525,600: Do you know this number?

There are two seemingly opposite realizations that whenever I encounter them I’m stopped in my tracks.

Some people accomplish incredible tasks and have outsized impact on the world, and leave us way too early. For example Jimi Hendrix was a virtuoso on the guitar and pioneered the sounds of rock music in ways that are still being felt 55 years after his death. He was 27.

The other side to the same coin is that there are many stories of people who got started much later in life. For 22 years from age 40 to 62, Colonel Sanders was just making chicken and selling it at his service station. You read that correctly. KFC started as gas station food. When the business man began franchising his secret recipe and business operations he was already in his sixties. He lived on until he was 90, still active in parts of the business and appearing as an advertising personality and the face of KFC.

The lesson here? Each year contains 525,600 minutes. That’s quite a lot. Except they seem to disappear very quickly (especially as I get older). Coming to terms with time and choosing to live life to the fullest is perhaps the greatest super power available.

It’s Finger Lickin’ Good

Today’s media and advertising landscape is crowded. The best marketers are struggling to get their message noticed. Big brands are stumbling with huge advertising spend all the time. Not only that, many small creators, local business and solopreneur sales agents are feeling lost in the noise.

It is in this context that this advice from KFC’s founder seems so right. Just because no one liked the post, or the video views were lower than expected doesn’t mean that you’re headed in the right direction.

Act - Fail - Learn

You probably know this. Most people can probably internalize the truth that failure is the best teacher. But that doesn’t necessarily make it an easy pill to swallow. That’s why remembering is so important. So if nothing else let this be that. A reminder that having done something, even if it didn’t work, is better than doing nothing at all.

Sort of a dust yourself off and get back on that horse kind of message.

We all need it sometimes.

A Green Chicken Aptly Named Doomberg

A fascinating and in depth conversation that made me think of two things:

How do I know what’s really going on?

Politics is an incredible playground of marketing

This is an economics podcast from Canada. I realize that could be a real deal breaker for some of you, but I would encourage you to give it a shot. The guest for this episode is Doomberg. He has a subscription email newsletter which is one of the most successful substack publications in the finance category with a green chicken as the logo. Just thinking about that success from the perspective of a writer and marketer was inspiring. But beyond that as they discuss the back and forth that has existed with Canada-USA relations of recent months there is an interesting peek under the hood of how all these geopolitical messes play out.

Naturally, this has been added to our playlist.

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