Hey Folks!

Happy Friday! You doin good? If we haven't met feel free to reply and say "hey." A couple things on my mind...

1. Marketing Calendar vs. Weekly Growth Meetings: I’ve been fractionally leading marketing for about 6 years, and my core thesis has always been to operate on a 7-day cycle where early growth is measured week by week. The issue is that this weekly lens leaves out marketing-calendar moments like Black Friday or big launches, so I’d drop reminders into our weekly sheet but still end up missing things. This week I finally figured out how to merge the two by building an annual marketing calendar with our big tentpole events, creating repeatable weekly launch SOPs tied to each event type, and having everything auto-populate into the weekly meeting sheet. Once it clicked, I honestly couldn’t believe I’d been operating without it. Check it out here, I pre-populated with some templates for e-comm brands. (If you haven't already, you can get my short course on how to use this sheet here.)

2. Blake Crouch Novels: When I get stuck and don’t feel like reading anything, I need some pop novels to “prime the pump” and get me excited again. About a month ago I found Blake Crouch and he totally did the trick. His style is a lot like Michael Crichton - big scientific idea at the center, fast pace, action, and just light, fun storytelling. Here’s what I’ve read so far and how I’d rate them:

• Recursion: 8/10. Maybe because it was the first one, but it grabbed my imagination. All about time travel. Great.
• Upgrade: 7/10. Gene editing and how it could reshape society. Really fun.
• Wayward Pines: 6/10. They made it into a TV show. Felt closer to horror, which isn’t really my thing.
• Dark Matter: 9/10. I’d already seen the series and loved it. Feels like Odysseus traveling home through the multiverse. Excellent.

3. 5 Year Trips: I often struggle with how much individual attention to give each of our 7 kids. If I hop on Instagram, it’ll tell me to do 30 minutes of free play every day and a weekly 1:1 date, but with 7 kids it just doesn’t scale. One thing that has worked for us is taking each kid on a one or two night trip to a national or state park every 5 years, just us and them. This weekend is our 5th child Imogen’s 5 year trip. We’ll write her letters about what we appreciate and hope for her, hike together, and hit a couple restaurants. We’ve done this for all our kids at ages 5 and 10 so far, and my hope is to keep it going into adulthood too, maybe even with spouses and grandkids someday. Do you do anything like this? Any traditions you’ve found meaningful? AMA

That's it for this week! Get outside and make a fire in the fireplace this weekend :)

Best,

Blake

P.S. Find any of this helpful? Share it w/ your friends at theallsmiths.com. (Also if you've missed previous emails you can read "back issues" there as well :)

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