We had a Fall tournament over the weekend.
It wasn’t with our team.
At the end of the summer, we made the hard choice to leave our old team and search for a new organization to call home.
It was a tough, but tardy decision to make.
All based on the premise that if you want to get better at anything, play up.
We have friends on another team that invited us to play with them because they were one player short, and so we did.
They are not our new team.
But what an awesome group of kids and people.
It starts with friends of friends and talking to parents about who you might know.
Talk about what you do always comes up.
I get two reactions.
“So, Chris, what do you do?”
“I own a small publishing company.”
“Like a newspaper or magazine?”
“More like a digital marketing agency selling pulp fiction that I write.”
“Oh.”
Kids find it fascinating, and I admit, I play up to that audience in the crowd.
A lot of adults don’t read past college.
I think I saw a statistic that said that the average American reads one book per year after they graduate.
Talk about playing in a tough field!
Yet, every single guy I know reads.
Not always books. But blog posts. Articles. Tiny slices of information about baseball, football, and what’s going on in the world.
They dive into and gain information in a bunch of ways.
Just not books.
It’s competing against movies and TV shows, of which there are a ton of good ones.
It’s against magazines, and sports and every other thing that competes for attention.
Which is why I’ve studied advertising and marketing so much in the past decade.
How do you set yourself apart from the noise in any field?
If people hear a thousand ads per day, what makes yours different?
I decided my course of action is to build a tribe of awesome people who like what I do.
And when I think about it, that’s what all businesses want to do.
Here in the South, there is sometimes a debate regarding what type of truck is better.
My father and uncle would argue over Ford and Chevy every time they got together.
They were each in a tribe.
It goes further and deeper for many people. Church. Work. And yes, 10 year old baseball teams.
The team we played with over the weekend was a sub team. Our #10 came in for one of their kids who had to quarantine.
It was a hot weekend with a great group and we came in second against an 11 AAA team. (they were a year older, and looked taller and bigger.)
One of the moms was talking about her business, advertising, and we compared notes.
Then she said she was looking to hire someone…
And I wondered if it would be the right fit.
Going back into the workforce after years of self employment and small business ownership is scary.
Could I be an employee after being such an awesome boss to myself?
I applied.
What’s the harm?
And I can keep doing publishing on the side. Keep advertising and marketing titles.
It might require a little more discipline on my part, but what the heck, I like routine and schedules.
My gut said “go for it.”
The same feeling I had when it was time to switch teams and play with a group of better playing kids.
“Go for it.”
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