Coiling at the approach of racing thought and spiked emotion. The smell of fear mixed with excitement sensed through the skin.

Striking this morning before rolling out of bed. Feet still on the floor 12 hours later. Hands bent into claws. Stomach empty. Shadows moving across the ceiling.

Seizing the shoulders, then the traps and on down the back. The icy-hot tingling moves down the arms and into the fingertips.

Until everything stops. And you listen.

It came from the last house. The apartment before that. And the garage people stopped opening long ago.

Someone might ask somebody where it went. Neither looks. The conversation moves on with a shrug.

Months go by.

Then a nail needs to go into the wall. The good plates need to come down from the cabinet. The journals are just out of reach.

It’s suddenly found. The legs give that familiar click and hold steady while you climb.

With eyes closed ten minutes disappear. For some reason I set it down and ignore it for months. Now there’s dust on it.

Grab your earbuds. Hit play. Let’s have a chat and jam.

I hike most days.

Around the bend comes something that takes my breath away.

It waits while my breathing catches up. It’s gone by the time I can describe it to myself.

The next morning it’s the same but different.

So I start taking photos.

A mountain landscape doesn’t fit on a portrait screen. Shadows from trees and ridges. I take 6 and keep 1 that pours something alive inside. 13 words with it.

Tossing into the LinkedIn feed. Poems come back from across the ocean. And songs from someone in Tennessee.

None of it fitting on a screen.

3.5 x 2 inch business cards. 4x6 inch post cards, 8.5 x 11 inch flyers. 11 x 17 inch posters.

Anything that can be printed at home or in a copy center. In fading color.

Hang there long enough and they’re eaten for hanging pins or covered over for space.

What possesses someone to go from board to board pinning their hope…

What’s left from the all night burst of creativity. Long talks with supportive friends. Moments of deep grief and desperation. Entangled hearts of constraint and yearning.

Shingles hung.

You might know it.

The one where the calendar suddenly clears, the money’s all there, and energy is something only the power company worries about.

My kids are starting another school year. And my sabbatical continues to evade me.

Grab a coffee. Hit play on the video or audio. I’ll find some index cards and a pen. Let’s work it out together.

Then the unthinkable happens. Someone yells, “I’m done.” “No more.”

A notebook shoved in a drawer. Keys and out the door. A commitment made now sits in an empty chair by the kitchen table.

It felt right. It was so good. It was on fire. In an instant love somehow turned to hate.

“Leave me alone.” Hours. Days. Weeks. Coupons and receipts pile on top of it. You know exactly where it is in the stack but refuse to touch it.

It always creeps silently back. Hopeful. Patient. Willing.

Leaving the door slightly open so people would think you were there.

Endless trailers. The reclining seat. Being the only person in there at 2pm. The cold dark theater is the place your mind goes silent. Living someone else’s reality, letting everything go in your own.

Walking out the door sun hits the eyes and warmth from the asphalt immediately spreads up the skin. Fumbling for the keys in a kind of a daze. It meets you again.

I’ve been chasing why some ideas stick and most don’t.

Get your shoes on. Hit play. Come mull it over with me, while we take in the sunrise.

The energy of each venture is fully palpable.

A whole town of plain warehouses gives no indication of success or failure. The entry doors and docks keep no regular hours. They put on no facade.

The trucks, the forklifts, the logos on the wall. Each one telling the epic journey of an idea making its way into something felt and real.

I want to stop at every one. Wander in through the roll-top door. Ask what they’re making in there. Coffee going cold on a folding table. A radio on in the back.

Who staked their claim in this building with no storefront?

Nowhere to hide.

Just operating.

Got it! Boom! A thud rings out from the other side of the net with groans. Delightful. Back to the serving line.

Hand still stinging. Everyone’s eyes locked in…

A grin. The Wilson goes over the net with a relaxed brow and deliberate follow through.

It’s someone else’s turn to play. All eyes following the bouncing ball. Moving between hands. Someone diving for it. Laughing.

Anyone up for a volley?

Mostly what I find is a pile on my desk. Half of it goes in the waste basket.

But there’s a thing that keeps visiting. In the shower. Behind the wheel. It shows up when the noise drops.

Whose job is it to find the proof?

Onward!

Brad 8-)

This “eye of the storm” feels like a vacuum sucking the life out of the situation. Life fueled by the pressing deadline, the like button, the approving look.

What is calm actually fueled by?

Balance? Too fickle. Motivation? Too fleeting. Peace? Too judgmental.

I’m convinced the wind whipping and blowing around me is whispering an answer. Can you hear it? I can’t make it out either.

But I can see the movement in the trees.

Everyone expects a lightbulb to burn when they flip the switch. What we forget is that lightbulb will burn for years unless switched off.

Ideas have something to say but have no vocal cords, no arms, no hands, no legs. No body to speak of. Only charged fuzzy energy.

Ideas can’t have integrity. They cannot say. They cannot do.

So when one taps you on the shoulder… what’s it asking for?

And what might you need to ask it for in return… to maintain your integrity?

You’ve stopped telling people about it. The ones who took it seriously wanted to smother it.

So here's something that won't. Short written notes in your inbox a few times a week, free. Videos with a voice and face for paid subscribers.

Recent Short Notes

Recent Video/Audio

Coming soon.

photo reflections

and captions by Brad Did

music reflections by Dave Summers

Book coming soon.

A chance to plan my own business after helping others do the same for 10 years.

The work of a business advisor is to shore up and serve the business founder.

Morning check-ins. Afternoon strategy calls. Evening reflection. Late night impressions.

It all ended so abruptly as it started. With an idea.

___

August, driving cross country with a jiu-jitsu grappling dummy in the seat next me.

Passing the time dodging traffic in HOV lanes and chuckling at the double takes by those passing on rural highways.

Sun riding low on the horizon of wind swept Wyoming. Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Big Magic” dancing between my ears rattled something loose.

A will and a want to support people who had big ideas. The ones that would somehow make the lonely planet out my windshield a more inviting place to live.

___

That want and will has been my constant companion. Walking beside me through financial struggles, relationship challenges, and health scares. Hand on my shoulder. Dirt on its shoes.

A driving force that demands my focus and attention. Morning check-ins. Afternoon strategy calls. Evening reflection. Late night impressions.

You’ve got one of these too… don’t you.

It can be maddening.

I just ran an offer launch. Six weeks of co-writing a business plan. Mine, in the open. Fellow planners writing theirs alongside.

I’ll tell you what I did and what I found.

Here’s what I did

I cleared the calendar. Got quiet. Wrote a survey. Listened.

I built the offer inward first, for me, before I ever opened a seat. I priced it at the honest intersection between what felt real to me and what was in reach for someone else. I rewrote the sales page into first person when I couldn’t honestly write to a stranger I didn’t know.

I held the line when someone asked me to sweeten the pot, because sweetening it would have built the opposite of what I wanted. I closed enrollment on joy instead of a countdown.

And on the last day of enrollment, before I was even awake, I stood on my porch in my pajamas and let the whole thing become a story about me.

Nobody new had signed up. Am I alone in this? Is there something wrong with me? The old questions.

I paced and muttered until I noticed how bad I felt. Then I stood there and let it be bad. The joy came back on its own. There was already one person coming. I wasn’t alone. I went inside and wrote the last email of the launch.

That’s the part I can speak to. My side.

And its a lot of noise. The churn. The seven names and formats I’ve tried in two years. The machinery of a launch. The weather inside me on a porch at 6 a.m. Loud, and mine, and mostly invisible to you.

Now the other side.

Here’s what you did

You opened the emails. Steadily, all the way through a sales sequence, which is the stretch where most lists go quiet. You answered the survey in your own words. A few of you wrote back. One of you told me, kindly, that you weren’t a fit, and I got to tell you that you were. One of you came all the way in, and will be writing your plan next to mine starting June 2nd.

And most of you stayed exactly where you were. Reading. Not buying. Which is its own clear answer.

I’ve watched this for two years now. I keep changing the container. You keep staying for the one thing I never change, the writing from my own experience.

You have been telling me the whole time what you’re here for. I keep almost believing you.

Here’s where I have to be careful

I know my side cold. I was there for every choice. Your side I can only read in the data, not know.

I can see what you did. The opens. The replies. The one yes. That part is fact. Why you did it is a guess, and the guess is only mine.

So I’ll tell you what I think it might mean, and you can recognize yourself in it or not. That part is yours. I’m not going to tell you where to land.

My best guess is this… you don’t come for a plan or a format or an offer. You come to be near someone learning out loud. Naming what’s true, including the parts most of us keep quiet. When I do that, you feel a little less alone.

The part I’m still sitting with is that you seem to do the same thing back. You give me a room to be the person I want to be. The one I am when I’m alone in the wilderness. We are both less alone in it.

Might that be the whole exchange here?

Which leaves me a knot

This publication that now feeds my soul pays about a hundred dollars a month.

I didn’t set out here writing with my soul in mind. I set out wanting a business. An asset bigger than me, one that might outlive my ego and actually take care of my family.

But it’d be nice feed both.

So I’m carrying this tangled knot into week one of The Business Plan Co-Write. Six weeks of space to let it untangle itself. And I won’t be the only one there.

That’s the signal I could find in my own noise from this launch. There’s more tuning to be done in our relationship.

So I’ll keep reading the data.

Onward!

Brad 8-)

P.S. If a line here was signal and not just my noise, tell me which one. You don’t have to. I read the data either way. But your words read clearer than your clicks.

What I didn’t expect was the part of the plan I needed most. The part most business plans skip entirely.

Not the market analysis. Not the projections. Ok… those are important too. But what I need to do first is write down what I require from the business. The number it has to produce. The time it gets from me. The time it doesn’t. What I give it. What I won’t, no matter what. The signals that tell me, day by day, whether to continue, pivot, or stop.

Most plans treat the human as secondary. The business gives the human a job. I’m flipping it. The business becomes the asset. I’m its protector. The business plan becomes the agreement between the two.

I’m writing mine over the next six weeks. Two live sessions a week. I write in front of you. You write in front of the group. We co-create. Six seats. Six plans.

All the details are here | BradDid.com/cowrite

Onward!

Brad 8-)

P.S. Enrollment closes next Wednesday May 27 at 11:59 PM Eastern. We start writing our business plans the week of June 1st, starting with the hardest part. What we require from a business for it to be worth running.

See the Details