You need to cut 80% of the experts you follow.

What’s Happening?

• The myth of the great wealth transfer: That large inheritance from your parents, or any size for that matter, isn’t likely coming. All the more reason to stay focused on building your business and creating that future you envision. The average person’s wealth can have a larger impact during their life than once they are gone. As they say “Spend it all, as you cannot take it with you”.

• Fewer entrepreneurs than in 2000 - This is not good for any economy. There are ways we can improve the numbers and better stack the odds of success.

• Social Impact Investing - A change we need. This article provides a good high-level overview of what is meant by and the goal of social impact investing. An important takeaway, one which needs to be reiterated, is that theses investments can be impactful and generate financial returns.

• SMB Prepared for Cyber Attacks?

Continuous Improvement

Experts in their fields - How to choose to realize value

There can be a lot of NOISE 📣 and distraction if you follow every expert in your search for improvement. There are also many questions; who provides the best value that can be implemented, is their content applicable to my business, what medium do I use, should I trust them, do their values align with mine, are they providing real value or just trying to sell me something, etc.

Receiving recommendations from trusted members of your network you can likely answer several of these questions, however, what typically ends up happening is information overload after following every recommendation. If you say “YES” to everything you will soon find you have gone shallow and wide rather than narrow and deep. Below is a process that helped me be purposeful and realize results when selecting, following, and implementing learnings from Experts. This will work whether it is the first time you have followed experts to improve your game or if it is housekeeping time because you’re scrolling and consuming but not focused on implementing what you have learned.

Find 10 minutes ~uninterrupted~

Do each step as if you didn’t read the following step. If you cheat, who loses?

1. List 10 areas of your business that you want to improve on a piece of paper. Order doesn’t matter.

2. Look at your list. Think about which items would have the largest positive impact on your business or your life. Re-write these 10 items in order from most to least impact.

3. From this impact ranked list now put a single line through items 3-10. You have your focus items #1 & #2.

4. Below the line-through list you just created, write down your #1 area of improvement and underline it twice. Now think about what your business looks like once you have improved this area (eg: sales-cycle reduction by 25%, increased revenue by 2x, 50% increase in customer satisfaction, 3 days a week active in my business, etc). With this in mind, how could you measure the minimum improvement that will progress your business to this future state? (eg: # of positive Google reviews per week)

   Write this description of how you measure results beside your #1 improvement area. Complete the same process for your #2 area of improvement.

5. You now know your two most important areas of improvement and how you will measure real results towards them. You are narrow and ready to go deep. At this point, start to seek experts on these topics by asking for recommendations from your network (We may have one for you, send us a note). The medium; LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Newsletters, and Blogs don’t matter and the expert you find will have their preference for delivering valuable content.

6. Say “No” and review. Finally, any expert feeds you’re subscribed to, that do not align with your #1 & #2 areas of improvement, say “no” and unfollow them. Keep in mind that your top two areas of improvement will change as you work on them. Save this piece of paper and review it each month or quarter. Have you implemented learnings? Have you measured meaningful impact on your business? Are your top two priorities still valid? If not, re-run this process and adjust.

Recommend Experts

• Chris Hoffmann - CEO of Home Service. Chris posts real numbers, strategies, processes, wins and failures of the businesses he is running.

• Sam Jacobs - CEO of Pavilion. He posts about everything sales from small business to enterprise and regularly shares mistakes/ learnings from his career. I’ve known Sam for 6 years and he regularly delivers thought-provoking content on LinkedIn. { I have been part of Pavilion for many years and have benefitted from the network, courses, and peer group. If interested, Sam’s team offers a free 1:1 call to see if their community is a fit for you }

• Justin Welsh - Founder of JW. He posts A LOT! with great ideas about how to increase your online presence.

• Jen Horonjeff - CEO of Savvy Cooperative. Jen talks healthcare and solutions that have a real impact on patients.

• Jason de Weerd - Wealth Advisor. Jason writes a monthly newsletter talking about important topics on investments, family, retirement, and risk. You also get a little update on what’s happening in his world.

Health

It’s amazing how the body begins to provide a stronger feedback loop to the sports and activities you love. Yes, I am talking about injuries, pain, extended workout recovery, and learning that while your mind may be at peak performance your body is not as nimble as when you were 20 years old.

For me, this feedback loop began slowly over a few years and then one day after 5 hours of dirt biking in the foothills my lower back had enough. I spent a day at the hospital and several days bedridden with the most agonizing pain I’ve ever experienced. I am not one to take pain medication however in this case I happily took the doctor’s orders resulting in my pain dropping to an 8/10.

Looking back the root cause of this event was a lack of core strength. I was not in my best shape but was regularly running, biking, and at the gym lifting weights. I thought I was doing all the right things, however, my core was being ignored. Fast forward to today, I have incorporated core exercises into my weekly routine along with stretching sessions. If you are out on the Alberta or BC bike trails and see a person in full gear, on the side of the trail, doing yoga stretches, please stop by and say hi 😁 

My flexibility and core strength have greatly improved and it has provided benefits beyond my body health and recovery, like wrestling with our three children, keeping up with the gen-Z’ers at the office, and improving my overall mindset.

I’ll leave you with this link of some exercises that I find helpful.

_{{I acknowledge that many healthcare professionals and healthcare SMBs subscribe to this newsletter, and are trained to provide recommendations. The suggestions and content above are for educational purposes, to provoke thought on a healthier life, and are not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please, seek advice from your doctor, physiotherapist or healthcare provider before trying any new exercises.}}