Blog - Brain Wads | Drew Hawkins

Can AI actually help me get in shape?

Drew Hawkins — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 18:52:30 +0000

I’m not sure what prompted me to start this experiment. Last fall, I invested in a Concept2 rowing machine so I could fit in solid workouts even on hectic days or when the weather kept me inside. On a whim, I decided to upload my workout and heart rate data, synced from Strava, into ChatGPT. I asked it: “Am I trending in the right direction?” and requested predictions for potential 2k or 5k all-out row times. Over time, ChatGPT tracked my progress, remembered my data, and built trendlines to gauge how well I was improving.

When I got serious about Hyrox training over the winter for the race Megan and I had planned in Las Vegas this past February, I took things a step further: could AI actually be my coach? Could it help me gauge progress and recovery?

Megan has always done a great job programming herself for Hyrox, and her results speak for themselves (she set a two-minute PR in Vegas with a blistering 1:14:14!). I have a tendency to overtrain and blow myself up too close to a goal race. We had spent a lot of money on flights and a hotel in Vegas, so I didn’t want to waste it. So I had ChatGPT help me train smarter, design workout ideas, and, because it’s ChatGPT, hype me up on bad days.

My Process

Between the programmed CrossFit workouts, running, and the occasional Concept2 WOD, I found a great rhythm with plenty of variety. This approach allowed me to train hard while minimizing the risk of overtraining any one muscle group. I even gave up playing in a rec soccer league with friends from church—no sense risking injury in a sport I’m not even good at. It just seemed unnecessary.

I’d map out my week as best I could, using ChatGPT as my (very nerdy) training buddy. After each workout, I’d log my results (run times, row splits, or CrossFit metcon scores, etc)plus screenshots of my Strava heart rate and, if I ran outside, my pace, distance, and elevation. Every morning, I’d even record my sleep score and Zepp’s “biocharge” number to see if I was actually recovering.

One of the best things about ChatGPT was how it helped me pace myself. It told me when to back off, suggested Zone 2 runs instead of always pushing hard, and offered nutrition tips to aid recovery. Normally, I’d try to make up for a bad day by doubling down, but ChatGPT encouraged rest...and I listened. As a result, my harder workouts kept improving.

I was avoiding unnecessary risks, meticulously logging my fitness data, and on track for a 1:23–1:25 Hyrox race, which would be a huge personal best. Everything was going according to plan.

Then I got sick

There's been a viral thing going around that several people we know have gotten. Ford was even down a bit, going into his first soccer tournament of the year. While we were at his tournament, I started feeling a bit bleh. Watching his tournament in the rain, plus going back and forth between Cumming and downtown Atlanta to coach Campbell, was a lot of running around, feeling bad. But the hay was in the barn with training, and I could afford to back off a bit.

Then things got really bad for both Campbell and me.

On the Tuesday evening before my Saturday race, Campbell and I both had fevers of just under 103. We were on the couch most of Tuesday, with her sleeping and me taking small cat naps in between, trying to catch up on work before flying out to Vegas early Thursday morning.

That Wednesday, Campbell’s fever spiked to 104 at one point, and I was still feeling like I had been hit by a truck. I consulted coach ChatGPT to see if traveling was even an option, much less doing Hyrox. It helped me keep track of the Zepp BioCharge, which my Amazfit watch kept tabs on, to see if I was recovering and on track to even toe the line that Saturday. It also gave me tips on how to best care for Campbell and keep the rest of our house in good condition.

Fortunately, Campbell and I both woke up feeling better than we had the prior days that Thursday, and we left our house at 6am to catch our flight to Vegas. Once we got to our hotel, Campbell and I crashed out the rest of the afternoon sleeping while Megan and Ford went off exploring Mandalay Bay. We were able to get it together enough that evening to grab dinner and do a short round of putt-putt.

Friday was packed with Vegas activities we’d already committed to. It was also a test: would I recover enough to race? ChatGPT monitored my biocharge and told me not to worry about exercise. There was no way to improve my fitness at that point, and pushing could only make things worse. Fortunately, recovery was on track, and a “did not start” felt less and less likely.

Race Day

According to ChatGPT, I had enough biocharge to toe the line and at least finish the race. Hyrox is a long, grind-it-out workout, and going out too fast is a mistake that can have devastating consequences on a good day. When you were in my position and truly didn’t have any reserves to recover a hot start, planning was crucial.

My AI coach gave me some tips on how to approach each station. Because it had tracked all my workouts over the past couple of months, it had a great sense of the areas I was good at and the stations I normally struggle with. From there, it helped me map out a plan for where I could feel free to sandbag and coast, saving myself for late-race heroics if I had anything in the tank at the end.

Here’s a quick video breaking down what the race is, if you’re curious about that kind of thing. If not, carry on.

Everything ended up working out great. I was far from my goal time (finished in 1:37), but I went faster on four stations than I had the last time I tried a Hyrox race. The pacing scheme ChatGPT helped me develop kept me from making big mistakes early and from finishing strong without completely killing myself, so I could enjoy the rest of the weekend's family time in Vegas.

Without ChatGPT, I probably would have overtrained and never built up fitness steadily through the winter. Honestly, I might’ve skipped the Hyrox race altogether if the chatbot hadn’t crunched my numbers and told me I could do it. Thanks to the AI coaching and tracking, I had just enough in the tank to finish. Even running on fumes.

Using AI Coaching Moving Forward

The Hyrox Vegas event is behind me. After doing Hyrox sick, on top of a heavy work season right now, I haven’t fully recovered and don’t have any goal races planned in the near future. The only thing I am considering right now is getting a sub-7:00 2k and/or a sub-19:00 5k on the rowing machine before the calendar year is up.

My main difference moving forward is my tool of choice. I’ve moved on from ChatGPT and have pivoted to Claude as my go-to assistant. I’ve done some light workouts since I’ve logged and plan on using AI as a sort of fitness journal to gauge overall trends rather than laser-focusing on a race. I’m even working with Claude to build a journaling artifact to track overall health.

While I constantly need to ramp up on AI for my career, I’ve found that personal out-of-office use cases are often the best teachers. When I was starting out in social media at the beginning of my career, playing around with it in my spare time was my best teacher and ultimately helped me succeed. I feel like smaller personal experiments, like this one with AI and fitness tracking, will have lessons that will carry over into my role at Womble.

Me and the kids after I successfully survived the race.

How 32 Seconds with My Dad Reset My Parenting Perspective

Drew Hawkins — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 19:17:00 +0000

“Every parent should have to do that at least once.”

I don’t remember exactly what year it was, but I’m guessing I was about a Junior or Senior in high school at the time. We were visiting my grandparents on a holiday break, and my dad and I scaled the fence of a local high school track early on a Saturday morning so I could get some speed work in.

When we traveled, my dad usually accompanied me on my adventures, sneaking out onto tracks for workouts. He would time me, cheer me on, and be a lookout for me if it looked like someone was coming over to ask us to leave.

My plan on this particular morning was to do 16 x 200-meter intervals at 32-34 seconds each. I don’t remember my rest between intervals, but it was likely either a 1-minute standing rest or a 200-meter jog.

I was about halfway through my 200s when my dad felt inspired.

“You know, I want to try one or two of these with you to see what I can do.”

To be clear, Dad and I weren’t necessarily training partners in the traditional sense. He was more strength-oriented. I was lean and more endurance-minded. Physically built very differently. Outside of the one time we both ran a local 5k together and he outsprinted a woman pushing a stroller on the final stretch, we never really ran together. Dad would either serve as a cheerleader/coach on track workouts or pace me on a bicycle on longer runs.

My pace on the 200s this particular morning wasn’t all out at all. After all, I had to do a lot of them without dying off. So on the next interval, my dad toed the line with me at the 200-meter mark, and off we went.

To his credit, he hung with me most of the way. His speed was pretty good for someone who hadn't really ever done this! I was a high school boy and, not missing the opportunity to beat my dad at something, I picked up the pace a little at the end, hitting a second or two faster than my target pace. Fast enough to beat him but not ruin my workout.

I felt loose and good. Dad had done one interval at the pace I had held all morning and was gassed. I did a few more intervals, and dad joined me for one last one. Being at the end of my workout, we both went all out. I ended my workout with a 28-second split or so, with dad following up with something in the low 30s, a shade slower than the pace I had held for my full workout.

He and I were both doubled over at the finish line. As we caught our breath, he looked at me and said, “I have way more respect for what you all do after that.”

At this point in time, Dad had seen me join my teammates in raising a state championship trophy over our heads - multiple times. He’d seen nearly every race I’d ever run and knew the splits of most of my workouts. However, it was in that moment of actually feeling what I felt daily, going through that pain cave and finding my way out again, that everything really clicked.

“Every parent should have to do that at least once.”

That moment changed both of us. It changed how he saw me run. It changed how I watch my own kids do their thing today.

Not Being That Parent

If you’ve been to any youth sporting event, you know what I’m talking about. It’s one thing to be vocal and hype up your kid and cheer for their effort. It’s another thing to micromanage their performance all the way through. Being all over their kid every time they make a misstep or fall short of whatever imaginary expectation their parents have. It was even prevalent in cross-country, where some parents would jump all over their kids for having an off day, not empathizing with how brutally hard that sport is.

Dad was all too familiar with those parents, which likely prompted his post-workout comment.

Building that empathy gland is one way I’ve tried to avoid being that parent. I joined an over-30 soccer league to understand what it’s like out on the field for my youngest (Ford).

I never played soccer growing up. In fact, the first real soccer game of my life was last year! However, going through the motions of chasing people up and down the field, taking hits, and continuously doing what I consider a “shuttle run from Hell” while still maintaining foot-eye coordination makes me respect what Ford does in his games more. I hope to never have him yell at me (like I saw one kid yell at his overly-vocal mom after he had enough in a soccer game once):

“You come out here and do it then!”

This past New Year’s Day, we joined our oldest daughter at her karate dojo for a morning of working out, doing many of the same exercises on the hardwood floor she does several times a week. While I also did karate at her age, joining her on her floor and experiencing it as she did made her endeavor more relatable for all of us.

Changing the Feedback Loop

Building empathy, trying to put myself (literally) in my kids' shoes in their sports, has also impacted how I cheer for them on the sidelines. We don’t jump on them when something doesn’t go their way. I try to cheer hard for them, not just when they do something well, but when it’s obvious they were making the right effort, but just fell short of what they were trying to do. I feel like verbally rewarding that effort makes the game more fun and also keeps them from being so risk-averse, out of fear of failure, that they never grow.

After games, Megan and I both usually ask, “Did you have fun?” before anything else.

I never give Ford pointers because, at this point, his domain expertise in soccer far exceeds mine. Who am I to tell him anything? Most of the time, after a game, he just wants the next snack and to chill. He leads the conversation on whether we should talk about the game.

With Campbell, especially in basketball, our feedback loop is led by Campbell. She just started her season recently, and on the way home from practice or a game, she’ll proactively ask, “What is one thing you saw that I could do better?” Coming from an elementary school girl, that’s a huge desire for growth. It also invites conversation and doesn’t require me to share unsolicited opinions.

All of that, my mentality to youth sports and expectations for my own kids as they play, stems from that one moment with my dad that cold morning out on the track 20+ years ago.

“Every parent should have to do that at least once.”

Chase Value, Not the Spotlight

Drew Hawkins — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 09:46:44 +0000

I blame social media for pouring gasoline on a fire that’s been burning for centuries. Humans have always chased glory: the applause, the spotlight, the outward praise. But now we’re chasing likes from people we don’t even know and will likely never meet. That’s a dangerous incentive.

We start believing the thing that gets the most attention, the most adoration, is what matters most. If we’re not under the lights, we’re not making an impact. Or at least, that’s how it feels.

I disagree. The people who do the work no one wants to do, who show up with grit and tenacity, are the ones who outlast the flash-in-the-pan talents and glory seekers. I’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve tried to instill it in my kids.

"The Great Wall of Campbell"

Last winter, our then-8-year-old daughter Campbell decided to try basketball. Sports aren’t her thing. She’s empathetic, artsy, and her emotional intelligence is off the charts. Wise beyond her years. But athletics? Usually a distant third.

She joined a co-ed church league and started the season timid, afraid to even touch the ball. By the end, she was named “Most Improved Player” on a team that won the league championship.

How?

She spent most of the season frustrated that the boys wouldn’t pass to her. And she was right. Typically speaking, elementary school boys want to be heroes on the court. Passing to the girl? Rare.

So I told her to control what she could. She may not get many offensive chances, but she could own the defensive side. Cam’s tall for her age, so we worked on using that. When we played together at a our local park, I bumped her around, got her used to contact, and taught her how to guard hard. Instead of counting points made by her, we tracked plus/minus to show how the team did when she was on the court. She learned that her hustle and defense made her team better.

By season’s end, her coach trusted her in big defensive moments. She didn’t rack up offensive stats, but she helped her friends win. And she loved it.

Ford’s Changing Role in Soccer

Our son Ford is the opposite of timid when it comes to sports...mostly because he's so high-energy. Soccer is his oxygen. In 4v4 and 5v5 rec and academy bridge programs, he was a goal-scoring machine. Three, five, sometimes ten goals in a session.

This fall he moved to a tougher academy team. Bigger field. Seven-on-seven format. Great players. More structure. Less chaos. His superpower—thriving in chaos—was neutralized.

What happened next blew me away. If you asked him what his favorite position was six months ago, he would have said “striker” without hesitation. Now he loves defense. He’s one of the team’s best goalies despite his size, plays wing and fullback, and says striker is his least favorite role.

He doesn’t score as much as he used to. When he does, it’s from scrapping in front of the goal. But his impact is huge. He does the dirty work, dives into danger without a second thought (he even lost a tooth in a game last week), wins balls, and moves play forward. A team dad once said, “I’ve never seen someone more willing to stick their face in a fan than that kid.”

Maybe one of the best compliments he’s ever gotten.

Ford embraced the role. No complaints. Just love for the game and a team-first mentality you rarely see in elementary school. That attitude will take him far.

Aiding a State Title Without Scoring

In high school, I was lucky to be part of three state championship cross-country teams. Scoring works like this: add the places of your top five runners. Lowest total wins.

During our second title run, I wasn’t in the top five. I was sixth. My teammate Matt was seventh. On paper, we didn’t matter.

Except we did.

In the last quarter mile, Matt and I outsprinted the other team’s fifth runner. That move pushed him back two spots. We won by two points.

We didn’t score, but we sealed the win. We had every reason to coast, but giving everything for the team paid off.

This Applies to Work Too

Most of my career has been built on doing the work others avoided. At my first agency job, I took on accounts no one wanted. That earned trust and bigger opportunities. I know people now who work on the less sexy brands at their agencies but those are the accounts that do the best jobs paying the bills.

Later on in my career, at a small nonprofit PR firm, I built their digital practice when social media was exploding. My success wasn’t from clever viral campaigns. It was from diving into analytics and getting my hands dirty doing the unglamorous math clients didn’t want to touch. That eventually opened doors for the “fun” stuff.

I’ve worked with people who prove their value the same way. They’re not chasing glory. They’re chasing excellence. Ask any teammate about those folks and they’ll say, “I don’t know what we’d do without them.”

Chase Value, Not Glory

Glory and value aren’t the same, even if culture tries to tell us otherwise most of the time. Showing up, doing the work, and making the team better—whether in sports, business, or life—lays the foundation for the long haul. When you’re not chasing the spotlight, you’re chasing something bigger than yourself.

It’s more sustainable. And honestly? More fun. I’ve yet to be proven otherwise.

An Academic Look at Easter

Drew Hawkins — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 18:24:39 +0000

One of my favorite professors at Western Kentucky was Dr. Joseph Trafton. I took three of his classes (New Testament, Life of Jesus and a C.S. Lewis intensive). He had a way of unpacking complex ideas in a way that was engaging while taking the scholarship of his subject matter seriously. He was a practicing Christian yes, but he approached his classes from an academic-first perspective.

One year I had the chance to hear him walk through the validity of Jesus’ resurrection (you know…the whole Easter story) from a historian perspective. I thought it was a great talk. A couple of years ago, I randomly stumbled upon a recording of that talk. I know he gave it quite a bit so I’m not sure when this was recorded.

Even if you aren’t a Christian or even antagonistic toward the faith, it’s at least an interesting walk-through that doesn’t proseltize but presents historical facts as they are. I have the recording here to listen:

If you don’t want to sit through 40 minutes, the below is a synposis of his posts that I had AI help me write using the transcript of this audio. Again, the below is very gen-AI driven but still hits the high points of his talk well (if you’re the text skimming type).

However you celebrate, I hope you have a great weekend!

An Academic Look at Easter Weekend

Easter is more than pastel eggs, chocolate bunnies, and blooming lilies. For many, it represents the foundation of Christianity, anchoring the story of Jesus's resurrection. Yet, what would an objective academic lens reveal about this central event? Can we view such a pivotal moment in faith through the scope of history, logic, and evidence?

This post dives into the historical inquiry and academic reflection surrounding Easter, exploring the resurrection of Jesus Christ and its implications.

The Historical Jesus

Before examining the resurrection, the first question to address is whether Jesus of Nazareth even existed. While skeptics may argue the stories surrounding Jesus were fabricated, historical evidence suggests otherwise. First-century writers Josephus, a Jewish historian, and Tacitus, a Roman historian, both non-Christians, acknowledged the existence of Jesus. Josephus even referred to James as "the brother of Jesus, the so-called Christ," while Tacitus mentioned Jesus's execution under Pontius Pilate. Their writings affirm that Jesus existed, grounding his life in documented history.

The New Testament Gospels complement this evidence. Written 30-40 years after Jesus’s death, they were close enough to the time of events to rely on eyewitness accounts, ensuring a level of historical reliability. Skeptics often view these as biased writings, but their timeline challenges the notion of myth-building that requires centuries of retelling.

Understanding the Crucifixion

The crucifixion of Jesus represents one of the most well-documented and gruesome forms of execution in the ancient Roman world. Designed to instill fear and obedience, crucifixion was reserved for revolutionaries, slaves, and the most severe criminals. Jesus's death paints a harrowing yet profoundly human narrative.

His beaten and bloodied body was nailed to a cross in a public place to be mocked and humiliated. Historical accounts from both Roman and Jewish sources align with the biblical Gospels in confirming Jesus's death on the cross. This method of execution left no room for disputed claims of someone surviving crucifixion.

The Claim of the Resurrection

At the core of Christianity is the assertion that Jesus rose from the dead. The Apostle Paul perfectly encapsulates this claim in his writings, declaring that without the resurrection, Christian faith has no foundation. But what evidence supports such an extraordinary claim?

1. The Empty Tomb

All four Gospels recount the discovery of an empty tomb. This claim carries weight for several reasons. First, the accounts in the Gospels describe women as the first witnesses of the empty tomb. At the time, women were not considered reliable witnesses in Jewish society. If the writers were fabricating the story, they would not have chosen women as their primary witnesses. The inclusion points to authenticity rather than fabrication since no one trying to convince others would craft a detail so counterproductive within its cultural context.

Additionally, if the tomb was not empty, opponents of the followers of Jesus could have easily debunked the resurrection claim by producing his body. Yet, no such evidence was presented.

2. Claims of Witnessing the Risen Jesus

Numerous accounts detail individuals and groups claiming to see the risen Jesus. From Paul’s letters to the Gospel narratives, the claims align in describing Jesus appearing to his disciples, to over 500 people at once, and even to skeptics like James, his brother. Importantly, Paul, a former persecutor of Christians, had a life-altering experience that he attributed to encountering Jesus, transforming him into one of Christianity's most significant proponents.

3. Transformed Lives

The impact of the resurrection on Jesus's disciples and early followers is undeniable. After Jesus’s death, his disciples were distraught and scattered, fearing for their lives. Yet, after the resurrection, these same individuals boldly proclaimed him as risen, even at the cost of their own lives. Such dramatic transformations point to a significant and life-altering event.

Additionally, skeptics like James and Paul had no incentive to align with the Christian movement. For Paul, however, his encounter with what he claimed was the risen Jesus drastically changed his worldview and mission.

Addressing Skeptical Theories

While skeptics have proposed alternative explanations for the resurrection, these theories struggle to hold up under scrutiny:

The Wrong Tomb Theory: Skeptics suggest that the women went to the wrong tomb. However, this theory fails to address why opponents of Christianity did not simply locate the actual tomb and produce the body.
The Stolen Body Theory: Another theory claims that Jesus's disciples stole his body to fake the resurrection. Yet, this fails to explain the radical transformation of individuals like Paul, who was not part of the original group and was actively opposed to Christianity.
The Spiritual Resurrection Theory: Some suggest Jesus's resurrection was a spiritual experience rather than a physical event. However, this does not explain the empty tomb or reports of physical interactions with the risen Jesus.

The Significance of Easter

Ultimately, the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus cannot be ignored. The empty tomb, the claims of witnesses, and the transformation of lives present a compelling case for the reality of the resurrection. While belief in the resurrection involves faith, historical inquiry offers a basis for understanding its plausibility.

For billions worldwide, Easter represents the triumph of life over death, of hope over despair, and of unwavering faith in something greater. Academics, believers, and skeptics alike continue to wrestle with its implications, but one thing is clear: the story of Easter remains one of the most significant narratives in human history.

If you’re intrigued by the stories and historical details surrounding Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, exploring these accounts with an open mind can lead to meaningful reflection, regardless of your perspective.

Happy Easter, and may this season inspire reflection, hope, and curiosity.

Can I Brag On My Kids for Just a Second?

Drew Hawkins — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 18:41:58 +0000

I don't do this often, but if you'll humor me, I want to brag on my own kids for a minute here. After all, this is my blog, and I can write what I want to. Megan and I live with two incredibly cool humans, and it'd be a shame not to mention that at some point.

As a parent, it's easy to take credit when things go well and shrug our shoulders when life isn't meeting our expectations. We want to take more credit than we deserve when raising kids. My wife and I were both only children. However, having two different kids has taught us that God has gifted each of them with different skills and talents that our parenting methods have no control over. We can only lean into what their giftings appear to be and hope both Campbell and Ford make good decisions.

While Megan and I draw boundaries and set examples, it's ultimately the kids' decision on how they'll act on them. So far, I've been impressed.

Campbell. Daddy's Little Girl.

Our first born and 100% daddy's girl, her wisdom exceeds her years here on earth. Campbell may be the most empathetic and emotionally intelligent person I have ever met. I don't mean for her age either - ever. She has a gift for understanding how people feel and why they may act out in ways they do that honestly astounds me. If more adults had the same level of empathy she did, the world would 100% be a better place. She's only eight years old, and I genuinely feel like I can ask her for advice on (almost) anything.

The kid is also a hugger too. She gives the best hugs. Even when we go to a school function, all of her friends run up to her, asking for a hug. Her grandaddy and I are both huggers - so it's hereditary.

She also understands her own emotional boundaries well too. Campbell can articulate how she feels better than most adults and tell us when she needs "introvert time." She takes on how other people feel so much that it puts weight on her. She needs that alone time to get her energy back. I get that - and am proud that she knows that about herself too.

Campbell is also highly creative. She has a quick wit for someone her age and extremely creative. We've had breakfasts before school in the morning where she'll ask for some construction paper and scissors, and then - boom - she's created an origami-like snow fox. I can't do that sort of thing now. Cam has even started a story series on a marshmallow kingdom that has genuinely made Megan and me laugh out loud. She's so funny and clever.

But genuinely creative. Campbell loves art and her art teacher. We ran into her art teacher from school at a neighborhood dive one night, and she told us about a note Campbell gave her that she has been hanging by her desk to this day. It was a list of art project suggestions to make class more fun. Bold but creative for someone not even in third grade. Campbell's actual art talent is great, too - this painting below was displayed in the world's busiest airport for most of the year last year. I told her more people probably walked by her painting during that time than the impressionist paintings in the High Museum. She's quite impressive.

Campbell’s cherry blossom painting that was chosen to hang in Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in 2024.

I also appreciate Campbell's bravery. She took it upon herself to ask me to sign her up for basketball this year. When she first started, she was afraid to catch a ball and couldn't dribble more than a couple of times in a row.

That didn't stop her.

She and I played together in the driveway and on the courts of a park near our house to get more comfortable with the ball, to not be afraid, and to lean into what she was good at. Campbell is taller than most kids her age right now and played in a co-ed league. Most 7-8-year-old boys aren't going to pass the ball to a girl, so I told her to lean into what she could control: defense.

By the end of the year, she played mean defense. He wasn't afraid of anyone and very rarely got scored on. She wasn't prolific on offense, but was she a difference maker on the defensive end of the floor. She went from having a meltdown at practice to being a hard-nosed defender. Her team even went from losing games by double digits to winning their league title.

Her perseverance and bravery this past year was inspiring. The one thing that stuck out most to me, as a dad, was an evening after her first practice. Cam was having a hard time with playing and understanding the coaches' instructions. She was in tears, a good chunk of that practice. I didn't let her or encourage her to quit - I just told her she could do it, and I believed in her. She walked up to me, gave me a huge "Campbell hug," and said, "Thank you so much for being supportive tonight."

That meant more to me as a dad than anything that happened the rest of the season.

Watching Campbell's growth, whether it's fighting on the basketball court or growing in her own maturity as a human, has been inspiring. Campbell also loves reading her Action Bible, praying for friends in need, and even writing her own short worship song. Campbell is also a fantastic big sister, cheering on her little brother, taking care of him, and being his protector on the playground at school. I love that girl so much.

Campbell Hawkins is one of the coolest people I know.

But she also has a very cool little brother, even if she won't admit it herself.

Ford the Dude

Campbell stores her energy. Ford burns his as fast as he can and crashes hard. Moderation is a stranger to this boy. He goes hard into anything he does and never halfway does anything. Ford is high energy but not in a bad way - he's also brilliant and apparently knows how to turn that on-and-off well at school.

It's good that he loves soccer as much as he does. It is the perfect sport for someone as focused and disciplined but also as high-energy as him. Ford isn't very big for his age, but he's fast and intense, making soccer an ideal outlet.

The boy isn't just a fan - he's truly a student of the sport. Ford impresses me with how much he knows about the game during his short time being involved with it. He loves to play, has a ball attached to his foot most of the time at the house, and watches YouTube videos of old soccer highlights as soon as he walks into the house from school. He knows the career paths of most players, understands the game way better than I do, and is a ton of fun to take to an Atlanta United game.

He's also a very talented player. I'll never have as big of a high as a dad as I did the first game I ever saw him play. We went to the field, where I hoped he would just have fun.

He ended up dominating the game.

I had no idea he was any good at it but learned on-the-fly just as everyone else watching did. He was good, but not because of talent - he just tried hard. Ford has so much joy playing the game. It's a huge thrill when you see your kid come alive from the inside out, doing something they love while also succeeding at it. It took me up until high school to get there with an activity. I'm honestly jealous he appears to have found his "thing" so quickly.

For Ford to lock into something as soon as he has is a true blessing. We never push him or make him do extra at home. If anything, Megan and I will hold him back. He'd play way more if we let him. We just don't want him to burn out. We want to avoid taking something he genuinely loves and turning it into a burden. He's way too young for that.

I put together a short clip of his first calendar year of soccer, starting from his first game to the end of 2024. The boy has a bright future ahead of him if he keeps working. If nothing else, he's found something that helps him build friendships and stay out of trouble. Either scenario is a win to me.

While athletic, Ford is also wicked smart. Honestly, he doesn't give that vibe on a first impression. But he's in his school's gifted program and won an award this past week for being the top math student in his entire grade. The boy is comically literal in nature - everything is black and white to him. So, it makes sense that math is his strong suit.

He can't tell you what he did an hour ago, but Ford memorizes anything with a number attached to it. He knows the entire number and roster of the Atlanta Hawks and Atlanta United. He knows the career paths of many Premier League soccer players. He knows how many goals he's scored in a season.

What's the most important is that the kid has a huge heart. I was fighting Delta to get flights booked for a summer trip, and he saw I was getting mad. He came over to me in the heat of my frustration and hugged me, saying, "It's okay, Daddy."

Ford's teacher even told us about his attitude at recess this year. When the boys play soccer, and someone falls or gets hurt, he makes everyone stop the game from making sure that person is okay before playing anymore. For someone who gets hit in games as much as he does (and he does...), he does a great job of looking out for other people.

Ford's insane, but he has a huge brain and a huge heart - and uses both well. He proactively prays for people who need help and ensures we sing "Jesus loves me" before he sleeps. The boy has a good head on his shoulders. I pray he keeps that spirit.

The kids are only in first and second grade. They are going to change quite a bit. Ford may wake up and hate soccer one day. Campbell may decide art isn't for her. We'll have to accept that.

What I do know is that God made them each unique. Both are unique from each other but also unique from Megan and myself. While they may share some traits as us, they are their humans on their unique paths. My only hope is to be a great cheerleader for their lives and not compare them to other kids or my life experience.

I can't wait to see what they get into next.

38 Things I've Learned in 38 Years

Drew Hawkins — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 18:48:53 +0000

I celebrated my 38th birthday this past week. It's not a milestone birthday, and I almost forgot about myself. Fortunately, my family didn't.

Anyway, I'm not going to make a long intro to this, as if I'm a recipe blogger talking about the family history of their cornbread recipe before actually listing the ingredients. Thought I'd quickly share 38 things I've learned in my less-brief-than-this-time-last-year time on this earth. These are in no particular order.

Spoiler alert: very few of these are deep and meaningful. Tamper your expectations accordingly.

Little kids make birthdays awesome. I mentioned earlier that I had almost forgotten about my birthday. The kids did not. They were extremely hyped about my birthday the days leading into it and did countdowns every day. It was a lot of fun.
Reading is important. I don't mean scrolling your phone, reading two-thirds of an article, sharing it without context, and doomscrolling. I mean reading books, sitting with a narrative and article, and reading it from start to finish. Early in my career, I had a boss who constantly nagged me about what I was reading. It was annoying then, but like a lot of life lessons, I appreciate it more with age.
People love reading lists. This was true early in the internet. It's true now. People like to read lists, so I made this post a list.
Exercise regularly. This isn't new advice. And you don't have to do anything crazy like train for a marathon or a tough mudder. Doing little things consistently builds up over time. It's great for your health and your brain.
Little habits compound over time. This is part of my motivation for exercise. While I sometimes train for something in the short term (e.g., Megan and I are doing a Hyrox event in April), I'm mainly exercising to make aging easier down the road. The same goes for reading, sleep patterns, diving into your faith, learning, etc. A few minutes a day bettering yourself doesn't feel like you move the needle now but compounds a lot over time.
Sleep is important. Like really important. Consistently having good sleep hygiene helps me in everything. I can tell when I haven't prioritized it. And people at work and my family at home probably can, too - for the worse. I know folks who brag about how little they sleep or that they can get by on just five hours and function fine. I'm pretty sure they aren't faring as well as they think. Back to #5, those patterns catch up to you over time.
I can't ask my kids to do something I wouldn't do myself. Whether it's spending less time on a screen, reading more, having certain habits, etc, I shouldn't hold my kids to a higher standard than I hold myself. They're going to learn more by watching me than by obeying a list of rules.
Peppermint oil is a great solution to an ant problem. There is not a life lesson here. We just have ant problems sometimes in the spring and peppermint oil seems to be a great non-toxic solution.
Physically hang out with people. We feel like we socialize with folks on our screens...and in a way that's true. But interacting with humans on a 2D surface makes us dehumanize people over time and view them as opinions, ideas, or stereotypes instead of real humans just trying to make it out there. Seeing people in person is a significant step to reduce that from happening.
Hang out with different types of people. Especially now. It's so easy to get in a bubble of like-minded people. Because it's comfortable. Relationships with people who aren't like you or think or believe like you are great. It helps you humanize those that our social media algorithms try to (and often successfully) turn into avatars as "the other." I have multiple circles of friends in different areas of my life and am better for it. Jesus himself hung out with people who clearly had a different set of values than he did - and he's a good example of how to treat people.
Be okay with having your beliefs challenged. This is different than being actively bullied or mistreated for your beliefs. But if someone does try to challenge your thinking, it's okay. It's sometimes OK to change your mind after being presented with new information. In other cases, challenging your beliefs can reinforce your previously held beliefs. In my case, I've had multiple chances or reasons to walk away from my own Christian faith over the years - but keep coming back. If you aren't confident enough in what you believe to not be able to maturely handle someone challenging them, I question whether or not you really believe them in the first place.
Only try to control what you can. There's a lot to worry about. Only focus on what you can actually control. One of those things we can all control is how we react to things that are totally out of our control. Anxiety about things totally out of our hands is a normal human emotion—but unproductive.
People are complicated. This is why having personal relationships matter so much. People surprise me all the time. You may have one specific idea of someone's belief based on what they watch, what they posted on Facebook or where they live. A lot of times, our assumptions of people based on a few observations can be wrong.
No single group is a monolith. Somewhat tangential to the above. I've heard people describe all Republicans as racist, uneducated, or that they hate people with low incomes. I've heard (from behind a church pulpit!) that all Democrats are demonic. Even people who cheer for specific sports teams have certain personality stereotypes assigned to them. None of these things are universally valid. You can't blanket label large groups of people. One, it's not helpful for public discourse. Two, and most importantly, it simply isn't true.
Don't always let your kids win. You want things to be fun and for them to know what it means to succeed. Don't be Peyton Manning in a United Way ad. But kids do learn well from micro-moments of adversity, and being able to experience that in a safe environment like home helps jump-start them for the real thing later on. At least that's my guess. My kids' therapists, decades from now, may disagree.
Travel. To the extent you have the means. The cool thing about the US is that you can experience a lot of different ways of life without needing a passport. But if you can travel abroad - do it. Megan and I have done that a few times, and it really broadens your perspective on the world and what people think of your own country.
Date your wife. We have two kids involved in activities and really demanding jobs. Making a point to get away just the two of us is super important to remind ourselves why we signed up for this life in the first place.
Spend time alone. I don't mean alone with your phone scrolling or reading. Just time with you and your thoughts. I spent an afternoon at a monastery several weeks ago without a phone or reading—one of my best-invested afternoons in 2025.
Find "third spaces." Find places where you can commune with folks over a shared interest unrelated to work or politics. Rec sports leagues, gyms, volunteer organizations, or other group-related hobbies where you don't know what someone does for a living or who they voted for. Just that you bond over this one similar interest this one time a week, and that's enough.
Your job isn't your identity—or at least shouldn't be. Over a decade ago, my grandfather passed away, and hundreds attended his visitation and funeral. He had a great career at GE. Out of that entire swarm of folks, I maybe met one or two people from his work. It made me think.
Hold your kids' interest with an open hand. Ford is a fantastic soccer player. I'm awful. Campbell loves art. I can't color inside of lines in a coloring book. Neither really have any interest in distance running like I did. While we have things we enjoy doing together, I've really enjoyed learning more and investing time in what they find interesting rather than trying to force them into my own. My gamble is that showing interest in them first will make them more receptive to my feedback over the long term - when it's appropriate to give it.
Keep up with your friends. It's hard, and I'm not great at it. I've lived in multiple states and still maintain friendships with people at all those stops. It's a lot of effort and easy to let go but I've appreciated those I still stay in touch with.
Old people rock. They have so much wisdom. Surround yourself with older folks. They've seen some things. My relationship and conversations with my grandparents have helped me keep my sanity when the world seems nuts.
Default to kindness. I'm far from perfect at this. But defaulting to kindness as a first response rarely backfires - even when it isn't necessarily deserved. After all, "kindness to an enemy is like pouring hot coals over their head."
Paying for routine maintenance now saves money later. It took me a long time to realize this, but doing those oil changes or routine AC tune-ups at the house helps us avoid massive repair bills down the road.
Save money, have an emergency fund, and invest early. We've had many stressful moments that would have been considerably worse if we hadn't prepared for the worst ahead of time.
Spend money on experiences over stuff. Traveling, attending sporting events, and getting museum memberships in town create more memories in the long run than expensive toys that eventually find their way to a Goodwill bin a year later.
Claim your farts. You aren't fooling anyone by trying to shift the blame.
Hold your career with an open hand. At my first job in Atlanta, I tweeted as a Snickers Ice Cream bar. I inadvertently started a feud between T.D. Jakes and Jeezy at another job. Last week, I was on a call discussing the impacts of a bilateral trade agreement with the UK. Life is weird. Just be open to new opportunities. You never know where they lead.
If you marry, marry well. You're going to spend a lot of time with that person. Megan and I both work from home a lot, so we see each other a lot. Make sure you enjoy hanging out with that person. I know I do. I think Megan does too?
Dogs are such a value add. Even with the indoor accidents, chewed up things and odd smells, having a dog has brought so much joy and makes the hardest days just a little bit better.
Commuting (or lack thereof) is compensation. I've had jobs where I have had long commutes. I now have one where I have decent hybrid flex and, when I do drive to work, it's not that bad (by Atlanta standards). All that said, if you have two job offers, pick the one with the shorter commute, even if it pays a little less. Life flexibility is a form of compensation.
Most of us are trying to do the best we can. None of us are perfect. We all do boneheaded things. Several of us are internalizing things that nobody knows about. Give folks grace and the benefit of the doubt that they're doing their best given their circumstances. It's easier said than done, but worth it.
Few things beat a cold beverage on a hot day while observing your newly mowed lawn. It's such a rush to see neat mowing lines while sitting on my front porch.
Be a regular at a restaurant. Or a couple of places. In Chicago, I had a hot dog stand that had my order memorized. I now have a similar relationship with two other local places in our neighborhood. Being a regular means you're supporting a small business and are loyal to them. Plus, it's a lot of fun walking into a place where the people know you by name.
Tip well when eating out. We're all in this together. Don't whip out a calculator to figure out exactly how much to tip. Take a guess, and if you aren't sure, default to rounding up. Show your appreciation to folks who haven't been treated as well by other tables during the other parts of the day.
Actually, reading the Bible beats just hearing commentary. It's like experiencing a live event yourself versus someone giving you their vantage point - it's a completely different experience. Not long ago, I did the Bible cover-to-cover in 100 days without any additional commentary or study guides, just reading the text as it was. It was really interesting how everything ties together, and themes repeat themselves over and over. It's also interesting how the things God repeatedly harps on throughout the text are pushed to the side in today's Christian culture wars. Sad actually.
None of us make it out alive. I don't mean to end on a gloomy note, but it's easy to forget, but something we should remember. Ryan Holiday wrote that procrastination is a form of arrogance - that we feel guaranteed that next hour to get something done. An awareness of your mortality changes your decision-making and makes little micro-moments, like doing a craft with your kid or sitting silently sipping a glass of wine with your wife on a porch, feel so much richer.

If you made it all the way here, congrats. I'm genuinely surprised at anyone who took the time to read that much. This wasn't a carefully curated list at all. I'm sure I'll re-read this a few weeks from now and think, "Dang, I should have added _____." But these are the things that jumped out of my head first. For what it's worth, thanks for listening!

Here's to at least 38 more years of learning.

The Double-Edged Sword of Social Media

Drew Hawkins — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 13:45:01 +0000

I'll start this out by acknowledging that my career would look remarkably different without social media. It's been built on a foundation of knowledge on how to use it for brands and better position myself as a marketer in public. I got my first job by articulating my knowledge of how this new Facebook Pages thing could work for a company. Social media helped me test my own ideas on marketing and connect with great folks in Atlanta, which opened my first agency opportunity.

Social media has opened career doors for me. It's helped me connect with people I may not have otherwise. I've stayed in touch with friends from home that I may not have otherwise. I believe you can create real connections and use it as a force for good in your life.

But it's also a time suck. At a macro level, it's done about as much (if not more) harm than good for the world. While I can't imagine my life without it, I also daydream about how I could live without it.

I was talking to my 80+-year-old grandfather on the phone the other day, and he mentioned how he wanted to learn more about being online, using social media, etc. My advice to him was to avoid it. At this stage of life, it probably wouldn't be as much of a value-add for him.

Social (Media) Security

A big part of my reasons for being active online, especially on LinkedIn, are job and financial security. Seeing all the green "Open to Work" circles while I scan my LinkedIn is a wake-up call. While some career decisions are riskier than others, there's truly no "safe" job. If something went sideways with my current job, I know it'll be much easier for me to pivot to a new thing if I already have personal "brand awareness." Brand building for anyone takes time and is truly a long game. It's much easier for me to credential myself over time with social media activity than to have to start from scratch (with a much shorter runway) to build credibility with a hiring manager who doesn't know me from Adam.

That's not to say maintaining a digital presence isn't bad. Networking and being known in your professional community have always been critical to career growth. In-person events are a lot harder to attend when juggling kid extracurricular schedules and the demands of my actual job. Social media provides me the flexibility to network asynchronously on my own time.

It's not all bad! But it is exhausting if I'm being honest.

Making New Friends and Keeping Old Ones

On the one hand, I have genuinely made IRL friends due to a digital-first connection. I have had some great meals and drinks with folks that I wouldn't have connected with otherwise if it wasn't for the help social media provides. I can't totally be down on social for that reason.

Thanks to Facebook and Instagram, I've even maintained connections with older friends from home. While I have thoughts on Facebook as a company, I enjoy seeing friends I grew up with brag about their kids, celebrate milestones, and even lament hard times. It's pretty fun, even if it's just a two-dimensional interaction, and I appreciate that.

That said, there is a lot of junk on my feed—loads of stuff I don't care to see, nothing that's making me a better person.

There are also times when I learn arguably too much about my friends. I don't need to know how a friend I made in a rec soccer league feels about the trade deficit or the latest pyramid scheme that a person I was in science class with once in high school joined via Facebook. Some friendships are meant to be surface-level, and that's okay!

Social media has helped me recognize more of humanity while simultaneously, depending on the day, losing faith in it.

Where do we go from here?

I don't have a main point or a solid solution here. I just wanted to communicate my love-hate relationship with how we "connect" online.

I appreciate the good things my social activity has brought into my life. In other ways, I wish it never existed.

My only true coping mechanism starts this and runs through April. The past several years, I've given up all social for Lent. Being less exposed to breaking news and hot takes is a huge relief. Professionally, I can't be digitally radio silent. My livelihood depends on it to a degree. But my annual faith-induced Lenten sabbaticals are a blessing.

Given the news cycle now, I couldn't be taking a month off at a better time.

How I am managing my own mental health in a stressful season

Drew Hawkins — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 18:47:38 +0000

I don’t want to rely on a common response that many people use, but I’m not sure how else to express this.

I’ve been quite busy over the past few months; it’s been a lot to handle.

In July, I had the honor of being promoted to Senior Director of Marketing at Womble Bond Dickinson. This promotion meant that, instead of managing just our five-person digital team, I now oversee a team of 16 people, which includes content, design, and events. I am (and continue to be) grateful for this opportunity, but it has been a significant jump in responsibility.

Shortly after this role transition became official—I'm talking just a couple of weeks later—our firm began the process of merging with another AM Law Top 200 firm, Lewis Roca. This merge not only involves integrating their 200+ attorneys but also expanding our Client Development team by combining their marketing and business development staff with our own. As a result, my team’s headcount would continue to grow overnight.

Fortunately for us, our new Lewis Roca colleagues are awesome to work with and have made the integration much easier than what others may experience in similar situations. I'm grateful for that. Still, after having to work with our teams to rewrite a lot of content to reflect the new combined capabilities and publishing over 1,400 net new pages to our website, it's a lot.

Oh yeah, and there was our pre-planned Disney Cruise on the kids' fall break, Thanksgiving, Christmas with interstate travel, walking pneumonia, flu and kids' extracurricular activities sprinkled in there.

All good things! But even good things can be a lot.

I've reached the point of burnout a few times in my career, enough to recognize the early signs of hitting an unhealthy mental wall. This past Q4, I came close again. However, I’ve learned how crucial it is to maintain a healthier mindset—not just for myself, but also for my team at work and, most importantly, my family at home. They rely on me to be at my best, and that means prioritizing my mental well-being.

Over the past few weeks, I've been trying a few things to keep my mind sharp. These are simply approaches that are working for me right now. Some of them might be worth exploring for yourself, while others might not resonate—and that's perfectly fine! After all, we're all unique, and what works for me might not necessarily work for you.

Reading in the morning

For a good part of Q4, I was using the 5-6:30am hour to get ahead on work. Who am I kidding...it was to tread water and not get behind. However, I promised myself that it would just be a season and to eliminate that when I could. I'm sure my co-workers could also do without waking up to an inbox full of messages from me too.

I now carve that time out for reading and meditation. It looks a little different every morning but generally speaking I'll do some Bible reading, another book of some kind, sitting in quiet and sometimes getting into my Headspace app. It's an hour of my morning but it goes by faster than any hour of my day. Going into the day not scrolling my phone or checking my email helps me get in the right mindset and come out of a stage or rest instead of putting my brain in a frantic mode out of the gate.

Speaking of not scrolling my phone...

Deleted social media from my phone

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to step away from social media on a whim. Let me be clear—I’m not here to vilify it. Social media is undeniably a double-edged sword. Without it, I wouldn’t have maintained connections with old friends or built new relationships. My career, in many ways, owes much to its influence.

That said, the balance between its benefits and drawbacks had shifted for me. It was consuming too much of my attention and adding a mental burden I didn’t need. On top of that, with current events flooding every feed and everyone weighing in on everything, taking a break has been a relief. It’s been liberating to step back from forming immediate opinions or feeling the pressure to react to every situation. For now, the distance has offered clarity and peace of mind.

Exercise regularly

This isnt' a new ritual but one I've continued to maintain. With holiday diets and our family passing along sicknesses to each other, my fitness had fallen off a bit. It's coming back to a good place now though. I split my time between attending morning CrossFit classes after kid morning school drop-off and running, with some pickup soccer sprinkled in-between. I think it's great for your brain and, in my opinion, if your body builds a tolerance for handling physical stress, it's much more equipped to handle any emotional stress as it comes.

Talking to a therapist

I started using BetterHelp as a quick remote therapy session. I don't have particular traumas or things I specifically sought help for. In fact, a lot of times when I start a session with my therapist, I'm not sure what he and I are going to even talk about that day. But man, it does well to just get a load off your mind and get some outside input on whatever is going on. Our sessions are virtual too, so we usually do ours on a walk-and-talk as I walk through a wooded trail near our home. I'm not going to be one that says everyone should do it , and I'll probably only do it in seasons, but it's been helpful for me maintaining some sanity.

Mental health day at a monastery

Last week, I took a day off just for myself. It wasn't a vacation day or a day to tackle chores around the yard or house; it was purely a day for me to escape and be a little selfish with my time. I went for a long run, which turned out to be my best run of the year up to that point. Afterward, I made pancakes and spontaneously decided to visit a monastery in Conyers, GA. I had no specific plans or agenda for my time there. I felt as though God was nudging me, saying, "I'll meet you out there," so I just went. I didn’t even give my wife a heads-up before leaving; she was working from home that day. I simply sent her a quick text while she was on a call, saying, "Going to that monastery in Conyers, be back before dinner," and then I left.

It was hands-down the best decision I've made. I learned more about the monks there, the history of the monastery, and how it was built (fascinating stuff), and I got to attend a prayer service of theirs while I was there. After the service, I spent time in their cathedral all by myself, talking to God but also just sitting in silence. No phone scrolling. No running through my future to-do lists. Just sitting. I spent over an hour in that sanctuary and felt about 20 pounds lighter when I walked back to my car.

Spending time with friends

We're in a weird spot where loneliness is a bigger issue than it probably ever has been in human history. People are spending an increasing time away from each other. With life's other commitments, I get it. It's hard.

Having a consistent social circle has been essential for me. I’m part of a group chat with a few other guys where we support each other—some of us work out together and meet up for lunch once a month. I’m also in a small group of three men from our church; we meet weekly at a local pub to have meaningful conversations and dig deeper into each other’s lives. On top of that, I play in a recreational soccer league with church friends and join pickup games with other dads in our neighborhood.

It might sound simple, but building friendships and nurturing relationships in various social spaces has made a huge difference. In today’s world, it feels strange to emphasize this, yet it’s more important than ever. Far fewer people have access to this kind of community than we’d like to admit.

I have a lot I want to write more about now that I'm creating a little more margin. It's been several months since I've drafted anything. I've been busy but also learning a lot. I can't wait to share more. We're all in this together.

Work remote? Hybrid? Return to office? Where I stand on all of that (for now)

Drew Hawkins — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 15:50:49 +0000

Does mandating an office return encourage better productivity?

Countless articles, I feel, are ghostwritten by corporate real estate landlords and middle managers who don't know how to prove value without looking over someone's shoulder.

Is remote work the way of the future? Is it backward to do anything else?

I love the flexibility of remote work - but only some things translate well over an email or even a Zoom call. A healthy remote culture takes a lot of intentionality. It's not for everyone?

Should companies be hybrid?

I'm a fan of moderation and shooting down the middle. Trying to have the best of both worlds can also present its own set of challenges.

So what's better?

It depends. There's no clear winner. There is no best way. It's what is best for you, your company, your work style, and your longer-term strategy.

My current situation

I'm almost hybrid but primarily remote. I have my own office in our Atlantic Station location but rarely come in. Most of my team is distributed, all of my direct reports live in different cities, and our offices are tucked away in a corner away from most people. My collaboration ability has minimal improvement based on my physical location.

That said, our firm is relocating to a new space next month. I'm losing my space due to my lack of use the last few years (fair enough), but I will be in a hot desking-type situation that will put me in a better position for collaboration. Oddly enough, losing my office space to our new setup may make me want to come in more often.

What I love about remote work

My love for remote work right now is really specific to me and my family's situation and wouldn't necessarily apply to everyone.

We live a very short drive from the kids' school, so I have the flexibility to take them to school and come home and still have time to get a workout in before the workday begins. I can start a run or go to an 8 am workout class and still be done and ready for the workday.

Our proximity to the kids' school also allows us the flexibility to pop over easily to have lunch with them, volunteer for a school function, or have a parent/teacher meeting without the need to bake in a lot of extra time driving to and from. If I tried to do the same from my office, I'd either have less time to engage at my kids' school or, the times I did go; it'd eat up most of my day going from place to place.

We live near a lot of restaurants and a park. I can walk to several lunch spots. There are even a few pet-friendly patios I can walk our dog to and have lunch on the patio while using their wifi to knock a few things out. Again, not having to drive 1-2 hours daily gives me the flexibility to do all that while still getting more done. I can even use my lunch break to mow the yard in the summer, which significantly frees my weekend.

Working remotely has often allowed me to build a work-life integration that I did not have during my first ten years of work. The stress of fighting Atlanta rush hour traffic to get to daycare pickup before the penalty fees start kicking in still gives me PTSD.

What I like about working in the office

Again, I come to the office occasionally and have people I work with a lot who are also based in Atlanta. I'm an introvert but do like seeing and talking to people. There's something about catching up in person that can't be replicated in a video chat or instant message.

It's also saved me a lot of time. Another of our marketing directors and I almost always have an impromptu collaboration session on a campaign or other project that lasts 15-20 minutes but likely saves us days of emails and potential communication gaps we would've faced otherwise.

When we have other in-person planning sessions with folks from different offices, something about it brings new energy into your work. It may sound terrible, but working with someone face-to-face humanizes them. That experience reminds you that you're working with a person, not an email address.

Where I Ultimately Stand

I'm a fan of the hybrid situation. Again, that speaks only to what works best for my work style and my family's current needs. I'm in a life stage where being closer to home and more accessible should be a priority.

That said, if I were ten years younger and early in my career, being in the office more would be something I'd value. The commute would still be a bummer but not create the ripple effects of stress one would now because I'd have fewer people depending on me. It'd be that stage where you're still growing your social network and learning how to work with people. That's more work to do remotely.

A hybrid setup does present challenges like "how many days a week should we require?" or "Which days of the week do we mandate?" etc. But, it gives folks the flexibility to get the best of both worlds as best they can. It also establishes a boundary where they know which days to schedule home repairs, doctor visits, etc. Hybrid also helps accommodate multiple work styles for people who thrive in a social environment while providing space for people who are better holing up at home to get stuff done.

At the end of the day, we're asking the wrong questions. People are mostly okay with being in an office. It's the commute to the office that people hate.

What's your opinion? What do you prefer? Would you decline a job offer or quit a job based on an RTO mandate?

Do Hard Things. Even When Hard Things Aren't Always Fun.

Drew Hawkins — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 17:06:58 +0000

As I type this at my desk, my legs are stiff, and my hips are killing me. My right heel hurts to step down on. Walking up and down the steps at our house to refill my coffee has left me second-guessing whether or not I genuinely need caffeine to get through the workday.

(Spoiler: I do).

Why am I feeling this way? My wife and I did a relay-style marathon yesterday. Megan ran the first 13.1, and I ran the second half (nearly 13.5 miles somehow) in a relay format. Primarily, thanks to Megan crushing her leg of the race, we placed second in the coed division of the relays and seventh among all relay teams in the Publix Marathon yesterday.

I went from doing 8 miles a week in August to running further in one shot than I have in 14 years yesterday - for time.

It was a hard thing.

Last weekend, I participated in an ERG rowing sprint relay. I did a 2k row flat out for the first time in my life and then did a relay-style row in another race an hour later. It was a different type of hard than I've ever experienced. The relay was a fun experience, and I did better on that, but it was something totally new that I had to learn.

That was hard.

This past fall, I signed up to be in a rec soccer league. The thing was, I had never played organized soccer in my life and had less knowledge of the game than Ted Lasso did in the pilot episode. Our first game, when our team was discussing formation strategies, I raised my hand and admitted that I had no idea what they were talking about. I even had an embarrassing moment when I didn’t know how to throw a ball in from out of bounds correctly. When you get a sympathy redo like I did from the ref and other team…things aren’t going well for you.

That was a hard thing.

In the open 2k rowing race, I fell totally off where I felt like I could've finished. I was an absolute liability for my rec soccer team for the first 2/3 of the season. In my half marathon leg yesterday, I fell short of where I thought I could finish pace-wise and felt miserable (mostly my fault for going out too hot).

So, what's the point of doing hard things? Especially if I'm not always meeting my own self-imposed expectations?

Being a parent has been a big motivator for that. Here's why.

My Kids Do Hard Things Every Day

From my vantage point, elementary school seems amazing. Every day seems like it should be the best day ever. In reality, both of our kids are doing hard things for them all the time. They constantly have to learn and master things they've never done before.

Doing new things is hard. To keep doing them takes a lot of willpower and grit to do it repeatedly. Sure, my kids have to go to school. But it's their choice to keep trying if they get an answer wrong, misread/mispronounce a word, or get a fact they're learning mixed up with something else.

As an adult, it's surprising how much we don't have to do hard things as frequently. We can get in a groove with our jobs and coast if necessary. It's tempting to go through the day's motions without genuinely challenging ourselves or pushing ourselves to try (and fail) at something new.

It was something that I noticed as I kept trying to encourage my kids to not give up on something new and/or challenging. I decided to try hard things myself for two reasons:

Build a bigger empathy gland: I don't want to be an armchair quarterback. I want to remember what it feels like to try something new, do something hard, and want to quit but keep seeing it through. I don't want to lose touch with what that feels like. It'll help me become a better encourager to both kids when they want to throw the towel on something challenging.

Let them see me struggle: While I know this will change as they become adults, our kids probably see Megan and me as somewhat invincible. To the kids, everything probably looks easy for us. I feel like the best way we can encourage them is to practice what we preach. My guess is that a "don't give up" message will be more sticky coming from someone they've seen also push through something themselves.

Doing Hard Things Has a Ripple Effect

The best way to do hard things is to try hard things in low-stakes situations. I've been doing physical challenges in races or workout classes and trying loads of things I've never done or am not good at. But trying and failing in those circumstances have helped me build a tolerance for grit that has carried over in other areas, like work and home.

My kids trying new things literally every day has inspired me to try (and often) fail at new activities I’m not good at to get out of my comfort zone and keep learning.

How AI Powers our Firm's Podcast Strategy and Production

Drew Hawkins — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 18:08:34 +0000

"Our company should start a podcast" today is what "our company should start a blog" was ten years ago. On the surface, it's a decent idea - but there's more to doing it in a way that helps drive long-term success.

Similar to a blog, podcasts need:

A content calendar
A steady cadence of content to build up a helpful content library (and to keep people coming back)
A subject matter area to focus on
A consistent voice
Talent dedicated to producing it

Our Womble Bond Dickinson insights portal has plenty of content. We have hundreds of lawyers guiding some of the world's largest companies in dozens of different practice areas. Having a steady flow of content topics wouldn't be an issue.

Producing it would.

We had taken a couple of high-quality swings at the podcast series. We had one In-house Roundhouse that focused on interviewing in-house counsel folks. It was a great niche, and our host was great at driving a good conversation.

We started another one focused on white-collar crime with some fantastic guests, very timely discussion topics, and a couple of our firm's Partners in that practice area doing an excellent job facilitating most of it.

So what's the problem?

Consistency is the main challenge. We had a quality product we were putting out. What's trickier with podcasts that are easier to navigate on written content are the logistics around making something go live. With a podcast, especially an interview, you must align schedules with multiple stakeholders that are usually very crunched for time.

Once everyone lines up a time to talk, you need to prep. You also have to hope the audio quality is good enough for production; everyone has a good mic or minimal background noise.

All that is on top of ensuring you have a content calendar and keeping a consistent brand voice - like someone's literal voice on a podcast.

It was a challenge.

How could we publish content frequently in an audio format in a way that allowed us to bypass the hurdles most podcast production faces?

Artificial Intelligence.

Chris Mammen, a Partner at our firm and a legal thought leader in the AI space right now, introduced me to ElevenLabs. It's a browser-based voice lab that would narrate any text you put in there. He was looking at using it to showcase his insights to launch the firm's new Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning practice and wanted to set up a podcast as part of that launch.

I took his initial idea and expanded on it. We could re-launch our WBD podcast and have it lead with AI for a while but slowly introduce more insights from other parts of the firm. Chris agreed and was gracious enough to let me use the launch of his AI team as a sandbox for other firm initiatives.

So, Womble Perspectives was born.

What do we use to produce Womble Perspectives?

We can now set up a podcast episode in less than an hour using the following tools:

LEGA Creates the Script

LEGA is our firm's internal generative AI tool that uses OpenAI's platform. It gives our firm the ability to use generative AI but reduces the risk of putting client data at risk in the process.

We'll take an insights piece from our website that is either 1) very timely or 2) getting a lot of traffic. Most of our insights pieces are written to be read and not necessarily listened to.

We copy and paste the complete insights piece into LEGA and prompt it to rewrite the article in the format of a radio broadcast (or something along those lines). It spits out a new audio script. We then send that script to our content marketing team to double-check that what the AI tool produced still maintains all the key messages of the piece.

Just because we are using AI doesn't mean we don't need a human element involved.

Recording the Episode

Once everyone aligns on the script, we copy and paste the content into ElevenLabs to create the audio read-out of the script. We take that audio, download it, and then upload it to our podcast editing tool, Kapwing.

Kapwing for Production

We have a pre-cut intro and outro for every episode (also using ElevenLabs) that uses royalty-free music in Kapwing's library. We paste the new "recorded" audio between the intro and outro and then export. That's it. Episode done.

Side note: Kapwing is fantastic. It has a lot of excellent generative AI features to create videos and other visual creative based on prompts. If you want a quick and fun way to spin up creative content without spending much money, it's worth checking out. I've even used it personally to help my kids with school projects.

Buzzsprout for Distribution

We use Buzzsprout for our podcast distribution. After initial setup, it is easy to syndicate your podcasts through any player that people would reasonably use. We upload our new audio file from Kapwing, write a podcast description with links to the complete insights article and relevant author bios, and then hit publish. Buzzsprout does the rest.

One feature Buzzsprout has that is pretty cool is making visually appealing sound clips for social use. You can upload a background image standard for all podcast sound clips and create your custom soundbites. The result looks something like this:

Do We Use Humans?

While 3/4 of what you hear on our podcasts are purely computer generated and not real people, we add a human element. On the weekends, we'll publish an interview-style podcast that humanizes what we do more. This AI approach helps give us more grace periods on podcast episodes that require schedule coordination, sound quality, and more preparation. If scheduling conflicts arise, we at least have a content queue rolling so as not to fall totally off folks' radars.

So there you have it—our internal process on how we go about making podcasts. There's a lot we want to do that we need to do, but it's a good start and a fun way for our whole team to dive into generative AI in a way that is manageable but also useful to our audience.

Any suggestions on how we could get better? Any tools we should look into?

Threads Isn't News-Forward. That's Good.

Drew Hawkins — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 19:05:41 +0000

This was a vast complaint immediately following Hamas's attack on Israel.

One of the things that made Twitter Twitter back in the day was breaking news. If something insane happened, I would go straight to Twitter to see the latest of what was going on. It pushed news via its Trending Topics feature.

Threads has yet to have that type of option right now. It doesn't push news. Theoretically, it could turn something like that on reasonably quickly and dominate traffic when breaking news happens.

But they don't. And that's a good thing.

Makes Misinformation Harder To Spread

Trust me, I'm not naive. Plenty of misinformation floats around Threads.

At the given moment, there doesn't seem to be an incentive algorithmically to be the first to say something. What I see more of are posts that have a longer shelf life. Instead of rewarding the post to break the news first, I've seen more posts with nuance—fewer hot takes.

Slower is Better

Information moves slower on Threads (at least to me), and that's good. It keeps us from jumping to conclusions based on what we see first online - which is rarely accurate.

You're rarely more informed by getting news first. People who engage with the news less frequently are usually better informed than news junkies for that very reason.

I find myself scrolling Threads less than I did with Twitter, but I feel it was designed that way. I'm not going to see news when it breaks there. And I'm okay with that.

Meta May Be Learning From Past Mistakes?

Remember that time Facebook had a trending news section? And how well did that go? It's a mistake they are trying to avoid making again.

Threads intentionally don't push news by design. They believe there are plenty of credible news organizations on Threads to follow if you want breaking news. They just aren't going to push it. Their CEO even said that upon launch. If you can’t see the Thread below, click here.

Post by @mosseri View on Threads

He may be full of it. Threads may make a hard pivot when Meta's stock price looks threatened. However, this is a healthier approach to building a social network if taken as a statement of good faith. I think he was honest here. It’s not that Meta grew a conscious. The PR nightmares news and politics brings them isn’t worth the incremental ad dollar.

Sure, there are use cases where not being news-forward isn't good. Being less reliant on real-time news or politics makes grassroots organizing more difficult. It could make it harder to build political or social coalitions.

At a 30,000-foot view, at least for now, that's a net positive. Everything is a trade-off, and having a less toxic place to share and read will be better for us.

Time will tell if Threads sticks to the plan.

Why I Think Threads Feels Friendlier Than X (for now)

Drew Hawkins — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 17:55:30 +0000

Threads has genuinely become one of the best PR wins (IMO) for any Big Tech leaders in recent memory.

Mark Zuckerberg has become public enemy number one for a few years. Facebook groups have been a hotbed for algorithmically induced political radicalization. Instagram has rightfully been accused of being a driver of poor mental health among teens (especially young women) to drive engagement and ad revenue. Documentaries like The Social Dilemma and the Facebook Files whistleblower stories in the Wall Street Journal have lent credibility to those accusations.

Zuck has profited handsomely off an addicting product that has been a net negative on the world.

Who would've thought his team at Meta would be heralded for bringing one of the healthier social networks to market? For a brief moment, thanks to a feature-light product and a series of own goals by Elon Musk, Zuck is the good guy.

Or at least the slightly less bad guy. For now.

It could be better, but Threads is a friendlier social network compared to most now.

Why is that? I have a few theories.

Early Adopters Are Willing It (Kind Of)

The early adopters of Threads joined it for similar reasons. They like Twitter from a pure technology perspective. They hate the trolling, disinformation, harassment, and toxic behavior on the platform.

The consensus is that engagement is, while not perfect, exponentially less terrible than what they've experienced on X.

As a result, those early adopters (like myself) are determined to keep Threads more amicable. Most of its users joined the platform simply because it was friendlier and less toxic, making it less harmful. While a diversity of thought exists on Threads, its users are unified on this front, which is good.

It's negative group polarization. Many internet users have been drawn to Threads based on their distaste for the other - X.

Trolls Stay on X Because the Toxicity is a Feature, Not A Bug

Why have few internet trolls followed people over to Threads yet (at least for the most part)?

Twitter has always had problems with bots and trolling. It's a challenge any social network has. The few guardrails Twitter had on that front were burned to the ground when Elon Musk acquired the network.

But free speech...

Trolls are staying on Twitter because Elon has taken an extreme laissez-faire approach to moderation. They can do pretty much anything they want. You can agree with that approach or not. You can have issues with what is moderated and what isn't. There are good-faith discussions to have on that front (most just aren't done in good faith).

The reality you cannot deny is that, like it or not, content moderation builds a better user experience. If you blow that up (like Elon appears to have on Twitter), you make a product less usable to the average person. He's turning Twitter/X into another 4chan with a more wealthy owner.

The same trolls who mocked autonomous zones in places like Seattle or Portland have their digital autonomous zones created by Elon Musk -and are seeing less than hospitable results.

Limited Hot Takes

Hot takes are still on Threads. It's the internet, after all!

Threads are not news-forward like Twitter, so they don't have things like trending topics. Breaking news breaks a little slower there. That aggravates some people who were used to Twitter's lightning-fast real-time news delivery from people on the ground.

What Threads lacks in news features, it gains by limiting hot takes. Users aren't incentivized to react to a trending topic. There's an extra layer of friction for misinformation, and watching hot takes quickly turn to freezing cold ones.

I'll write more in another post on why Threads' lack of features is good. For now, I think some of the functionality it lacks is making our worst online behaviors a little harder to engage in.

What do you think?

Is Threads a safer place than X at this moment? Have you used it? Have you thrown X in the trash in favor of Threads?

A Good Dog.

Drew Hawkins — Sat, 08 Jul 2023 15:59:28 +0000

Theo wasn't even the dog we initially went to see about one Sunday afternoon at a Petsmart adoption drive 12 years ago.

We went looking at another puppy who we didn't exactly gel with. Shrugging and walking off, we passed by another small pen with a couple of dogs we wanted to pet. One black lab, with one brown and one blue eye, kept fighting to the front of the litter to get our attention. He was wearing this small yellow vest hanging loose on his six-month-old frame. After scratching those still silky soft, oversized puppy ears, the lady helping there asked if we wanted to take him for a walk around the store.

You know, just for fun. No pressure.

After that walk, Theo leaned his whole body on our legs just like my dog growing up; we knew he was meant to join our new family.

The day we met Theo

One week later, he was living with us in our tiny one-bedroom apartment. Megan and I were a newlywed couple still trying to figure out how to live with each other...and we brought a hyperactive ball of black fur into the mix. It was a learning experience for all three of us, adjusting to each other on multiple fronts. But we made it work, and Theo became our first child.

A Giant Cuddlebug

We loved that dog - and that dog returned our love tenfold. Theo was the third dog I raised in my lifetime, and he was hands down the most loyal and cuddly dog I've ever witnessed. That dog never wanted anything more than to be with Megan and me at all times.

If he had his way, he would have lived half his life sitting on our laps if we let him. Theo wasn't allowed on furniture most of his life but had a way of slowly imposing his will on you. If you were lying on the couch, he'd walk over to you and nudge you to pet him. Then Theo would look at you and put a paw on you. Then inch by inch, he'd gradually put more of his body parts on you - while avoiding eye contact - until he was ultimately lying on you. At that point, you couldn't scold those sweet multi-colored eyes of his. You just had to let it happen...and he knew it.

he first half of Theo's life was him being the center of attention. He was Megan and I's world. He went on trips with us, moved into new homes, and was the ever-ready guard dog.

Then we had kids and got to experience a whole new side of Theo.

Brother Theo

His relationship with the kids brought out a very sweet side of him we didn't know possible. When we first brought Campbell home from the hospital, he'd guard her pack-and-play from the cat getting to her and anyone else who didn't belong.

As Campbell grew older, they grew closer and became best friends.

There was even a season where Campbell was afraid to be alone at night. Theo spent the better part of a year sleeping in Campbell's room by her side, serving as a loyal security blanket for her as she got a whole night of sleep.

Theo posted up next to Cam while she slept during his brief stint as her roommate.

That arrangement ended abruptly one night as a storm broke out; Theo freaked out (he was deathly afraid of storms) and accidentally broke her Elsa mirror. We got a knock on our door at 3 am that night with an angry Campbell holding Theo by the collar, saying, "he sleeps with you all now!" and storming back upstairs to her room. Theo got evicted from Cam's room, but Megan and I were happy to have him back next to us again.

Theo and Ford had a unique relationship that started to blossom in the last year and a half. As Ford grew older, his appreciation for his dog grew with it. The two also became buddies, with Theo giving Ford more attention sometimes than Ford may have wanted.

A Bittersweet Last Year

In March of 2022, Theo ate grapes, and we took him to the ER. While the grapes were a non-issue, we learned he had liver cancer from the scans—a giant tumor. The veterinarian gave us a relatively limited prognosis of only a few months of him being around. In June and July of 2023, Theo was still around, still able to hop in the back of our SUV and go on road trips with us. I wrote at that time about how we were looking at his prognosis as "bonus time" with him, but we had no idea how blessed we would ultimately be with him being around another YEAR longer than expected.

Theo and I going on a walk. Video taken this past December, several months beyond the vet’s initial prognosis.

This past year, Theo spent every night saying goodnight to each kid, curled up at the foot of their beds during storytime. He was my midday walking break buddy during the work week. Most weeknights this last year and a half, I'd turn on a record, open a book to read on the couch, and Theo would pop up next to me and sleep with his head in my lap while I read. It was our special bonding time that I knew was limited and soaked up every minute.

One of the nights where Theo would sleep with his head in my lap while I read every night on the couch.

Even when his energy wasn't totally there, you could tell he found every bit of strength he could to physically be next to his family. Or better yet, sitting his big lab frame literally on one of his family members.

The Gut Punch

We spent the Fourth of July holiday with Megan's parents and took Theo with us. That morning of the Fourth, Theo had a great day for a dog. He followed the kids everywhere that morning. He barked at cars. He kept asking to go out but wouldn't potty - he would roll around on his back in the grass like he was a puppy again instead of the 12-year-old cancer-ridden dog he was.

Megan and I loaded up the car that afternoon to take Theo to Charleston for a remote work week while the kids visited with her parents at their home. As I loaded the car with suitcases, Theo jumped up and down excitedly, knowing he was going for a car ride.

Typical Theo.

He had been slowing down for a couple of weeks and losing weight, but the things that made Theo Theo were all still there.

He got his goodbye hugs from Cam and Ford and hopped up in the back of the SUV, enjoying the cool AC and fans we had blasting for him. Then we took off for the three-hour trip to Charleston, scouting out green spaces on Google Maps to take him to throughout our days there.

We got to our Airbnb in Charleston, and I opened the back latch to let Theo out. There was no movement. I realized what happened, but my brain didn't want to believe it. I could barely get the words out to tell Megan, standing at the front of the car, not yet knowing the situation and wondering why I looked so stressed.

Theo went to sleep at some point on the car ride and never woke back up.

We left Meg's parents' place with a tail-wagging happy dog at 1 pm. By 5 pm, we were being handed a clay imprint of Theo's paw by a vet tech in Mount Pleasant, SC.

We had been planning Theo's end of life for over a year. We anticipated deciding to put him down when his life quality ultimately diminished. We had a plan.

But even a year of mentally prepping it for the worst is insufficient when the worst ultimately greets you. The whiplash of how he passed knocked Megan and me down hard.

We knew the day would come but not...like...that. Not that day.

I think Theo defied the odds so much over the last 16 months that we somehow convinced ourselves he wasn't terminal. That he would live forever. Because, of course he would.

Looking back and analyzing the whole situation, it was the best way for him to go. He never whimpered or seemed in pain during that car ride. Megan and I found him - not the kids, a house sitter, or grandparents. He also wasn't alone. He was with his mom and dad, whom he loved more than anything. Megan and I didn't have music blaring during that drive. Bubby heard us talking and laughing near him as he drifted off for the last time.

I talked to a coworker in our Charleston office about what had happened, and he responded with, "The two hardest things in the world I've ever had to do is quit smoking and bury a dog." He's right. Saying goodbye is hard.

We Were So Blessed to Have That Dog

That night after we took his body to the emergency vet to be taken care of, Megan and I sat in the living room of our Airbnb, not knowing what to do. It was weird how a building we'd never been in could feel so empty and quiet.

We spent the night looking at all the old photos of him through the years, laughing and crying at stories about our best friend. Seeing those pictures made us realize how long we had Theo and how big of a part of our lives he was. He was part of every major life milestone of our family for the past 12 years. Megan and I adopted him a few months after getting married and had him through job changes, house changes, and two kids.

We were beyond lucky to have him. I firmly believe he was the best dog our family could have ever had. It only hurts this bad because it was so good for so long. There are so many memories and stories that I can't even begin to fit in one spot.

We are going to miss him sorely. His family loved him so much - but Theo loved his family so much more.

Theo was a good dog.

The Nonchalance of Nikola Jokic is Inspiring

Drew Hawkins — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 20:12:54 +0000

I stayed up past bedtime to watch the Denver Nuggets win the NBA title. I'm a very committed Hawks fan, but I was rooting for the Nuggets as a fan of the sport. Their style of play and having a center that can pass the ball better than most point guards is truly something to watch.

Nikola Jokic's post-game comments on the court stood out to me then. The 2x MVP and (at that point) Finals MVP was happy but not going nuts. His immediate reaction to the win to the person interviewing him was:

"The job is done. We can go home now."

No trash talk. None of the "people have been doubting us" types of lines you usually hear. He plainly stated a fact. And you could tell Jokic genuinely meant it.

Jokic saw his role as a job. He wanted to be the best in his job that he could - I mean, you can only win an MVP and an NBA title if you are committed to your craft.

But you could tell it wasn't how he defined himself. Basketball was a big part of his life but wasn't his biggest priority. That mindset didn't break, even when it arguably could have, and nobody would have thought worse of him.

Even the Joker's brutal honesty about his job and success is something that many people resonate with. The MVP came across as a man of the people here while also not minimizing the success. His main message is that "this is a good thing, but it's not everything." Check out where this clip starts (6:29 - 8:24) and his reaction to the parade and his perspective on success:

I honestly love that perspective.

What’s my main takeaway?

Nikola Jokic is very good at what he does. When he is "at work," he cares a lot about his job. He wants to succeed. But it's not everything. It's not what defines him.

Only some of us will ever hit a peak of success like Jokic or other MVPs winning something on a world stage. But we may take our 9-5 too seriously. In our heads, even if we don't admit it, it is everything. That job title is what defines us. Our success may be how we literally define ourselves when meeting new people.

When/if all of it goes away, it can be devastating. If your occupation is your life and it's taken away from you, it's losing something significant. I've even argued that sometimes caring a little less about your job will make you perform better.

I imagine the Joker doesn't take it too seriously. Should we take a lesson from him in defining success?

Restraint is an Underrated Skill

Drew Hawkins — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 13:56:51 +0000

Pushing boundaries. Testing our limits. Being relentless. Trying to recognize potential. We applaud people for doing it - all are honorable character traits. It's how we've achieved great things in business, sports, and the arts. Pushing our boundaries is how we've dared to do impossible things like mountain unicycling (yes, it's real).

But I'm brought back to the famous quote from Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park:

"..your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

Strategy > Tactics

Marketing is a minefield of temptations to ignore restraint completely. I've only been in marketing/tech as part of my career, but it's a functional area with the highest proportion of shiny object syndrome.

A marketer's job is to make the brand they work for stand out among clutter, so we're incentivized to try things before anyone else does if we strike gold.

But it's very easy to make unforced errors if we focus on gimmicky tactics over the "why" of what we're doing.

Just ask the DeSantis campaign.

Case Study: Failure to Launch

To be clear, I'm not making a political angle here—just a marketing strategy. I also hate needing to type those last two sentences, but here we are.

Anyway, in a season with abundant GOP presidential campaign announcements, I'm sure the DeSantis team was looking to do something different to stand out. That's my charitable view of why they took this announcement approach.

Instead of the traditional stump speech in front of a backdrop that reflects their campaign, the DeSantis crew decided to use Twitter Spaces for their campaign announcement in a moderated discussion with Elon Musk (Twitter owner) and David Sacks. The platform crashed and delayed the announcement by 20 minutes.

Let's take the technical aspects out of this. I know it's what the news (and most people) focused on because it was an Elon Musk-owned technology failing (again) in front of an audience.

I want to look at the marketing strategy.

Twitter has a big audience, but it's also very niche. Using that as an exclusive platform for a national campaign was taking a way-too-online view of reaching people. In the Democratic primaries a few years ago, the super online campaigns that let Twitter sentiment guide their messaging strategy didn't last long. You'd think the DeSantis campaign strategists would learn from that history. Apparently not.

Also, Twitter Spaces is effectively a conference call. It's a quality that's a step down from a podcast interview. If he wanted to make an audio-only announcement, DeSantis would've been better off trying to score an interview on Joe Rogan than this. Plus, it was a moderated discussion. The moderators did him no favors by talking about themselves more than the candidate, which hurt his messaging reach.

Plus, getting a redo on a first impression takes a lot of work. The DeSantis campaign may do just fine in the long run. Still, they have to overcome a massive hurdle with regular folks when the story of the announcement isn't DeSantis's policy proposals but the fact that their glorified conference call crashed.

His lack of restraint on that front may send an unintentional message about his potential governing style they didn't want out there.

The better approach for the campaign would be for DeSantis to do something more traditional. Instead of trying to be edgy and appear innovative, just doing a simple stump at a place in Florida that illustrated his achievements as governor would have been more effective. Sure, it may not have the style points, but the story would've been about his campaign - not tech difficulties. They would have had more control of the messaging.

Wisdom Is Knowing When to Hold Back

Being bold and trying something is fantastic and should be encouraged. There is absolutely a time and place for it.

The wisdom in marketing (and any area of life) recognizes when to go for it and when to hold back.

Knowing when to hold back takes discipline. It's a muscle you have to build over time. And you won't always get it right. I know I haven't.

But sometimes, you have to slow down to speed up.

Restraint is a notable skill. And underrated.

What do you think?

AI Feels Like Social Media Did a Decade Ago

Drew Hawkins — Thu, 18 May 2023 17:40:00 +0000

The parallels, to me, are uncanny.

AI dominates the news now. It's front and center of any trend reports. Everyone has a thought piece on it.

It'll be disruptive. AI will transform some industries in ways that we didn't see coming.

Then there will be other areas where AI's disruptiveness will be overhyped.

It feels so much like the conversations around social media during my first couple of years out of school—a lot of hype. A lot of specialists are coming out of the woodwork. Something you knew you should get comfortable with but may not know where to start.

Being a more tenured professional, I now have a bigger empathy gland for how my more seasoned colleagues a decade ago must have felt when social hit the scene.

So what parallels am I seeing between AI and the early days of social media?

There's a significant player.

"Social media" was a comprehensive term. It could have meant message boards, Reddit threads, tweets, etc. But when people talked about social media in the early days, they were talking about Facebook. To a large swath of people in the early days, being a social media expert, in their mind, truly meant being a Facebook expert.

AI has a similar phenomenon right now. You could be talking about a multitude of platforms and tools. But when you say you're an expert at AI, most people probably immediately think of ChatGPT.

When Facebook opened up its API, almost every app or website had some Facebook integration. This could have been via implementing a simple Facebook login or even creating an app to customize someone's digital experience based on their Facebook data. Most clients at Engauge (a digital agency I worked at when I first moved to Atlanta) seemed to have some Facebook integration into our projects.

We're seeing the same thing now that OpenAI has opened up its API. Several apps are baking generative AI into their platforms - powered mainly by OpenAI's newly opened API. It's one major player being baked into much of the internet's ecosystem.

Let's hope that OpenAI has a better moral compass than Facebook.

Specialists Coming Out of the Woodwork

Being "good at AI" will become something akin to "being good at social media" used to be. Companies will view an AI expert as someone adept at typing in prompts to a generative AI platform like Chat GPT and getting quality responses that are either very creative or improve efficiencies.

Organizations will have entire roles dedicated to people who are very good at inputting queries. Tom Fishburne illustrated that in a recent cartoon.

There will be career paths that emerge from being skilled at AI prompts. Job titles will appear that we haven't seen before. Specialists in this area can stand out in a critical space quickly.

I was able to move up quicker in my career because of social media knowledge. It helped me get my first job and opened up new opportunities I might never have had before.

While I'm not a social specialist at this point in my career, I used that initial niche knowledge to get my foot in the door for other career opportunities. Today's AI "prompt engineers" could likely see a similar path for themselves.

Down the road, we'll see AI being baked more natively into companies' operations and relying less on specialists. It'll just be expected for most employees in a few years to have foundational knowledge on how to navigate these tools - or not have jobs.

There Is a Wide Range of Users

AI has been around for a bit. What's different now (and what differentiates this from the crypto hype last year) is the vast array of users.

Even where I work, a wide variety of folks use ChatGPT daily. Some use it to help refine or quickly spit out code for email templates. Others are using it to word their internal emails better. It's more than just the early adopters using AI-powered tools. Even some of the more tech-resistant colleagues find value in their way rather quickly, so much to the point where our firm is piloting its own ChatGPT-like internal solution using OpenAI's API.

In the same way, social media hit an inflection point on adoption when our parents got their own Facebook accounts; we are hitting a similar adoption curve with AI. It's moving beyond a fad because it feels accessible to a broader range of people - not just those of us in our little marketing/tech bubble.

You Need to Learn Now - But Don't Panic

I've been in marketing for nearly 15 years at this point. One of my favorite parts of marketing is that it's constantly evolving and changing, and you must learn something new every day.

One of my least favorite parts of marketing is that it's constantly evolving, always changing, and you have to learn something new every day.

I'm tired some days.

But AI is coming. Is it coming for your job? The threat may be overblown in some instances. But not having that knowledge in using AI probably wouldn't be wise either. Those who figure out a way to make new tech of any kind make them better at what they do instead of fighting it like it's a threat will do just fine. As Tom Fishburne wrote:

"In the long run, it's less about the title du jour than digital upskilling. AI prompt engineering is just one more area in an endless curriculum of digital upskilling we all have to pay attention to.
As I heard recently, it's not so much the risk of AI coming for your job as the risk of someone who knows how to use AI coming for your job."

Also, ramping up on AI isn't an emergency. Now is a great time to play around with it, get familiar with it, and try to have fun. Learning in a lower-stakes situation makes understanding better down the road. While his approach is slightly different than mine, here's Jason Fried's approach to AI.

"Play around, kick the tires, poke and prod. Get a feel for what this new sauce tastes like. Have fun, it's not a test.
So wait on it. Pop the pressure. Don't feel like you're falling behind. And don't drop everything to dig in. Start curious, stay curious, know what it's capable of, and, when the necessity strikes, figure it out. Until then, ignore the demands and focus on doing what you're already good at."

My most success on social back in the early days came when I was experimenting and playing around. That will prove true for me in AI as well.

What do you think? Are the parallels between the early days of social and AI today similar?

Behind the Scenes: Planning Social Media Strategy for an Exclusive Client Summit

Drew Hawkins — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 20:11:28 +0000

I don’t talk a lot about work projects on here but thought I’d change that today. I wanted to share a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at what (from a digital marketing perspective) went into an exclusive client event.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to help our Womble Bond Dickinson team host their Latin America Summit at the Park Lane Hotel in New York City. The weekend included:

A private dinner and panel with the former Presidents of Ecuador and Guatemala
A keynote session by a former Minister of Finance of Colombia
Speakers from The World Bank, Goldman Sachs, and McKinsey, among others.

The LATAM Summit was one of the most "exclusive" events I have ever participated in.

The social media lead on my team was out on PTO, so I jumped in to support on-site and day-of social media engagement. I've been spending the past several months deep in the weeds on marketing operations and CRM-related work; it was a nice change of pace to put on more of a "brand journalist" hat for a few days.

Here's the (digital marketing) challenge we faced.

We hosted this event with many influential people in the Latin American business world. We want people to know that we are putting this on and share insights from the event. Despite its invite-only approach, we wanted people to feel like they were part of the event virtually, where appropriate.

LinkedIn post featuring the dinner and discussion with both Presidents on our first night of the event.

Because this was an exclusive event, many attendees being lawyers, with people from large and sometimes bureaucratic organizations, we also couldn't just live-quote them on the spot. We had to be intentional with how we shared insights. We also had to be mindful of our panelists, who needed sign-off from their external affairs departments to have anything attributed to them explicitly.

How do you post real-time content from an event where the content needs to vet through multiple PR and other external affairs departments?

How We Did it

All the panels had prep calls in a week or two before walking through discussion topics, exciting points worth bringing up, and how to effectively use their time slots to provide the maximum value for event attendees.

I attended every single panel call for two primary reasons:

Listen for insights that we could create visual content for ahead of time.

Learn which subjects required more discretion with posting ahead of time so I would avoid causing an unforced error on social media. These were things that were not necessarily confidential but also not things you would want to blast on social media (if that makes sense).

I would take a copious amount of notes from each call, just silently listening in and trying to stay in the background as much as possible. Then, I'd reach out to each panelist individually and share a handful of quotes from their planning session that (in my opinion) would make for great social content.

They would typically need to run my social ideas through their external affairs departments but were personally OK with them themselves. While we waited on approvals, I preemptively sent all of our quotes to the design teams to let them get started, knowing we might have a few tweaks along the way.

We had multiple panels with multiple panelists in each session. I repeated this process roughly a dozen times over a week and a half and didn't want to send a couple of dozen requests to our design team with a same-day turnaround waiting for approvals. The content creation approach was agile, building the plane as it fell out of the sky.

Fortunately for me, we had very little pushback on anything we wanted to create, and the speakers we worked with were very gracious with their time and helped collaborate with me on our social media approach the day of the event.

Once we had all the graphics created, I sat in on each session. We only published our designed quotes and takeaways based on two criteria:

It had been approved and vetted by all necessary parties
It was something said on stage and not just in prep calls.

Several great insights were left on the cutting room floor that needed to meet those criteria. But that's all part of the process. Ultimately, we did more than post random LinkedIn updates but made a more digitally engaging experience for the event attendees and people keeping tabs back home.

I also enjoyed briefly putting my social media marketer hat back on and have a couple of weeks focused less on operations and more on content strategy. It was a welcome change of pace for me and an excellent way to stay sharp on other non-technical areas of marketing.

Not to mention, how cool is it to meet and mingle with two former Latin American Presidents? I was shocked at how approachable both men were at the event. Everyone involved was very gracious, down-to-earth, and easy to work with. There were times where my 23-year-old self wouldn’t believe that I was getting paid to go up to a nice hotel on the edge of Central Park to hang out with former dignitaries and execs. It was a notable week with interesting stories for my career that I may not have had otherwise.

Einstein GPT and What Marketers Should Be Prioritizing Now

Drew Hawkins — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 15:36:26 +0000

Yesterday Salesforce announced that they'd be baking the capabilities of OpenAI into their product called "Einstein GPT." While "significant" new features from tech behemoths are often more impressive in idea than practice, let's take these capabilities at face value. After all, it's just v1 of a new way of using their platform.

You can read Salesforce's press release on the launch here if you would like. Two features (copied/pasted from the release) stood out to me as a digital marketing leader at a large enterprise organization:

Einstein GPT for Sales: Auto-generate sales tasks like composing emails, scheduling meetings, and preparing for the next interaction.

Einstein GPT for Marketing: Dynamically generate personalized content to engage customers and prospects across email, mobile, web, and advertising.

These two features, on the surface, appear they could put some marketing roles out of a job. That may very well be true for some people. However, the good news about a clunky v1 of a product is that it gives you the space to plan and adapt for the inevitable future when these technologies get more sophisticated, more accurate, and more of a game changer to your job.

Two critical things jumped out at me from reading this release and imagining a future where AI is doing a lot of the marketing work as we know it today.

Rediscover Marketing Fundamentals and Creativity

One thing about marketing technology is that someone could use a tech stack to hide behind their knowledge gap in fundamentals. Marketing technologists like myself get frustrated when other marketing or sales professionals are slower to adopt new tools, tech, or processes than we'd like.

The inverse could also be true - marketers slow at tech adoption could get frustrated at technologists who need help understanding the customer, messaging, or buying behaviors.

On the marketing front, AI will automate quite a bit of what marketers do now. It's going to be able to auto-create content based on customer data. Shoot - it may be able to use a company database to answer customer questions on demand in their own time. I expect future integrations with OpenAI to allow customers to define their buying journey more than they can today.

Marketers who get to know their customers and find creative and unique ways of communicating their value prop will continue to thrive. Savvy marketers will use AI to help reduce some burdens, make space for creative ways to reach people, and leave random touch points to the robots.

This brings me to my next point.

Data Hygiene Will Be A Premium

Automation is truly only as good as the data behind it. The only thing worse than not personalizing a buying experience to a customer is trying to personalize it but with the wrong information.

AI is excellent, but these early iterations of CRM integration will only be as effective as the data in the CRM. Conversations at conferences and with other vendors show that data quality is a massive challenge for most organizations. A salesperson automating an outreach using Einstein GPT but with insufficient data could quickly turn a potential customer off. It doesn't make you look like a serious person.

Data hygiene isn't a sexy topic. It's honestly not one of the "fun" things to most of us marketers. But man, is it essential. It's what's going to pay the bills.

I've had the good fortune of learning a lot about data hygiene from the Business Intelligence team here at Womble Bond Dickinson. I am proud that the crew helps us have some of the best data quality of anyone in our space (which third-party vendors have acknowledged). We sometimes know about client updates before our attorneys do!

Big law isn't known for its rapid adoption of new technology. However, the attention paid to the small but essential details of customer data at WBD has positioned us well to adapt to new AI technology.

There is much opportunity for AI. As a marketer, AI can help you improve your job by improving efficiencies and creating more head space for creative problem-solving that has been spent on the mundane. I've written about how I've started using ChatGPT in that capacity over the last couple of months.

The atmosphere around AI and marketing feels eerily similar to social media's impact on marketing when I started my career. The people who were resistant to the changes struggled after a while. Despite the discomfort, others who found a way to grow alongside the new tech and embrace change appeared to thrive.

What about you? Any thoughts about OpenAI integrating with CRMs? How will it affect sales and marketing pros in the next few years?

Subscribe below to get posts via email.

I'm staying away from social media until Easter (at least)

Drew Hawkins — Tue, 21 Feb 2023 21:37:44 +0000

It's that time of year again: a Lent-induced break from social media.

There are loads of things to give up. The church is encouraging the congregation to all give up sweets and alcohol along with meat on Friday (a more traditional approach). In the past, I've given up coffee, which was much more challenging than I wanted to admit and put me in withdrawals for a week or two until my body finished detoxing the caffeine.

Since COVID, I've used Lent to abstain from social media. Unbeknownst to me, in 2020, giving up social media before a pandemic broke out was maybe the absolute best thing to happen to me. I've kept that tradition going ever since, and while it's hard, it's one of the best mental and spiritual wellness practices I have undertaken. Weirdly, I continue to jump back on social media afterward.

So what are my rules?

I am giving up all social this year. In the past, I've only given up Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Again those three things are much harder to give up than I'd like to admit. LinkedIn has been an exception to that rule since it's usually a core part of my job.

This year is different. I'm giving up LinkedIn too. The only times I'm going to log into LinkedIn are:

If I get an InMail, that would be irresponsible to ignore it for a long time; I'll see those come in via email anyway.
If I'm training one of our attorneys on the platform. We have more capable people on my team who own this now, so it should be minimal.

My social media fasts have helped me keep a clearer head, be more focused at work, and be more informed on world events. I'm reading them after the stories are more vetted rather than the first (usually incorrect) take to a report.

How Can We Stay In Touch?

First, email me at drew@thebrainwads.com or fill out my contact form on the website.

I'll also still be writing on this blog and using it to talk more about what's going on in my world generally and not just general marketing or tech observations.

If you want to stay up-to-date there, please subscribe in the box below (or by clicking here) to get new posts via email. I'll also spin up my Sixth Day Six emails on Saturdays to share cool things I've read that week.

What about you? Have you ever had a social media fast? What was the most challenging part? Let me know! I would love to hear from you.