KEEP CLIMBING, I GUESS

Just passed over 100 hours running in 2025, and almost 52,000′ of climbing.

Running about 30 miles a week the last five weeks, and over 5,000′ of elevation. Flirting with 6,000′ of climbing the last few weeks now, too.

I’m starting to double up some hills. Before I’d just go up and run back down, now I’m doing them twice in one session. Two ups. Two downs. Thighs of steel, baby.

Shuffling and jogging up some sections that I used to have to walk. Getting strong, fitting back into shirts and jackets I couldn’t wear earlier this year.

Damn, feels good to be hitting 49 tomorrow.

ACTIVATION VS PERSUASION

Your next big break is probably right under your nose. Your next sale, job, whatever.

“Marketers face a choice every day: hustle for new people or serve the ones who care. Activation is much more productive than persuasion.” Seth Godin

The most frequent question I get with my Email Guidance offering is “how do I get more subscribers,” and I never answer it. Instead, we dig deeper into their existing audience, asking “are you 100% that everyone on your current email list knows about your thing?”

And if so – is your website set up in a way that makes it easy for them to support your work?

SURFACE AREA

There’s the saying to increase the surface area for luck, but I’m telling you… meeting new folks increases the surface area for COOL STUFF.

I just got off a Zoom call with some great folks and met Andrew White and I want him to take photos of me running up the hills I try to run up (just kidding, I’d look awful), and also discovered Andrew(?) Byrd who is running an analog recording competition – making and recording music with no computers!

I know, I know… the surface area thing… for networking, for finding jobs, yes, sure. Of course. But wow, there are just so many amazing people out there doing great work.

DELETING ALL YOUR SUBSTACK DATA IS TOO EASY

It is UNREAL that any setting other than DELETE MY ENTIRE SUBSTACK would delete your whole entire substack.

Please help.

My Substack publication. All my subscribers. All my posts. Everything gone.

How? I deleted my podcast and a glitch in the substack system meant it wiped everything.

A similar thing happened to 

Chelsey Pippin Mizzi (although she still had her publication and data it wiped all her posts).

My stripe account is still working. I don’t know if my publication will come back. I don’t know if I create a new publication if it will attach to old stripe data. Or if I have to effectively bankrupt myself to refund everyone and then re-ask them to subscribe to a new publication.

Has this happened to anyone else? Can anyone help?

This happened to me, but it only wiped out about 10 video posts. Thankfully I had full back up copies of those videos, and was able to piece together the posts again. But the permalinks, the comments, the views, etc. – all gone.

DOUBLE UPS

Doing more of the thing you want to do usually leads to more of what you want to do.

That doesn’t mean I should eat pizza and ice cream everday, of course, but the math adds up soon enough.

Months ago I got back to my running practice. Some days I just couldn’t grind through a three or four mile run.

Sure enough, I wasn’t eating enough to have the energy for those runs, so they always sucked.

Once you start eating to run, running gets easier.

And so now I’ve run 30 miles a week for the past few weeks, and usually hitting 5000′ of elevation along the way.

I’m not the fastest, but I’m probably the only ding dong who runs up and down this dirt road with no guard rail at least once a week.

And this past Sunday I did it twice, because hey, at 48 years old if you’re not challenging yourself, most likely no one else will, either.

BLOGGING IS FIGHTING

It’s a lie that “people stopped reading blogs.” There are plenty of people reading blogs, and writing them. It’s just that there’s no giant smoke-and-mirrors machine at work convincing everyone of the fact – that’s what social media has been doing.

  • The product makers (Apple, Samsung, etc) all convinced us we need the best new phones.
  • The cellular companies convinced us we needed unlimited plans and 5G speeds.
  • The social media companies kept us scrolling, watching, liking.

Three collosal industries working together to keep you consuming, and making it seem ludicrous to consider anything else.

Which is why all those “I left Instagram” and “I switched to a dumbphone” articles are so popular. They’re like the Matrix allowing certain people to leave the system, knowing so many other people will accept the program as it’s built.

Make your blogs. Link to other blogs. They’re not back, they never left.