Leonard Rodman, M.Sc. PMP® LSSBB® CSM® CSPO®

Making friends as an adult is weirdly brutal.

Not because you forgot how to be friendly.

Because adult life is designed to delete friendship by default.

Work eats your weekdays.
Partners and kids eat your weekends.
Moves break your routines.
And everyone’s calendar becomes a polite way of saying “no.”

Then you look up and realize:

You’re not lonely.

You’re under-booked on real connection.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth.

You don’t “meet friends.”
You build them.
On purpose.
With reps.

Friendship is proximity + repetition + shared vulnerability.

So if you want more new friends this year, stop treating it like a magical accident.

Treat it like a system.

Pick one “third place” and show up every week.
Same day. Same time.
Run club. Pickup basketball. Yoga. Trivia. Volunteering. Book club. Coworking spot. Church. Whatever.

Not because it’s your passion.

Because it’s your pipeline.

Then do the part most adults avoid:

Make the first move.

Not “we should hang sometime.”

Actual specifics.

“Want to grab coffee after next week’s class?”
“I’m trying a new spot Saturday at 10 - want in?”
“I’m headed to that meetup Thursday - come with?”

Yes, it’s awkward.

So is being 42 with zero people you can call on a Tuesday.

Also, stop waiting for instant chemistry.

Adult friendship is slow-cooked.

You don’t need a soulmate friend.
You need a bench.

3-5 people you see regularly.
Who know your name.
Who’d notice if you disappeared.

One more thing:

If you’re always “too busy,” you’re not busy.

You’re over-optimized.

This year, trade a little efficiency for a lot more life.

Repost, like, and follow if you want more posts like this.

There’s a moment every January where “Happy New Year!” stops being festive…

…and starts being a cry for help.

Like:

January 1–2
Totally normal.
We’re all still metabolizing champagne.

January 3
According to Larry David… this is the line.
After this, you’re not spreading joy.
You’re forcing small talk.

January 4–7
Now it’s weird.
Not illegal.
Just weird.

January 8–15
At this point you’re basically wishing me “Happy New Year” as a personality trait.

January 16–31
No.
Now it’s not a greeting.
It’s a hostage negotiation.

If you missed the window, just say:
“Hope your year’s off to a good start.”

Clean.
Adult.
No one gets hurt.

So what’s the actual cutoff for you?

January 3?
First Monday back?
Or are you out here saying it in February like a menace?

Icon came.
Blew up the internet.
Then died.

Omneky raised a ton.
Then became a rounding error.

Not because “AI ads” is fake.
Because ads are not a tool problem.

Ads are a system.
And the missing piece was always the same:
a real human feedback loop from people who have actually spent serious money.

That’s why Airpost is interesting.

Airpost is a hybrid AI ads machine built for performance advertisers.
Platform + service.

AI does the heavy lifting.
Experienced creative strategists do the part AI keeps hallucinating:
taste, context, iteration, and ruthless prioritization of what actually wins.

The core idea is simple (and kind of unfair):
a taxonomy for how ads work.
Strategic pattern → narrative angle → execution.
So you can find what’s working, then scale it into dozens of new swings per week.

Airpost is built by the ReadySet team.
The “we shipped an AI wrapper” crowd can’t fake that.
They’ve deployed $100M+ in ads, and it shows in the positioning.

And the proof points are spicy:
DoorDash reportedly saw Airpost ads beat internal ads by ~40% better CAC.
Cloaked ran $1M+ in spend through Airpost ads.

If you’re spending $250k+/mo on paid social, this is the real pitch:
Stop asking your team to be a content studio.
Give them an ad factory that learns.

Launching Jan 20, 2026.

#partner [https://lnkd.in/g_rr36jp)

Delve just pulled off a Valentine’s Day growth hack that feels unfair.

They asked the community one question
“What do you value about Delve?”

Then they did the obvious thing nobody actually does
they listened
collected the sticky notes
and turned them into a real billboard

That’s not “cute branding”
That’s a content engine
a trust signal
and customer research
all in one stunt

Even the line is a flex
not “SOC2 + HIPAA”
“Built with love for YOU.”

If you’re building in a boring category
this is how you make people feel something
and get shared for it

https://delve.co

AI agents are becoming a commodity.
The differentiator is the OS that ships them.

Because “we built an agent” is not the hard part anymore.

The hard part is:

Getting to production fast
Not in 6 months
In weeks

Making it safe to scale
With monitoring
Observability
Billing controls
Security and compliance

And turning agents into revenue
Not just “cost savings” in a deck

That’s why Vida caught my attention.

Vida is an AI Agent Operating System built for ROAI and speed-to-market.

Crawl-walk-run deployments
A framework that plugs into your stack
And gets real agents live quickly

Plus white-label and reseller options.

So if you’re a SaaS business trying to add a new product line
Or an MSP, BPO, or call center looking for a new margin engine
Vida is built to be a money maker, not just a cost saver.

Also - omnichannel is not an add-on here.

Inbound and outbound via:
Phone
Text
Email
Webchat

At real scale too - tens of thousands of calls and texts daily, and hundreds of millions of AI agent interactions supported.

If your “agent strategy” currently ends at a demo…

Maybe it’s time to start thinking like an operator.
Check it out today at [https://lnkd.in/gQYcBHUc)