Jake LaCaze

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As a teenager, I was impressed by complexity. I wanted to believe my heroes had done things no one else could do.

But these days, I’m more impressed—and even inspired—by simplicity. Just because something is simple doesn’t mean it’s easy. If that were the case, everyone would keep things simple.

But simple works because it needs little to no explanation. Either you get it or you don’t.

And if it’s simple, that means everyone can do it. They just choose not to.

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As exciting as career changes can be, they do bring about their own challenges.

A major part of rebranding myself after my own career change lies in transforming my network.

I spent nearly 14 years building my oil and gas network. How can I speed up making connections with my new peers, those interested in marketing, tech, and writing?

While I haven’t yet mastered how to break through with the marketing and tech crowds, I do believe I’ve found the secret to connecting with writers.

Wanna know my secret?

Writers love typos.

Okay, I admit that’s click baity and attention-grabbing.

But writers love when you point out their typos. Or they usually at least appreciate it.

Because writing is hard.

Writers have to come up with awesome ideas and awesome words and awesome images and awesome promotion tactics.

Writers obsess over their work and cut and rearrange material they worked so hard to research and create.

They massage it numerous times and then they hit the Publish button even though they know their work isn’t perfect.

And seemingly no one notices.

Until you come along.

And say you: Hey, I know you put so much time and effort into this. And I want to help by pointing out something simple that slipped past you. So I’m making the effort to bring it to your attention.

Because I care about what you’re doing.

How sweet.

While I don’t have data to backup my claim, I do have anecdotes.

Pointing out typos on websites has led to a few new LinkedIn connections and even a free Udemy course.

So give it a shot.

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Recently my son, daughter, and I slept in a tent on our living room floor. Even with a pallet of blankets, the floor was uncomfortable. I woke up numerous times throughout the night.

Still, our little camping trip was fun. So much fun my son and I did it again the next night.

The morning following the first night, my wife poked her head into the tent and said, Happy birthday.

My daughter leapt in excitement and exclaimed, “It’s my princess party!”

She was adorable.

But so, so wrong.

Because it wasn’t her birthday. It was my birthday.

And a princess party was the last thing I had in mind. But it’s the only thing that’s been on my daughter’s mind since her friend had a princess birthday.

Now, in my daughter’s mind, any gift—even those for Valentine’s Day—is a sign that her birthday has arrived.

My daughter’s birthday will be here soon enough. And she’ll finally get her princess party.

And I have to say she’s sold me on the idea. I’m looking forward to it.

Her hype broke me down.

I can’t wait for the princess party.

My daughter might make a great marketer one day.

It’s that time of year again when your boss pulls you into his office and pulls out the list of things you told him you were going to accomplish this year. And then he tells you all the ways you fell short.

I don’t have a boss as I’m typing this, so I’ll have to torture myself.

The goals I set for myself in 2021 were to:

So how did I do?

Well, let’s take it one goal at a time, starting with the top.

I knocked this one out of the park. According to my logging on literal.club, I read 43 books in 2021.

30 or 43 books may not seem like much to some people. But before 2021, I had never kept record of how many books I had read in a given year. Reading 30 books in a year means you’re reading between two and three books a month. If you read one book a month, you’re likely reading more than the average American.

So, I’m happy with this accomplishment.

But I learned something surprising from this goal: I will no longer challenge myself to read a certain number of books within a certain timeframe.

Blog posts and even tweets from the right person can have just as much value as books. So the point should be to read continuously and to keep record of what I’ve read–but not to set some sort of goal for the quantity of one medium over any others.

I killed this one. I took writing courses on Coursera, courses for my technical writing certification, courses on Udemy and LinkedIn Learning. I’m pretty sure I had taken three classes before the close of the first quarter of the year.

I got learned up in 2021.

I botched this one. Long story short, I screwed up the video files I had ripped to my server and then re-ripped them and didn’t start over.

The good news: I had time to watch all three seasons of What We Do in the Shadows. So, I’ll still consider this one a win.

No joke: This is the goal I’m proudest of. I did not wear blue jeans once this year.

Chinos? Yep.

Khakis? Yep.

Basketball shorts, track pants? Yep. And yep.

But blue jeans? No way, Jose.

I’ve never been as comfortable as I was in 2021. But losing nearly 20 pounds may have also had something to do with that.

In terms of these goals, I give 2021 an A.

Perhaps I would have given it an A+ if I had squeezed in Kids in the Hall.

Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all.

And now it’s time to start thinking about my goals for 2022.

The bad news: My latest job interview lasted all of 5 minutes.

The good news: Lessons learned.