Three things from this week.
First. I never thought I’d say this but I lost most of an afternoon to DNS records.
Not a metaphor. I set the newsletter up on a new platform and, without really thinking about it, pointed it at www.lightpathadvisory.com. Which is where my actual website lives. So for a couple of days, if you typed the www version you got the newsletter, and if you dropped the www you got the company site. I didn't notice on my own. Somebody had to tell me.
Untangling it ate the rest of the day. Moved the newsletter onto its own subdomain, which broke something else, which threw an error that made it look like my entire website had vanished. I sat there staring at an error page for my own company for a solid ten minutes before I worked out that my browser had cached it and the site had been fine the whole time.
The part I keep chewing on is that nobody stopped me. In a company with actual people in it, somebody walks past and says why is the owner doing this. When it's your company, that person does not exist unless you go build them. I've said some version of that to thirty founders this year and I still burned four hours on a job I could have handed off for a hundred and fifty bucks.
Second thing. I'm coaching both boys' baseball this fall, which may turn out to be a mistake, I don’t think so, but only time will tell right? Between that and everything else the calendar got crowded fast.
What's saved us is a Skylight. It's a big touchscreen calendar that hangs in the kitchen. Not an affiliate link, we just use it. Everybody's stuff goes on it, the kids can check it themselves, and I've stopped being the guy who gets asked where everyone is supposed to be on Saturday morning.
Turns out the fix at home was the same as the fix at work. Get it out of my head and onto something everybody can see.
What are you using? Hit reply and tell me, I'll steal it.
Last one. Somebody showed me this and I felt a little dumb for not knowing it already.
If you've got a pile of prospects or clients sitting in a spreadsheet and you want them in your phone, don't sit there typing them in one at a time. Hand the list to Claude or ChatGPT and ask it to spit out a .vcf file. Email it to yourself, tap it on your phone, and they all load at once. Or better yet, if you have a MacBook, you can just import them right from the desktop.
I had a list I'd been avoiding for months. Four minutes. Done.
That's what I've got.
Max
P.S. This one is a lot shorter than the last two on purpose. Going weekly with these and saving the long pieces for once a month. Let me know if you hate it.