Tag: entrepreneurship

Jealous of others making a job change? Then it’s time to make your own.

I have mostly loved my career. I have always enjoyed the work I do. But there have been a couple of brief periods when I didn’t like where I worked.

At one point in my advertising career, due to some business loss, we decided to shut down one of our agency’s office locations. Which meant that virtually everyone in that office had to find a new job. The whole experience was right out of a movie.

But I had a very surprising reaction to the situation.

Under those circumstances, it is natural to feel lucky that you are not affected by the office shutdown. That while everyone else is losing their job, you get to keep yours. It should feel like a win. However, instead of feeling bad for that group of my teammates forced to find the next chapter of their careers, I found myself envying them.

I envied that they had to make a change.

I envied that they got to stop what they were doing and find a new situation. That could involve a new company, mission, industry, a new set of coworkers, a new career path, a new level within an organization, or a new attitude, like Patti Labelle.

Meanwhile, I was going to stay in the same job, with the same shortcomings, the same cultural challenges, the same feeling that this place didn’t fit me. The same sense that I was better than this situation. The same feeling that the only reason I was still here was for the money. For the false sense of stability that this salaried employee job offered me.

But something in the feeling of envy for those forced to move on and move forward in their careers, changed something profound in me. I recognized that life is too short to spend unhappy and unfulfilled at work, in a culture, climate and a missionless or purposeless environment.

So my mind shifted.

I knew I needed to find my own next chapter that would make me feel all the things I wish I felt. I spoke to several advertising agencies about the prospect of joining their teams. I explored several different markets to live and work in. The exploration was energizing. And I knew I was on the right path.

Within a year of my profound mindset shift triggered by envy for my teammates who had to make a career change, I had discovered my new path. I started my own business. I launched The advertising and ideas agency The Weaponry. And my life changed in all the ways that I hoped it would.

The past 9 years at The Weaponry have been the most adventurous and rewarding of my career. All because I tuned in to what my envy was telling me. I was willing to make a dramatic change for the better. I was willing to risk the perceived safety and security of my situation for the control and happiness of an unknown adventure. And that has made all the difference.

Key Takeaway

If you are jealous when others are forced to write the next chapter of their career, it means that you have to find your own new next chapter. It is time for greater happiness and fulfillment. It is time to throw off the ropes of your current condition and sail for something better, more fulfilling, more exciting and new. Something that matches your skills and vision for your life’s adventure. Get going. There’s nothing stopping you but 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.

Finding Value in Discarded Items: A Life Lesson

When I was a kid, my older sister Heather bought a pack of glow-in-the-dark star stickers to put on her ceiling. After she carefully adhered them to her bedroom ceiling, she called me to her room to show me how they glowed in the dark. I thought Heather’s new constellation was the coolest thing I had ever seen.

That evening, on a routine trip to the bathroom, I saw that Heather had thrown away the packaging from the stickers in the bathroom garbage can. I immediately noticed that the entire sticker sheet that she removed the stars from was made of the same glow-in-the-dark material as the stars. Which meant that the discarded star sheet carcass, or starcass, still had great value.

Instantly, a little glow in the dark light bulb appeared above my head.

I snatched the de-starred sheet from the garbage can. I ran to our craft closet and pulled out a pair of scissors. Despite my excitement, I did not run with them. I carried them, pointed down, the way I was taught to safely pack such a dangerous weapon in school. Once I safely transported the scissors to my upstairs bedroom and secured the door to my bedroom/laboratory of invention, I proceeded to cut the remnant sticker sheet into dozens of little squares and stuck them all over my ceiling.

I was so excited by my new star-stickered ceiling that I rushed down the hall to Heather’s room and exclaimed, ‘You’ve got to see something awesome in my room!’ She followed me back down the upstairs hall to my room to see what all the fuss was about. I turned off the lights, and my little star scraps speckled the ceiling. I could practically hear the angels sing. It was like that moment in Christmas Vacation when Clark Griswold finally gets his outdoor Christmas masterpiece to light up. I felt like I was the smartest boy alive.

The effect was amazing. The small squares dotting my ceiling looked just like the stars outside in the Vermont night sky. (Note: Rural Vermont has literally zero light pollution. Also note: Rural Vermont is a redundant statement.)

But Heather was not amused.

She had spent several dollars on her star stickers. And I had spent nothing. Yet we essentially had the same amazing result.

After a small sibling flare-up, we agreed that I would pay her 50 cents for the sticker refuse material that I had stuck up in da club. It was still a great value for me. And an even better lesson.

Key Takeaway

Be careful what you throw away. It may still contain great value. Keep an eye on what others are discarding, giving away or selling for next to nothing. There is unrecognized value everywhere. Train yourself to see it. And then take action to extract that value. You will find it in the garbage, in giveaway items, in collectibles and second hand markets. You will find untapped value in remnant time and in leftover space. Once you condition yourself to see it, you will find that untapped value everywhere. It is the perfect straw for your entrepreneurial mind to spin into gold.

*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.

Top 10 Must-Have Software for Startups

There has never been a better time to start a business. Because so much of the infrastructure needed to run a business is simply a small stack of software that you can set up and run online. The software needs of a newborn business may seem intimidating from the outside. But they are easy to find, easy to implement and easy to scale. Like Eazy-E. To help make it even easier for you to start your own business, I am sharing the ten software suggestions to get your startup party started right.

One of the first things we did when we created The Weaponry in 2016 was set up a series of software accounts. This, in essence, becomes your operational center. It’s super easy to set up. And generally quite affordable to maintain. Not only are the software accounts scalable, which means you pay a small amount for a small business, and then slowly increase your payments as your needs or size increase, but there are free versions or free trial periods of many software offerings that allow you to try them out before you get too deep.

Here’s a quick overview of the software systems we use to run The Weaponry.

Google Workspace is the central hub of our business. It offers email. It offers Google Docs for writing. (I also write my books on Google Docs.) It provides Sheets for spreadsheets (not bed sheets) and Slides for building decks and presentations. (Not playgrounds.) It offers an online calendar, chat, a file storage drive for documents and much, much more. Microsoft Office also offers this type of functionality. Choose your favorite and get businessing!

We use Slack for instant communication. This is the primary venue for our teams day to day communication. This takes a lot of unnecessary traffic out of your email inbox. You can have real-time communications and share files instantly on this platform. Think of it like a super chat platform. (Or chatform.) You can create dedicated channels for specific accounts, departments or teams. There is a ton you can do for free. Or you can upgrade and also use Slack to store all of the documents you ever share on the platform. Which is cool. I also find that Slack is a better platform for sharing funny comments than email because it is quicker. And the little emoji responses make it feel like people think you are funny. (Just in case funniness is important to you.)

Quickbooks is the accounting software we use to track and manage all of our accounting. This is the heart of our accounting world. You connect all of your business bank accounts and credit cards here. It makes it easy to create and send invoices (bills) and to know what is due and when. It also provides reports (profit and loss, profitability, balance sheets, etc.) and dashboards that help you manage your business. You can set up Quickbooks to receive payments from your clients, including via credit cards. Get this going as soon as you can afford to. It will become the backbone of your accounting system. And your business’s scoreboard. It helps make everything official, and easy to share with your tax accountant when it is time to talk taxes. And best of all, Quickbooks is not the book equivalent of quicksand. (Just in case you were wondering.)

We use Harvest for all of our time tracking and reporting. Our team members enter the time they spend on each task, project, or client on a daily basis. This easy-to-use software helps us track our labor costs for every client. Plus it enables us to track our staff utilization. So we always know how much of our team’s time is billable. Which helps you know when you should hire more people. However, this software does not let us know the best time to harvest the stuff we grow in our gardens. I hope they fix that in the next update.

We use Asana as our project management tool. We use this to help house important information like timelines, files, overviews, and due dates on each project, by client. This becomes the central hub for all information needed to deliver a project. Like The Manhattan Project, The Alan Parsons Project, or The Mindy Project.

We use Gusto to process our payroll. You want a payroll processing software to help make sure you are automating everything in accordance with the IRS as well as state and local laws related to taxes and various benefits. Plus, it just makes your life a lot easier when you’re not wanted by the feds for tax evasion.

We use Guideline to provide and administer our 401(k) plan. Guideline is offered as a partner through Gusto. That makes it an easy add-on when your organization is mature enough to offer this great employee savings and retirement benefit. Which is kinda like hitting puberty for a startup. Only without the bad skin.

We use DropBox for file storage. This works as both a server and as a way to share and request large files with clients and partners. As an advertising and ideas agency, we create and move a lot of large files. Like art files, video files, X-Files and Simone Files.

We use Zoom for video conferencing. Thanks to the COVID-19 global pandemic, everyone on the planet knows about Zoom. At The Weaponry, we’ve been using Zoom for both internal and client meetings from day one. Because our clients are all over the country and in Canada. Not to mention we have worked with great clients in England, France and India. (Except I did just mention them. Which ruins the not-to-mention thing.) Google Meet also works well, and is offered as part of the Google Workspace. And if you go with Microsoft software you can use Teams.

We use Grasshopper as our virtual phone system. As a startup business you don’t need a receptionist or a fancy phone system. Grasshopper and options like it allow you to create a virtual system that connects your teams’ mobile phones and makes you appear professional and organized in a way that transcends simply using your personal phone as the phone number for the business. (Which of course is fine to do in your early stages. Part of the charm of a baby business is having a voicemail that says, ‘Hi, you’ve reached Billy’s voicemail, and the world headquarters for Galactic Pickles.)

Specialty Software

You will also find specialty software available for your specific industry. In our world, those things include the Adobe Creative Cloud for all creative development software including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and more. We use Figma when creating websites. A quick Google search will help you discover the useful software services available to you and your industry online.

To Shop or Not To Shop…

There are plenty of other options for each of the software offerings shared above. But my goal is not to list all the options. It is to show you what you can grab today and get going so you don’t put off your great business idea any longer. I encourage you to look at these options first, and if you have a problem with something they don’t offer that you want or need, keep looking. But don’t let research and shopping turn into procrastination and delay. The key is to get going. And get rid of all the things that are stopping you from starting. Which sounds funny, but it’s true.

Key Takeaway

It has never been easier to set up your business infrastructure online. Start with the relevant software shared here. Shop for potential alternatives if these options don’t serve your specific needs. Many of these are available as free versions to get started, or for very low trial rates. The software offerings make it easy for you to set up a fully functional business quickly. So don’t let your infrastructure needs delay your entrepreneurial dreams. You don’t even need an IT expert to get these resources up and running. I am living proof of that.

*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.

If you want to start a successful business, start getting involved in your community. 

You’ve heard the saying that it takes a village to raise a child. Well, the same principle applies to creating a business. Because you need customers, suppliers, employees, partners, contractors, references and promoters to make a business sing. Even if you’re not in the singing business. In other words, even as a solo entrepreneur, you can’t do it alone.

That’s why it is so important to get involved in your community. As a community member, there are countless ways to show your community they can count on you, like an abacus. You can get involved as a volunteer, member, attendee, leader, or sponsor. You can teach, coach or create. You can donate your time, talent, treasure or tasty treats. And all of this helps create fertile ground to grow your business.

This happens in several different ways.

First, the more people you know, the more people will know about your business. Think of this as word-of-mouth advertising about the existence of your business. This is extremely beneficial. Because the first thing a business needs to be successful is for people to know it exists. It’s hard to hire or buy from a business that you don’t know exists. Because if you are invisible or autonomous, you are wicked hard to google.

Speaking to high school students about my career path and why I get to wear flip-flops to work.

Second, being actively involved in your community helps people connect the dots for you. (In some communities, the dots are actually women named Dot. Especially in the senior community.) The more people know about you and your business, the more likely they are to share their relevant connections to businesses, suppliers, distributors and other experts and resources that may benefit you.

Me and some of the amazing ladies I have coached on the girl’s track team at Homestead High School.

But what may be even more important is that there is a great reciprocity factor at play. When you support your community, the people of your community are more likely to support you. It’s a thing. This happens as community members buy from you, refer potential customers to you, or include you on valuable lists, or in media or social opportunities. Community members look out for their own. And the more valuable you are to your community, the more they will look out for you. Which means the more time you spend in the dunk tank at the community fundraiser the less likely your business is to get dunked or tank in real life.

Coaching flag football and teaching the boys which finger is called the index.

Your community could mean your neighborhood, your town, or the larger city you live in or near. (I like to think of this like being an active member of the village people.) But your community could also mean a community of interests at a local, state, or national level. It could mean becoming active within an industry, association, or regular event. The key is to consider where your business is active and get involved there.  

I am involved in my local community in a number of ways. I am a regular speaker within our local school district, where I talk about my career path to middle and high school students. I regularly speak at the university in our town too. (It used to be our town too…) I have coached high school track and field for 4 years. I have coached youth football for 8 years.

My business, The Weaponry, has been a presenting sponsor of our youth football program. Which included signage, announcements at games, company logos on program-issued clothing and mentions on the program website. All of which help get the word out about my business and our interest in being athletic supporters to the local community.

Speaking to my guys at Steffen Middle School, and a partially inflated chicken.

My family and I also attend band and orchestra concerts and sporting events of all types. We go to and participate in parades, festivals and fun runs. (And eat Funyuns.) We volunteer at concession stands and other activities that add value to our community. We are seen at local events regularly. And all of those events, both large and small, create connections and relationships and keep me and my business top of mind within our home base. It’s not the primary reason we do all these things. But I can assure you that your involvement is also good for you, your reputation and your business.

As you are planning or growing your business, make sure to get out and spend time supporting and adding value to your community. The more involved you are in your community, the more you will be connected to others and the valuable opportunities they can introduce you to.

Key Takeaway

As an entrepreneur or business owner, the more involved you are in your community, the more you connect with others and the opportunities they can introduce you to. You want strong ties to the people around you, and this is one of the best ways to get to know as many people as possible. Even better, when you support your community and its interests, you will find that your community supports you and your interests, too. It’s what communities 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.

The 2 Key Factors That Determine Success in Sports and Life.

I have spent a lot of time coaching and participating in sports. Both team sports and individual sports. My teams have won and lost. The individual athletes I have coached have both dominated and been dominated. Along the way, I have carefully analyzed what creates wins and losses. And I have discovered that there are 2 key factors that determine the outcomes of all sporting events. And despite what Nike and Mars Blackmon would like you to believe, it is not da shoes.

The key 2 factors that determine the outcomes of all sporting events are effort and errors.

Effort

In sporting competitions, the effort exerted by a team or individual competitor is stacked directly against the effort exerted by the other team or individual competitor.

The more effort you exert, the more likely you are to win. This is true in contact sports, races of all types, gymnastics, putting the shot, dodgeball, and Red Rover. (Where you always ask your opponent to send that low-effort kid over.)

However, effort is not the only factor at play. (See what I did there?)

Errors

The other key element that impacts every sporting event outcome is errors.

There is an ideal way to perform every move in sports, from the discus throw to the jump shot to the form tackle to the Triple Lindy. Any deviation from that technique, form, move or execution is an error. The more errors you commit, the less likely you are to win. Like Bruce Hornsby said, that’s just the way it is,

Sometimes, errors result from a lack of focus and are self-created. Other times, your errors are forced by your opponent. In fact, it is your job as a competitor to force errors in your competitors. You do this either through physical effort or through mental or psychological stress applied through pressure, confusion, conditions, or crowd noise. (Although crowd noise is illegal in tennis and golf.)

However, you and your opponent aren’t the only ones committing errors. There are also errors made by officials, judges, referees, umpires, scoreboard operators, timekeepers, and eager Cubs fans in left field excited to catch a foul ball. Their errors have the potential to completely change the outcome of a competition. Those are simply the facts of life, like Tootie, Blair, Jo and Mrs. G.

As a competitor, there are two things you can do to impact the outcome of a sporting event.

  1. Maximize your own effort.
  2. Minimize your own errors.

The rest is beyond your control.

Beyond Sports

The impact of effort and errors doesn’t just apply to sports. The same key factors influence such varied fields as business, relationships, and academic success. They are the key ingredients in gardening, investing, music performance, and even picking up hotties at a nightclub. So pay close attention to both your successes and failures. You’ll find these two critical variables play a major role in each.

Key Takeaway

Success in sports is simply a result of maximizing effort and minimizing errors. It is why you train and improve your strength and stamina. It is why you practice and drill over and over and over again. But these same influences on sports also determine the outcomes in most areas of life. From marriage to sales to self-confidence. Which is why sports are so valuable. They teach you how to be successful in all areas of life. And that’s the great win for us all.

*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.

How to build your personal brand, even without TikTok.

A good friend called me this week to tell me he had started a new business. Because his new entrepreneurial adventure would require him to sell himself to others, he asked me for my best advice on how to build a personal brand. I’m not sure if he asked me because I have spent my entire career building brands, because he admired my personal brand, or because he wanted to understand where I went wrong. I was afraid to ask. After a moment of reflection, I shared my best advice on building a personal brand. And here it is for you.

Influencers know something that other people don’t:

It is not about who you know. It really is about who knows you. 

The more people who know about you, what you know, and what you are doing, the better. The Kardashians have built an empire on this simple principle. And the fact that so many people can actually spell Kardashian is proof that it works.

The first thing you should consider when building your personal brand is to start a blog, vlog, podcast, newsletter, social media feed, or other regularly published knowledge. (Which would include having your own TV show like the Kardashians.)

When I first started The Weaponry, I also started The Adam Albrecht Blog. It has been an amazing vehicle to share my thoughts, ideas, successes, and learnings with the world. Literally. My blog has been read in over 150 countries. Who knew there were over 150 countries? (Geographers and cartographers knew. There are actually 195 countries.)

A regular commitment to sharing your knowledge and experience through blogging helps build your personal brand and reputation. For the past 9 years, I have shared my thoughts, experiences and perspectives two to three times per week. This creates a steady stream of value-adding content that I can then share on various other channels, including LinkedIn, Facebook, X, Medium, Reddit, Instagram and Threads. However, as of this morning, we Americans can no longer share our expertise or best dance moves and lip-syncing skillz on TikTok. Because apparently national security is more important.

As of this publishing, I have written and published 1,045 blog posts that I can share across my social media ecosystem. As a result, my business and I are both top of mind when people have relevant opportunities. I regularly hear from people that I haven’t seen in a long time who tell me that they think of me often. This is what sharing your content does for you. This makes it great for building your brand but terrible if you are in the witness protection program.

Podcasts, newsletters, vlogs, columns, and social media channels all work too. The key is to share information and value with the world broadly so that more people than you could reach through individual messages know about you, your skills, experience, philosophies, and your business offering.

While you may create your platform to help support your business, you never know where your platform may lead. My blog readers encouraged me to write a book. Which sounded crazy-hard, until 2020, when I suddenly had plenty of time on my over-sanitized hands to do crazy-hard things. I published my first book in 2021, building on the content I had first created for my blog. 

My first book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say?, created amazing new opportunities for me as a paid speaker, and as a guest on TV shows and podcasts. Those opportunities helped raise my profile, and enabled me to share more about my business and my personal perspective on a wide range of topics. 

In 2024 I also started publishing Adam’s Good Newsletter. The reach of the newsletter now exceeds the reach of my blog. And the newsletter is a great vehicle to share good news and information about all of my activities, interests and offerings. 

Having your own newsletter also means that you own a media channel. While Facebook, LinkedIn and X continue to modify their algorithm to their own advantage, making it harder and harder for you to share your message without paying for exposure, like at those clubs, you control everything about the way your message is shared in a newsletter. And the audience you develop for your newsletter becomes one of your greatest assets. 

What’s more, a newsletter created through a newsletter service provider like Mailchimp (which I use), Substack or others, enables you to see when readers have opened your newsletter, and which links interested them enough to click on them. This feedback enables you to create an even more valuable offering, both for your readers and for yourself and your business.

Key Takeaway 

Always remember, it’s not about who you know. It’s who knows you. Develop a platform to share what you know and what you are experiencing with others. This not only creates value for your audience, it raises your profile. It means that people will think of you more often, even when you are not thinking of them. As a result, you won’t just seek out your own new opportunities, the dynamic flips, and both people and opportunities find their way to you. Which changes everything. Kinda like a TikTok ban.

*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.

Keys to a Successful Marriage or Business Relationship: Lessons from My Grandfather.

Marriage is a fascinating human experience. It’s both highly rewarding and challenging. Yet while most couples put a lot of preparation into the wedding day, few put much, if any effort into preparing for the marriage itself. Which is why half of marriages end in I don’t. And a healthy percentage of the other half of marriages aren’t as healthy as they could be.

The Program

To help prepare for our marriage, my wife Dawn and I listened to an audio program called Marathon Marriage. We learned the many lessons and philosophies of the program and did all of the exercises shared in the 4 CD set. (At least it wasn’t on 8-track cassettes.) It was a good reminder that just as you need to prepare to run a successful marathon, you need to prepare for a long and successful marriage. So we stocked up on plenty of Gatorade and snacks. And we felt like we had a good game plan.

The Mentors

Then, on our wedding day I wanted to cram in one last bit of preparation. So I scheduled breakfast with my three marriage mentors, which included my dad and my two grandfathers (who would all laugh me off the family tree for calling them my marriage mentors). At the time, my parents had been married 32 years. My two sets of grandparents had been hitched for 61 and 63 years.

After we sat down at Emma Krumbees in Wausau, Wisconsin and worked through some Northwoods pancakes and sausage, I decided it was time for the knowledge share. I asked The Paternity Council, ‘What is the key to making a marriage great?’  With 156 years of experience at the table, I was about to get the fatherlode of great advice.

Then my 86-year-old maternal grandfather, Kenny Sprau, crossed his arms, leaned back in his chair and shared,

‘Keep doing what you’re doing.’

Um… WTF Grampy?  61 years of trial and error, nine kids and a World War, and that’s all you’ve got?  I wanted to give him a mulligan and see if he could hit it past the ladies’ tee this time. But he went on. ‘You have to keep doing the things that got you to this point.’

My Grampy, Kenneth Adam Sprau. (Thanks for the hair.)

Perspective On The Advice

While at the time the 29-year-old me was totally underwhelmed by the advice, over the past 22 years I have developed a deep appreciation for what Grampy Sprau said. Because when we are dating, we are at our best. The unfortunate tendency is to drop the hard work, energy, attention, and charm we put into the relationship after the contract is signed. Without pouring that effort, care and prioritization into the relationship, the relationship isn’t as healthy and strong as it was during your courtship and engagement. Which is kind of like leaving the cap off a bottle of soda-pop, only to realize that it’s the cap that keeps the soda popping.

Over our 22 years of marriage, I have recognized plenty of times when I was not putting in the same kind of attention and prioritization into our relationship as I did when we were just kids in the heartland, like in that little ditty ’bout Jack and Diane. It gets much harder alongside the demands of raising children, building a successful career, growing a business, and the effort required to fend off the Dad bod creep. But whenever I find that my attention to my bride has slipped (or I am reminded by my bride that my attention to my bride has slipped), I use Grampy Sprau’s advice, to help make the appropriate adjustments and corrections.

Applying The Advice To Business

Eight years after launching the advertising and ideas agency, The Weaponry, I have discovered that Grampy Sprau’s advice holds true in business as well as marriage.  You need to treat your potential clients and partners well. Act as if you would like nothing more than to spend the rest of your time together. Listen. Make them laugh. Show them you are interesting, kind and thoughtful. And then after you get the contract signed, keep doing what you’ve been doing.

In business, as in marriage, listening and collaborating are valuable approaches to your growth strategy. Clients and spouses alike really like that stuff. (Crazy right?)  When you respond favorably to a client’s request, they generate something called ‘good feelings’ about you.  And these ‘good feelings’ make them want to see you more and work with you more. And the result is business growth.

The opposite is also true.  If you are the all-time best seller at The Jerk Store, no one wants to be around you. This is true of both the individual and the organization.

If you recognize complacency, apathy or combativeness between your organization and your clients or between you and your spouse, stamp that out like a flaming bag of dog poo on your front porch. The behavior may feel justified today. But you’ll regret the justice leveled tomorrow when you’re trading the offspring in the McDonald’s parking lot.

Key Takeaway

Treat your spouse the way you did when you were dating. Treat your current business like new business. Never take either of them for granted. Work to re-win them every day. Even after you put a ring on it.

Thanks for the wise advice, Grampy.

*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.

Are you willing to trade a good life right now for a great life later?

I don’t believe in work-life balance. I never have. It’s just a nice mythical idea. Kinda like The Fountain of Youth. Or a happy Kardashian marriage. You can’t divide your life into 3 neat 8-hour blocks of work, personal time and sleep and become rich, successful and fulfilled. To have a wildly successful career you have to throw things out of balance. You need chapters of your life when you put a disproportionate amount of time and energy into your career. That’s what all of the most accomplished people you’ve never met do. It’s why they don’t have time to meet you.

Sometimes this means days of extreme dedication and focus. Sometimes it means weeks. But more likely, there will be many months and years where your career is the thing, Stephen King. You don’t have to ignore the rest of your life the way Michael Douglas ignored Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. But your career demands to be your priority during certain seasons. Just as farmers must put all their attention into harvesting when it is time to get the crop in, you must pay attention to the opportunity seasons of your career, and make all the progress you can before the window closes.

In the movie about your life, this part of your career would be the montage. You know, the part where they show quick clips of all your hard work, focus, skill development, late night sessions, early morning sessions, and burning-the-candle-at-both-ends kind of work. (You can learn everything you need to know about your montage in this 1-minute video from Team America, World Police.) If you are not willing to have your movie montage chapter (or two or three) you will not be dedicating enough focus and energy to your career to pull away from the pack.

Focusing your time and energy on your career instead of your personal life is like investing your money for greater compounded gains tomorrow rather than spending it on yourself today. That time invested in your professional development and in developing career capital will pay out in massive ways in the future if you don’t scarf your marshmallow today.

The sacrifice is worth it. But you have to keep the primary goal in mind to remember why you are not buying that timeshare in Gatlinburg or knocking off early to meet your friends at Applebee’s. And if you have a family, you and your spouse need to focus on the long-term payoff and be willing to sacrifice whatever nights, weekends, holidays, birthdays, anniversaries and vacations need to be traded now, for better versions of all of those things in the years to come.

One of the great regrets people have in life is that they didn’t do the foundational work they should have done to achieve their dreams. It is important to know about this widespread regret while you still have time to do the foundational work. The work is more than a fair trade. The payout is so handsome, (like George Clooney handsome) that is feels like a small price to pay.

I have experienced enough chapters of significant sacrifice in my advertising career to fill a forthcoming book. In the first chapter of career sacrifice, I wanted to become a stronger writer. So I spent considerable time working on and improving my craft. I read all the time. I wrote far more than my professional peers. I studied other great writers in all John Rahs. (And I learned the word is actually genres.) I read great writers’ writings on writing. I experimented with words, style, structure, tone and humor. Through that focus, my writing got sharper, smarter, and more interesting.

Then I focused a disproportionate amount of time and energy on developing my presentation skills. Because girls only want boyfriends who have great skills. I took courses. I read books. I became a student again. I practiced and applied all that I was learning. This helped make me a strong and entertaining performer in business development meetings, sales pitches and client presentations. Which led to promotions and more responsibility. Because sometimes your hard work gets you more hard work.

Next, I focused heavily on creative direction skills, leadership and management. And within a four year span I motored from my first creative director position to executive creative director to Chief Creative Officer. The only position in my industry left was CEO. And I wanted that job too.

So I began focusing on what it took to run the entire business. I learned as much as I could about accounting and finance. I learned about human resources and non-surgical operations. I learned systems and processes. Project management and IT. I learned stuff that most writers and art directors in advertising never learn anything about. But then again, they get to go to Applebee’s and eat good in the neighborhood.

I didn’t want to wait for a CEO job to open or to wait in line for the CEO in front of me to leave, or die. So I decided to grab the role for myself by starting my own agency called The Weaponry.

As an entrepreneur you not only need to know a bit about all areas of a business, you need to create the whole business from dust. That takes more time, energy, focus, learning, sacrifice and work, work, work, work, work. Like Rihanna said.

Again, I sacrificed other opportunities in my personal life to make this happen. It’s the only way to make big dreams a reality. It’s not easy. But it has been both immensely fun and rewarding.

To share what I was learning through my entrepreneurial journey, I also started this blog. This is the 1023rd blog post I have written in the past 9 years. This too requires sacrifice. I write first thing every morning. I write 5 to 7 days every week. By 6:10 am I am in my office hammering away at another post, another story, another idea. While other people are still in bed or enjoying a cup of coffee and a good social media scroll.

By dedicating so much time to writing I further developed my storytelling skills. And I found my own unique writing style. Which sounds exactly like the way I talk. Now, I write books too. And writing books takes yet another level of dedication and sacrifice. Which is a sacrifice I am willing to make, because I understand the compounding benefits that come from that investment.

Key Takeaway

The great achievements in your career don’t come easy. They don’t come at a natural pace. They come by throwing your life out of balance. By heavying your load. By gorging on learning. And by giving more time, attention and energy to your work than others are willing to give. But by unbalancing your career early your life balance will flip later, and you will receive far more financial and career capital by becoming uncommonly great at what you do. Today, I have no foundational regrets. Instead, I have the rewards of a lot of hard work and sacrifice. And not only can you take that to the bank, you can take it on long, well-deserved vacations with your family and 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.

There are no guarantees that your great idea will work every time.

Every day there are new songs, books, and blog posts. (Like the new blog post you are reading right now.)

There are new businesses, restaurants, shops, clubs and bars. Including shops where you buy clubs and bars.

There are new clothes, accessories and decoration.

And there are enough new social posts to fill a whole new social sphere every single day.

So why all the newness, Huey Lewis?

Because people have great new ideas worth betting on all the time.

However, you never know which good new ideas will wallop and which ones will whimper.

Sometimes your favorites will fail like New Coke and Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi ad. And sometimes your maybes will make a mighty roar. Like cat videos.

Learn from both.

And just keep swinging.*

The only real failure is to stop sharing your new ideas.

*Don’t actually be a swinger.

If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them. Especially if you know Kendall Jenner or anyone thinking about swinging.

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

How to do hard things.

When I was in college I had a summer job setting up large party tents in Vermont. I loved pitching a tent. It was hard. But looking back, that’s what I loved about it.

The hardest part of the erection process was driving the 4-foot-long steel stakes into the ground. The stakes create the foundation for the tent. You tie the tent ropes to the stakes to help hold the tent upright and sturdy.

To drive the stakes into the ground we used sledgehammers that were 8, 12 or 16-pounds. Size mattered. Because if you swung a bigger hammer you could get the job done in fewer swings.

Sometimes, when the ground was soft, the stakes would go in smoothly. But in Vermont and New Hampshire where I drove most of my stakes, the ground was very hard. They don’t call New Hampshire The Granite State for nothing. (And they don’t call Vermont the Granite State at all, but that’s just because New Hampshire already took it, for granite.)

But during those college years, I learned a valuable lesson about how to do hard things. Because the only way to get those 4-foot stakes in the ground was to keep pounding away until the job was done. More often than not the stakes went in an inch or less at a time. And sinking a 4-foot shaft neck-deep at that rate can be exhausting. But it was the only way to finish the job.

I applied that just-keep-swinging-till-it’s-done lesson in my athletic career as a track and field athlete at the University of Wisconsin. Today, I apply the same lesson to building the advertising and ideas agency, The Weaponry, writing my blog posts, newsletters and books. And simply not stopping until the work is done has never failed to produce results. Even when things get really, really hard.

Key Takeaway

The only way to get a job done is to just keep pounding until you are finished. Hit the task again and again and again. This is true when you are driving stakes in the ground in Vermont, building a company, advancing your career, trying to meet your fitness goals, or getting your education. Focus your efforts. Pound away. And just don’t stop until the job is done.

*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.