I wanted to take this moment, in the summer of 2023 to say thanks to the thousands of readers of this blog, and the essays that I post regularly (ok, about monthly!) trying to touch on “lessons of leadership and life.” As you can see by the “dashboard” below, I hit the milestone of over 100k pageviews in the past few days, covering the 254 essays that I have posted over the past 14 years.
As I sit here writing essay 255, I think back to the start of this little adventure and how close I came to killing the idea before it started…. I was certainly a reluctant and “doubting blogger” back in march of 2009 when I posted the first essay titled “Legacy” which you can see here: https://fylegacy.blogspot.com/2009/03/legacy.html. At the end of the opening paragraph, I included a line that still rings true today...
“Regardless of age or experience, no one is too old to learn, to grow, to see new insights and I am hopeful that this blog will foster growth in the writer and reader alike.”
This platform has certainly fostered growth for “yours truly” over the years and I am so grateful that I DIDN’T let my own reluctance/doubts/uncertainties stop me from posting that first essay so many years ago! I had left working at The Coca-Cola Company in 2008 (hard to imagine that it has been 15+ years) and as I started to transition to other endeavors, I had some of my old “Coke friends” ask me to share a s few of the stories that I told in meetings back at the company. Like the “Turkey Bag Story” featured in the first essay and the link above, I had a few “old stories” that I had shared over my 18 years at Coke. I had never written them down, so I had no easy way to share them with others. One of the folks asking for the stories kept at it and suggested that I create a blog and post them on-line. It seems crazy today, but at that moment the suggestion of me “writing a blog” seemed ludicrous…. I wasn’t a blog writer sitting in some wayward coffee shop (naïve and insulting!!), I was a corporate exec working towards my next gig… (Bolthouse Farms was still six months away.) Well, my reluctance was worn down over a few months and I posted the first essay, and ultimately five others in March of 2009 thinking that might be the end of it…. a blog of six stories for easy reference… little did I know that almost 250 essays later, decades in the future, I would be sitting here today highlighting all these essays and the 100k pageviews.
It’s interesting to look back at those first essays, which not only include the “Turkey Bag Story,” but also feature a personal favorite “Aunt Lorraine’s Law,” and one of the most read essays of all the 254 posted “The Three Impact Points of Leadership.” They were relevant then and still resonate today. If you think about the metrics, with 100k page pageviews, and 254 essays posted the average essay would have 394 pageviews (it’s just math.) Well, the bell curve on this blog doesn’t work like that, there are the “Top 10 Most Popular Posts” (you can see them over on the left side of the blog, just scroll down a little) and each of them have more than a 1000 pageviews per essay, many essays have a few hundred pageviews, and there are dozens with less than 50. Some of the “Top 10” were written back in 2009, yet two were written in the past few months. One of the things I have learned through this writing/posting adventure is that you never know what essay/topic will hit home, and literally be shared and read by thousands across the world, and which will be read by 20-30 folks and sit quietly on the sidelines… it’s not up to the writer for sure. Once you post an essay, its literally “out there” and the rest is up to the readers to decide!
I will close with a big and humble thank you… thanks for taking the time over the years with these stories and thanks for sharing them with others. I will keep adding to the essays “regularly” and I hope that a few stories in the future months and years will hit home like a few have done over the past decades.
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Bill, I can say your blogs inspire me. I've been reading them since my first day at Bolthouse (the first time around, which ironically was July of 2013) with several of your essays being required reading as part of the onboarding process. Your blogs even played a part while I was visiting your leadership camp in the mountains. Since the pandemic, I've been writing my own leadership book. It's been a slow process and full of obstacles, but your history at blogging keeps me going. Writing is my hobby, happens when I have "extra" time, but the work continues on regarless of the endless hours I devote to my current "day job" that traditionally expands into each evening.
ReplyDeleteWho knows what the future holds or where my next career will take me, but it's nice to know I can come back and visit these lessons on that next journey and hopefully continue to read more of yours as we go on this journey together.