 Oh, yeah. Without further ado, here is Adam Silver. Yes, today, Adam. Yeah. Good morning. Let me do two things real quick here. Slicker. Alright, so, it's good to look outside. It's said the accidental agency was the name of the top. That top has actually been, it's wrong. That's the name of the top. That part of the story is getting to this. So, it was a long and convoluted story. And there we go. So, what's your next entrepreneurial journey, my entrepreneurial journey, and maybe yours too? Real quick question. How many first-time word campers? I know it's the first time for me to know, wow. How many people have been to more than five word camps? More than ten? More than twenty? Thirty? Forty? Yes. I've done a lot of word camps. I have a problem, so my wife tells me, okay. So, what's your next? When I was ten years old, I knew exactly what it was that I wanted to do when I grow up. Not many people can say that. I knew exactly what it was. Ten years of age, I was on track to do this. Not just being able to skateboard, but ride that thing. As much as I possibly could. My goal honestly was to be a professional skateboarder. I just lived and breathed skateboarding. Only number one, second would be soccer. Love soccer too. But, I wanted to be that cool kid. I wanted to be this kid. Who looks a lot like me. But trust me, it's not. One of my sons looks like that now actually. But, he's not. This kid's a little cooler still than my kid. So, luckily, I lived in Los Angeles at the time. I recently moved to the East Coast. I live in North Carolina. Here in North Carolina. And, living in that L.A., I wanted it to be a part of that L.A. Hollywood, and this work films for me. Ten years old, I didn't quite know that, but movies were made in L.A. And I was cast in the movie. True story. The skateboard. But not this skateboard. No, this was actually a movie movie. Really cool movie. His skateboarding was all the rage in the West Coast. Really was. Was not nearly this cool. Apparently, my neighbors ran a small production company. Didn't know that worked best until, like, a week ago. And before churches, youth groups, morality play type things. About kids and parents and relationships. And they were on the tail end of the skateboarding thing, or right in the tail of it. And they had what we called the skateboard. The company was called Franciscan Communications. Go figure, religious. I had no clue what this was about. Because it turns out, I was not wearing this skateboard. Like, really bad. Really bad. They had me sitting down on my yellow skateboard, to decline like this much. The way they edited it was awesome. I was speeding through the streets. It was the most brilliant editing job in the world. But I was a terrible skateboarder. True story. It's not moving obviously. The Red Bull was around, you know, 1978-1989. Last year, I took a still on skateboard. Because I'm an idiot. Gameboying still. I'm doing what I tell my kids not to do. I have to go return something to the neighbor of the street. My son pulls me... I'm on my phone board, pulls me up the hill. No problem, up the hill. I can't do much damage here. On my way back, this good-sized hill, and I'm beginning... This is easy. Telling my son to go to the next street, each street. It was clear I must keep going. This is not an animal, just trust me. He goes to the next street, next street, and I'm cruising. On a long board, we don't know. Long skateboard, you know, you get along. Picks up a lot of speed, really quickly. And I am cruising. I don't realize how fast I'm going. And he said, stop. Yeah, there's a car. So like, he said, hey, I jump off. Maybe I can run. I don't run that fast, for real. I immediately know this is going to hurt really bad. And you go, no helmet, no whiskers, my iPhones in my pocket, orange shorts, t-shirt. Only benefit was I was wearing sneakers, not flip-flops. And I'm just tumbling from middle of the street to the intersection. I get up, and luckily I don't fall. I fall a lot, because as you can see, I did that. Not all from this accident. This is the first 10 years of my life. My parents love me. They really do, trust me. So I get up, and the most embarrassing part was not the fall, the car. Not the fall. It was the getting up, in the middle of the intersection, with the mom pushing the stroller. And then the dad in the intersection was putting his car steering wheel. And that look of, this is wrong. What are you thinking? Yeah, I get up. I limp. I'm like, bloody rocks in my side. I go back to my house. I still have to deform on the left side. It's been two years there. I haven't been back on the skateboard yet. So I love being around in the movie sense. I love that whole make-believe-in-that-thing. This is where I want to be. I'm already going to pivot. At 10, I'm making my first pivot. Because what I love most about being around movies was craft services. You get fed, you get dressed, you get makeup done. This is the bomb. So my first thought was, I'm going to be an actor. I'm going to be a child star. My parents disagreed completely with the attention. And I really wanted that to be my next point. Right here, that's totally true. And then one day I figured, well, I'll study this. I'll learn this trade. And I will be welcomed into the world of, so right up front, up front. 10 years old, it's part of this little journey of mine. So my next, what's next then? Cut to about seven years later, now I'm about 17, and I go to college. So a lot of people have experiences and they tell stories that college was the best years of their life. How many people went to college? How many people have great memories? How many people have so best friends from college? Okay. So I do have some of those. But my first college experience wasn't as good. Well, that's really kind of isolated, sorry about that. Wasn't so great. First and foremost, I went to a junior college and nothing wrong junior college. So I went to Pierce Junior College and looking at those California, one of the hot beds of the pits of the valley where we were up. I feel like hot. In the summer, 110 degrees, it's dry heat, I know. No humidity, if I get it. But apparently, I'm old, and I kind of went to class, but I didn't really attend, if you don't know what I mean. My best friend went to school at a four-year university out of the home. I was at his university every weekend, feeling like Stephen Harvey is right now. He's hungover. So, apparently, if you don't really do well, they kick you out. Even from a junior college, no matter how bad you think you have it, I have it worse. If you get under a 2.0, we're three semesters in a row. I was consistent. I had consistency on my side. Congratulations. That what any 17-year-old would do is I would blame somebody else. Easy. It wasn't my fault I did bad. It's your fault. It's your fault. It's your fault. And it wasn't yours. I didn't know these people there. But I blamed a counselor who was guiding me, taking sociology and psychology and art history, because who needs those things in life? Who's the psych major? Who was the psych major? Only one. Nice. See? Who needs it? No, okay. I said, I told the counselors I'm like, hey, my dad's heart attack must have affected my studies. Truly. He had a massive coronary heart attack, and it was bad. I went there to sip over water here one second. That's not a good idea. To the junior college. I said, look, I'm gonna indicate these things. The misguided counselor, dad's heart attack. And they agreed with me. He said, okay, Mr. Silver, Adam, fifth unit status, LU status. And it's only because I mentioned this to them. I found this in the handbook of college rules and regulations that if you had it under 2.0, in three years, three semesters a row, you can write this letter, LU. And they let you back in. But they only let me take two classes a semester for a year to get my grades back up. That would be if you couldn't do that and you were done. You were not gonna go to junior college. So I did that. And to transfer to a four year university in California back then, you had to have 2.0, it's 56 transferable units. I was awesome. I had 2.01 and 58 units. So no university coverage turned me down. So I thought, they actually did all four turned me down when I transferred, wrote a letter saying, look, my transfer was gonna be updated and they got me back in. So I ended up going to San Diego State. San Diego State, where eventually I studied theater. So I'm on track. The pitter from 10 to college is on track. I went to theater school. What I think might have helped was that letter of appeal was that my dad lived. So I don't know. I didn't mention it. So he's 87, that was about six months ago. He's doing great. Still practicing law because he didn't practice law every day. He'd be in prison for killing my mom. So what's next? So again, some transitions in my life. Some hurdles, if you will, right? And I blame Michael so bad because of my dad's head. He's a sole provider. He runs his own shop. And that's a problem for my perspective. A heartbeat for, there's a bigger, bigger lane. My plans to move back to LA to come, I moved to San Francisco because I have an opportunity just to get here. So how many people look back home after college to live with family? How many people still live with no, I don't know. I did. I had to go back home with my parents. I didn't have to, but that was not the plan. That was to get an apartment with my best friend, start my acting career and do all that. Earthquake changed all that. So I moved to San Francisco. I follow love, did day jobs. I do some stuff. I do some acting work. I do what I have to do to pay the bills, right? And then move back to Hollywood. We could want to pursue the acting. I really want to do this. So we go back to Hollywood and as you can see, I took it seriously. Yeah, it's me without beer. And that was just last week. It's a long time ago. Man, that was, I had a love, didn't I? I don't say it's a good one, it's a love, right? At pursuit of acting, we sell a house because again, LA is really expensive. And we sold on the high end of the market. 29, who knows what it was, honestly. I had a lot of jobs in my life, a lot of companies. But I really started these companies. Silverlight Productions, I had two brands, okay? If these would go okay, but now it's 2009, 2005, sorry, 2005, and economy's about to tank. No one's fault, just stuff happens. So what we do, we have to get out 13 years old. And that's right then. Right after business thrives, looking to do it. Websites, I'm doing like 10% of web work, mostly dream reader, HTML, no WordPress at this time. Because now it is 2009. And I get offered an awesome job, the dream job of a lifetime. I'm gonna host a show on the web, I can tell you the image, it's actually on YouTube. My two loves, I love technology, maybe more than skateboarding. San Antonio is from the Han Beach, that's a Han Beach beer. Things are looking great, right? I'm now gonna make a lot of money to be a director of a company, another pivot, another opportunity, I go with it. Just kinda keep going the path, right? My next. I'm in 7th Heaven, I'm doing what I really want to do. They pay the move, they pay me a lot of money, and now I'm stuck, and I'm like, we're just stuck, I don't know what to do with myself. So I do everything else as I start my company again. And this time I focus solely on photography, because that's what I want to do. I'm doing more photography at that time than anything else. And photography, I didn't have a website. So because I lost a bet a year earlier, so I spent six weeks dating her. It didn't take well. So with that in mind, I built a site that worked best. My life has never been in the same sense. I look at it, I figure out a theme I want to use, and this is only for photography, mind you. I make, okay, actually I found a photographer websites that I like to look of. And I kind of copied one that was in Florida. I'm in LA, he's in Florida, he gets commercial work, I do portraits. He'll never find me. And it's true, he never found me. Of course, I launched my site, I'm like, I have a new website, hire me. Crickets. As you know, having a website isn't everything. It's part of the equation, part of your business plan, right? So I then start building a website for the parents who I met through soccer, through baseball, my kids, or basketball, or through the school, PTN sites, stuff, I start building sites. And then people say, can you teach us a website? I'm sure, so I start teaching sites. Excuse me. And in that timeframe, I then find out about work camps. Work camps are awesome. I asked the pressure lawyer how many times have you guys been? I started by going to two, at least two. We're camp LA, we're camp Orange County. I missed out at Orange County to buy a ticket. It's one of the most popular ones out there. And it sells out like within hours, typically. I got lucky, a sponsor gave me a ticket. Who does that? Who gives away tickets? I know it's only 40 bucks, or 20 bucks per day. But I get a ticket. And I'm there, I want you guys. I need a parole. These are my people. I want to do that. I want to help people be people. But I was really desperate for work. Because I told someone earlier this morning, desperation for work wreaks really bad. And I help them, you guys do, I help them. I don't do something. What do you do? What do you do? What do you do? Wasn't pretty. It takes time. You have to be able to trust. I was a volunteer, and I was a volunteer photographer because my entry in the workplace was food photography. And then, I don't know, how many people hear your name? Chris. Okay, which is interesting. So Chris, my life, is a personality of a workplace. He's a speaker. He does strategy. Super nice guy. My first initial impression of him was, who's this guy? He blogs every day. And he did. He was blogging every day for about two or three years. He put in the time. He put in so much time in this community of work reps and work camps that people, this community, got together about five years ago and bought him a Mac Pro. The first, the silver one that came out, the black one. Bought him a Mac Pro. And my mind is blown up. I'm out of work. I have no money. My marriage is close to being over. Seriously. If he has a job, why would people do that? It's based on community. It's based on what he gave back. And I got really pissed, really bitter, really angry. Wasn't a good space. Until I met him. Couldn't be nicer. Really, really annoyed me when I met him. Super bad. Not only that, he hired me. Yeah, great, thanks. I want to hate you, but you're paying me. And I shoot work camp launch county in 2015 or 2016 for him, for his own, what was he seeing on his website? One of them, I took. So I came in to work rest as a photographer. 90% of my time, 10% work rest. Over the years, very few people know that I was an outdoor photographer. That's the top offline. I don't mention it. My website for photography, it's actually down. It says it's coming soon, as it says for years now. It actually was hacked, which I let it get hacked. Here's how they would do it. It's fascinating how that happens. But I don't recommend it. Update your logins, update your things, okay? So here I have mad, angry, angry white guy. There's a song called, Angry White Guy by Jim's big ego. Check it out. I was an angry white guy. Can't fault the man for doing the work. Anybody for that matter. Can't fault people for putting in the time and doing the work, okay? So I was at a crossroads. What am I gonna do? So my next was suck it up, get a day job, do what I have to do. Wake some tables, do some internet marketing for a company that was very toxic and just not a good happy place to be. But I did what I had to do. And during that time, I started reading a lot more books, starting with Star Wars 1. I mean, people heard this book. Great. So the basic concept is, start with why. Why is it we do what we do, right? That was perspective. They do it from great user experience, great interface, elegant and amazing design. That's their why. And they move that work from that way. There's a TED talk on this. Simon Sinek is great. And my why, I can see my slide. I don't practice, it's the same thing I do. So I'm not surprised it's happening, except as you know. Okay, moving back to it. Okay. And so seriously, when I talked about my marriage being here, it wasn't good. This year, it'd be 20 years. We pushed through it. So thanks. So the bad part was years, they're 24, 15. We're not good. Communication and money, number two, two top reasons why people get divorced. My dad's a lawyer. You think I would know this? I thought it was adultery and other stuff. Communication and money. Can I communicate? Expectations, talk about it. You're married? Yeah. Okay. So when I knew what I could lose, that's when I got serious. And I also read The One Thing. Anyone know of this book? This is by Gary Keller and Jay Pappasen. That was him. Gary Keller's called Williams Real Estate, being on the West Coast. And his belief, his take on it is you can do one thing. You cannot multitask. You've got to have one thing. And I have one thing, along with one thing right now. The new generation of what I do right after the past 18 months. So I relaunched a company. I divided some things up. I relaunched 18 months ago. I went full-time on September 2nd, 2016. And that's concierge WP. And I have other things. But every day, this is my one thing. I focus on this every day. I show up and I do the work. Because in a little bit of a phrase that actually, I thought I would show up and do the work. And I kind of was kind of wasn't. So Einstein has the quote, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again because I didn't do the result. I love Einstein, one of my heroes. And I realized in the first six or seven months that I thought I was doing what I needed to do. I was kind of cleaning out their cold calling, cold email, and finding the leads. Scattershot, almost a shotgun approach. Using Trello, but no follow-up, no follow-up. So I had the epiphany to where I asked other people in our space who were doing the job I'm trying to do better. They're doing better than I am. There's plenty of work. I'm not opposed to anybody's doing the same thing because there's 90 million websites. We can't take it all. Well, I can't take it all. I'm not willing to. I want to make that balance of my life. So I asked them, what are they doing different? And I just kind of looked at them. I talked to three friends of mine who I trust their opinion. And they're using productivity tools consistently. So I dove in. I picked up productivity planner. And this is not a pitch for them. I just, this is what I use. Every day to my bag, I just over here. You guys want to see it later, I'll show you. I use productivity, productivity planner. And I also use a CRF. And those two things, in the last six months since I moved to the East Coast, have made the biggest change in my career. And such a big change that my wife, who I've tried to include in my businesses over the last 20 years, 23 years of marriage, I realized when I look at my wife, is that she doesn't care about my ideas. Not in a negative way. I would say, hey, how should I bid this? How should I propose this? How should I shoot this for a photo shoot? Or build a site? And she's like, she doesn't care. She won't tell me a rent or mortgage cover, health insurance, and food in the fridge. And I get that now. I really do. I really get it now. But she asked me two weeks ago. She literally said, why now? When she was doing dishes, I'm helping with the kitchen table. She was like, why are you getting business now? And I said, do you really want to know? And she gave me a little, like, maybe. And I didn't want, because I can get into the weeds. I can dive into the weeds and tell you every little thing I do by day to day. I have no problem sharing. Trust me. So I think about her second. She's looking at me. And I say, because I use systems, and I hold myself accountable every day. That's all. I don't say, see, I don't want to say the productivity plan. She's not going to care. She'll go, I don't care. I use the system. So that's part of it. And then it got me thinking that entrepreneurship is hard, it's work. And that brings it to us to right now, the last six months. Business is on the upswing. I run an agency. Actually, I tell people now that they ask me, what do you do? I do business development for a small agency. And I stop. Because if I say, I have a podcast, I have two podcasts, I have a subsidiary, if I do too much, people will, ah, it's too much. So I do business development for a small web agency. It's my agency, you don't need to know that. I'm not trying to grab it. And I can build right in the cell. I rather sell, I rather build relationships and help solve the problem. And then have a team that I brought on to do the rest of it. That's how I see it. Can I build as well? Sure. One of the guys that does the work for me, I do what he does without a question. The other two guys, I have no idea what they do. I just don't think they're really smart. And that's the key. The difference between an agency and not an agency is, more work than you can handle, bringing on help. Free minutes, full time, doesn't matter how you re-go in. That's just the definition of taxes. 1099 or not, I don't care about that. So I'm an agency. The accidental agency, it just happened in the last six months. Because of being accountable, because I didn't want to lose what I have to lose. And it's not all roses. It's not all pretty. I've lost work. People aren't happy sometimes, putting up fires. And just to show you how it's not all roses, is this was February 22nd, my dance work reaction. I've heard of mine posted on Twitter about crying. He's a male, watch the movie, had him cry. I replied to him in the DM. And I crossed out the bad words that I didn't want to say to him. But it says, truth be told, I feel like I could lose my breath at any minute. Just the basics of life, work, money, money, all of it. Just figure this was a decent, safe place to share. Yes, me, outgoing, people, person, yes. But mentally, I'm due, breathe, not a second. That's what I was feeling. It's what I feel all the time, all the time. So, what's your next? Your next is different than mine, than yours, than yours, than yours. Every day, that's enough of an order. If you want to run your own day to day, you have to do the work. My goal today is to inspire you. It's hard work. You can also be a great entrepreneur, an employee. And that's what I'm saying. The way I get my dad, which is out of love, is he's a sole proprietor attorney. He worked for a small company for a year, and then went on his own. And I always saw that. And I'm like, that's what I want to do, my whole thing. I want my own, I just want to call my own shots. I make it okay, employee, if you're hiring for a long time, let me know. But I just feel like I have more control of my day to day, but it takes work. Being an entrepreneur, it also reminds me of the image you'll see with the iceberg, the little bit on top, turning on the bottom. Where I'm at right now, it didn't happen overnight. It's been 18 months, two years of making, okay? It's, I'm so not perfect that conciergewp.com is down right now because the site was old, I was losing business because of what the offers were there. We took it down and we were redeveloping it. It's supposed to feel live last Monday. It's not live, because I'm not perfect. It's a matter of priorities. It needs to go up. So if anyone's not busy today, they can do my side of the cake. And leaving this last piece here. To quote by John F. Kennedy. It was this, or it was Captain Kirk. I won this one. And it says, there are risks and costs to action, but there are far less than, they are far less than the risks, the long range risks of comfortable inaction. Take action. If you're new to WordPress, learn. If you're not a coder, it's fine. Ground your piece of the community. Be a part of the community, but do the work every day. I'm Adam Silver, and that's what you can find me. If you want to talk more, I'll be here all day. Thanks and enjoy my work. Can't be remote.