realized that I was not accurately representing my relationship with a large swath of people in my orbit by simply referring to them as clients. That was way too transactional, or distant, or businessy.

For me, the client relationship is simply the introductory vehicle to many of my favorite friendships. And the workplace is just the meetup venue for our friending actions.

So for the dictionary entry I propose the following:

Client Friend. /klient frend/ nouny. A friend whom you originally met as a client.

For comparative context, some people have drinking friends or fishing buddies. Other people have friends who they play softball with, or poker, or fantasy football. I have even heard of knitting circle friends. And hunting wives.

I have friends who I do commerce with.

We meet up and talk about their business. We talk about branding, and marketing and advertising. We talk about sales and products and services. We talk about innovation and customer experience, and off-menu creative ideas to enhance their brand image. We talk about competitive pressures, and trends and threats. (Oh My!)

And we love it!

We nerd out on all these things. Because we are gazoinkeers for business, marketing, advertising and creative problem solving.

We also share stories about the fun travel we’ve done together. And film and photo shoots in interesting places. And the great meals we have shared. And all the hilarity that happened along the way. Zwerp!

But we also talk about our families, vacations, hobbies and pets.

I freaking love making new friends. I go gazoinkers for adding new people to my world. Because my clients and I have so much in common, we typically become friends quickly, both because of the work, and beyond the work.

When I began seriously thinking about starting my own advertising and ideas agency back in 2015, a couple of my client friends called me to encourage me to do it. Then I called more client friends to talk about it. I met other client friends at restaurants and talked with them for hours about it. And when I first launched The Weaponry, my very first client was actually my friend, Dan Richards, whom I have known since we were in 7th grade in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Looking back, I can clearly see that it was my client friends who enabled me to start The Weaponry. And it has been client friends who have sustained us for the past 9 years.

We spend something like 100% of our time at work. Which makes the workplace a great place to develop and maintain friendships and deepen relationships with the people you work with. Take advantage of this rich field for meaningful social interactions. (Did I mention I also met my wife, Dawn, at work? I did. And she’s amazing!)

At the end of your career, you won’t care about the awards you won nearly as much as you will value the client friends you won and the work-related relationships you developed. Those client friends are just as good as any other form of friendship. Maybe even better. Because you have so much history and so much to talk about in retirement.

Not everyone has client friends. Instead, you may have customer friends. Or member friends. Or partner friends. Or collaborator friends. Or vendor friends. Or Joey, Chandler, Ross, Monica, Phoebe and Rachel. Collect them all. Enjoy them all. The universe put them in your world so that you can develop a human relationship. We are not just here for business transactions. We are here to engage meaningfully with each other for the greater good of all.

Key Takeaway

Make more client friends. And customer friends. And co-worker friends. And people-you-interact-with-because- of-work friends. Working with your friends makes life more enjoyable. And friending with the people you work with is the ultimate relationship hack. More and better friends lead to a better life. So make friends everywhere you can. Especially at work. And if you want to work with people who want to be your friend, shoot me a text or call me at 614-256-2850, or email me at adam@theweponry.com. I always have room for more friends.

*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.

Why you should bring your freakin idea to life and share it with the world.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw the band Bombargo. They were playing a free concert in a park 2 miles from my house. The band is a bundle of energy and entertainment from the off-off Broadway, town of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Which is also one of the cartooniest place names ever invented. The band was on their Disco Surf Rodeo Tour, because any one of those things on its own is just not enough.

For a flavor of their fun music, check out Let It Grow or Oxygen. (Songs I assume were inspired by The Lorax.)

An hour into their set, the band told an interesting story as they introduced one of their signature songs.

During the winter months, Saskatoon is often among the coldest places on the planet. And during one of those cold spells, the lead singer stopped by his brother-bandmate’s igloo home. His brother-bandmate was playing a new song idea on the piano. The lead singer really liked what he was playing and decided that they should write a song to it.

So they wrote the full song that day.

The next day, they recorded the song, shot a video for it, and shared it online.

Then something swiftdiculous happened. Taylor Swift, the most influential musician on the planet, heard the song, loved it, and added it to her Spotify playlist.

The song immediately blew up thanks to Swift’s endorsement.

The band shared that it was rare for them to work so fast and not tweak a song to death. But it was exactly this speed of creating and sharing that led to the success of the song Mr. No Good.

Reminder

Each of the ideas you bring to life is like a lottery ticket. It has the potential to pay off in a big way. So create it, share it and move on. Don’t analyze it to death. Great work doesn’t have to take a long time. Focus on creating work that you love. If you love it, there is a great chance that others will love it too.

Key Takeaway

Create things you love and share them quickly. It’s the key to being a successful artist, innovator, or entrepreneur. The world benefits from your ideas. And your ideas benefit from real-world exposure. Successful ideas are a percentage game. The more ideas you bring to life, the more likely you are to produce hits. And when you love your creations, there is a great chance others will too. So don’t die with your song in your head, your art in your heart or your startup in your soul.

*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.

Why you need to have a need for speed.

If there is one defining factor of how the world works today versus any other time in history it is speed.

Today, everything happens faster. Not just Jimmy John’s. And Tinactin.

Communication technology has advanced from mail, to email to Slack and texting. Information arrives instantly.

News can be reported with a tweet, just seconds after it occurs.

You can stream practically anything you want to watch on demand, anytime.

AI has squeezed the gestational period of our research, discovery, query and analysis down to a mere burp.

So Why All The Slow Motion?

Yet, with all of the technology enabling us to move at Lightning McQueen-speed, I am constantly surprised by how slow many organizations move.

Nearly all technological friction has been taken out of our systems, yet human friction is still ubiquitous. K, why is that?

Human decision making, prioritization and hesitation still kill momentum, push deadlines and slow progress to a snail-mail’s pace.

The Weaponry, the advertising and ideas agency I lead, was launched 9 years ago, and the urgency of the social era was baked into our DNA. Because in the social era, opportunities come and go in a flash. In the social era, you must harvest social opportunities during the very short season when the opportunities are ripe. This can be as short as a few seconds, but never longer than a couple of days.

One of the mandates for our organization is to operate with the urgency of social media. Move quickly. Jump on opportunities. Thwart threats quickly. Move faster than other organizations. It was programmed into our genomic code from the start.

When we present timelines in our proposals, we share aggressive timelines, and note that this timeline only works if the client can keep up, and turn approvals around within our reasonable, but not generous, turnaround periods.

Yet as much as we hear about how important the work we do is to our clients’ success and how they want to get it done quickly, organizations can rarely keep up with their own ambitions. They are simply not built for speed and urgency.

While not all windows of opportunity close as quickly as social media does, all opportunities are finite.

When you fail to get your advertising in market in time, you also fail to drive sales during that time. For seasonal businesses, that is revenue lost forever. For non-seasonal businesses, it means your sales slide later in the year or into the next year. When you delay decisions, your overall revenue numbers for the current month, quarter or year are lower than they should be. That’s a loss. And an avoidable one.

My friend and client Bob Monnat, Senior Partner at Mandel Group Inc, shared some insights with me about one of his organization’s best partners. He revealed that they are great partners because they are always pushing them to move faster, to decide quicker, to get the work done so that they can ultimately turn their projects into cash-flowing assets.

Never lose sight of the reason businesses exist. They are created to make money. And time is money. The quicker you move, the more money you are likely to make.

Key Takeaway

Move faster. Today, advanced technology means that the slowest part of the process is the humans who have the most to gain. Slow actions and slow decisions cause wasteful delays. Identify the bottlenecks and pinch points in your process. Then attack them. Address your delays to help move your organization faster so that everyone can enjoy the success of speed. It is today’s competitive advantage.

*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.