Josh Steimle's Linkedin Analytics

Last year I announced my 5x50 goals (5 goals to complete before I turn 50 this year). Here's an update on how it's going. The goals: 1. Read 50 books ✅ (see my Instagram if you want the list and reviews, link in comments) 2. Run a 50-mile trail run (still training, probably my right Achilles won't be ready before my birthday but I'll do it sometime this year) 3. Lose 50 lbs. Down 20 lbs. Probably won't make it before my birthday but will keep working on it. 4. Do 50 skateboard tricks on my 50th birthday.🤞 5. Do a 5,000 yard (3 mi) swim ✅ (see video)

If you run an agency (PR, SEO, marketing, advertising, etc.)...You know those emails you get 50x a day, the ones that say, "Hey! Could you handle more leads? How about if I send you 20x leads every day?!" Yeah, I ignore them too. All of them. Don't even glance at them other than to identify what they are so I can feel safe marking them as spam and blocking the sender. However...I was referred through word of mouth to one of those companies, and they are CRUSHING it for MWI. They got me on two really good calls last week with potential clients who want proposals. One of the clients is a $500M fitness equipment manufacturer. The other is a very famous movie star's fitness app. So I hired them to do lead gen for Canvas PR. Last week, they got me on four great calls, three of them white-label partner opportunities (which are generally our best opportunities) and one potential client. I'd rate the likelihood of closing 5-figure deals with three of them at 90%, and 50% with the fourth. I've already finished three more 90% calls with white-label partners this week and there are more scheduled. So I've also hired them to get started with MWI's Hong Kong office (yes, they do international lead gen). Sales isn't what every agency needs most, but if it's what you need most right now, DM me, and I'll intro you to the company that is quickly becoming the best source of sales I've ever had in 25 years of owning an agency. I'd post who they are here, but, well, you know, I don't want EVERYONE to know who they are, but just for you, I'll make an exception 😉

Been using the ChatGPT image creation feature the past few days. It's amazing. But it will not put designers, agencies, or marketers out of business. It will give the designers, agencies, and marketers who use AI a huge advantage over their competitors, that's all. If there's a fallout coming, it will be a fallout to increased quality and productivity.

Greatness can be taught, but not everyone is ready to learn.

What's the vibe you sense these days in the business world, at work, professionally, etc.? 1. Things are good and getting better. 2. Things are bad and getting worse. 3. Not sure, waiting to see where things go. 4. Other? 5. The world is crazy but what are you gonna do, sit around and wait for something? Gotta get on with things, regardless. It's the 5th one I feel like I'm seeing a lot, maybe with some of #1, but more of a "I'm cautiously optimistic." You?

Are you a tortoise or hare? Or how much of each? The ADHD side of me is the hare. I will have spurts of creativity and productivity where I get six months of work done in a week. On the other hand, even when I'm slow, I never stop. I never give up. I keep on grinding away. So I can't say I'm either the hare or the tortoise—it depends on what I'm doing and what day it is. Overall, I'd say I'm probably 80% tortoise and 20% hare...maybe. I'm not sure. What about you?

Many people argue to win. I argue to learn. That’s why I steelman the other side. Steelmanning means taking the best version of an opposing argument—even better than the other person presented it—and wrestling with that. Not the lazy strawman version we all love to demolish. Why do this? Because truth doesn’t care about your feelings, your ideology, or your echo chamber. And if I can’t explain the strongest version of the other side’s argument, I don’t really understand mine. You can’t build a solid foundation if you’re afraid to test it. You can’t lead, teach, or create anything lasting if your ideas can’t survive pressure. So next time you disagree with someone: 1. Slow down. 2. Ask questions—not to trap, but to understand. 3. Build their argument stronger than they did. 4. Then challenge it. If your beliefs are still standing afterward, good. If not? Even better—you just got closer to truth.

I'm tired of dealing with banks for business debt financing. If you've got $250K or more you can lend, and you'd like to make a 20%/year return on it, let me know.

If you're an entrepreneur, what's the #1 thing you need help with right now? Maybe I can help, maybe someone I know can help, maybe someone I don't know will see your comment and can help.

I'm seeing a lot of posts about AI ripping off the work of artists. This will only accelerate, and we'll hear more complaining. I think the complaints are fair, but unproductive. Here's why... Imagine you were a musician one or two hundred years ago when recording technology was becoming a thing. "How dare they even think to record me!" you might say. After all, you've lived all your life in a world where musicians played live, got paid to play live, and there was no other option. The thought of recording might feel like a threat. To think that someone could pay a mere $10 and then listen to one's music whenever they wanted, as much as they wanted, might feel like theft to someone whose music could previously only be heard live and in-person at a much higher cost. Of course, in hindsight, we know that music recording allowed musicians who would never have played outside their hometown to become world-famous, impact more people, and make a lot more money. Ironically, it's come full circle such that music stars today make more money from touring than from music sales, but without recording and the mass distribution of music that wouldn't be the case. "Yes, but if AI is ripping off artists without attribution or compensation then that's not giving artists a new way to make money, it's just stealing!" I'm not saying it's a perfect apples to apples comparison, but I think there are similarities. The first similarity is that AI is an unstoppable force. Fight it, and you'll lose. The second similarity is that there is almost certainly an opportunity here that's much larger than the perceived downside. Perhaps it's that a proliferation of AI-generated art will increase the appreciation of and demand for art generally, and that will in turn increase the demand for human-created art. Perhaps AI will assist artists to find more customers, faster, who will pay more. I didn't even know what Studio Ghibli was until yesterday when AI-generated art in the Studio Ghibli style began appearing everywhere. Now everyone knows about Studio Ghibli or will know within a day or two. Do you think that's going to decrease or increase demand for Studio Ghibli's products and services? But the important thing to understand is that we don't know exactly how things will play out. There will be great opportunities for artists (and entrepreneurs, business leaders, authors, musicians, and anyone else) who embrace AI that none of us can see right now. You can try to stop the wave and get knocked over and dragged under, or surf it and have the ride of your life. What will you choose?

"I may not be fast, but I keep going." I run trail ultramarathons and this is what I tell myself when I'm out in the mountains. It's also what I tell myself in my business and other areas of life. I have a few other variations: "I may not be smart, but I keep going." "I may not be smart, but I keep learning." "I may not get there first, but I'll get there." I once ran a 70K race with a guy who did it in 8 hrs. It took me 14 hrs. I was slow, but I kept on going. I didn't get there first, but I got there. I have a business mentor, who's seven years younger than me, and much, much more successful financially than I am. He's always telling me how stupid I am and what I'm doing wrong and how I need to change (in a polite, kind way). When he tells me something I slap my forehead, say, "Oh, duh!" and then I think, "I may not be that smart, but I keep learning and I keep going." These are simple things to say, but they help me. Do you have things like this that you say to yourself that help you to keep going and keep improving?

This is not an America-first thing, but tell me what you think about a dev outsourcing firm that only uses US-based programming talent. This was an idea born from my own experiences outsourcing dev work overseas. Over the past 25 years I've outsourced to the Philippines, India, China, Bulgaria, Romania, etc. I've paid high and I've paid low. I've recruited directly, and I've gone through agencies that promise the best and brightest. I've worked with individuals and firms. Nothing ever worked for me. In fact, most times it blew up in spectacular fashion. On the other hand, I've had great experiences hiring developers in the US. The only catch was that they cost more, but in every other way the experience has been ideal with rare exceptions. Since there's no cost-savings that can make up for an unsuccessful project, I gave up entirely on outsourcing dev overseas. I'm sure it works for some people, but I'm done dealing with it. I suspect there's a segment of other companies that are also done with it, which is why I'm working with the dev team at MWI to create a new dev firm called Built, which will offer dev services (starting with WordPress) on a fractional basis. So if you have a marketing agency and you do websites, but it's a here and there type of thing and you don't want to hire someone full time, you can hire half a WordPress developer through us. If you have a self-storage company and you need to build a new enterprise website in the next 8 months, but you don't want to hire a team of full-timers nor do you have the time to find the right team anyway, we'll give you a team for that duration and they'll already have experience working together. And we promise that every developer who's on your project is based in the US—we won't be outsourcing it overseas at $10/hr and then charging you $300/hr for inefficiently provisioned time. Thoughts?

I was a young kid when I was diagnosed with ADHD (it's very common in entrepreneurs, btw). My parents didn't tell me until I was in my 30s. This year I turn 50, and today was my first time taking ADHD medication. How did I get here? It took me years to try medication. First, I listened to the Huberman lab episode on ADHD. He talks about medication but also talked about non-medication methods for training your brain. I tried one of those, it was kind of crazy, they hooked up electrodes to my head and I used my brain to control a video game which exercised my ability to focus and was supposed to produce permanent benefits. For various reasons, however, I quit going after a few visits. Maybe it really works, but I didn't stick around to find out. I have friends I trust who are on ADHD medication. One of them said he feels like he has superpowers and he actually takes half his prescribed dose because he feels like it's not fair for him to take the full does because it gives him too much of an advantage. 🤔 I asked my other friend, "How did you know it was working and how long did it take?" "An hour," he responded. "It was like I had lived my whole life wearing cement shoes and trying to walk through deep mud, and suddenly I was wearing running shoes on dry ground." 😯 I'm still not sure exactly what he meant, but it sounded pretty good. Regardless, it still took me years to pull the trigger. Years of observing my behavior, analyzing what was ADHD, and finally realizing that the negative impact of my ADHD was bad enough that I owed it to myself and my family to at least try medication (it's cheap and it's easy to go off it). So I'm on a 20 mg dose of Lisdexamfetamine and...well, I haven't noticed anything, but that's a low dose and it's my first day. We'll see how it goes as the experiment continues. Got any experience yourself with this? Do share.