A Letter For "Blank" Starts Monday
Sometimes time and date matters
Back in 2017 a guy walked into the Sports Academy gym with a bag full of shoes and apparel and accompanied by Happy Walters (at the time a prominent Sports Agent). That guy was John Geiger and he had just launched a new streetwear brand called Diet Starts Monday.
John had an infectious energy and hustle to him, so much so that I will never forget it. It was one of those moments where someone can just command a room, seemingly lift it up and suplex it. And if you think YOU are a sneaker head - you ain’t got nothin on John Geiger.
He had with him the first pair of shoes he ever created under his eponymous label as well as some Diet Starts Monday hoodies and T-Shirts. Unfortunately I didn’t get any swag, it was for the NBA players that frequented our facility that day.
Recently I’ve been reminded of John after everyone started framing their goals and ambitions around the New Year, framing today as this holy day almost, the first Monday of the year and the day all our wildest dreams for 2025 start to be realized. I’ve never been the type to frame things around New Years or set goals or time-plan things around a date, I’ve always kind of thought that was pointless. If you have those goals or things you want to achieve, just do them on December 15th or August 28th, why does the date matter???
I still mostly believe in that ethos, JUST START, but this year felt different. With the energy I’m channeling right now it felt good to start framing things with time, so I’ve been doing a lot of goal setting and thinking about what I was going to do today, Monday, January 6th.
I had been using the phrase all last week with people in my life… “Blank” Starts Monday.
Business Starts Monday
Workout Starts Monday
Commitment Starts Monday
Writing Starts Monday
Community Starts Monday
It can be whatever you want it to be, a malleable element that you can turn into your own time and date based set point. I stumbled on this article today when I was catching up on John and what he’s been up to, it’s from 2017 and it’s about why John and his buddy Davin Gentry started Diet Starts Monday.
There are some absolute GOLD nuggets in this article.
"We just felt like there was no sense in putting it off any longer," says Gentry. "That's why it exists."
If you’re thinking this about a project right now, don’t put it off any longer
The difference is that Geiger and Gentry have spent years building the relationships and gaining the experience necessary to make something like this actually happen.
The journey along the way sets you up for moments when it’s time to jump in and use the experience and relationships you’ve built along that journey
"It's a lot of the ideas that we wanted to do for a while. It just never really made sense under whatever umbrella we were working with," says Gentry. Diet Starts Monday is the catchall for projects they've wanted to execute but never fit into the traditional understanding of what a brand is or could be…. "We're just doing whatever the hell we want," explains Geiger.
Hell yeah! Once they found their umbrella the creativity started flowing outward and manifesting something new
"Everybody is trying to look like what everybody else is doing. It's just a bunch of copycats. John and I both agreed that if anything looked like another brand we had to change it."
The best creativity stems from this, be original, be you, be authentic, break the rules and norms, push the boundaries, get out on the edge and peer over - just don’t be a copy cat
"The direction is there is no direction," says Gentry. [They] have removed practically all obstacles that normally stand in the way of starting a brand these days: experience, customers, operations.
when you start something new you get to develop it in the way you want and works for you. If it was an obstacle before, get rid of it. The brutal edit up front can be so freeing.
Since that fateful day John and Diet Starts Monday lives rent free in my head. More so now than ever before. I’m bought into all these themes. The beautiful thing about being aware and open to signals is that you never know when a 7 year old memory can spark something new.
Big thanks to John (and Happy Walters for bringing him by) and the way he sees the world and operates in it and for passing that along to me that fateful day 7 years ago. I didn’t know I’d need it right now, today, but I did. I’m so grateful.
With love and deep appreciation,
-Andrew