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The Barstool Breakdown

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The 500 person mistake I never forgot

You plan the event, pick the date, work out the food, drinks, entertainment, tickets, and whatever else needs to happen. Then promotion starts. You print flyers, hang them around town, drop a stack at the coffee shop, post the event on Facebook, share it again a few days later, and maybe throw a few bucks behind the post. Then you wait and pray people actually show up. I’ve done it. Back when I managed a restaurant here in town, we planned a special Italian dinner that should’ve been a big...

Smartphones are making people more and more stupid. People aren’t dumb. They’ve outsourced thinking. Why wrestle with a problem when Google will spit out an answer in 0.3 seconds? Why strain the brain when YouTube will happily autoplay the next How To video until your eyes glaze over? It reminds me of Short Circuit. Johnny 5 reads a book in seconds, pauses, and says… “Need more input.” That’s most people now. Constant input. Zero output. And sure, access to information is nice. Incredible,...

Reader question, Remember when Twitter went dark in Brazil back in 2024? One day it's there. Next day, poof, gone. Now imagine you're a business owner who spent years building 50,000 followers. You wake up Tuesday morning and your entire customer base vanishes into thin air. That's exactly what happened to thousands of businesses. Every minute you spend building someone else's platform is a minute you're NOT building your own business. Facebook changes the algorithm? You're screwed. Instagram...

Yo Reader, I used to spend a lot of time doom scrolling. At this time in my life I was always tired, and it got bad around 7pm. Every day like clockwork. One day, I was chillin at work before the dinner rush scrolling Facebook. I came across an ad that grabbed my attention immediately. “No weights, no cardio, just X3” I’d been looking for something to replace the gym and this was perfect. The last time I'd went to the gym there were 3 girls in there that may as well have been naked. As soon...

Greetings Reader, I've been feeling nostalgic this week and decided to break out an old guide I wrote last year. Doesn't matter if your a wedding planner, therapist, plumber, musician, or artist. The principles are the same, stop depending on social media to bring you moneys. Enjoy... You ever post a gorgeous wedding photo? Perfect lighting, emotional captions, with the hashtags dialed in. Then you wait. And wait. And wait some more. And the only engagement you get is another planner...

Ever sit down at your computer to write an email and end up staring at a blank screen for an hour? You have an idea of what to write but you can’t get the words from your brain to your fingers and type it. So you throw a short summary of an idea into Chat-GPT or Claude because you’re frustrated. What comes out is nothing short of disastrous. It doesn’t sound like anything that you’d ever write and now you’re frustrated. So, you don’t send anything to your list of customers who're expecting to...

Greetings Reader, Benjamin Franklin said “A small leak will sink a great ship.” He was talking about munny, but he could’ve been talkin about your website. A few small problems can cost you leads, customers, and repeat sales every week. There’s nothing more frustrating to a customer than trying to navigate a confusing website. Customers usually visit a local business website to answer a simple question. What are your hours? Where are you located? What do you sell? How do I contact you? Can I...

And you can do it too. Yep Reader, you read that right. Most bartenders hate paper straws. I love em. Know why? Because they made my secret stash of plastic ones worth their weight in gold. To the tune of over $500. So last year there was a company that does subcontracting for the mine where I live. About 10 or 15 of em staying at the hotel where I tend bar. These dudes work brutal 12 hour days and after work they wanna unwind. Obviously staying at a full service hotel they don’t have to go...

Yo Reader, This past Monday I volunteered to help at Fall Fest (yeah, on my day off... don't ask). Local businesses set up tables to recruit college students on campus and get their name out there. Pretty standard stuff. But something happened that my dark sometimes soulless heart beam with joy. One of my past clients was there collecting emails the old school way, pen and paper. His table was packed. I could see he had a stack of sign-ups building up fast. We said hello but he was swamped,...

Greetings Reader, Ever wonder why some emails get deleted faster than a bad Tinder date while others get read, saved, and acted on? It’s the same reason Dave Chappelle can hold 10,000 people hostage for an hour without a weapon. He figured out the secret most writers never learn. Most business owners write like they’re filing a tax return. Boring facts that are as fun as watching paint dry. Features and benefits. Yawn-inducing word vomit that makes people want to take a nap or regret having...