I work in a firm that runs advertising campaigns for clients — paid search. A way to paid search is to launch Google Ads. Google charges you, the advertiser, a fee every time someone clicks on your ad. This is called “Cost per Click” or CPC. Every word you type into Google has a value. That value is based on how much intent Google thinks you have to buy a service or a product. “Where can I find cheap legal service” is high intent versus “legal services.”If I want to buy clicks from high-intent buyers, I must spend lots of money. The next best type of click you can get is an organic click. That’s a click that doesn’t come from any form of paid-search. It’s an 18+ month slog of creating content, optimization, testing, re-testing… you don’t know want to know. If you want to high intent organic buyers, you must invest time.You now have two things. A basic understanding of digital advertising; andA deep principle of what it means to attract the people who care — you have to invest in them, you have to show up for them. There are no shortcuts.

I’ve been using this nifty device to advocate for myself. Try it.Situation: Moment when I interpret the events of something in a negative way. Perhaps someone said something to me that I didn’t like. Maybe I didn’t like the result of something I tried.ActionsReflect: Determine the story that I’m telling myself about what just happened.Declare: “Hey, the story that I’m telling myself now is that ____”Ask: “Is this story accurate? What am I missing? How do I make this a more complete story?”Listen. Incorporate what you learned back into your story. Ask yourself: What would it mean for me to believe this new story? Start telling yourself that new story. EnjoyTry it out!

Because vomiting requires the use of your core muscles.And if your core muscles aren’t strong enough, vomits will be painful. There’s always a silver lining… (I’m sick… that’s why I’m vomiting…)

I am contemplating rethinking the idea of failure. I want to have a less toxic relationship with the term; but, I don’t want to celebrate the term and make it more than it is. I think of a failure as a “swing and a miss” — to use a baseball concept. After you swing and miss, you re-orientate yourself, learn, and swing again. I think of failure like I think of baseball… and there’s no crying in baseball.

Work requires us to engage with and apply a force upon the world. Work is active, stressful, and demands focus. You can’t be that way all the time. You need to stop, breathe, and contemplate.The actions I did today, who were they for? what were they for? Did my work make change happen? Was it the change those I seek to serve hoped for? What must I do tomorrow to serve more?Sleep. Wake.Apply force.

I know many people who ask ChatGPT to write and analyze things for them. Prompts that look like: “Write an email to my customers…”What if we pretended we were the customer? The one being served by our message. I started using prompts like: “I’m an attorney, I care about growing my business. I don’t know much about marketing, and I don’t want to spend time focusing on x, y, and z. I recently started with {insert business name here) to solve my marketing problems. What should I expect in my first meeting from them? How will I know they know what they’re talking about and looking after my investment?”It takes a bit more time. Then again, empathy of any kind takes time. Always worth the result.

My body told me to do it. Perhaps it was the crisp fall air hitting my face. Perhaps I had the energy to do it.Perhaps it’s because there was a nice long path that invited it. Great things can happen when environment meets desire.

I think I’m intellectually drained. Too many inputs this week; hard to keep it together. But I did. What helped?Closing my eyes for 15 seconds (my goal was 5 minutes) and breathing. I may not have made the most optimum decisions, but I successfully avoided bad ones.Pause, let life get ahead of you, breathe, take a step. Perfection is not a useful goal.Forward is.

She developed a long term strategy.

She kept her head above the fray — stayed rational, stayed focus.

She executed with precision.

She won.

Her outcome is a direct result of her actions.

What’s her secret? Besides awesome brothers coaching her along… her secret is her ability to tame the impulses generated by fear, still the mind, and do what she needs to do: she spoke up and advocated for herself when the odds weren’t in her favor.

If you want someone to respond to you, that’s a terrible way to get a response. Think about it.Now I, the respondent, must wonder when I’m available:I click to open the calendar;I think about the date;I think about what needs to NOT be a priority so that I can speak to you;I click to move my calendar around;I click back into my email to write you a reply (if I have that energy).If you are really serving others, make things easy for them. Consider, “I’ll call you tomorrow afternoon to review.” Now, I, the respondent, must:Look at tomorrow afternoon,Respond to you when I’d rather you call.In the latter option, I - the respondent, am thinking about when we’ll chat next versus if we’ll chat.Inspired by too many people asking me to tell them when I want to connect next.