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.
A few months ago, something coo-coo happened with my default search browser on my laptop. This is not something I would typically write about. (Or read about.) But stay with me. There is a valuable lesson at the end of this techno-rainbow.
Instead of defaulting to Google for search, suddenly my computer was defaulting to Yahoo’s search engine, as if it were 1995.
For months, I would type a search into the search bar and it would take me to Yahoo’s results page, which, unlike a Snickers, was not very satisfying.
So I began to simply type Google into the search bar, then click on Google, and then perform my search once I had arrived at the Googler.
This was inefficient. And a waste of time. (But you already knew that.)
So one day I went to Google, and googled how to make Google your default search engine.
I got the answer immediately.
Because Google is good like that.
The process of changing my search engine took about 20 seconds.
And every day since then I have enjoyed a highly efficient search process.
The Bigger Lesson
The experience served as a reminder that we all have unnecessary inefficiencies that are slowing us down, wasting our time, and negatively impacting our productivity or our quality of life.
Recognize those inefficiencies and eliminate the time-wasting workarounds. Look for opportunities to improve your processes to save you time, energy and money over the long haul.
This may include improving your processes. It may include training others to do tasks so that you don’t have to. It may include fixing a broken or worn-out thing you have been working around. It may involve cleaning or organizing so that you can easily find the things you need when you need them. Which is kind of like Google in the physical world.
Key Takeaway
There are unnecessary inefficiencies in your world right now. Addressing them will take a little bit of time now, but save you a lot of time later. Seek out ways to improve your professional and personal productivity by improving your processes, training others, fixing, and organizing. It will eliminate your time-stealing workarounds. And decrease the friction in your work and in your life.
*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.
Like many avid self-improvers, I’m trying to grow into the best version of myself. This means adherence to healthy and productive habits. Which is hard. Because there are a lot of fun things on this planet that are unhealthy and counterproductive. Like sweet tea and turtle sundaes.
But I have found that if you gamify your life, your life becomes more fun and you get better results. This doesn’t simply mean playing more games. It means turning everything into a game. Like Milton Bradley. Or compulsive gamblers.
My life games start when my alarm first goes off in the morning. And they don’t stop until I am in bed again at night. These games help me feel like I am scoring points and winning all day long. It’s an easy way to make the actions that I know I should take each day more enjoyable and rewarding.
Fill Your Day With Games
Your work is packed with opportunities to win every day. But so is your home life, your social life, your health, your wealth, and your general self-improvement activities.
Consider the following ideas to get started.
You can gamify your sleep. Get to bed by a certain time, and you win. Wake up at a pre-set time and you win. Get a set number of hours of total sleep and you win. Don’t get kicked out of bed for snoring, and you win.
You can make weight loss a competition. Or make weight maintenance a game. I track my weight every day with the Happy Scale app, which gives me the opportunity for daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and even lifetime wins. Plus, you get bonus wins when you look in the mirror. And every time you can button your pants.
You can make your good habits a game. Stacking days in a row of consistently completing your good habits at work or at home is a win. There are so many good habits worth developing and maintaining that there are hundreds of ways to win every day. Like Lotto games say. (But don’t play Lotto. Bet on yourself.)
You can turn meeting new people into a game. Gamifying people-meeting incentivizes you to expand your circle of friends and grow your network. Give yourself points for every new person you know by name. Having more friends expands your opportunities, supports your mental health, and gives you more phone-a-friend options if you are ever a contestant on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
Grow-Your-Net Worth is a game that pays you a cash prize. And increases your peace of mind. Definitely track and stack your assets. And if they hate, then let them hate and watch the money pile up.
I play the Drink-A-Glass-Of-Water-First-Thing-Every-MorningGame. And I am crushing it at this game. Proper hydration is key to great health and human performance. So play this drinking game every morning.
I gamify annual adventures with friends. Gamifying it makes scheduling our time together a priority.
I play the Start-Each-Day-With-A-Smile game. And I’m happier as a result.
I try to be the first one to apologize when I get into a quarrel with a friend or loved one. I also compete to keep the word quarrel in use, since it has been decreasing in popularity for like 500 years.
I track my time on my phone each week and try to keep it below a winning standard.
I try to get to church every Sunday during Advent and Lent to win the Advent and Lent games.
By turning the positive behaviors you want to see from yourself into a game, they become fun to-dos. You can quantify your positive actions. Through small actions, you can put points on the board every day. Which means you can always count the good things you did, even on bad days.
Key Takeaway
You win at life in small ways, every day. By gamifying the actions, habits and behaviors you value, you are giving yourself a fun and easy way to track them, and stack them. It’s a great way to make yourself feel like a winner every day. It’s builds confidence and positive self talk. And it creates a clear and easy guide that you can use to measure your life. So start gamifying your life today. You can play every day. And like the state lottery commission, you can add new games every day to keep your interest up and to encourage the behaviors you value most.
*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.
I have been listening to a lot of Parker McCollum lately.
The country singer just released his 5th studio album, titled “Parker McCollum.” I am not sure how you decide to name your 5th album after yourself. Unless you are The Jackson 5.
One of the songs on the album is titled, “My Own Worst Enemy.”
The song is interesting. And entertaining.
But I can’t relate to it.
I realized while listening to the lyrics of the song that I am definitely NOT my own worst enemy. I have other people for that.
I am not self destructive.
I don’t talk smack to myself.
I don’t beat myself up.
I don’t have a cluster of bad habits or vices that I can’t unscrew.
Unfortunately, my relationship with myself will not inspire a classic country song. Or anything blues related.
But acknowledging that I am not my own worst enemy led to an interesting new question in my squishy gray matter.
Who am I to me?
Since the worst enemy title doesn’t fit me, I started wondering if the opposite was true.
So I asked myself:
Am I my own best friend?
I found that I could make a strong case for the affirmative.
The conversations I have with myself are supportive.
I give myself pep talks.
I encourage myself.
I remind myself of the reasons to believe in myself.
I keep a list of examples of success close at hand for regular reference.
I keep a list of examples of success in my Rolodex to call on when needed.
I start each day with an encouraging talk. Sometimes in my head. Sometimes aloud. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference.
I turn to myself in challenging situations.
I don’t suffer from imposter syndrome.
Instead, I always ask, “Why not me?”
And as much as I enjoy spending time with others, I am quite happy in my own company.
When people don’t like me, I typically consider it to be their issue, not mine.
I laugh to myself and at myself a lot. Which also feels a little loony.
I reminisce a lot with myself.
I reflect a lot on myself.
In fact, this writing is a reflection on my reflection. Which is totally metta.
When I was considering starting the advertising and ideas agency The Weaponry, I really believed I could do it. And I sent myself out to talk to people I thought would corroborate that belief.
I trust myself.
And while I know I am not perfect, I forgive myself for my shortcomings. I work on getting better every day and focus on the potential and the progress. Which is a friendly thing to do for yourself.
Key Takeaway
For better or worse, I act like my own best friend. (Which may also be a sign that no one else wanted the job.) I encourage you to strive to be your own best friend. Encourage yourself. Forgive yourself. Believe in yourself. Trust yourself. Be kind to yourself. The rest of the world will throw enough challenges your way. Don’t make your relationship with yourself another obstacle to success. Treat yourself as if you were your own BFF. It will make you happier, more confident and more resilient. And you will find there is no limit to what you can accomplish together.
*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.
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.
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.
The greatest way to increase your value to yourself and others is through reading.
You could just stop reading this post now and go grab a book to read instead.
But I am going to drop some new reading knowledge on you that is worth 90 seconds of attention.
Why Should You Read?
Bill Gates reads about 50 books a year. Or about a book each week.
Warren Buffett famously reads about 500 pages per day.
Lin-Manuel Miranda bought the book Hamilton to read on vacation in Mexico.
So read books that expand your thinking and your knowledge base.
Read to understand how things work.
Read for inspiration, motivation, and all the other great ations.
Read to understand how successful people became successful.
Read about what worked in the past in your field of expertise.
And read to learn what is changing in your field, so you can surf that change, rather than get pummeled by it.
Read to improve your writing and expand your vocabulary.
Read to develop your focus and your patience for long-term goals.
But most importantly…
Read To Separate Yourself From The Pack.
Despite all of the mental nutrition and long-term success that sprouts from reading, a new study just released by researchers at the University of Florida and University College London (which sounds like the fakest British school name ever) found that reading for pleasure among Americans has declined by 40% over the past two decades.
In 2004, 28% of Americans said they read for fun.
In 2023, only 16% said they read because they wanted to.
It is not lost on me, or the researchers, that Facebook launched in 2004 and the iPhone was released in 2007. Together, social media and smart phones may be accomplices, killing reading softly, like Roberta Flack or the Fugees.
This all means that people who read books have a greater competitive advantage now than ever before.
However, this is massively skewed by the avid readers.
In fact, estimates reveal that between 25-46% of adults READ NO BOOKS each year.
And the median number of books read annually by adults is only about 4. That’s how much the average person hates paper cuts.
Which means there are fewer and fewer people after the pot of gold at the end of the Reading Rainbow.
There are fewer people who are willing to do the slow, steady, yet transformational work of knowledge gain through reading. While others are settling for bite-sized bits of video, podcasts, and tweetable wisdom served by algorithms, readers are accumulating broad and deep knowledge that helps make them more capable, valuable and irreplaceable.
The new study also revealed that those who do read for fun are spending more time doing so. Because while haters gonna hate, readers gonna read.
And in the era of artificial intelligence, it is the humans who can contribute more than the machines that will be in greatest demand.
Key Takeaway
Now more than ever, reading is your great competitive advantage. Your self-directed education makes you a valuable and irreplaceable resource. It improves your thinking. Which drives smarter decisions and actions. And it draws other people to you who want to tap into what you know.
*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.
This spring, I began a Misogi Challenge. These are demanding personal challenges that push your limits in order to develop character, confidence and self-reliance. Win or lose, they create great stories that make your obituary a more interesting read.
Such challenges are meant to push your outer limits, with a high likelihood of failure. The 2 basic rules for a Misogi Challenge are that they should be really, really hard. But you are not supposed to die. I have found that there is plenty of room for suffering within those boundaries.
To bench press 300 pounds. Because it is hard. And it’s a nice round number. Especially the two zeros at the end.
To bench press 315 pounds. Because this is three 45 lb plates on each side of the bar, and it looks freaking awesome.
To bench press 335 pounds. Because this was my maximum bench press when I was an 18-year-old high school student. Today, I am 52 years old, and have a white collar job that requires practically no physical labor beyond keyboard tickling.
To live to fight another day. Because I also want to be smart and not push myself to an injury.
This past Sunday, I made my final push to complete my Misogi Bench Press Challenge. #punalwaysintended
I took on the final challenge in my home gym, with my 3 teenage mutant children Ava, Johann and Magnus as witnesses. Not only did I want them with me to spot me, but I knew that having my kids in the room watching would provide additional motivation. And I needed all I could get.
If I succeeded, I would be setting a great example of hard work, determination and personal accomplishment for my kids. If I failed, I would be showing my kids that sometimes we set lofty goals for ourselves, and we fall short. But it’s the attempt that matters. It isMan In The Arena stuff. Which is also Woman In The Arena stuff.
I started with a 10-minute warmup on my Matrix elliptical machine. Then I stretched well. I believe that my commitment to warming up and stretching before my workouts has been key to my performance, injury prevention and longevity. My body still works and feels mostly the way it should. And I still have most of my original factory parts.
So I readied myself for the goal weight of 335 pounds. This was the weight that I had been focused on for months. It would answer the question, ‘Can you be as strong at 52 years old as you were when you were a high school kid, training during the peak of your high school career?’ I was a strong 18-year-old kid. I was the state champ in the shot put. I was the New England Champion in the discus. And I never saw another kid in my high school bench 335 lbs or more.
To hit that same weight 34 years later was a daunting task. But a major win if I could do it. Because coming up just 5 lbs short of the mark would mean that I wasn’t quite as strong as I was at 18. Certainly understandable. But also a bummer to lose the competition with my 18-year-old Zubaz-wearing self.
I prowled around the room, yelling motivation to myself. I have always been my own best hype man. I worked myself into a lather in a process I call Summoning. The basic premise is that we all have some maximum physical capability. The key to acheiving the maximum physical performance is to summon as much of your capacity as you can. So I summon as much energy, focus and fury as I can. It may be a little embarrassing to see on film, but it has always driven results. So I go with it.
I had Limp Bizkit’s Rollin’ (Air Raid Vehicle)on 11 in my AirPods. This is my go-to bench press song. Something about the lyrics (Breathe In now Breathe out, Hands up now Hands down…) feels highly appropriate for bench pressing. Plus, swear words get me hyped. (Sorry, Mom.)
I lay down on the bench, gripped the bar, and twisted it until it felt just right. I counted aloud, 1…2…3! And hoisted the bar off the red Rogue rack. I lowered the fully-loaded bar down to my chest and pushed with everything I had.
And the bar began to rise off my chest.
I knew I had it.
I began to yell as I pushed the bar through the full range of motion.
My kids didn’t even get a chance to yell encouragement at me, because I was yelling at myself. And the bar was obviously moving north.
I locked out the top position, re-racked the bar, and went freaking nutz-o!
I was so hyped I just kept yelling, and celebrating. I grabbed the hands of each of my 3 kids who were spotting me. Johann, then Magnus then Ava.
Then I turned and yelled at the camera. It was a Seven-Yeah Celebration. Like Usher would do.
I was so freaking hyped!
I had set a high bar for this Misogi Challenge.
And I met it.
With all 3 of my kids as witnesses.
And 2 cameras rolling, to catch the result, win or lose.
But I knew I hadn’t hit my limit. So I decided to try one more attempt. This would be above my goal weight. So I turned to Ava, my most experienced offspring in the iron arts, and asked, ‘Should I go for 340 or 345 lbs?’
Without hesitating, she said, ‘340. You always tell me to make sure I get the lift, rather than stretching too far.’
So she served up the good advice I had been dishing out. And I took it.
Now I was playing with house money. Plus, at that point, I had happy-hype coursing through my system.
5 minutes later, with Black Sabbath’s Iron Man sawing through my AirPods, I lay down under the bar, again. I un-racked the bar, lowered it and pressed. The weight moved. My kids blasted me with encouragement. I pushed at full strength until I had locked out the weight. Then I re-racked the bar.
I was instantly flooded with my favorite feeling: MaxHap. It’s the term I use for maximum happiness. It’s my version of self-actualization. Or flow. Or euphoria. It’s the drug that Huey Lewis was seeking. And I still haven’t found a negative side effect.
Everything had gone right. I set and met a hard goal, with a high chance of failure. Then I exceeded it. Which meant that I can say definitively that I am stronger at 52 than I was at 18. And I was 6 feet tall and 215 pounds back then. And headed to the University of Wisconsin to throw for the Badgers. Yet somehow, 34 years later, I was still pushing myself. That’s some crazy train stuff, Ozzy!
But even better, I experienced this with my kids. They were all in the room where it happened. They saw me attempt something hard and succeed. They saw me working towards my goal for months. They saw me fail reps along the way, but I kept on going. They saw the focus, determination and craziness that I tapped into to rise to the occasion. They were there to encourage me. And to catch me if I failed.
That was an amazing experience.
Now I am done with this challenge. I have banked the results in my list of life experiences. It has bolstered my confidence and my belief that I can handle hard things. So I move forward, mentally stronger than I was before I started. Which is the whole point of the challenge.
Key Takeaway
Push yourself to do hard things. Stretch your limits. Test yourself. Make commitments to yourself that are hard to keep. Then keep them anyway. It will build your confidence and self-reliance. It will toughen you up. The work and the suffering and pushing past your past limits make you feel alive and ready for anything. Give yourself a Misogi Challenge. Because when the world becomes too comfortable, you need to seek out discomfort to grow and experience life more deeply. Make it a regular part of your life. It will help you live a life worth talking about. Which means that whether or not you win or lose your self-challenge, you win at life.
*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.
This year, I have had a tall flapjack stack of fun and interesting experiences outside of work.
I traveled to Nashville in May to visit colleges and enjoy some live music at the Grand Ole Opry. (Although I still have no idea what an opry is.)
I spent our family’s spring break in Arizona, splitting time between Scottsdale and Sedona. (I didn’t have time for standing on the corner in Winslow.)
I completed a circle tour of Lake Michigan, seeing many things that are not that far away by the way the crow flys or the salmon swims, but quite far away by the way the car drives.
I coached 2 great athletes at the Wisconsin State High School Track Championship on the other side of the state in La Crosse.
I attended a family reunion in southern Minnesota, in my mom’s hometown of Elkton, with a whole flock of reuning relatives.
How To Profit From Your Experiences
My goal, when I experience such things, is to come back different.
I don’t want these to be inert experiences.
You want the special experiences of your life to have impact.
You want them to expand your view of the world.
You want them to create new or deeper relationships.
You want new learning.
You want new ideas.
You want to grow through each one of your novel experiences and be better as a result. (Your novel experiences don’t have to include a novel.)
You want to be a different and more capable version of yourself after the experience than you were before. (And you want to maintain all of your limbs and phalanges.)
When you aim to grow, expand and improve through your experiences, you will always find your path to accomplish your aim.
You will spot things you have never seen before.
You will recognize the learning, the lessons and the insights when they arrive.
You will grab the opportunity to meet new people you encounter. And you will find that each new person you meet will change you in some way. Sometimes these changes are large and profound. Other times, they are small and seemingly insignificant. But if you genuinely try to get to know people in a greater way, you will walk away a greater person.
Key Takeaway
Throughout your human experience, always look for ways to grow. Collect and connect dots. Add new humans to your world. Expand your circle of friends. Upgrade your world view. Come back from your experiences and adventures smarter, wiser and more informed. It helps generate excitement and curiosity every time you leave home. And it brings you back better, wiser and more creative than you were when you left.
*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.
I composed my first email message when I was a college student. It was my second or third year of college at the University of Wisconsin. I wrote the email to my parents from the computer lab at college. Because back then, almost no students in my socio-economic subdivision owned their own computers.
I was awestruck by the idea of this new technology. It would allow me to send a written letter to my parents, but without having to find a sheet of paper or an envelope. I wouldn’t have to buy a stamp. Or lick a stamp. I wouldn’t have to find a mailbox. Or lick a mailbox. And I wouldn’t have to wait a week for them to get the letter. They would get it instantaneously! This was some kind of magic from the future. And I couldn’t wait to try it out.
But when I went to write my first high-tech email letter, something went wrong.
I quickly filled the small field provided for the message with my first sentence. Then, as I continued to type, the new words pushed the old words out of the field. It was very confusing. But, hey, this was magic mail. And I was just a regular human. So I figured I wasn’t supposed to fully understand the wizardry.
I stared at the email for a long time, trying to understand what was happening to my message. But finding no good explanation, I eventually poked the send button and sent my magic mail into the ether, hoping it would land as promised inside my parents’ home computer in the woods of Norwich, Vermont.
The next day, when I received a reply email from my parents, I realized what had gone wrong.
I wrote my entire email letter to them in the subject field.
Looking back, it is easy to laugh at that mistake. It is easy to say I was a dufus. Or a doofus. (Both of which are dictionarily acceptable.)
But I find inspiration in this story. Because it serves as a reminder that when you try new things, you will be bad at them. Or at least as bad as you will ever be.
But just because you are bad at things at first doesn’t mean you will be bad at them forever. In fact, the only way to greatness is to travel through badness and mediocrity. It’s like traveling through the wardrobe into Narnia.
My first email experience demonstrates that by trying, experimenting and exploring, you grow and expand your capabilities. You have to be willing to try new things to accomplish new things. You have to be willing to be bad to become good. You have to be willing to make mistakes to make yourself great.
I am now 9 years into leading the advertising and ideas agency, The Weaponry. And I can draw a direct connection from my willingness to try to ride a bike, to my willingness to try to write my first email, to my eagerness to try to launch a startup business. They are all plunges into the unknown. They all involved missteps, mistakes, mistypes, or mispedals.
Here’s The Recipe:
You try.
You mess up.
You learn.
You correct.
You try again.
You improve.
You try again.
You improve again.
And you just keep trying.
Forgive my braggadocio, but today, I am freaking good at writing emails. I can fill in the To, CC, and BCC fields like a boss. I can write a subject that will tell the recipient why they should want to read the email. I can craft a clear, concise, compelling and occasionally comedic message. And I write that whole message in the body section. I can add an attachment. I can change the font size. I have a standard signature that includes my name, title, office location, and website address. My email also lets people know that I wrote a book called, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? And that I publish Adam’s Good Newsletter. Which is a newsletter that I send out regularly via email. Boom!
Key Takeaway
Don’t be afraid to try something new because you think you will be bad at it. You will be bad at it. At least as bad as you will ever be. But that is the price you pay to achieve greatness. You have to humble yourself at the beginning of the process. Which helps you appreciate your growth and ultimate success. The learning journey is the life journey. So learn as much as you can. It’s how you create the most rewarding life.
*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them. And if you want to show off your email skillz, send me a note at adam@theweaponry.com.
Adam Albrecht Blog 