This isn't the post I was going to write until I happened to just notice that my last post was the 1,300th of this blog, which started in February 2005. Sure, I might be near my 1,700th post on my other blog in a shorter time, but this is the one that got it all started, the blogging and extra writing beyond my first book and the two newsletters I used to write.

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I usually highlight the previous milestone post and say some things about it, but though I just linked to it I want to talk about the early posts on this blog.

The funny thing about this blog is that if you decided to view the first blog post here you'd see that it's not actually the first post I wrote on this blog. I'd actually lost all the posts that were on this blog via the host I was sharing with my friend Kelvin at the time. Luckily I was able to find those posts via a major Google search that took some considerable time and even then I left some posts alone and let them die with the wind.

The actual first post for this blog was just a quick introduction of who I was and what I hoped this blog would be about. It was fairly short. The funny thing is that I wrote a second post on the first day that was even shorter, where I was introducing my newsletter and linked to the one I'd written the night before; I've made that one private. I didn't quite have this blogging thing down at that point, that's for sure.

The first post I wrote the next day was even shorter than the second post; I was going in the wrong direction. I should actually make that one private, but I'm not going to. I did make private the next two posts on that same day though, one because I was mentioning a seminar I was putting on, the other talking about a seminar I was going to that I wanted to let others know about. Those weren't great posts by any means, but I was trying to be helpful.

After beginning the first day with another very short post talking about Wegmans and linking to Forbes, I finally wrote my first "real" blog post, titled Black History Month; Why Don’t People Care More?. I think that one's still a pretty quality post and, scarily enough, the question is even more valid now that it's 2016; that's also pretty depressing. It figures though, that the first real post here was on a diversity topic, even though the overwhelming majority of posts on this blog are about leadership.

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One thing I did that I would recommend no one else ever do at this juncture is that I posted most of those recaptured blog posts on the same day, April 29th, 2006. In retrospect, that was bad SEO and messed up my chance to let this blog look really vibrant by not spacing the posts out at least one a day until I'd gotten through all of them. I think that probably hurt the readership of the blog because who was going to try to read upwards of 100 blog posts that all went live on the same day; pure silliness on my part, but the euphoria of finding all that I did overcame my good sense at the time.

Talk about timing. On the 24th I'll be celebrating my 15th year in business, even though LinkedIn has already told everyone I've already hit that milestone; sigh... lol I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with that one, but it means that this one gets to be the compilation post of the last 100 where I get to name my favorite posts. I also get to talk about the milestones within the last 100 posts and what I've done during this time.

For instance, December was special because I had a post a day the entire month. A couple of those posts will definitely be in my top 15. The post after my 1,200th was my introducing my latest book at the time, Leadership Is/Isn't Easy, which I can honestly say has had lackluster sales, but at least I wrote it. 🙂 This series of posts also included the one highlighting my 14th year in business, and I talked about business while linking to the video I did celebrating the anniversary talking about leadership.

What did I write about? I touched upon 12 specific topics out of the last 100; here are the top 5:

Leadership - 49

Business - 14

Motivation - 8

Health Care - 7

Diversity - 6

I think that's pretty well rounded, don't you? Notice that almost half the posts were on leadership? It seems that wasn't enough posts to get me on a list of top leadership bloggers though; oh well...

It took me 13 months to write 100 posts on this blog. Out of the top 25 posts viewed on the blog this year, only 3 in the last 100 made the list, and only one of those would be in my top 15. These are the posts:

9 Motivational Lessons From Beethoven - 118

When Employees Don’t Get Along, Blame Leadership - 114

You Must Believe In Yourself - 112

By the way, LinkedIn told me that more than 100 people viewed each of these posts within the first 3 days it was live... go figure. lol

Enough of that. Let's close with what I consider as my favorite posts of the year. The one I'm leaving out is the third one above, with 112 views, as it would have made this list but I don't want to be redundant:

Reverse Racism? Let’s Talk About Inclusion…

9 Ways To Make Leadership Easy

What Do You Do When There’s Nothing To Lose?

Do You Know What You’re Talking About?

You Can’t Be A Good Leader Without Integrity

We All Have A Little Bit Of Good And Evil In Us

Leadership In The Community

The Difference Between Negativity And Good Advice

22 Leadership Lessons From Star Trek TV

New Things Are Sometimes Old Things

White America, It’s Not Always About You

Will Your Customers Forgive Your Bad Behavior?

Dr King’s Dream Is Dying; Race Relations Is On Its Last Breath

It Takes A Lot To Change A Habit

That's all I've got this time around. If I survive the rest of the year, as I turn 57 at some point, and make it to my 12th anniversary of blogging, by next August or so I hope to be close to or hitting post #1,400. I hope you enjoy some of what I've shared above, and I hope some of you keep coming back to see what else I have to pontificate about as time goes on.