Use the Past

The Simple Newsletter - Issue # 093

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Adam’s Thoughts

Oh my goodness.

What a week.

It’s been unbelievably productive.

Tom and I have been working through writing our new book.

By the way, it’s finished.

We’ll launch it in January.

But what’s been most interesting is everything that came after finishing it.

Once we became crystal clear on the direction, everything else started to fall into place.

Over the last five years of working together, Tom and I have built up an incredible amount of knowledge.

Not just about coaching.

About building "Our" particular business.

Marketing.

Sales.

Content.

Events.

Relationships.

Systems.

What works.

What doesn’t.

And now, for the first time, we have one centralized point to deploy all of that experience against.

It feels like a firestorm of strategy.

Suddenly, all these things we’ve learned over the years have somewhere to go.

And it’s amazing what happens when experience finally meets clarity.

All the pieces that once felt separate start working together.

It’s rare.

But when it happens, man, it’s exciting.

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Adam’s Lessons

We are an aggregation of everything we’ve experienced.

The successes.

The failures.

The good decisions.

The terrible ones.

And every once in a while, I think we need to step back and revisit all of it.

Because when you do, patterns start to appear.

That’s exactly what Tom and I did this week.

We asked:

Why did things go right in the past?

And more importantly:

When did things go wrong?

That second question became incredibly useful.

Not just why something failed.

But where in the chain of events did it begin to fail?

Because once you can identify that moment, you can start seeing it before it happens again.

We were able to take tactics we’ve used successfully in the past and ask:

How can we leverage this now?

And we were able to look at the things that didn’t work and say:

If we apply this old tactic to what we’re building now, where is it likely to break?

That’s wisdom.

Not pretending you’ll never make another mistake.

But using the mistakes you’ve already made so you don’t have to keep paying for the same lesson.

Your past is full of information.

But only if you’re willing to go back and look at it.

Otherwise, it just becomes business as usual.

And business as usual rarely creates anything extraordinary.

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So here’s my question for you this week:

When was the last time you looked back at your biggest successes and failures—not to judge them, but to find the patterns you can use right now?

Reply and tell me. While I can’t respond to every message, Tom and I read every reply, and we genuinely appreciate hearing from you.

That’s all for this week.

See you next Saturday.