In partnership with
Hi! Welcome to The Friday Fix! You’re reading this because you probably stumbled upon this post somewhere on the internet instead of where it should be—in your inbox. But no worries; we can fix that.
Who am I? I’m Shem Opolot, a health professional turned content creator, passionate about helping people be their best selves in life and work.
Why should you subscribe?
I have over ten years of work experience in healthcare, program management, and data analytics on two continents. So, I know a little about helping you work smarter
I comb through tonnes of self-improvement content so you don’t have to, and I distill the content into bite-sized wisdom for you
I’ll occasionally make you laugh
If this sounds good, click the subscribe button below, add your email, read my welcome email (check your spam folder or “Promotion” tabs), and follow ALL the instructions. This is important so you don’t miss future posts.
Hi! I'm Shem Opolot, and this is The Friday Fix, my weekly newsletter. If you've received it, you’re either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter (yes, I’m the kind of person who uses words like “latter”) camp and want to subscribe, then click on the shiny button below:
You can also skim the past posts here.
Otherwise, grab a seat 🪑.
HAPPY FRIDAY 🎉 For $10k/month, Snoop Dogg hired an international ice cream taster. That’s it. That’s all we have time for.
TOGETHER WITH ALIGNED
One workspace where buyers, sellers, and AI close deals together
Instead of running your deals across scattered email threads and forgotten attachments, Aligned brings everything into one shared deal workspace.
Buyers get a single place to evaluate, loop in their team, and say yes. Sellers get visibility into what is actually happening when they're not in the room and AI Deal Insights that help you act accordingly, before it's too late.
Best part? Your first deal room takes only minutes to stand up.
LIFE
Loquacious
About a year ago, I got a gold chain with a “Z” for a pendant to match the one my wife has. They are an homage to our two babies, Zion and Zoé. We hope to get the same chains for our kids when they learn long division.
About a year ago, I also met the most talkative man, named Dan.
A neophyte to chain-wearing, I was green about the maintenance. It was a dainty little chain (gold is expensive), so when I stored it like a python at rest, it knotted up. I immediately panicked because I couldn’t unknot it, and I suspected that the price of fixing this minor wrinkle in D.C. would be egregious.
I googled jewelry stores close by and picked one in a less gentrified neighborhood. I hoped their lower rent would be reflected in their prices. The store was called Kane’s Jewelers on Google Maps, but that name was absent when I stood where the pin led me. A good sign for my pocket.
Cracking the door open triggered an unseen bell somewhere in the shop. Another good sign for my pocket. Fully dressed manikins faced the window, looking stylish — for the 1970s. Left to right, floor to ceiling: oversized suits and colorful checked shirts. No jewelry in sight. The only visible strip of floor, a canyon through the piles of clothes, led to the welcome desk. I could hear rustling and rummaging behind the it. A stout man — Mediterranean, or just very tanned — straightened up and welcomed me in a New York accent. His name was Dan.
“Hey! What can I do for ya?” he said, sounding like a jolly character from The Godfather.
“Hello. Is this Kane’s Jewelers? My chai-” I began, before he interrupted me and pointed to the back left corner of the store.
In the corner, sat a old Japanese man behind glass, like a bank teller, hunched in intense focus over something on his desk, haloed in yellow light, detachable lenses on his glasses.
“My, my chain got a knot. Can you help me fix it, please?” I said, less confidently than usual, dangling the chain in front of him.
Silently, he looked up, raised the detachable lenses off his glasses, and slid his open hand through the gap below the glass to receive the chain. I handed it over. He replaced the lenses, inspected the chain, hunched over, and went to work, his hands hidden as before.
A minute later, he exited his booth, and walked up to me holding an end of the chain in either hand, as if he were about to complete my dinner-date outfit. He was short. So short that there was barely a discernible difference between him sitting in his booth and him standing next to me.
“Keep like this. Not like this.” He said softly, in a Japanese accent, advising me against coiling the chain like a python.
“Thank you so much. How much do I pay?”
He waved me off and returned to his booth gingerly.
***
Two weeks ago, while trimming my neck hair, I clipped the chain, and it broke. This capped an awful month, the way a jammed seat belt caps an awful day.
I returned to Kane’s, but this time, I found only Dan.
“My chain broke. Where is he?” I asked after exchanging pleasantries, pointing at the empty corner.
“Oh man, so this old white lady came into the store a while back with a broken bracelet. Expensive. Real expensive. She asked him to fix it, so he did. When she returned to pick it up a week later, she claimed it wasn’t the bracelet she brought in. She made a scene, took the bracelet, didn’t pay, and threatened to sue. A few weeks later, we got notice from her lawyers. We lawyered up. It cost a lot of money. We went to court. Her daughter — she lived out of town — joined her in court. Right before the proceedings started, the daughter looked at the bracelet and said, ‘Mom! That’s your bracelet!’ The case was dismissed, but his heart was broken. He didn’t wanna come back.
And it was so upsetting because I’d had him in my store for years. He worked on all sorts of jewelry, sometimes worth more than the whole shop, but he never stole. Such a good, honest man. If anything, as his landlord, I thought he charged too little for his services, but I liked him. I trusted him, so I kept him. But yeah, he’s gone. Now, when I need jewelry done, I gotta pile it up, then drive to his house, drop ‘em off, and then pick ‘em up when they’re ready. Here’s a tip: look for a jewelry store in a poor neighborhood that has been open for four or five years. They’ll fix your chain for like 50 bucks. I don’t know of many poor neighborhoods in D.C., though. The rents are so high everywhere.
I remember your accent. We’ve met, right? East Africa, right?”
“Yes.”
“Been there a couple times. Yeah, a coupla times. It’s nice. Real nice. Lots of poor people, but it’s real nice. Do they still have the genital mutilation where you’re from? That’s East, right?”
“Uh…real quick,” I interrupted that morbid non-sequitur. “What if I give you the chain, and you take it to him when you take yours?”
“Lemme see the chain.” He grabbed it and inspected it in the store’s inequitably distributed fluorescent light.
“He’d probably charge you 20 bucks for this, but I don’t want to hold on to your chain. I don’t know when I’ll go next.”
“It’s okay, I can wait.”
“Okay, let’s do this. I think I’ll go in two weeks. Call me on October 5 at 11 am. I’ll let you know if I’ll be going that week, and you can drop the chain off then.”
“Thank you so much!”
“So, do you know who does the genital mutilation?”
“Um…” I stuttered, marveling at his total disregard for segues.
“It’s the mothers! They cut their daughters themselves. But you know what? I don’t believe we should come into your countries and tell you how to live your lives.”
“Yeah…the, the, the societies have to figure it out on their own. It takes time, but I think society evolves and self-corrects.”
“I’m not sure it self-corrects. Things are pretty bad today.”
“Yeah, but they were worse yesterday.”
“You know what, you’re right. I love America, I love my wife. She’s older than me. When she was a kid, Black people [he widened his eyes as he stared at me] weren’t treated like full human beings. And her mom couldn’t vote.”
“Exactly. Things get better over time. How long have you been married?”
“About 30 years. And you know what? Tell me, do you love your job?”
“Uh…”
“If I told you I’d triple your salary, you’d probably love your job more, right?”
“Hell yeah.”
“What if I halved your salary? Would you still love it?”
“Mmmm…”
“No, you wouldn’t! The compensation is important. My wife doesn’t wanna sleep with me anymore, so I’ve been thinking a lot about my marriage compensation.”
“Oh...”
“But I’m not getting divorced. We’re not getting divorced. Marriage isn’t about love. Never has been, really.”
I told you Dan was talkative.
I got the chain this week. Good as new. Dan found a way to tell me three more scandalous stories. We’re friends now. He closes early on Fridays to share drinks and stories with friends in the shop. I’ll honor his invitation soon.
TOGETHER WITH THE CEO REPORT
Want an easy $0 marketing hack? @MarketingMax has driven 9 figures in client revenue. His favorite no-cost hack: find the angle that makes people NEED what you sell. STEAL His Marketing Hack Here →
THINGS
A quote
When you fall, when you really fall, you never know how far it is. After a while, it feels like flying. Then you hit the ground.
A picture
Please enjoy this picture of my daughter playing tennis in one of her many beloved tutus.
WORK
Raising the bar(s)
You have sales data in Excel and you want to visualize the number of units sold with a bar chart. You could select the data and insert a bar chart. Orrrr you can use the REPT function:
Think of REPT as “repeat.” You describe what you want to repeat (“|” in this case), and the cell with the # of units (B2 and so on) tells REPT how many times to repeat.
We can make our skinny bars look like real bars by selecting the entire column with our tiny bars, and changing the font to “Playbill.”
Notice that increasing the number of units makes the bar bigger. As it should.
PRODUCTS
A course
A guide
FUN
The Friday Fix playlist
Your picks
> Why every single world map is a little wrong
> How the whole world started using passports
> Make yourself more charismatic
Have a great weekend,
— SO
