David Henzel's Blog

Two Maps of the Soul: The Seven Levels of Nafs and Spiral Dynamics

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I recently watched a video called Ibn Arabi's Map of the Soul: The Seven Levels of Nafs. Its hook is blunt: most people die at level two, and only saints reach level seven.

I became Muslim more than 25 years ago. Lately I have been digging much deeper into Sufism, because at its heart it is a path of love, and love is exactly what I have been building everything around with Love Not Fear.

So the map itself was not new to me. What struck me was how much it sounds like another map that has shaped how a lot of leaders think about growth: Spiral Dynamics.

Both claim to describe how a human being grows. Both use levels. Both say most of us are stuck lower than we think. So are they the same map in different clothes?

No. And the difference is the most useful thing I know about personal growth.

The seven stations of the nafs

In Sufism, the nafs is the self: the ego, the part of you that wants, grasps, defends and compares. The path is not about destroying it. It is about refining it until it stops running the show.

The classical map has seven stations, most of them named in the Quran.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/nafs-seven-stations.svg" alt="A table of the seven stations of the nafs, from the commanding self to the perfected self. For each: its name, its Quran reference, what gives the orders, and a bar showing the nafs shrinking and the heart growing." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01. The seven stations, and who is in charge at each</figcaption> </figure>

1. An-nafs al-ammara, the commanding self

Quran 12:53. The self that orders you around. Craving, anger, envy, appetite. You do not have desires; they have you. Most people here do not know it, because they have never seen anything else.

2. An-nafs al-lawwama, the self-reproaching self

Quran 75:2. Conscience wakes up. You still fall, but now you notice and it stings. This is the level the video says most people die at: aware enough to feel the gap, not yet free of it. It is uncomfortable, and it is the beginning of everything.

3. An-nafs al-mulhima, the inspired self

Quran 91:7-8. The heart opens. Intuition, real love, the taste of something beyond you. Also a dangerous station, because spiritual experience can feed the ego as easily as it quiets it.

4. An-nafs al-mutma'inna, the tranquil self

Quran 89:27. Peace that does not depend on circumstances. The storms still come. You are no longer the storm.

5. An-nafs ar-radiya, the content self

Quran 89:28. You are pleased with what comes, not resigned to it. Gratitude without conditions.

6. An-nafs al-mardiyya, the self that is pleasing

Quran 89:28. Not only are you content with God; your life has become something pleasing in return. Service replaces self-interest.

7. An-nafs al-kamila or as-safiya, the perfected or purified self

The ego is transparent. What moves through the person is no longer them.

A small note for accuracy: the video frames this as Ibn Arabi's map. Ibn Arabi wrote about the soul's stations at great depth, but the neat seven-level ladder is usually taught through the later Sufi orders, which built it on those Quranic names. The attribution matters less than the map, and the map is centuries old.

Spiral Dynamics in one breath

Spiral Dynamics comes from the psychologist Clare Graves, and was popularised by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan in 1996. It describes the value systems that people and cultures move through as their life conditions get more complex. Each level has a color:

Beige: survival.
Purple: tribe, ritual, belonging.
Red: power, impulse, "I take what I want."
Blue: order, rules, duty, the one right way.
Orange: achievement, science, strategy, winning.
Green: community, equality, feelings, consensus.
Yellow: systems thinking, flexibility, integrating all the previous levels.
Turquoise: holistic, a felt sense that everything is connected.

The spiral swings between two poles. Beige, Red, Orange and Yellow are about expressing the self, the "I". Purple, Blue, Green and Turquoise are about belonging to something larger, the "we". Graves saw the jump from Green to Yellow as the biggest of all: the start of a second tier, where you can see and value every earlier level instead of fighting it.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/spiral-dynamics-levels.svg" alt="Spiral Dynamics: eight levels stacked from bottom to top, alternating between expressing the self (Beige, Red, Orange, Yellow) and belonging to the whole (Purple, Blue, Green, Turquoise). A dashed line between Green and Yellow marks the jump from the first tier to the second." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 02. The spiral, from survival to wholeness</figcaption> </figure>

The key insight is that each level solves the problems of the one before it, and creates new ones. I see this in my own portfolio. The companies are not all run the same way. LTVplus is a little Green, with elements of Orange: people-first, but with real targets, growth and performance. Others, like Relote, Context Engine and upcoach, are run Teal, Frederic Laloux's word, from Reinventing Organizations, for self-managing, purpose-led companies. Teal sits roughly where Yellow sits on the spiral. Neither is wrong. Each fits a different stage and a different kind of work.

Laloux gives each way of running a company a metaphor. Red is a wolf pack. Amber is an army. Orange is a machine. Green is a family. Teal is a living organism, where people manage themselves, bring their whole selves to work, and let the purpose steer.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/reinventing-organizations.svg" alt="Reinventing Organizations: Red (wolf pack), Amber (army), Orange (machine), Green (family) and Teal (living organism), each with its breakthrough, examples and matching Spiral Dynamics level. Below, LTVplus sits between Orange and Green, leaning Green; Relote, Context Engine and upcoach sit under Teal." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 03. From wolf pack to living organism, and where my companies sit</figcaption> </figure>

Where the two maps rhyme

Lay them side by side and the echoes are hard to miss:

Nafs	Spiral Dynamics	The shared idea
Ammara, the commanding self	Red, with Beige and Purple underneath	Impulse runs the person
Lawwama, the self-reproaching self	Blue, then Orange	Conscience, rules, striving, the inner critic
Mulhima, the inspired self	Green	The heart opens, empathy, meaning
Mutma'inna, the tranquil self	Yellow	Calm, integration, no longer reactive
Radiya, mardiyya, kamila	Turquoise and beyond	Unity, service, the self becomes transparent

Both maps agree that growth is not more of the same. Each step is a different relationship with yourself. Both agree that you cannot skip steps. Both agree that the early levels feel like the whole world while you are in them.

And both have a sting in the tail: the level you are proudest of is often where you are stuck.

Where they part ways

Here is where it gets interesting. The table above is a loose rhyme, not an equation, for three reasons.

They measure different things. Spiral Dynamics maps how you think: your worldview, your values, how much complexity you can hold. The nafs maps how much your ego is running you. Those are two different axes. You can be a brilliant Yellow systems thinker whose nafs is fully ammara: sophisticated, and still commanded by envy and appetite. And you can meet a grandmother in an Anatolian village who has never heard of systems thinking, whose nafs is mutma'inna. You feel it the moment you sit with her.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/nafs-vs-spiral-axes.svg" alt="A grid with Spiral Dynamics on the horizontal axis and the seven nafs stations on the vertical axis. A brilliant systems thinker sits far right but at the bottom, ammara. A village grandmother sits far left but halfway up. The goal is top right: a big map held by a quiet heart." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 04. Two axes, not one ladder</figcaption> </figure>

Ken Wilber made a similar point about the difference between stages of development and states of consciousness. Sufism is sharper still: the question is not how big your map of the world is, but who is holding the map.

The same goes for companies. You can give a team a Teal structure, with no bosses, full transparency and a real purpose, and it still will not run on love if the people in it are run by their nafs. Structure can make room for a better self. It cannot do the refining for you.

They point in opposite directions. Spiral Dynamics grows by adding: more perspectives, more complexity, more capacity. The Sufi path grows by subtracting. The goal is not a bigger self but a thinner one, until at the end there is almost nothing left in the way. The Sufis call that fana, passing away of the self. No developmental psychology has a stage for that, because psychology still needs someone there to develop.

They grow in different ways. In Spiral Dynamics, you move up when your life conditions change and your current level can no longer cope. It happens to you. On the Sufi path, the stations are worked for: remembrance (dhikr), the company of a teacher and fellow travellers (sohbet), service, and fighting your own nafs, which the tradition calls the greater struggle. And even then, the Sufis insist, the next station is a gift, not a reward.

What the path teaches that the model cannot

The deeper I dig into Sufism, the more I think the thing to trust most is not the map. It is what the map does to you once you stop treating it as a scoreboard.

The first trap with any levels model is using it to rank people. Spiral Dynamics fans do it with colors. Spiritual people do it with stations. Both are ammara wearing a nicer outfit.

The second trap is thinking you live on one level. You do not. You can be tranquil in meditation and commanding in traffic. Growth is less about reaching a level than about how quickly you notice you have slipped, and how gently you come back.

And the third: the lower levels are not the enemy. Lawwama, the painful self-reproach, is the door. If you feel the gap between who you are and who you could be, that is not failure. That is the path starting.

Love, not fear

This is also why Sufism fits so naturally with Love Not Fear, and with the idea that every major religion says "fear not".

The commanding self runs on fear: fear of missing out, of not having enough, of not being enough. Every station up the ladder is a little less fear and a little more love. The Quran describes where it ends: "The friends of God have no fear, nor shall they grieve" (10:62). The tranquil self is what that feels like from the inside.

Spiral Dynamics will help you understand your team, your market and your culture. Use it. But if you want to know whether you are actually growing, ask the older question.

Not "how complex is my thinking?"

But "who is in charge in here, my nafs or my heart?"

Türkiye Is Quietly Crushing It: Free AI for Everyone, and a State That Runs on Your Phone

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I've lived in Bodrum with my family for nine years. Friends fly in, stay a few days, and leave a little stunned. The sea, the food, the light. And the people: warm, hospitable, ready to help before you've finished asking. That part, visitors get right away.

What fewer people see is how advanced Türkiye is in certain fields. Free national AI. The government admin stuff you usually deal with painfully (letters, forms, offices), a lot of it from your phone. Not the postcard. The operating system underneath.

A national AI platform, and it is free for now

Last week, the Defence Industry Presidency opened EVREN. The name means "universe." The explore page is public. You can look at the platform before you log in, and the login is e-Devlet. No credit card, no waitlist, no sales call.

<figure> <img class="screenshot" src="/images/blog/turkiye-evren-explore.png" alt="The public EVREN explore page: the national AI platform landing, with an e-Devlet login." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01. EVREN's explore page</figcaption> </figure>

Launch coverage described 11 open-weight large language models behind one OpenAI-compatible API, so existing code changes a base URL and keeps going. EVREN's own site describes the machines as a cluster of 64 NVIDIA H200 GPUs inside the country. Prompts stay on that infrastructure. You can also do the unglamorous work on the same platform: upload a dataset, label it, train.

Through 1 November 2026, as announced at launch, API calls are not deducted from your credit balance. There are daily token quotas per account. You still pay nothing. That date is a window, not a promise that the window stays open.

This is the part I find most interesting. EVREN does not run on pay-per-token. It runs on a contribution model. Upload a useful dataset, label data, or share a model you trained, and you earn credits. The credits are GPU time for training and inference. They are not cash. You cannot withdraw them.

GPU time is the biggest cost line for most AI startups. A platform that lets you earn it turns that cost into a flywheel. Label data, train or run a model on the credits, and ship something that makes real money. The platform carries the infrastructure. The business on top of it is yours. I spend most of my time on what it takes for a company to become AI-native. The blocker is almost never the model. It is access, cost, and trust. EVREN is a country taking a swing at all three.

The state underneath

EVREN plugs in this cleanly because the identity layer was already there. e-Devlet is the government's single digital gateway, and it is the thing the AI platform, and everything else here, sits on.

<figure> <img class="screenshot" src="/images/blog/turkiye-edevlet-home.png" alt="The e-Devlet Kapısı homepage: a search box and the service categories." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 02. The e-Devlet homepage</figcaption> </figure>

e-Devlet's own statistics, through 31 July 2026, showed about 69.4 million registered users, in a country of about 86 million, and more than 9,000 services from that one login. Those counts move. The experience does not.

From your phone: pull an official document with a barcode anyone can verify, book a public hospital appointment and read the labs in e-Nabız, see a tax debt, and now log in to EVREN. One identity. A new service reaches people on day one.

I grew up around German bureaucracy. Letters in the mail. Forms. Waiting rooms. Deadlines you miss because the envelope sat under a pile. Here, a huge chunk of that life is an app. Not perfect. Still a different world.

Foreigners can get in too. A residence permit comes with a foreign identity number, and you pick up an e-Devlet password at a PTT branch with your residence card and passport. A few minutes, a few lira.

The rails are the new part

Identity first, then compute on top of it. Istanbul, a young technical workforce, and a time zone between Europe and Asia were already here. The rails are the new part.

And if all this has you thinking about moving here: since June, new residents with no Turkish tax ties in the previous three years pay no Turkish income tax on their foreign-sourced income for 20 years (Law No. 7582). Check it with a tax advisor before you plan around it, but it is worth knowing.

I am not writing a tourism brochure. I am writing from the place I actually live. Beautiful country. Kind people. And, quietly, some of the sharpest digital public infrastructure I have seen.

If you want to see the concrete piece, log in to EVREN before 1 November.

You're AI-decorated, not AI-native.

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Walk into almost any company and ask what they're doing with AI. You'll get a list. A notetaker on the calls. A copilot in the docs. A chatbot on the site. Something in the CRM nobody has opened since March. An SDR tool someone bought at a conference.

That isn't an AI company. That's twelve copilots, each with its own little memory, none of which talk to each other. Every one of them learns something real about the business. Then it takes that learning to the grave.

Here's the test I use. Ask any of them a boring question that needs last Tuesday: why did we pass on that vendor? What did this customer complain about in June? Who owns this now?

None of them can answer. They're brilliant and amnesiac. Not because the models are weak. The models are extraordinary. Because nothing in the company is writing anything down somewhere they can all read.

One piece is load-bearing: the company brain. One place that holds your decisions, customers, people, projects, and current state. Everything else is an interface onto it. Build that first or nothing compounds. You just accumulate subscriptions.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/youre-ai-decorated-not-ai-native-fig-01.svg" alt="Two panels. Left, AI-decorated: a notetaker, docs copilot, site chatbot, CRM, and SDR tool, each with a private memory and no shared line. Right, AI-native: those sources flow into one company brain, which then reaches Slack, Telegram, and the chat where work already happens." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01. Twelve copilots, or one brain</figcaption> </figure>

Each copilot learns something real, then takes it to the grave. The company brain is the one place they can all read.

Your context outlives every model you'll ever use

The best model keeps changing hands. That churn isn't a phase. It's the shape of the industry.

Every time you put the company's knowledge inside a vendor's tool, you've bet that vendor keeps winning, forever. The context is what makes the tool useful, and the context doesn't come out when you leave.

The company brain flips that. Your history sits in a layer you own. The model consumes it. It doesn't own it. Something better ships, you point the brain at it and keep going. No migration. No re-teaching. No "we're a [vendor] shop" three years after they stopped being best.

This isn't really an AI argument. It's a supplier argument, and you already know the answer. You would never let one supplier hold the only copy of your operating knowledge. People are doing exactly that with AI because it feels like magic.

Models are commoditising. Context isn't. Own the part that doesn't.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/youre-ai-decorated-not-ai-native-fig-02.svg" alt="Two panels. Left: company knowledge locked inside a vendor tool, beside their model, stopped at the edge so the context does not come out. Right: a company brain you own points at today's model, the next model, and whatever ships after." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 02. Models commoditise. Context doesn't.</figcaption> </figure>

Put the knowledge inside a vendor's tool and it doesn't come out. Own the context, and you point the brain at whichever model is best.

Here's what that looks like when it works. Someone asks: why did we kill the Q2 expansion with Acme? The brain answers in one place: the call notes from May 14, the decision logged that afternoon, the owner, the follow-up that never shipped. No Slack archaeology. No "who has the latest?" Twelve copilots can't do that. One brain can.

The floor: without these you're AI-decorated, not AI-native

The company brain. Decisions, customers, people, projects, current state. Yours, not a vendor's.
Automatic capture. Meetings, email, chat, CRM, docs, tickets, calls. If a human has to remember to write it down, it doesn't get written down.
An agent where people already talk. Slack, Telegram, wherever work happens. Not a new tab with its own login.

The operating layer

A website that updates itself. Change content by asking, not by filing a ticket.
Support: AI first, human on escalation. Every transcript flows back into the brain.
Outbound and marketing as a system. Personalization from real context, not a scraped list.
Every sales call recorded, graded, and coached. AI audits all of them. Managers coach the edge.
Internal ops. Onboarding, SOPs, and reports from the brain, not Friday scramble.
Build capability in-house. "Waiting on engineering" stops being the bottleneck.
Governance. Permissions, audit trail, facts in the brain not in DMs.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/youre-ai-decorated-not-ai-native-fig-03.svg" alt="The floor is three highlighted pieces: the company brain, automatic capture, and an agent where people already talk. Under that, the operating layer: website, support, outbound, sales calls, internal ops, building in-house, and governance. The caption says to start at the top." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 03. The floor, then the operating layer</figcaption> </figure>

The floor is what makes the difference. Most people start at number four, because the operating layer is the part you can see.

Three tests for whether it's real

Is the default "AI does it first, human reviews," or "human does it, AI helps"? Only the first changes your cost structure.
Has headcount stopped scaling with volume? If you still hire linearly with customers, nothing structural changed.
Does state live in one place you own? If the answer is "it's in the tool," you have a filing problem, not an AI strategy.

Start at the top of the list. Most people start at number four because it's visible. Then they wonder why year two looks like year one, just with more subscriptions.

If you want the next layer (how to stand up the brain without boiling the ocean), say so and I'll write that next.

The Best ROAS in Ecommerce Isn't in Your Ad Account: WinbackEngine for Ecommerce

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ask an ecommerce operator where their next dollar of revenue comes from and almost all of them say the same thing: the ad account. More spend, more traffic, more conversions. So they pour money into audiences that get colder and more expensive every quarter, chasing strangers who have never heard of the brand.

Meanwhile the warmest, cheapest revenue in the whole business is sitting untouched: the customers who already bought, already loved the product, and quietly stopped coming back.

That is why we brought WinbackEngine to ecommerce.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/winback-how-it-works.svg" alt="How WinbackEngine works, in four steps: your customer list, AI targeting, human outreach, and recovered revenue at a guaranteed 5x ROAS." width="720" height="384" loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — How WinbackEngine works</figcaption> </figure>

The revenue your ad account can't reach

I wrote recently about why we built WinbackEngine for multi-location service businesses, wellness, fitness, beauty, dental. The pattern turned out to be universal. Every business that sells to the same people more than once is sitting on a pile of lapsed customers, and almost nobody works it.

Ecommerce might be the worst offender. The average brand spends the overwhelming majority of its marketing budget acquiring new buyers, and a rounding error winning old ones back. So the second a customer goes quiet, they are handed off to an automated flow, another "we miss you" email, another 10% off, another retargeting ad chasing them around the internet. It is the same generic noise everyone else is sending, and it converts about as well as you would expect.

The same DNA as RecoverPayments

This is not new territory for us. WinbackEngine for ecommerce is a close sibling of another company we run, RecoverPayments, which recovers failed and declined payments for subscription businesses using real human outreach instead of another automated dunning email. Same core belief: there is enormous, provable revenue hiding in the money you have already earned, and a real person recovers it far better than a template ever will.

We took that muscle, human-led recovery of revenue you already own, and pointed it at lapsed ecommerce customers.

Why we can talk in ROAS

Ecommerce operators do not think in vague retention metrics. They think in ROAS, return on ad spend. So that is the language we speak.

The pitch is simple, and it is the reason this lands: instead of a 1.5x or 2x return on cold traffic that gets worse every month, we go after customers who already bought from you, with AI picking exactly who is recoverable and a real human doing the outreach that actually brings them back. It is the highest-intent audience you have, and nobody is talking to them. That is how we can promise a 5x return, and mean it.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/winback-roas.svg" alt="Bar chart comparing return on spend: cold traffic ads return roughly 2x and falling, while WinbackEngine returns 5x, guaranteed in the first 30 days." width="720" height="216" loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 02 — The same marketing dollar, two very different returns</figcaption> </figure>

Same principles as everything we build. Machine precision on the targeting, human warmth on the relationship. Real jobs for real people, because a bot chasing your customers is a turnoff, not a win-back. And we only win when you win.

If you run an ecommerce brand and you have a customer list full of people who bought once and disappeared, that list is quietly worth more than your next ad campaign. Let's find out how much.

Much love.

The Revenue You Already Earned and Lost: Why We Built WinbackEngine

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Almost every company I meet is pouring money into the front door while the back door swings wide open.

The front door is acquisition: ads, funnels, SEO, content, the endless hunt for someone brand new who has never heard of you. The back door is churn: the customers who already found you, already paid you, already liked what you did, and then quietly drifted away. Nobody chases them. And that is exactly why we built WinbackEngine.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/winback-front-back-door.svg" alt="Two columns comparing the front door — acquisition through ads, funnels, and SEO that gets colder and pricier every quarter — with the back door: lapsed customers who already know you and already paid you, the warmest revenue you own." width="720" height="320" loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — Where the budget goes vs. where the revenue is</figcaption> </figure>

The revenue hiding in plain sight

I have spent years running customer support and customer experience for service businesses through LTVplus. When you sit that close to the operations of a lot of companies, you start to see the same thing everywhere: a database full of lapsed customers that just keeps growing, and nobody doing anything about it.

The numbers are brutal once you look. Service businesses lose something like 65% of their customers a year. Most of those people did not leave angry. They did not have a bad experience. Life just got busy, the reminder never came, and they never rebooked. The relationship went cold by default, not by decision.

Meanwhile the marketing team is measured on new leads, so all the energy and budget flows to the front door. The customer who already spent money with you, already knows your name, and would happily come back with a nudge, gets ignored. That is backwards. The cheapest, warmest, most likely revenue in the entire business is the customer you already earned and lost.

Why the usual "reactivation" does nothing

Here is the part most people get wrong. When a business does finally think about win-back, it fires off another automated email or another SMS blast. "We miss you, here is 10% off."

It does almost nothing. Lapsed customers ignore it, because it looks exactly like the hundred other automated messages sitting unread in their inbox. You cannot re-earn a human relationship with a template. An automated blast is noise, and noise is precisely what made them drift in the first place.

What actually works is embarrassingly old-fashioned: a real person picks up the phone, references your actual history with the business, has a genuine conversation, and helps you rebook. Someone who sounds like they remember you, because they do. That is the thing email and SMS can never fake, and it is the whole reason people come back.

Machine precision, human warmth

So why not just hire a room full of callers and be done with it? Because dialing a cold list at random is a miserable, expensive way to work, and it does not scale.

We built WinbackEngine AI-first from day one. The engine does the part machines are genuinely good at: it reads the customer database, works out who is actually recoverable, when to reach them, and what offer fits, so no agent is ever calling blind. Then a trained human does the part only a human can do: the real conversation that earns the rebooking.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/winback-how-it-works.svg" alt="How WinbackEngine works, in four steps: your customer list, AI targeting, human outreach, and recovered revenue at a guaranteed 5x ROAS." width="720" height="384" loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 02 — Machine precision underneath, human warmth on top</figcaption> </figure>

That split is the whole idea. Machine precision underneath, human warmth on top. It is the same belief that runs through everything I build. Use AI to carry the routine load and point people at the moments that matter, then let real humans be human where it actually counts. Automate the targeting, never automate the relationship.

The rare kind of technology that creates jobs

Here is the part I am most excited about, and it has nothing to do with the technology. Most AI stories end with fewer people. This one ends with more.

A robocall does not work for winning a customer back. The second someone realizes a machine is dialing them about a relationship they used to have with a business, it is over. It feels cheap, it is a turnoff, and it does the exact opposite of what you want. Winning someone back is an act of warmth, and warmth cannot be faked by a bot.

So the person on the phone is not a cost we are trying to engineer away. The person is the product. Every campaign we run means real jobs for real people having real conversations, and the better WinbackEngine does, the more of those jobs there are. At a moment when everyone is anxious about which jobs AI will erase, I love that we are building a company where the technology exists to put more good people to work, not fewer. That is the love-not-fear version of AI, and it is the only version I am interested in building.

We only win when the client wins

The last piece is how we charge, and it matters more than it sounds.

I did not want to build another agency that gets paid whether or not it works. So WinbackEngine is performance-based on purpose. We guarantee a 5x return in the first 30 days or the client does not pay, and after that we take a share of the revenue we actually recover. If we do not bring the money back, we do not get paid.

That is not a marketing gimmick. It is a discipline. When you only get paid on recovered revenue, you cannot hide behind impressions or open rates or a nice-looking dashboard. You either put real dollars back on the client's books or you do not eat. It forces the whole company to be honest about what is working, which is exactly the pressure I want on a business I run.

It also runs on real infrastructure, not a promise. WinbackEngine sits on top of LTVplus, the customer-experience company I have spent years building. That means over 500 trained agents across more than 30 countries, vetted, coached, and certified to the security and quality standards that come from running customer support at that scale. This is not a startup wiring up a call script. It is a proven global operation pointed at one specific, lucrative job: getting your lost customers back.

Why this is the pattern now

WinbackEngine is a win-back company on the surface. Underneath, it is the pattern I now build everything on: find revenue everyone else is too distracted to work, use AI for precision and humans for the relationship, and tie your own pay to whether the client actually wins. Real systems, proven with numbers, human where it counts.

Retention is unglamorous. Acquisition gets the conference talks and the shiny case studies, and reactivation gets ignored. That is precisely why the opportunity is so big and so wide open. The revenue is already yours. Someone just has to go get it.

If you run a multi-location service business, wellness, fitness, beauty, dental, med spa, and you have a pile of customers who have not come back in a while, that pile is worth more than you think. Come see what WinbackEngine can recover for you.

Much love.

The First Thing to Build in an AI-Native Company Isn't AI. It's Memory.

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Everyone is buying AI right now. Almost nobody is becoming an AI-native company.

Those are two very different things, and the gap between them is where most of the money is quietly disappearing. A company buys seats for a chatbot, runs a prompting workshop, ships a pilot that never touches a real workflow, and six months later it runs exactly the way it did before. The tools are impressive. The company is unchanged.

I want to make a claim that sounds backwards, and then show you why it is the most practical thing I know about this whole subject.

The first thing you build in an AI-native company is not AI. It is memory.

Most "AI transformation" is theater

Let me say the quiet part out loud, because I have watched a lot of people get sold the theater version.

The theater looks like this: an inspiration keynote, a tour of the newest models, a slide about the future, maybe a single automation that demos beautifully and breaks the moment it meets a real edge case. It is advice from people who have read about AI but have never had to make payroll, never run a support queue at 2am, never had a key person quit and take half the company's knowledge with them.

The real work looks different, and it is less glamorous. You map how the work actually happens, not the org chart, the real flow of decisions and handoffs and busywork. You sort what stays human, judgment, relationships, taste, from what AI should carry, coordination, reporting, routine execution, the endless re-explaining. And then you prove it with numbers before anything gets handed over.

I did not arrive at this from a whiteboard. I arrived at it by doing it to my own companies first, and getting it wrong enough times to see what the missing piece was.

Why the tools keep failing you

Here is the thing nobody selling you a demo wants to dwell on: every AI tool today has amnesia.

You open a fresh chat and it knows nothing about your business. You explain your situation, your customers, your history, your constraints. It gives you a decent answer. Tomorrow you open it again and you start from zero. Switch to a different tool and you re-explain everything a third time. The intelligence is real, but it is floating in a vacuum, disconnected from everything that makes your company yours.

A company is not smart because it has smart tools. A company is smart because it remembers. It remembers why you fired that customer, what you promised that supplier, which pricing experiment failed and why, what the person who left in March actually knew. Strip the memory out and the smartest tools in the world give you generic answers to a business they have never met.

So the foundational building block is the layer that fixes the amnesia. One shared, permanent memory that every tool, and every person, draws from. We call ours the Context Engine, and it is the thing I would install before I touched a single fancy automation.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/context-engine-diagram.svg" alt="How the Context Engine works: every source your company runs on, email, meetings, team chats on Slack, WhatsApp and Telegram, documents, CRM and calendar, flows into one shared memory. Daimon listens in the chats your team already uses. The engine then surfaces briefings to your team and connects to any AI tool via MCP." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — How the Context Engine works</figcaption> </figure>

Everything your company knows flows into one memory. Daimon sits in the chats your team already uses, on Slack, WhatsApp, or Telegram, and keeps that memory alive. Then any tool, or any person, can draw on it.

The proof came from my own portfolio

I run a portfolio of real companies, and I mean real in the boring, operational sense. Customer support and CX. Recruiting and people work. Marketing. SaaS. Customer reactivation. Queues, hiring funnels, churn, SLAs, pipelines. Not slideware.

We rebuilt each one around AI ourselves, and each one taught us something specific about where AI genuinely absorbs load and where it quietly makes things worse:

LTVplus (customer support, scaled past hundreds of agents) taught us where AI absorbs support load without wrecking the customer relationship, and where a human still has to step in.
LoveNotFear (recruiting and people work) taught us what actually changes for people when AI enters the org, in hiring, onboarding, and retention.
Shortlist (marketing) taught us where AI multiplies real output and where it just produces slop that someone else has to clean up.
upcoach (SaaS and coaching) taught us product, activation, and retention from the inside of a software company.
WinbackEngine (customer reactivation) was built AI-first from day one, so it taught us the retention economics of doing this from scratch.

The pattern across all of them was the same. The automations that stuck were the ones sitting on top of a shared memory. The ones that failed were the clever point solutions that started from zero every time. That is not a coincidence. That is the whole lesson.

We got so excited by the results that we turned the playbook into a company. But the sequence never changed: memory first, then everything else.

The layer almost everyone skips

This is not a framework I invented. The clearest map of how a company built around AI actually operates comes from ExO 3.0, The Organizational Singularity, by Salim Ismail and colleagues, the follow-up to the original Exponential Organizations. The idea is that an AI-native organization runs as a continuous loop, at machine speed: it senses what is happening, interprets it against everything the company knows, decides, acts, and learns from the outcome. A purpose sets the goals and the hard constraints up top, and governance wraps the whole thing so a human stays in control and nothing runs off the rails.

Plenty of people have read the book. The difference is that we actually build the loop, layer by layer, inside real companies. That is what the whole engagement is: installing this stack where a pile of disconnected tools used to be.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/ai-native-operating-loop.svg" alt="The ExO 3.0 operating loop of an AI-native company: Purpose sets the constraints, then a continuous loop of Sense, Interpret (the memory), Decide, Act, and Learn (which compounds), with every outcome feeding back into the memory. Governance wraps the whole loop." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 02 — The AI-native operating loop</figcaption> </figure>

The two highlighted layers, Interpret and Learn, are the ones almost nobody builds. They make no demo, so they get skipped. They are also the only reason the system gets smarter every month.

Most companies buy a chatbot, which is a sliver of the "act" layer, and stop. They never build the two layers that actually compound.

The first is interpret. This is the memory: signals become understanding because history gets retrieved and context gets attached. This is the Context Engine, and it is the layer almost every company is missing.

The second is learn. Every outcome feeds back into the memory, so the system in month six is measurably smarter than in month one. Nobody builds this either, because it is invisible in a demo. It only shows up over time.

That is the contrarian core of it. The parts of AI that make the best demos, the flashy generation, the clever one-off automation, are the parts that matter least to whether your company is genuinely transformed. The parts that make no demo at all, memory and learning, are the parts that decide everything. Setup porn photographs well. Compounding does not.

What memory actually buys you

When the foundation is a shared memory instead of a pile of disconnected tools, the wins stop being abstract:

You stop losing tribal knowledge. When someone leaves, what they knew and decided stays in the company's memory, searchable and usable.
New hires are useful in days, not months. They start with the full history of the company instead of six months of asking around.
Coordination cost collapses. Status meetings, reporting, chasing updates, AI carries it, and department cost as a share of revenue goes down as you grow instead of up.
Every tool knows your business. No more generic answers, and no re-explaining yourself when you switch tools.
It compounds. Every call, decision, and document makes the system smarter. Month twelve beats month one by a wide margin.

None of that comes from a better model. All of it comes from the memory underneath.

Own the asset

One more contrarian point, because it matters more than people realize when they are shopping for AI.

Your company's memory is the most valuable, most private asset you will build in this whole process. It should not become someone else's asset, train someone else's model, or lock you into a vendor forever. Ours runs on servers you own, with your data under your control, GDPR compliant by design. When the work is done, the software and the license are yours. Success, for me, is a client needing us less every month, not a dependency that renews forever.

That is the opposite of how most of this gets sold. It is also the only version I would be willing to install in my own companies, which is the only test I actually trust.

Where to start

If you are staring at the AI hype and wondering where to begin, here is the honest answer, stripped of theater.

Do not start with the model. Do not start with the flashiest automation you can demo on Friday. Start by giving your company one shared, permanent memory. Get the interpret and learn layers in place. Then let the "act" layer sit on top of a foundation that actually remembers your business. Everything else you build after that gets better, because it is finally standing on something.

Ask the question about your own company: if you built it from scratch today, with AI, what would it look like? Then go build the memory first. The rest follows.

Much love.

'Fear Not': The One Thing Every Major Religion Agrees On

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Love Not Fear — the idea that every decision in life comes from one of two places: love or fear. It's the lens through which I try to make decisions, build companies, and live my life.

But here's the thing that still stops me in my tracks: this isn't a modern idea.

Not even close. It's thousands of years old. And it doesn't belong to any one tradition — it shows up in virtually every major religion on Earth.

<div style="margin: 2rem 0;"> <video controls playsinline preload="metadata" style="width: 100%; border-radius: 12px;"> <source src="/videos/fear-not-sacred-texts.mp4" type="video/mp4" /> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> </div>

The Numbers Are Staggering

When you actually dig into the sacred texts, the pattern is impossible to ignore:

Christianity — "Fear not" appears over 100 times in the Bible. That's not a footnote. That's a theme. And 1 John 4:18 puts it plainly: "Perfect love casts out fear."

Islam — The root word for "fear" appears 124 times in the Quran. And Quran 10:62 says: "The friends of Allah have no fear, nor shall they grieve."

Judaism — "Al-tirah" — do not fear — appears 51 times in the Torah and Hebrew Bible. Isaiah 41:10: "Fear not, for I am with you."

Hinduism — The Bhagavad Gita lists fearlessness as the first divine quality. Not courage, not strength — fearlessness. Chapter 4, verse 10: "Freed from attachment, fear, and anger — many have attained My love."

Buddhism — Abhaya, or fearlessness, is a core teaching. The Dhammapada says: "Hatred does not cease by hatred. By love alone is hatred healed."

Taoism — Fear is addressed across five chapters of the Tao Te Ching. Chapter 67 says simply: "From compassion comes courage."

Sufism — The mystic poet Hafiz wrote: "Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions."

What This Means

Seven traditions. Thousands of years apart. Different languages, different cultures, different continents. And they all landed on the same truth: fear is the obstacle, and love is the way through.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/fear-not-every-religion-agrees-fig.svg" alt="A two-column comparison showing fear as the obstacle and love as the way through, the shared teaching of seven major religious traditions." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — One ancient truth across seven traditions</figcaption> </figure>

This isn't a coincidence. It's a signal.

The Love Not Fear framework — purpose, values, vision, habits — isn't something new. It's something ancient, organized into a system that works for modern life.

Every time you choose love over fear, you're not following a trend. You're tapping into something that billions of people across millennia have recognized as fundamental to being human.

The Practical Question

What decision are you currently making from fear?

Maybe it's staying in a role that doesn't align with who you are. Maybe it's avoiding a conversation you know you need to have. Maybe it's playing small because the alternative feels too exposed.

Whatever it is — the sages, prophets, poets, and teachers across every tradition would tell you the same thing:

Fear not.

Not because it's easy. Because it's the path.

This is the foundation of the Love Not Fear operating system — a framework for making better decisions by understanding the two forces behind every choice. If this resonates, learn more about the framework or reach out.

Here's an exercise rooted in this same tradition. The Funeral Exercise asks you to imagine what people would say about you at the end. It cuts through the noise and shows you what actually matters. Try it for free →

Productivity Tips: How to Run One or Multiple Companies Without Going Crazy

Mon, 30 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I run a small portfolio of companies and people often ask me how am I pulling it off without going crazy.

TLDR: Limit the number of decisions you have to make -- Save your decision power

A big part of successfully running one or multiple businesses is that I'm doing my best to limit the number of decisions I have to make on daily basis. This allows me to put my focus and decision-making power onto the stuff that matters.

A quick background about me: I'm a 43-year-old entrepreneur with a small portfolio of businesses, a 7-year-old daughter, an amazing wife who I have been sharing my life with for over 20+ years, and eight dogs. I just had to stop and look at this number again.. 43-year-old wow.. feels ancient when I write this down. I still feel like I'm 20.

Anyhow, I want to share with you how I limit the number of business decisions I have to make and what kind of filters I use to make the right choices.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/productivity-tips-for-running-multiple-companies-fig.svg" alt="Numbered list of five decision-limiting systems: using frameworks like EOS, monthly mission-vision-values calls, keeping an error log, hiring strong team leads, and pricing tasks by hourly value." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — Systems that limit decisions and save focus</figcaption> </figure>

Business productivity tips

Use Frameworks!

Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman is the business book that had the most significant impact on me. It teaches the EOS -- Entrepreneurial Operating System, which allows you to systematize your business. Everything from how to define your Mission, Vision, Values, to figuring out if you have the right people in the right seats. From identifying which KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to measure to how to run proper meetings and planning sessions.

I WISH I had known about the EOS 10 years ago. Everything we learned, while growing my previous business -- MaxCDN (we had to learn the hard way, through blood, sweat, and tears) is perfectly described and battle-tested in this book.

Mission, Vision, Values

I always thought that MVV is unnecessary thing you only put into a presentation for investors, and then you bury it somewhere on the website and never look at it again.

But what I found out over the years, MVV is the best management tool there is.

We started implementing MVV monthly calls for all new employees in all my businesses. When people are introduced to the concept from the beginning they understand better what is required of them. In this case it's being in line with company's Mission, Vision and Core Values.

We also ask new employees to put their signature next to each of the values and that way acknowledge that they understand what values we are nurturing.

Error log

In all of my businesses, we have an error log. The idea is that we log every mess up, customer complaint, and error so we can talk about them in our weekly management meeting to see which process we can improve to make sure this error will not repeat.

By doing this, you are building a self-healing and continually improving machine.

Hire strong team leads!

After StackPath acquired MaxCDN (a company I co-founded 2009) I became the CMO, taking care of marketing activities, preparing progress reports and so on. While I was working on putting together the StackPath brand I asked Lance Crosby, CEO of Softlayer, to join a couple of meetings and give me his feedback. He didn't say much on those meetings, just an occasional "looks good". After one meeting I pulled him aside and asked him:

Am I messing up? Don't you care? What's going on???

That is when he told me this: As a CEO he only has 3 roles.

Making sure there is enough money to run the biz (Fundraising / Sales)
Preaching the Mission and the Vision of the Company like a parrot to the outside world (PR) and inside world (the team)
Hiring strong team leads / department heads and let them do their thing.

Especially the 3rd one was a big eye-opener for me.

Now I just hire people who are really good at what they do and let them run with the ball. I just check if they deliver via KPIs, act as a sounding board, and remove roadblocks for them.

Solution-oriented team culture

When your team members have a problem or they are criticizing something, you should encourage them to always provide two possible solutions or at least some thoughts on how to improve the situation. This way, you only act as a sounding board, and they use their own heads, experience and skills to find the solution for the problem and actively participate in decision making process.

Personal productivity tips

I am a strong advocate of the saying "How you do one thing, is how you do everything". So, implementing hacks and tricks to boost "productivity" in my personal life and reduce the number of decisions I had to make, was a no brainer.

Mental Models

You most likely know the Pareto Principle (80/20). There are a lot of other mental models that are just as useful.

A mental model is an explanation of how something works. The phrase "mental model" is an overarching term for any sort of concept, framework, or worldview that you carry around in your mind. Mental models help you understand life.

Gabriel Weinberg wrote an amazing medium post on the topic and later a book called Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models which I can highly recommend.

Only black

I only wear black clothing. It always matches, and picking out what to wear today or packing a suitcase is much faster. Buying clothing is also much faster, I only have to check out the black items.

Lunch and Dinner

We hired a housekeeper who cooks, so she decides on what we are having on the menu for lunch and dinner. So, neither my wife nor I have to think about the groceries. When we eat out, I usually skip looking at the menu and just ask the server what his or her favorite vegan dish is. And I order that.

No junk food at home

We only buy healthy stuff -- fruits, nuts. If we have chips at home there is a high likelihood that I will eat them. Especially late at night when my decision making and will power is drained.

Staying in shape

I have a personal trainer who comes to my house at least three times per week. There is no way around it. At 6 am, he shows up at my house, and we start. He is the perfect accountability buddy.

If you want to get results and not think about it, get a personal trainer if you can.

I went to the gym for years 3x per week, but only after I started working out with a trainer, working out the same amount of time as I did before, I actually started seeing my body transform. It feels like I just wasted all that time at the gym before.

$10, $100, $1000, $10000 per hour tasks

Every evening I have a ritual of planning the next day. This is one of the most important things for my personal productivity.

I write down all my tasks in my bullet journal and I also do the following:

I circle the frog -- the task I want to do the least is the task I do first.

Then I add monetary value to the rest of the tasks: $10, $100, $1000, and $10,000 per hour.

I only keep the expensive ones ($1k and $10k tasks) and do my best to delegate, automate, or ignore the ones that I rated $10 and $100.

There you have it, simple yet very efficient tips that you can use today to boost your personal productivity and I promise that will reflect on your business as well.

All of this gets easier when you know your direction. I built a free tool that helps you define your personal vision and mission. It takes the guesswork out of deciding what matters. Build yours →

Book Review: The Little Book of Stoicism

Thu, 21 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT

I have been practicing stoic principles my whole life without knowing about the philosophy behind it. Maybe it's part of my German heritage. Although stoicism has experienced a revival over the last few years, I feel many people have misconceptions about the core nature of this philosophy. Stoicism is "a guide to life based on reason rather than faith" supporting self-mastery, perseverance, and wisdom -- principles dating back to Marcus Aurelius that remain as relevant today as they were thousands of years ago.

A Modern Approach to Ancient Philosophy

Jonas Salzgeber's The Little Book of Stoicism: Timeless Wisdom to Gain Resilience, Confidence, and Calmness makes ancient philosophy practical for contemporary life. The book divides into two sections: the first explains stoicism's goals and key philosophers, then presents the author's "Stoic Happiness Triangle" framework. The second section offers 55 actionable daily practices.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/the-little-book-of-stoicism-review-fig.svg" alt="A diagram of the Stoic Happiness Triangle: living with arete, focusing on what you control, and taking responsibility, all supporting eudaimonia." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — The Stoic Happiness Triangle from Salzgeber's book</figcaption> </figure>

The Stoic Happiness Triangle

The triangle centers on Eudaimonia -- ultimate human flourishing and life satisfaction. Three corners support this goal:

Live with Arete emphasizes expressing your highest self consistently, closing the gap between capability and action.

Focus on What You Control represents stoicism's cornerstone principle -- concentrating on controllable factors while accepting external circumstances beyond your influence.

Take Responsibility reminds practitioners that external events don't determine happiness; rather, personal interpretation and chosen responses do.

Favorite Stoic Practices

Here are some of the practices from the book that resonated with me the most:

Become an eternal student: Following Seneca's wisdom that "Leisure without study is death," intentional learning drives growth.
Choose courage and calm over anger: Seneca describes anger as "brief madness," causing loss of self-control and reason.
The Equanimity Game: Measuring how quickly one recovers from mistakes demonstrates resilience.
Buy tranquility whenever possible: Using Epictetus's principle, one can choose peace over irritation over minor inconveniences.
Lead by example: Demonstrating beliefs through action proves more powerful than verbal instruction.

The Stoics spent a lot of time thinking about death. So does this exercise. The Funeral Exercise asks you to imagine what people would say about you at the end of your life. It's the kind of reflection Marcus Aurelius would have approved of. Try it for free →

Do You Have the Courage to Follow Your Calling?

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMT

A few days ago, I was sitting on a white sandy beach in Bali with my daughter and wife. It was gorgeous, aside from the insane amount of plastic trash that was floating on the water and was also scattered all over the beach. But this is a topic for a different post.

Next to us on the beach was this couple that was being pitched by a jewelry merchant. The potential customer declined with the words, "I'm a poor musician from Germany. I don't have money for this."

Once the merchant left, I started a conversation with them. I asked him if he said that he was broke just to get rid of the merchant, or if he is really struggling. He told me that he used to manage a restaurant, made good money, but was miserable. He went on his first trip to Bali two years ago and decided to radically change his life. He called his boss and told him that he would not be coming back to work.

Not having a backup plan, not having money on the side. He just quit... to follow his passion in Music.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/do-you-have-the-courage-to-follow-your-calling-fig.svg" alt="A two-column comparison contrasting staying in the comfort zone with having the courage to take the plunge and follow your calling." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — Comfort zone or calling — the courage gap</figcaption> </figure>

His girlfriend took the same courageous plunge and quit her event management job to work in a bar until she could find her true calling. They are doing OK but are far from where they want to be. I deeply admire their courage!

When I meet somebody, I'm always following one of my family core values:

DELIVER VALUE: We enrich the lives of everybody we come in touch with.

I took out my coaching toolkit and gave them some pointers on how to better define his brand as a musician, came up with some growth strategies for them and made them overcome some limiting beliefs they had. It was great to witness their aha moments and to see them so enthusiastic about all the possibilities they suddenly saw during our conversation. Watching their transformation made me feel again what I'm most passionate about and reconfirmed why my personal mission statement is:

I'm a change agent who is transforming individuals and organizations so they can reach their full potential.

Over the years I found that this is what makes me the happiest!

But there is a small problem with this. The conversation at the beach reminded me of the struggle I have. Should I focus more on organizations (business focus) or individuals (personal development)?

If I would have as much courage as the couple at the beach, I may have picked individuals. Yet, I have chosen to stick with organizations. Being successful here seems easier and more within my comfort zone.

I'm curious to hear if you ever been to Bali or shared similar struggles and which decision you made in the end.

Here's an exercise that changed my perspective. The Funeral Exercise asks you to imagine what people would say about you. It's uncomfortable and clarifying. Try it for free →

How to Launch New Product Features Without Pissing Off Your Team and Customers

Tue, 10 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT

A few years ago, I ended up taking over the product aspect of my company and formed a team to support me in this task.

During that time, one of the biggest challenges that I faced, was communicating the product improvements and new features to the people inside and outside the company.

Each department was rapidly growing and it was hard to keep everyone on top of product development. It was visible that our miscommunication was a bottleneck to the growth of the company and we had to fix it.

It turned out to be a lengthy and hard process, but we found a way to communicate effectively our product roadmap. In this blog post, I'll share what we learned the hard way.

So, you just created a new product feature? Follow these steps before you launch it and you won't piss off your team.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/how-to-launch-new-product-features-fig.svg" alt="A diagram of four numbered launch communication steps: brief support first, educate marketing and sales, update the whole company, then inform customers." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — Four steps to launch a feature without chaos</figcaption> </figure>

1. Start with your Support team

First and foremost, give your support team heads up so that they know what to expect on the release date.

If there is a chance that something goes wrong after the launch, prepare them for it. List the bugs that are most likely to happen and provide your support with the proper troubleshooting steps. Also, make sure that they know what types of issues should be escalated directly to the product development team.

This, along with an update of the knowledge base of your new product or feature, will equip your staff to provide a better customer service to your clients.

Don't forget that your support is your most important asset when it comes to gathering customer feedback. They are the first people in your company to see how your users interact with your product, react to its changes and adopt your new features.

That's why the communication between the support and the product team is very important. The support team can be your best source of ideas for unsatisfied user needs and potential product improvements.

2. Educate your Marketing and Sales staff

New features are a great reason for your sales team to:

Touch base with existing accounts
Approach new customers most companies use feature releases as marketing tools to drive sales

By all means, it is not a good idea that your marketing and sales teams are the last to learn about certain product changes.

These teams should be fully versed in what they are selling. Make sure that they understand the added value for the customer from every product iteration.

Not all features are easily marketable. Thus, it is a great idea that the product team writes down:

How your new features serve your customers better
How they differentiate you from the competition

This will help your marketers craft a better value proposition and unique selling point.

It is a good idea to impart a sales enablement training on the new functionalities. Else, providing cheatsheets can help your salespeople refine their pitch.

3. Keep everyone in the company updated

As a business, you have several parts of the "machine" that cranks out results and helps your company grow. In order to ensure efficient and smooth working of all the parts, everyone should know what changes are taking place in the company.

Internal newsletters stating all the changes, action plans and a simple product roadmap of your company is a great way to go about this. It ensures that everyone is on the same page and knows who to approach if they have any questions or concerns.

What if the newsletter you send out is not read by all? To curb this issue, the communication process should be multifaceted.

One method that I like (and we implemented at MaxCDN) is the relay of information to all of the department "Heads." These are the people coaching their individual teams, i.e. support, development, operations, sales, marketing, etc.

Once they learn about the product changes and updates, it is their responsibility to communicate and reemphasize the important information that their team may have missed or misunderstood.

This way, there are several sources providing the same information and you are reducing the risk of someone being out of the loop.

4. Inform your customers

There are several ways to keep your customers updated about what's new and changing within your company.

Keep updating your website and FAQ section regularly to reflect the changes you have made. Follow and update any third party sites as well. It is important to be consistent in the information you share.

When it comes to a release of something major or a big change in your company, there should be a checklist of things that need to be done. Gather your marketing team and craft a proper communication strategy, which may include:

Feature press releases to the media
Blog posts about the changes
Product documentation update
Social media posts
Posting on popular blogs or websites
Newsletters to your customers

Launching product updates is a complex process which involves everyone in the company. Many things happen at once and it is easy to get distracted.

I am a firm believer in checklists so I highly recommend that you do one for every aspect of your release -- support, marketing, sales, etc. This way you will make sure you don't miss anything important and it will help you distribute the work more efficiently.

Launches go smoother when the whole team knows where you're headed. I built a free tool that helps you define your personal vision and mission. When your "why" is clear, every launch decision gets easier. Build yours →

7 Mistakes (Almost) Every First-Time Entrepreneur Will Make

Tue, 19 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMT

As a new business owner, you're bound to make mistakes. I know I've made plenty. If you do a quick Google search, you'll find a whole list of reasons that businesses fail. Many are obvious, including not enough planning, poor revenue model, no market research, etc. But others are less so.

Even after reading about all these mistakes, you're still likely to fall into a few traps along the way. In fact, if you're like most first-time entrepreneurs, you may have already fallen for one and just haven't realized it yet. Here are seven of the most common mistakes I see business owners make.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/mistakes-every-first-time-entrepreneur-will-make-fig.svg" alt="Numbered list of five common first-time entrepreneur mistakes: chasing money, shiny object syndrome, failure to ship, lacking a vision, and fear of failure." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — Five traps that catch first-time entrepreneurs</figcaption> </figure>

1. Chasing Benjamins

Ask yourself right now (and be honest): are you in this for the cash? If so, it's going to be an uphill battle. By focusing on extracting as much cash as possible from your customers, you'll quickly blind yourself to what actually makes money: providing value. If you want to avoid this mistake, retool your efforts so you're focusing on changing lives, reducing pain, or just making life easier for your market.

2. Shiny Object Syndrome

Another trap that catches many first-time business owners is pursuing too many things at once. It's completely understandable -- you have thousands of ideas and you want to do whatever you can to bring them to life. Unfortunately, dividing your attention like this is a surefire way to make your best ideas less powerful. Focus your energy on one thing at a time. Become the best at what you do in just one area.

3. Failure to Ship

In the software world, we call this having a "waterfall" mentality. You try to make sure everything is perfect before you go out into the market. You pay for a fancy logo, sharp business cards, and a snazzy website. The problem is, your first idea is rarely your best. The market will likely ask you to pivot, and if you've spent all your resources building the perfect product, you may be unable to do so. If you're not embarrassed to ship your product in its current state, you've waited too long.

4. Lacking a Vision

Business is exciting. You can't wait to jump in and get your feet wet as you build your new venture. However, without a clear sense of direction, you'll likely find it hard to pursue your passion efficiently. Instead, you may find yourself doing and building things that have nothing to do with your vision.

At MaxCDN, we quickly realized the importance of focusing on our mission statement. While we had originally started out with a clear vision, we never took the time to physically write it out. This meant that as the company grew, our vision became more watered down with every new team member. Eventually, we found our team wandering in different directions. We recently sat down and remedied this, writing a clearly defined vision and ensured 100 percent of our actions fell under its umbrella. This simple action has made a world of difference. In your own business, fight the temptation to "just get started" and do some planning. You don't need a 70-page business plan, but I do recommend writing down your mission and vision for your company. This will keep all your efforts consistent and focused on a singular goal.

5. Fear of Failure

Success is simply the product of lessons learned through failure. If you aren't failing, you aren't trying hard enough. Try new things, experiment, break out of your comfort zone and challenge your team and yourself. After discovering 99 things that don't work, you'll stumble upon the one solution that does.

6. Wallowing in Impatience

So you had a great idea, started a blog, and four months later you're not a zillionaire? Be patient. Unfortunately, with the hype surrounding entrepreneurship these days, there's an expectation that it will be a quick rise to the top. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you're interested in being a successful entrepreneur, prepare yourself for the long haul. Success takes time.

7. Management Woes

Just left the cubicle? Striking out on your own with more questions than answers? It can be hard, without prior experience, to suddenly be expected to manage a team. But if you're going to make entrepreneurship work, you'll need to get past your fears and learn to be the leader your company deserves. This becomes doubly important when you begin hiring (or promoting) your first middle managers who rely on you for guidance in their new roles.

Before you burn out chasing everything, check your balance. The Wheel of Life assessment gives you a quick snapshot of where you're thriving and where you're neglecting. Free, takes 5 minutes. Take the assessment →

For Entrepreneurs with a Family: The Definitive Guide to Work-Life Balance

Tue, 12 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMT

As an entrepreneur, you have a lot on your mind every minute of every day. Throw a family into the mix, and it's easy to feel overwhelmed. Sounds familiar? I've been there.

Building a large tech business, juggling family life, and then celebrating the birth of my daughter three years ago, I struggled with these same issues. Balance isn't easy. It's not something that 'just happens'. I read books and blogs, watched countless videos, and finally stumbled upon a new idea -- why don't I approach my life the same way I do my business?

The same principles that made Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates successful in business could help me get a handle on my personal life. The same time management skills and productivity hacks I've learned building companies could potentially work wonders at home.

In this guide, I'll share some of the business lessons I've learned to apply outside of the office. Lessons that have helped me be a better father and husband. As you read through my experiences, think about different business practices you currently use in your own life and how you might tweak them so they work at home.

Work-Life Balance is a Myth (and here's why I'll never use that term again)

There, I said it. If you get nothing from this guide, let it be that the entire concept of work-life balance is misleading -- and has been for years!

Best-selling author Matthew Kelly, in his short paperback Off Balance, describes the idea as something we "don't really need or want." He explains that people don't actually pursue balance but rather seek "alignment with what matters most."

Work isn't something that should exist outside of 'life'. Work is part of life, especially if you're at a point in your entrepreneurial career where you've truly found your vocation (and not just working for a paycheck). Instead of trying to spend a certain percentage of time on work and another percentage on life, try viewing your work as simply a single piece of the whole. So instead of chasing "work-life balance", instead view the entire pursuit as "work-life integration".

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/the-definitive-guide-to-work-life-balance-fig.svg" alt="A two-column comparison contrasting the myth of work-life balance with the healthier reframe of work-life integration." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — Balance is a myth; aim for work-life integration</figcaption> </figure>

In this guide, you'll get the tools you need to begin building a more balanced life. By the time you're done, you should be on the road to creating a system that works for you, your partner, and your family. After all, a family truly is a system. Like a business, families are interdependent networks with moving parts, different competing priorities, and multiple stakeholders.

And, just like a business, your family is another area in life that requires active management. To help it run smoothly, I'll share tools, processes, and project management philosophies you can use to run your family life as successfully as you run your business.

Part 1 -- Vision

Before we get into scheduling, planning, and setting boundaries, it's important to stop and think about what makes you tick. What's important to you? What drives you? What are you truly living for?

And perhaps most importantly... why?

Define your why

It's a video that we've all seen several times. I'm talking about the world-famous -- at least in the entrepreneur community -- TED talk by Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why.

Knowing "your why" is a concept that has embedded itself within the entrepreneur community and doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon. The reason is simple: it works. It gets everyone on the same page whether they're stakeholders, customers, suppliers, or new leads. By having a clear purpose, you set off a chain reaction of proactive action towards your goals.

By understanding your purpose and getting everyone on the same page, decisions can be made without you. Not just any decisions, but the exact same decisions you would have made had you been in the room while they were being deliberated. You've essentially imbued your guiding passion and drive into your employees. And that's how you scale. That's how you delegate, free up your time, and without losing your unique vision that made your company so great in the first place.

Work together

Just imagine for a second, if you and your partner were on the same page. If you both had a clear idea of each other's goals and core values. How much easier would it be for you both to work harmoniously, without needing to keep track of each other's actions?

For example, let's say that after sitting down and thinking about it for a while, you've decided that what really lights your fire is having the ability to provide for your children. In talking with your partner, they've revealed that they've always wanted to raise children in multiple countries.

With this information, hundreds of tiny decisions become no-brainers. What's more, this kind of upfront transparency is a great way to set expectations -- you and your partner can figure out what kind of sacrifice will be required in order for each of you to realize your personal whys.

Using the hypothetical example above, let's say you need to spend more time working so you can grow your company and support your family. Your partner understands this because with the company at a good, stable level, you'll be able to explore different parts of the world as a family.

On the weekends, it's an easy decision between going on a road trip or staying home and watching cartoons. Which activity will give your children experience packing, traveling, being on the move, and working as a team? It's an easier conversation because you're now working as a unit, trying to find areas where each of your personal "whys" are aligned.

With a clear why you now have a 'North star' to head towards. There's no longer a gap between what you actually want and what you've communicated that you want. It's exactly like a business -- every team member, stakeholder, and contributor (your family members) are now working towards a single shared vision (your combined whys).

And everything else? Eliminate it. Here's how...

Part 2 -- Scheduling, Boundaries, and Learning to Say No

After figuring out your why, communicating with your partner about their own, and getting clear on your mutual priorities, it's time to figure out how to schedule these priorities effectively. In this section, we'll talk about setting clear boundaries, outsourcing, and planning for happiness.

Focused, Quality Attention

Every day, at around 4:30 PM, the front door flies open and whatever I'm working on is put aside. It doesn't matter how "important" the task at hand was -- it's now been overruled by an adorable three-foot human named Emma. She's my daughter, she's just finished a long day at preschool, and for the next ninety minutes she'll soak up 100% of my attention.

This is her time.

Because for me, part of my why involves being a caring, attentive father. And this would be impossible if I viewed my daughter as a distraction to my work. Instead, when she comes home I switch gears and give her everything I've got. In other words, thinking about my work would be a distraction during this time.

By carefully selecting how I use my time, I'm able to be more focused when it matters most. Is it time to work? Great. I'll turn off any social media notifications, lock my office door, and start on my work. Everything else can wait.

This kind of deep, structured focus is what truly brings results. It's what allows me to operate at peak capacity and maintain maximum productivity -- whether with my family, my career, or anything else I choose to work on.

Setting Clear Boundaries

Use what you learned in Part 1 to have a conversation with your partner. Find out what they consider most important (their why) and how you can help support them in their pursuit. A huge part of doing this involves structuring your life so that it's easy to meet expectations. Or, in other words, how could you create an environment that makes it easier for you and your partner to support each other?

In the previous example, I mentioned that at a certain time of the day I devote 100% of my focused attention to my daughter, Emma. What's important to note, is that this is a time I've talked about with my wife. She knows how much this time means to me and for those 90 minutes she either works on her own priorities or joins us for "Emma Time". This is a boundary that we've set so that no matter what happens, I can still give my daughter my undivided attention every day.

This applies to work, too. For example, if having a regular 'date night' is important in your relationship, don't allow work to interfere. It's not uncommon for entrepreneurs to use two cell phones (one work, one personal) and leave the work phone at home when they're out with their partner.

Think about it: where could you support your partner, and where could they give you more space to pursue your priorities? When you're ready, keep reading and let's talk about everything that is definitely not a priority.

Eliminate What You Hate

Briefly, I should mention the importance of a two-letter word that is rarely said enough...

"No."

Learning to say "no" is a crucial skill for any entrepreneur who's looking to design a more balanced, stress-free lifestyle. There simply isn't enough time for you to work on every project that comes across your desk. Stay true to your why and only say yes to what moves you closer to it.

In a similar vein, look for areas of your relationship that you're currently spending time on where you simply don't need to. Just like in a business, how could you outsource elements of your relationship that you don't enjoy?

For example, I have a virtual assistant who helps me keep on top of stuff that I'm just no good at. This includes suggesting fun activities for anniversaries and important events, buying presents (we have a shared doc that I keep gift ideas in) for my wife and planning fun dates around the city.

(Side note: that last one is actually amazing. With someone else doing all the research, I can spend that time on other priorities, give myself a great night out later, and the whole thing is a surprise for both of us! Try it... you may like it).

What kind of things could you outsource? It's a good question, and the answer will likely be highly dependent on your unique situation. For now, just try being aware of all the activities you're spending time on in your relationship. If it's an activity that you don't necessarily need to be a part of, see if it can be outsourced. A few ideas:

Hiring a nanny or childcare worker
Having someone clean your house
Don't iron your shirts; use a dry cleaner
Have somebody cook or prep meals
Use Amazon for most of your shopping

Bottom line: look for ways to be your most focused, attentive self in the areas that matter most to you and your partner. For everything else, there's outsourcing.

When you're clear on which tasks you'll no longer be wasting time on, keep reading to learn how to better manage the stuff that does require your complete attention.

Part 3 -- Tools, Tactics, and Routines

With a clear why and an idea of where to set boundaries, let's talk about some of the tools, techniques, and habits that can help you make this all happen.

Software

Shared Calendar

If you don't have a family calendar, create one today. Not tomorrow. Finish reading this guide, open up your favorite calendar app (I use Google Calendar), and create one for your family.

Simply having a single place to keep track of our intermingled lives has eased a ton of tension in my marriage. No longer do we get into stupid arguments that start with, "I have that work thing on Friday, remember?" or "Why would you agree to that, you know we're supposed to go on a work trip this weekend!"

Keep a shared calendar. Just try it. Invite your partner and give her the same access rights as you. Then, try and think of all the things you do in a typical day that you simply can't sacrifice for anything else. For example, I mentioned in Part 2 that when my daughter comes home at around 4:30 PM we play together and talk about her day. These 90 minutes that I spend with her, from 4:30-6:00 PM are blocked off in my calendar. If we need to schedule an appointment or event, my wife and I know that this time is off limits.

In a similar vein, we also use the shared calendar for family activities like vacations. Each year, instead of planning a vacation last minute (when my wife has simply had enough) I plan our annual family vacation in advance. Because our family's appointments are stored in this same calendar, it's easy to pick a time/date that works for all of us. As an added benefit, this means we usually save on flights, hotels, and packages because I'm booking so early. Plus, my wife can review every choice I make and add her own suggestions.

Where can you do the same in your own life? What kind of events, holidays, or activities could you plan together? How could you use a shared calendar to set certain boundaries or block off important time? What priorities are so important to you that they simply cannot be overwritten?

Calendly

In Part 2, you learned how important it is to set clear boundaries between the priorities in your life. One of the best tools I've ever found for making this work is Calendly.

Calendly lets you set up a specific window of time where you're available. In other words, if someone wants to book time with you (for a conference call, meeting, etc.) they can select from available times that you define.

This takes a lot of time out of the appointment setting process and stops you from accepting meetings at crazy times (trust me on this: I've jumped on far too many 3 AM phone calls in my time). However, the key to making this work is keeping it updated. If you're traveling, be sure to adjust your scheduling preferences so you're not double booked.

Inbox Zero

Cutting down on the number of emails packed into your inbox is an effective way to reduce overwhelm and make your life easier. It helps you keep track of important conversations and stay on top of ongoing projects.

To help, try upgrading your email solution. If an email is urgent, reply. If it's important, delegate it. If it's none of the above, archive it or schedule it to reappear when you're not in work mode. The goal is a clean inbox at all times.

Techniques and Routines

Being Present at Home

Don't divide your attention. When you get home, as you walk in the door, make the shift -- I am here, and I am devoting my attention to my family.

Peter Awad, host of the Slow Hustle podcast, does this very well. He wears a wristband with "Slow" on one side and "Hustle" on the other. Before he enters his house, he rotates it from Hustle (work mode) to Slow (paying attention to his family life).

Peter's business is important to him, but so is his family. "The band exists because I needed a visual queue to switch modes. A reminder that I was entering a sacred place and to clear my mind for that. To be prepared for all of the stories my kids would bombard me with and to really listen. Not just hear them but really listen. Otherwise, my mind would still be sitting at the desk contemplating that last bad phone call or email."

For myself, I've learned to come home and place my cellphone on its charging station (on silent). This kills the temptation to check on work -- I'm now in family mode. Our family, friends, and certain important work contacts know that if they want to reach me, they'll need to contact me on my home phone.

Working Deeply

If you haven't heard of the Pomodoro technique, it may end up being the one thing that really saves your professional life. The technique is simple: do work in short, 25-minute sprints, each separated by a 5-minute break. During the break, push back from your desk and relax.

By working this way, you can focus entirely on the task at hand.

The Key Ingredient: Consistency

Remember, just like your business, your family life is an important part of your life and requires active management to run successfully. In order to truly make progress on your work-life integration, you'll need to constantly be fine-tuning and optimizing your strategy.

Again, it's just like a business. You wouldn't stop improving your products once you found something that customers like, would you? You should maintain this same level of commitment in your relationship with your partner. Understand that each day is an opportunity to improve your relationship. Each day, spend some time thinking about how you might:

Set better boundaries
Get realigned with your priorities
Get realigned with your partner's priorities
Live more efficiently
Eliminate what you hate
Measure progress (if you don't measure it, you can't change it)

I've been working on work-life integration consistently for over two decades and I still work on my system every day.

How balanced is your life right now? Try the free Wheel of Life assessment. It takes 5 minutes and the results might surprise you. Take the assessment →

For Ambitious Entrepreneurs: 5 Effective Leadership Qualities

Tue, 05 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Steve Jobs is the flag bearer for the CEOs of our generation.

Many leaders are nasty towards their employees. And they justify it by quoting how Mr. Jobs yelled and told his staff that they "sucked."

I think this is absolutely the wrong way and much against my core beliefs.

An exceptional leader inspires people to work relentlessly and extracts their creative energies.

We all crave validation; it's a biological need.

Here are the five leadership qualities to make you more effective and successful.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/effective-leadership-qualities-fig.svg" alt="A diagram of five numbered leadership qualities: emotional intelligence, compelling vision, aggressive action taking, effective communication, and passing on the bait." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — Five effective leadership qualities</figcaption> </figure>

1. Emotional Intelligence

We live in a world obsessed with data, problem-solving, and decision-making.

Sometimes though the rational thinking mind freezes, and the reptile brain takes over. In such instances, your might make fear-based decisions. It happens even with the most talented and intelligent people of the world.

So what's the fix?

My friend Corey Blake did a terrific TEDx talk on how Vulnerability is Sexy and can make the other person feel as an equal.

See, you can't just consider your employees as a project resource. The human bridge between you and them is emotions.

You need to put yourself in their shoes. Start with small gestures to show them that you care. Acknowledge their feelings and lead with love even during challenging times. Empathy can make your working environment tremendously conducive.

2. Compelling Vision

Jack Ma regularly gets dozens of new, exciting ideas to implement in his business – some his own; while others by his employees.

So how does he remain sane?

By running every idea through a simple filter: "Does this make doing business easier?"

Even Facebook had a single goal during the early stages of the company. For all the suggestions, Mark Zuckerberg had the same question: "Does it help us grow?"

Such simple sounding phrases are called Vision Statements. I have written a detailed case study on them. They can bring immense clarity and relentless focus in your business decisions.

I recommend you to draft an ambitious Vision Statement for your organization. You also need to ensure that everyone in your company subscribes to it.

The tactical everyday aspects will become smoother when your employees see a challenging bigger picture. Remember, people take action because of 'the why' – give them a compelling one.

One effective method to keep your employees engaged is by aligning their egotistical goals with your companies' larger goal.

3. Aggressive Action Taking

Even after drafting the best plan, your predictions can go haywire in the real-world. During many critical business junctures, you won't even find complete information to choose the right course.

In such cases, you will have to trust your instincts.

In a recent letter to the shareholders, Jeff Bezos mentioned that they take action with around 70% of information at hand. Waiting more can mean that you're slow – especially in the fast-paced online businesses like eCommerce.

4. Effective Communication

A slight miscommunication can go downhill and drop your employee morale. However, if you regularly meet and interact with your employees, then you keep them engaged and motivated.

You can address their concerns and remind them of their responsibilities. Even if there's a conflict, you can resolve it peacefully. I like what my father said on this, "If you have to yell, then your argument is weak."

Also, while communicating, choose your words carefully. Be specific, elegant, and leave no room for doubt. Encourage your team to share their ideas and give feedback on how you can improve.

At MaxCDN, we used internal newsletters to keep people informed. Also, every month we had town hall meetings that would end with a round of open questions.

5. Pass on the Bait

It's important to reiterate your Vision and make the employees believe that they are important to your organization.

Remind them of the impact they are creating. And give them the liberty to experiment. Inculcating a sense of ownership can lead to innovative products. For example, Gmail wasn't an officially sanctioned product. Rather, it was a side-project by employees that has now become a huge success.

Amidst encouraging your employees to start their own projects, tell them to remain customer-centric in their thinking: successful businesses keep their clients at the center of everything.

Take it from Amazon. Their Vision is to be Earth's most customer-centric company.

In today's world, where every second person is an aspiring entrepreneur, you need to set yourself apart.

How many of the above-mentioned effective leadership qualities do you possess?

What do you actually stand for? Great leadership starts with knowing your values. I built a free AI tool that walks you through defining them. No signup, takes 15 minutes. Define your values →

Good Leadership Traits You Should Teach Your Child

Tue, 29 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT

I see parents around me worried what their children would end up doing with their lives. But I don't care about what my child wants to pursue. Rather, I want to give her a toolkit that propels her to success. Leadership traits are a vital part of that kit.

For many children these traits are inherent. But as a parent, you need to imbibe valuable lessons that will help your child throughout their life. Knowing how to persuade and influence people is a useful skill because life is mostly collaboration and trusting each other.

So let me show you three ways to inculcate leadership traits in your child while having fun.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/teach-leadership-traits-child-fig.svg" alt="Numbered list of three ways to teach children leadership: team building through extracurricular activities, encouraging playfulness and curiosity, and telling stories of grit." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — Three ways to grow a leader while having fun</figcaption> </figure>

1. Encourage Team Building by Participation in Extracurricular Activities

As an entrepreneur, you might regularly go on team lunches and play games to boost your team's morale. You also expect your employees to learn new skills.

With your children, you can choose from a wide array of activities to impart the importance of teamwork. So identify your child's interests and encourage them to participate in a competitive environment.

Enroll them for that baseball summer camp. Help them set up a rock band. Let them volunteer for an NGO.

Such real-world experiences will provide your child a taste of the independent adult life.

2. Encourage Their Playfulness and Curiosity

Did you know that Google encourages its employees to pursue side-projects?

20% of the work time is dedicated towards them, and some of the best Google products ideated during this period.

Children are inherently curious. They don't judge their feelings and creations. That is until the time they are made to believe that 'only successful are respected.'

You need to clear the air by telling them stories of how failure has been fundamental to breakthroughs in the world.

Play word games, get them to role play a superhero, mental gymnastics and anything else that fuels their imagination.

When they come up with a creative output, appreciate it. Give them nuanced feedback that doesn't rate an idea as either good or bad. Rather, it's about the in-depth understanding of what's working and what isn't.

Steve Covey, the author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, talks about how he involved his son in projects. Instead of telling him to clean the trash and water the lawn, he shows the neighbor's yard to set expectations.

Once he sees how green and clean it is, Steve's son is motivated and jumps on the mission to make their garden shine.

3. Tell Stories That Show Hard Work, Passion, and Ethics in Positive Light

It's crucial to inculcate a core set of values in your child. Hard work, discipline, focus, and integrity are cornerstone skills that determine how far you get in life.

But instructions, no matter how elegantly put, might fail to motivate your employees to work.

Similarly, declarative statements about what's important in life can sound preachy and bore your child.

An alternative tool is stories. They can subconsciously influence the behavior of your child.

You know what can drastically change their outlook?

Stories from your life where you exhibited grit and perseverance. Because kids don't do what you tell them; they copy what you do.

And while we are on the subject, you should also gift them novels, comics, and literature. Reading expands their idea of the world. It is essential for quicker learning, and it's a habit that all successful people fall back on.

Leadership is a mindset. If your child has a sense of ownership, then they won't surrender in the face of adversities. Rather, they will believe in taking action and getting past the failures – because you taught them so.

Want to know your own values before teaching them? I built a free AI tool that helps you discover your personal core values. Hard to teach what you haven't defined for yourself. Define your values →

3 Characteristics of Effective Communication with Your Spouse

Tue, 22 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT

It's a trend these days – you cannot successfully manage both your personal and professional life.

This delusion is justified when we take a look at the lives of massively influential entrepreneurs. Elon Musk is already divorced twice, and Sergey Brin separated from his wife in 2015.

Here's how the problems might shape.

You have a grueling day at work. You expect a relaxed environment and a happy partner.

Instead, the issues bleed into a conversation with your spouse. Your stress is amplified, and your judgment gets impaired.

Isn't it obvious: You need to regain your mental poise.

But poor communication can ruin the sanctity of a relationship. Indeed, communication is the cornerstone of a successful marriage.

So let's explore the three characteristics of effective communication. Here goes number one.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/characteristics-of-effective-communication-fig.svg" alt="A diagram of three numbered characteristics of effective communication with your spouse: empathy, honesty and transparency, and active listening." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — Three characteristics of effective communication</figcaption> </figure>

1. Empathy (Even When You're Being Criticized)

As per a study by Forbes, empathy ranks among the top five traits for a successful entrepreneur.

And it makes sense. To understand your partner better, you need to shred off the condescending nature. Rather, put yourself in your spouse's shoes – it will deepen your bonding.

Secondly, embrace criticism. Your partner wishes the best for you. They know you inside out. Do you flip out when they mention your idiosyncrasy? Then you fail to understand your spouse's position.

If it helps, treat the critique of your personality as a separate entity. And collaboratively have a dialogue on how to deal with it.

Here's a tip: When your blood starts boiling, smile, take a breath and pause for a second.

2. Honesty and Transparency

I get it. You want to curtail the bad news from your partner to shield them from the worry. The truth is it will help neither one of you – because work pressures find a way home and creep into your relationship.

So:

If your business is facing a financial crunch, don't hide it from your partner.
If you are launching a product that will lead to long work-hours, your partner should be aware of it at least a month in advance.

Remember though, that it doesn't equate to being nasty and blunt. Acknowledge the current emotional state of your partner and don't let the warmth slip out of your communication.

Authenticity in communication will lead to a genuine connection with your spouse. It will garner trust and build a good rapport.

3. Active Listening

Many entrepreneurs are only physically present in the conversations with their partners. They passively hear their spouse while mentally being occupied with the board meeting that happened in the morning.

If you take official calls after work, then it's unfair to your family. Once you are home, you need to give them your undivided attention.

I have had instances when I felt disconnected with my wife. So let me tell you the systematic framework we created for our conversations...

I, along with Yurda, wrote down our individual and collective goals. Further, to eliminate unspoken expectations, we defined our roles and responsibilities. We also schedule the time to discuss errands, vacations, and the like.

Using this technique, my business mentor discovered that his wife wants to become a marriage counselor. Then they worked together towards this goal.

Special note for the guys: Occasionally in a conversation, you need to keep your analytical brain (obsessed with problem-solving) aside. Your spouse is probably seeking validation and you need to just let her vent it out. Remember that you also have your own set of gloomy days.

Strive to give your marriage the very best of yourself; not what's left over after you have given your best to your work. If you want your marriage to blossom, then you need to treat your work and family equally.

Curious about your personality? The Big 5 test reveals patterns in how you think, feel, and connect. Understanding those patterns will make you a better communicator. Free, AI-powered, takes 10 minutes. Take the test →

Why Marriages Fail: 4 Tragic Reasons That Entrepreneurs Need To Be Aware Of

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT

The blissful idea of a happily-ever-after almost seems like a myth in today's world.

CDC stats from 2014 show that 38.03% of marriages lead to a divorce (2,140,272 reported marriages and a staggering 813,862 divorces).

Entrepreneurs probably fare worse because they are ambitious, indulgent, and desire-centric individuals. They are also notoriously known for putting their families in the backseat.

If you look around, you'll find workaholics like Elon Musk. He's an inspiring figure who's touted as real-life Tony Stark, but he has repeatedly failed in his relationships.

So today, let's look at the four major reasons why entrepreneurs fail at marriage. We'll also discuss a few ways to solve these issues.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/why-marriages-fail-fig.svg" alt="A numbered list of the four major reasons entrepreneurial marriages fail: diverging priorities, emotional distance, financial distress, and bringing work stress home." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — Four reasons entrepreneurial marriages fall apart</figcaption> </figure>

1. Diverging Perspectives and Priorities

One of the most common ways in which a marriage starts malfunctioning is when the entrepreneur dissolves their life outside of work. Sure, your company is a part of your identity. But how has that changed you as an individual?

If you always keep a 'business comes first' attitude, then you will invite your spouse's jealousy and contempt of your work.

See, a marriage calls forth spending time and doing things together with your partner. If you have a non-entrepreneurial spouse, their world-view will be entirely different from yours.

So if you are switching gears and going all-in with an intense work focus, ensure your partner is on the same page. Else, you're treading in troubled waters.

How can you sail past those tiresome product launches and long work hours?

By planning well and informing your partner about them in advance. If there's a seasonality in your business with launch dates, then it's possible to set these expectations.

My friend Syed Balki (CEO of Awesome Motive) and his wife Amanda who are very close friends of us have it figured out. When Syed is in the product launch mode Amanda has different expectations of Syed during these intense work modes.

You can have relaxing periods from work when you reconnect with your partner. I like how James Clear puts it in his Four Burners Theory article –

"Have seasons in your life when you change your priorities between work and family."

If you fantasize putting more work hours for the sake of it, then understand that we are past the industrial revolution.

For knowledge workers, putting in more hours doesn't necessarily equate to a higher output. Determine your optimal performance peak – beyond which you will get diminishing returns.

Many times entrepreneurs are hell bent on their business ideas and their spouses aren't convinced about them. In such cases, you can enforce a mutually agreeable deadline to prove that your product works, else you are out.

Darren Rowse was given a 6-month deadline by his wife 'to make the blogging thing work.' We all know how that went.

2. Emotional Distance Due to Lack of Communication

The business at MaxCDN was booming. I considered it an important part of my life and mistakenly thought that professional success is all that counts.

I thought my marriage didn't need any work. The routine had taken the better of me. My thinking was clouded because I didn't communicate with my wife.

One day, we had 'the talk.' And I found out that my beautiful wife had entirely different expectations from me than what I had in mind. I was taken aback but made it a point to have weekly meetings to review our expectations, our weaknesses, and the like.

In a survey of mental health professionals, YourTango.com found a lack of communication to be the number one reason that leads to a divorce.

As simple as it might sound, openly conveying your feelings and expectations with your partner is important to maintain the sanctity of your marriage.

Take a look at YouTube's poster boy for 'hustle' – Gary Vaynerchuk.

He's the CEO of a multi-million dollar successful company. And he religiously produces content on YouTube showing us how busy life gets for CEOs. In spite of his hectic schedule, he makes it a point to spare time for his kids, wife, and parents.

If you are a geeky entrepreneur (like me), then put meetings with your family and loved ones on your calendar.

3. Financial Distress

Entrepreneurs are good at drafting long-term business plans and setting lofty goals. Ambition is necessary to build a successful company.

But the truth is, your passion and commitment aren't sufficient. Most startups fail within five years – you can't always transform your idea into a successful product.

If you are single, then you could have afforded to take more hits and keep pivoting and iterating your idea.

Since you are married, you need to consider the financial security of your family. Couples that fight over money are more likely to get divorced than those that argue over children, sex, and in-laws.

If you have been stuck with your entrepreneurial venture for a while, you have to weigh in if it makes sense to continue with experimentation. Maybe you need to accept failure and move on to the next financially viable project. Remember you're not walking alone.

As an entrepreneur, you take pride in saying how you are your own boss and not accountable to anyone. But don't start tying your self-worth to the success of your company. Else, even when it isn't working out, you won't call it quits and jeopardize your family.

In today's startup climate, we consistently see incessant cash injection from venture capitalists. So you might feel that it's justifiable to burn money – even use your family savings to fund your startup.

Don't forget unit economics, though.

Losing money for an extended period, even while growing at an exponential pace, most likely won't result in a sustainable long-term business. Triple check the viability of your idea in such cases.

The entrepreneurial road is unknown and full of risks. It's advisable to keep an ample amount of financial backup before you jump in.

4. Bringing Ghosts from Work Back Home

Running an early stage company is exciting and a great learning experience, but it's full of chaos. One day a key team member might quit, the next day your server might blow up, and before you realize, your scaling plan might fall flat.

So what's the solution?

Today's culture promotes excess.

Many naive entrepreneurs justify their quest to always remain connected with examples of 100+ work weeks by likes of Marissa Mayer and Elon Musk.

You need to understand that being busy doesn't equate to productivity and efficiency. Getting yourself out of the workplace headspace is important to refill your creativity tanks. Remaining zoned in is detrimental to your health, and thereby, negatively affects your business.

Once you step out of your work desk, forget the stresses and problems troubling you.

It might help to build a cool down routine. You can workout to flush out the toxins in your body. You can also develop a mindfulness skill by regularly meditating using an app like Headspace – it will prove useful in stressful situations at work.

If nothing else seems like your cup of tea, then at the end of your workday, write down what's troubling you in a notebook. The act of journaling can clear your mind and serve as a mental cue to stop thinking about work.

At home, I have family goals to keep myself productively occupied. You can do the same. Else, just spend time with your spouse and other family members – it will soothe your nerves and rejuvenate your energy reservoirs.

I've had a rough patch with my wife. And I now understand the importance of balancing family and work life.

Entrepreneurship brings freedom, confidence and a sense of achievement. But remember that you still need to earn the confidence and trust of your spouse. Never treat them secondary to your entrepreneurial endeavors.

How balanced is your life right now? The Wheel of Life assessment gives you a clear picture of where you're thriving and where you're neglecting. Takes 5 minutes. Take the assessment →

Managing Happiness: Course Summary

Mon, 17 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT

As an entrepreneur, balancing my personal and professional life was a challenging task. But over the years, my wife Yurda and I perfected a system that allows us to lead a happy and fulfilling marriage while running a startup.

The key to our success was that we applied business principles to our relationship.

It worked wonders.

I became a better father, spouse and business leader and 80% of our relationship struggles disappeared.

It worked so well for us that I became obsessed with sharing it with others.

So I launched an online course Managing Happiness a few weeks ago. My goal was to help other couples, struggling with the same questions, find answers and better their lives.

It's a comprehensive, 6-part course. In it, I cover exactly how to employ the right systems at home are known to make you better at work.

And I hoped that it would radically change the way entrepreneurs look at their relationships.

Honestly, I was skeptical whether my principles only help crazy German entrepreneurs. But I am happy to find out it works for others as well.

The feedback I have received for the course is incredible.

Your home and your business don't have to be competing forces anymore. Let me show you around the course.

Here's a sneak peek of what you'll get inside Managing Happiness (that will eliminate the majority of your relationship struggles):

Find out what you want out of life and what drives you.
Avoiding common arguments like "why wasn't this done" or "what did you do today?"
The optimal time to have difficult conversations to avoid getting off track.
How to set rules that everyone will stick to. The secret comes from the HR world — "buy in" is the key.
Three ways to ensure that household tasks and chores are always done.
The importance of a common goal, and how you can combine forces and achieve more than you thought possible — together.
The secrets of airtight communication — no more confusion, misinterpretation, or frustration.
The trick I used to eliminate arguments about money. (This easy fix will pay for the course if your spouse has a spending problem).
The one time you MUST be selfish. If you put your family first in this situation, it will be detrimental to the whole system.
An easy way to extract your spouse's secret ambitions — and how to make them a reality (no matter how crazy they seem).
How to get rid of bad habits for good (plus, help your spouse do the same).

A quick overview of the 6 parts of the course:

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/managing-happiness-course-summary-fig.svg" alt="Stacked numbered list of the Managing Happiness course parts: managing yourself, defining your foundation, roles and responsibilities, planning and goal setting, and problem-solving plus finance." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — The Managing Happiness framework at a glance</figcaption> </figure>

Part 1: Managing Yourself

It is important that you are always on your A-game and that you take care of yourself.

When the oxygen masks come down in flight, you put the mask on yourself before you help anyone else. You have to be in control and strong yourself before you can help others.

By crafting your mission statement, you will have a clear understanding of what you want in life. You will also learn how to become emotionally strong.

Part 2: What Do You Want Your Life to Look Like

In this part, you will create and define the foundation of your relationship.

You will craft your family core values, your rules of engagement and figure out what you both want out of life and your relationship.

This will set you up for a harmonious and aligned relationship.

Part 3: Roles and Responsibilities

Back in the days, the roles in a relationship were clearly defined.

Men work, and women take care of home and the kids.

But as we all know, this is not the case anymore.

The unclear, unspoken expectations that we have of each other causes a lot of pain.

After going through this part, there won't be any unknown expectations in your relationship.

You won't be upset about any 'you haven't done this' or 'you don't do anything.' There won't be discussions about whose fault it is.

We will look at big household tasks, the ones related to your kids, and assign them and go over friction points.

Now, it gets a little nerdy:

You will learn how to organize your family life in Trello. Trust me it works REALLY well.

Part 4: Planning and Goal Setting

In this part, you will plan and set your goals for the following areas:

Health
Wealth
Growth
Fun
Relationship

Just imagine for a second – You running your business without setting goals. Scary, isn't it?

Why don't you take this as an opportunity and do it with your family?

This way there will be less miscommunication and more alignment. You will always know what matters, and you will accomplish more and use your time more efficiently together.

Part 5: Problem-Solving

How do you attack problems in the relationship?

Most of the time you only talk about problems when you are fighting. This means you are emotionally blinded. You only want to win this argument and not solve the problem for good.

Suppose you have a problem at work. Say, your head of sales is not bringing in the revenue he promised. Now, would you start a fight and yell at him?

I hope not.

You would sit down in a solution oriented manner and make sure the problem gets fixed. Correct?

Similarly, we will show you how to tackle your relationship problems in a structured way (squash them, accept them, or find workarounds).

Part 6: Finance

Imagine the chaos of not having fixed budgets in your business. As you know, it's difficult to improve what you don't measure.

And if you want to succeed, you need to operate within your budget.

In this section, I will show you how to budget and how to do your quarterly net worth tracking.

We manage the things we care about. Be it our business, our health, our money.

Do you care about your family?

Then start managing it.

Even if you are not struggling in your relationship, start managing it to make sure that there is always scope for growth and improvement.

If a plant is not growing anymore, it dies. If a business is not growing anymore, it dies. What happens if a person or a relationship stops growing and improving?

Step one of Managing Happiness is knowing what you want. I built a free tool that helps you define your personal vision and mission with AI. No signup required. Start here →

The Coaching Habit: Just Ask the Right Questions

Mon, 23 May 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Coaching your employees is a critical tool for your direct reports' growth and your organization's success. Bungay Stanier's book, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, covers seven questions that, when followed, will profoundly change your leadership game. Unlike other coaching training that's overly theoretical, too complicated, a little boring and divorced from the reality of your busy work life, Bungay Stanier contends that the New Habit Formula, Seven Essential Questions and Masterclass Exercises of his Coaching Habit provide quick and practical ways to elevate the way you work and lead.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/the-coaching-habit-fig.svg" alt="A numbered list of five coaching questions from The Coaching Habit, from the kickstart question to the learning question." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — Five essential coaching questions from The Coaching Habit</figcaption> </figure>

Form Your New Habit With These 7 Essential Questions

Question 1: The Kickstart Question

A good opening line can make all the difference. Get straight to the point. Starts fast and delivers the punch of a great first line: "What's on your mind?" It's about getting quickly to the thing that matters most, and this opener dissolves tired agendas, sidesteps small talk and defeats the default diagnosis. Question 1 is also the first half of what author Michael Bungay Stanier calls The Bookend Questions.

Question 2: The AWE Question

Leave no investigative rock unturned: "And what else?" may seem like three innocuous little words, but it's actually The Best Coaching Question in the world. That's because the first answer is never the only answer and rarely the best answer. There are more answers to be found and possibilities to be generated. And equally as important, it slows down the "advice monster" – that part of every manager that wants to leap in, take over and give advice/be an expert/solve the problem.

Question 3: The Focus Question

"What's the real challenge here for you?" It gets to the heart of the challenge at hand. Busy managers have to grapple with the continuous desire to tackle every problem themselves, and this question slows down the rush to action so that they spend time solving the real problem, not just the first problem.

The first three questions combine to form a powerful script for any coaching conversation, short or long, performance-review formal or water-cooler casual. The key is to start strong, provide the opportunity for the conversation to deepen, and then bring things into focus.

Question 4: The Foundation Question

"What do you want?" It gets you thinking about how you can influence the environment that drives engagement. The easy-to-remember TERA Quotient (hint: employees who feel safe and autonomous are happier, more productive people who do better and more meaningful work) summarizes and applies what Evan Gordon calls the "fundamental organizing principle of the brain": the risk-and-reward response.

Question 5: The Lazy Question

"How can I help?" works in two ways. First, it forces the other person to make a clear request, by first forcing her to get clear on what it is she wants or needs help with. Second, it is a self-management tool to keep you curious and keep you lazy – it prevents you from spending time doing things you think people want you to do.

Question 6: The Strategic Question

If you're someone who feels compelled to say Yes to every request or challenge, then this is for you. Overwhelmed and overcommitted, you've lost your focus and spread yourself too thinly. This is why you need to ask: "If you're saying Yes to this, what are you saying No to?" A Yes without an attendant No is an empty promise. This question helps make the promise real.

Question 7: The Learning Question

It helps finish the conversation with a sense of accomplishment and meaning on all sides. Asking "What was most useful for you?" is an effortless way to reinforce learning and development. By asking people to identify and reflect on the process, this question helps to create the space in which insightful moments of learning can occur. The question also assumes that the conversation was helpful, providing a naturally meaningful conclusion to your robust coaching script.

Incorporated into your coaching habit, these questions have the potential to transform your weekly check-in one-to-ones, your team meetings, your sales meetings and (particularly important) those non-meeting moments when you just bump into someone between scheduled events.

Stop defaulting to old habits, and discover the power of these transformative questions that will help you unlock your inner coaching genius.

Good coaching starts with knowing what you stand for. I built a free AI tool that helps you discover your personal core values. Takes 15 minutes, no signup required. Define your values →

The Definitive Guide to Planning Your Life

Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:00:00 GMT

You have dreams. I know this because I have dreams, we all do. But unfortunately, for a lot of us achieving these dreams is easier said than done. In order to get things done, we need an actionable plan for doing so. I wrote this guide to help you build that plan and take action on it every day.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/the-definitive-guide-to-planning-your-life-fig.svg" alt="A five-step framework for planning your life, moving from understanding why you plan through SWOT analysis and SMARTR goals to five-year plans and daily habits." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — From life purpose to daily action: the planning framework</figcaption> </figure>

Who Is This Guide For?

This is a guide for two people: (1) someone with huge aspirations but little plan for getting there; and (2) someone who is still struggling to determine their life purpose.

How to Use This Guide

While you can still get a lot out of this guide by skimming through, I encourage you to download the worksheets and actually work through each step. You'll use this guide to build a real, tangible plan with which to base your life on.

What Does This Guide Cover?

This guide is divided into five chapters, with each chapter focusing on a different stage of your journey. Here's a quick look at each:

Chapter One: Why Plan? This chapter will explain why planning is so important and set expectations for the rest of the guide. This is an essential read for anyone who has yet to define their life's purpose or build a five-year plan.

Chapter Two: Lifelong Goals This chapter explores the process behind discovering your lifelong goals. We'll also look at what makes a good goal, and how to set these SMARTR goals as part of your plan.

Chapter Three: Making Big Plans With your lifelong goals defined and written down, we'll look out how to translate those goals into a five-year, one-year, and month-by-month plans.

Chapter Four: Making Each Day Count In this chapter, we'll look at what you can do to make daily progress towards your goals. The objective of this chapter is to have you build the habits and routines that will drive your success.

Chapter Five: Tools and Resources for Success Finally, I'll share some of the productivity tools you can use to keep yourself on track.

After each chapter I'll list a few resources you can visit to learn more. I highly encourage you check these out when you have time. Now, let's get started and head over to Chapter One, Why Plan?

Chapter One: Why Plan?

We all have some idea of the kind of person we'd like to be. Even if it's a hazy, ill-defined image, I'd say it's safe to assume we're all on some kind of journey towards self-improvement. Some of us want to be world leaders on the cover of TIME magazine, others just want to be seen as a decent person, someone worth getting to know.

But whatever your vision of your ideal self looks like, I can promise you one thing: without planning your progress towards this ideal... your chances of arriving there are slim to none.

Why?

By allowing yourself to simply wander through life without a clear end goal, you'll find yourself wasting a lot of time on activities inessential to your progress. That's why a life plan is so important -- without it, your energy is unfocused and can leave you spinning your wheels for years on end.

You'll also find that by clearly defining the kind of life you want to live, the people around you will actively help you get there. Devote yourself to your dream, and your friends and family will become part of that journey. They'll be inspired by your passion and will connect you with the right people, resources, and opportunities.

However, to make the most out of your life plan, it's important that it's built with three essential components in mind: direction, accountability, and measurability. These are the building blocks of long-term change. Let's look at each in turn.

Direction

A well-defined life plan begins by painting a clear picture of who you want to be and what you want to accomplish. With clear direction, you can quickly determine what needs to happen next in your journey. This helps you narrow your focus and devote your full attention to living your dreams. We'll talk more about direction as we set lifelong goals in the next chapter.

Accountability

A life plan also adds accountability to your pursuit of the ideal you. Instead of making vague goals that you lose interest in as quick as you state them, a life plan will help you establish and check in with your goals to ensure you're making progress towards them. This accountability is an essential piece of the self-development puzzle.

Measurability

With anything you set out to change, if you can't measure it, it won't improve. That's why your life plan provides the essential function of giving you a measurable framework to track your success. It's not enough to state that you want to, "become successful," if you haven't defined a way to measure and track what "success" means. Over the course of this guide, we'll work on setting goals and milestones that quantifiable and easy to measure.

Chapter Two: Lifelong Goals

Think about the last time you said, "I have no idea what I want to do with my life"? Maybe you said it a week before you graduated high school. Maybe you said it last week. Or maybe you've never had the thought cross your mind, maybe you've always known what you wanted to do and you've been working towards that end since birth.

If so, you're in the minority. For most of us, knowing what we want to do with our life is a luxury we simply don't have. If that's a better description of you, let's change that right now.

Starting with SWOT

A SWOT Analysis is a tool used in business to help a company to discover new opportunities and develop strategies. However, I find it can be powerful tool if used on a personal level. Use it to identify what you want to achieve, and where you might have difficulty or opportunity doing so.

The tool works like this. Take a sheet of paper and divide it into four quadrants. Label the quadrants Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT). You'll now fill out each of these sections in order to get a better of picture of what kind of things you can (and should) achieve.

Strengths

I'd encourage you to go a little crazy here. This is the foundation that you're about to guide your life with, the more things you have in this section the better. Need some ideas? Here are some prompts to get you started:

What are you better than others at?
Enjoying an activity is a strength in itself. What's something you enjoy doing where others often do not?
What have you accomplished that makes you proud?
What passions do you have that you devote yourself to?
What personal characteristics do you have that others frequently commend you on?

Try to be objective here and don't hold back. If you're having serious trouble listing your strengths, try taking a personality test to determine what you're best at.

Weaknesses

Often, our lifelong goals include a journey to overcome a certain weakness. For example, I used to be pretty seriously introverted. However, I recognized this early, decided it was something I would spend my life reversing and have made some serious progress. If I'd never reflected on it, I may never have made changes. As you're developing your own lifelong goals, it's important to have an accurate picture of what might hold you back. For example:

What do you hate doing? What would you pay large sums of money to have someone else do for you?
What tasks or activities are extremely challenging for you?
What personal qualities are you sometimes reprimanded for?
Where do you lack confidence?
Would you consider yourself a well-rounded person? If not, why?

As before, it's important to be extremely objective here. You're the only person who will read this, so don't hold back. Be fair to yourself and ensure you're painting an accurate picture of your capabilities.

Opportunities

This is where you examine your strengths not from a personal standpoint, but from your current position in the world. You'll want to examine your current relationships, your network, and how your interests line up with new trends and technology.

What activities do you enjoy that are becoming more popular worldwide?
Are you particularly well-connected in a specific area or industry?
Is there anyone in your life who shares similar strengths to those you listed above? How might you connect with them?
Are you uniquely positioned to help someone achieve their own goals?

Threats

Different than weaknesses, this quadrant is where you list areas of your life that might detract from your success. As with opportunities, examine your relationships and competition. Try some of these prompts to get started:

Do you have any enemies? Who would love to see you fail?
Are there any new technologies or trends that might amplify your weaknesses?
Is there an increasing or decreasing demand for your strengths?

Putting Your SWOT Analysis to Work

After spending some time fleshing out your SWOT analysis, look to see if there's any area where your passions seem to align. For example...

Say you listed yourself as a creative individual who enjoys writing (strengths). You also feel you have troubles being vulnerable, something you'd like to overcome (weaknesses). You've noticed that self-publishing is becoming easier and you happen to know someone who's self-published several books (opportunities). But you also know that to get a self-published book out in today's world is beginning to require a better grasp of social media marketing (threats), something you're unfamiliar with.

From this analysis, you might decide to write a novel. You'll overcome your issue with vulnerability by blogging about the process, which will simultaneously help you adapt to the threat of a more socially connected world. Your first action step would be to contact your friend ask what it takes to succeed as a self-published author.

This is just one example, but notice how it's a very different process than arbitrarily deciding you'd "like to write a book someday". By performing this analysis you're able to figure out what kind of dream your strengths and opportunities support, and what kind of challenges you can overcome through the process.

Of course, even with a well-defined dream, you can't hope to get there without setting clear milestones. In the next few chapters we'll talk about setting goals as part of your overall life plan. But before we do, it's important to understand what makes a good goal.

Setting SMARTR Goals

We've already briefly touched on the danger of ambiguous goals. Simply deciding to "be more successful" or "have others look up to me" is a vague goal that you'll find difficult to track and measure. In order to make serious progress towards your goals, it's important that you start with goals that are quantifiable. To help you out, let's look at the SMART framework and how you can use it to set better goals. We'll also look at how you can apply the SMART system to your life goals using a small tweak.

Using this system, you'll build goals that are:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely
Rich

Specific -- When setting your goals, you'll want to ensure they're very specific. Try answering the four "W" questions: Who is involved? What do you want to accomplish? Where will this goal take place? Why is it important?

Measurable -- What does success mean? How will you measure it? Make sure that you establish at least one specific metric that will help you track your progress.

Attainable -- This is where it's helpful to have already completed your SWOT analysis. Ensure that whatever life goal you set, it's within reason that you'd be able to achieve it. However, don't allow this to limit you. Even if something seems out of reach right now, remember that you can accomplish almost anything you truly set your mind to. Just make sure it's within the laws of physics.

Realistic -- Similar to the above qualification, but here you'll want ensure it's a goal you're happy working towards. Don't set a goal that you know you'll get bored with after only a few days. A realistic goal is one that you can see yourself pursuing.

Timely -- Set yourself a timeframe to complete the goal by. Without some kind of deadline, you'll find it difficult to keep yourself accountable to your goal. However, when setting this deadline make sure that it abides by the attainable and realistic guidelines. You can't change the world in a day, give yourself a reasonable amount of time to succeed.

Rich -- On their own, SMART goals work great for small to medium achievements. For most of the goals you'll set over the course of this guide, a SMART goal is fine. However, when setting your life goals, using the SMART system can pose some problems. Namely, the system can be a little too focused on metrics. For your over-arching, purpose-driven goals, you need to ensure your goals are what I call Rich.

That is, when setting your goals, be sure to paint a very vivid, tangible picture of success. This is key for accomplishing big goals. Make sure your goal includes what it will look and feel like when you've accomplished it. By doing this, you can give yourself a taste of the success you're craving. It's only by adding this final step that you'll provide the intrinsic motivation needed to keep yourself pursuing your goals long after you've set them.

Chapter Three: Making Big Plans

Now that we've looked at why plans are important, and the goals you want to accomplish, let's put together a framework towards achieving them. We'll start big with a five-year plan, then narrow down and look at some of the day-to-day tasks you'll need to accomplish.

Building a Five-Year Plan

Your five-year plan is your chance to define exactly what needs to happen in the next five years in order to accomplish your life goals. You'll use this plan to guide your efforts as you pursue your dreams. How you build this plan is entirely up to you, but I have a few guidelines that will make the process easier:

Work backwards -- Start at 2020 and determine what you will have accomplished. This is easier than planning each year chronologically, as it gives you a chance to break down each year's goals into a logical progression. For example, if your goal is to have built your own house by 2020, perhaps you would be finishing the house in 2019, you'd have bought the property in 2018, and until then you'd be saving money and learning the necessary skills.

Be SMART -- For each year's goals, use the SMART framework you used to set your life goals in the previous chapter. This will keep your goals quantifiable and achievable.

Dream Big -- Five years is a long time. If you want to become a best-selling author, don't spend four years writing and one year getting the book published. While still being realistic, use the final fifth year as huge milestone like having had your sixth book published, or having brought your startup to $2.5M in revenue.

Write Quickly, Edit Slowly -- Don't get too caught up in calculating exactly how much you need to buy your dream home in year three. Get everything out on paper, everything you plan to do and then go back and edit.

The Further, the Fuzzier -- Your final three years should allow a certain amount of room for error. Five years isn't an overly long time, but it's still plenty of time to make mistakes or meet with misfortune. There's no point planning each month of year four as everything will have changed by the time you get there. Instead, spend that time bring next year into sharp focus -- something we'll talk about next.

Making Next Year Count

Now that you have a general outline for the next five years, let's get ultra-specific and make a plan for the next year. This is a process you'll want to get familiar with and is something to revisit each year.

Before we go any further, I'd just like to confirm that you're writing some of this down. Specifically, your over-arching goals. If you haven't written down who you want to be or what you want to accomplish in the next five years -- do this now. Studies have shown that just the act of physically writing down your goals can vastly improve the chance that you'll achieve them.

With your goals for the year written down and in front of you, think about what steps will be required to accomplish them. As before, try working backwards in order to determine what needs to happen at each stage. Figure out where you need to be six, three, and one month from now. Then figure out the first thing you need to do in order to make those dreams reality, and the metrics you'll be using to track success.

To make this work, you'll also need to establish how often you'll be measuring your progress. I suggest finding some time to regularly check in, say once a week in order to evaluate your efforts. Set yourself reminders to ensure you don't miss these critical appointments.

Additionally, I recommend spending a little more time at the beginning of each month to look at your bigger picture and reexamine your goals for the year. If you find yourself behind in any area, what could you do to get back on track? What might be holding you back?

Planning Months and Weeks

Now that you have a clear vision for the next year, what needs to happen this month in order to get there? I suggest breaking your monthly plan into four weeks and working from there. You'll need a calendar app and a to-do list app, have a look at the list of tools at the end of this guide.

Narrow Your Focus -- To start out, let's look at your priorities. Of all the things you need to accomplish this month, which is most essential to the pursuit of your lifelong goals? Make it priority one and ensure you have enough time to guarantee its completion. For example, if your lifelong goal is to become a world-famous public speaker, perhaps you first task is to join Toastmasters and write your icebreaker speech. This goal should take priority over everything else, leaving you plenty of room to accomplish with perfection. If you have to drop one of your less-important priorities to make room, so be it.

Write EVERYTHING Down -- Using your calendar app, plan all your major milestones for the month. If you're writing the next great American novel, how many pages do you need completed by week one? On which days will you sit down to write? Are they all in your calendar? They should be.

Reflection Time -- As I mentioned in the previous section, it's important to set aside days where you'll be measuring your progress. I like Sunday, as it's generally a day where we don't have much going on. Be sure to plan for this and set reminders, otherwise you may never get around to it.

Delegate -- This is a good time to look at areas of your life that might be better handled by someone else. If you're currently spending considerable time and effort on something that isn't building towards your lifelong goal, why not delegate it? Plan your month so that you're spending as much time as possible chasing your dreams. If you don't have the time to spare because you're spending your weekends maintaining the house, maybe it's worth paying a professional to do it instead.

This should be more than enough to get you started. Remember that while planning your month you should be leaving a little wiggle room. Life has a funny way of derailing your plans and generally being a bit of a nuisance. Don't plan too meticulously, or you may find yourself feeling trapped by your plan.

Chapter Four: Making Each Day Count

Until now, we've been talking about big picture stuff: setting your over-arching goals, planning years and months in advance, and tracking progress towards your dreams. However, the only way for you to actually make any progress is to take constant, continuous action towards your goals every single day. To make this process easier, let's go over a few tips to help you make the most out of your days.

Step One: Starting With a Plan -- As mentioned in the first chapter, it's impossible to be successful without direction. You need some kind of definition of success otherwise your efforts remain unfocused and ineffective. So as you start your day, sit down and write down what needs to happen in order for this to be a successful day. This simple action will tie together your simple daily actions with your big, lifelong goals.

Step Two: Schedule Your Success -- Once you've determined what it will take to call today a success, pull up your calendar and establish when and where you'll make those things happen. If at all possible, try to get these things done early. By accomplishing your biggest tasks first, you can give yourself the momentum necessary to fuel the rest of your day.

Step Three: Track Your Efforts -- There is a wealth of productivity tools out there to help you stay on track. But I'd like to emphasize the importance of using habit-building tools rather than simple reminder apps or alarms. One great tool to check out is chains.cc. This is a fantastic tool for building long-term habits. Use it to force yourself to work on your novel, go to the gym, or practice your public speaking. Of course, this is just one tool. How you choose to track your progress is not nearly as important as ensuring that you do. Find something that works for you and stick to it.

Step Four: Use Productivity Hacks to Get More Done -- Contrary to popular belief, multi-tasking is actually terrible for your productivity and can lead to poor results. In order to reach your goals faster, it's important that you learn to manage your time more productively. If you aren't already, get familiar with the idea of batching. This technique will allow you to get more done during the day by getting hyper-focused on one task at a time.

Step Five: Reflect -- Just like you did at the beginning of your day, take five minutes at the end of your day for a moment of quiet reflection. Was today successful? Why or why not? Are you closer to your weekly and monthly goals than you were yesterday? This reflection time is critical for long-term success as it allows you to spend a moment measuring your progress and keeping yourself accountable to your goals.

That's it!

If you Google, "how to be more productive" you'll bump into massive lists that promise to help you get more done. But if you think about it, it really boils down to the above five points. Which can be simplified further into four core statements:

Plan and schedule
Finish big tasks early
Focus on one thing at a time
Track, reflect, repeat

That's really all there is to it. If you follow this plan and align it with your monthly, yearly, and lifelong goals, you'll be miles ahead of the majority. Most people fail to live life on their terms and instead let life live them. Take action today and put together a plan to achieve your life goals. Even the simple act of discovering what you want to do with your life will take you further than most.

Chapter Five: Tools and Resources for Success

Building beautiful things is easier with the right tools. This is true for building your dreams, too. Here are just a few of the tools available to help you plan your life.

Evernote -- Throughout this whole guide, anywhere I've suggested writing something down, you should probably be doing in Evernote. I use Evernote daily, to stay on top of important projects, store important information, and so many things it would take a long, long time to list them all out. If you've never given the app a shot, I suggest downloading it today. The free version is likely more than you need already.

Todoist -- While I personally don't use this app, I've had it recommended enough that it warrants a mention here. Todoist is a very simple todo list manager but comes with an interesting rewards system for accomplishing tasks. This can help offset human inertia and motivate you to get more done.

Google Calendar -- I'm a huge fan of the Google apps and Calendar is no exception. Use this app to schedule your life and stay on top of your goals.

Chains.cc -- Chains is a habit-building app that helps you turn new habits into established routines. The app lets you build long chains to track how often you accomplish a specific task. Even though there's no negative consequence for breaking these chains, you may find that simply seeing how well you've been doing is enough to keep you on the right track.

Coach.me (Previously Lift) -- Lift adds accountability to your goals by connecting you and your goals to a larger community. This way, instead of simply stating your goals to yourself, you can release your goals publicly and receive motivation, advice, and reminders to keep you on task.

Know where you're going? I built a free tool that helps you define your personal vision and mission. Most people skip this step. Don't. Build yours →

How to Promote Your eCommerce Site Without Going Broke

Wed, 09 Dec 2015 00:00:00 GMT

eCommerce has been a big part of my life long before my time with MaxCDN. In 2002 I opened an online store. That store ran -- profitably -- for seven years before I shifted gears and started focusing my attention elsewhere.

So today, I'd like to narrow our focus a little and talk to any of you enterprising bootstrappers who are building an eCommerce business from the ground up. In my time as an eCommerce guy, I learned that you're nothing without awareness. If the world doesn't know you exist, you're dead in the water.

But advertising can be expensive. Let's talk about how you can get your name in front of customers without breaking the bank. Specifically, let's go over how you might get your eCommerce store featured on someone's blog or website.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/promote-ecommerce-site-fig.svg" alt="Two-column comparison contrasting paid advertising, which burns scarce cash with high acquisition costs, against free blog outreach, which takes more work but costs almost nothing." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — Two ways to get in front of customers</figcaption> </figure>

How to Do it Without Spending a Cent

If you're seriously pressed for cash, it's entirely possible to do this without opening your wallet. It will take a little longer and will require more work, but the pay off is your Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) will be nonexistent. Meaning greater margins to be invested back into your business.

Step One: Find Relevant Blogs

First up, we need to find a blog that might be interested in promoting your company. To get started, head over to Alltop to find blogs in your industry.

Punch a keyword into Alltop that's related to your product and check out what comes up. The site will return a list of blogs that regularly post about certain topics. Use these to find blogs that might be interested in featuring your site.

I'm a big fan of the Inventions category, as a lot of the blogs there are actively looking for new products to feature. Of course, if you can't find what you're looking for try searching on Technorati or Blog Catalog. Depending on your eCommerce site's niche, you may find blogs here that are more relevant to what you sell.

Step Two: Track Down the Right People

Once you've found a few blogs you'd like to be featured on, you'll now need to find the contact information for someone who can make that happen. Ideally, someone who handles guest posting, featured posts, or advertising on the blog. If you can't find anything in the site's contact information, look at posts that are similar to what you'd want your blog post to look like. If there is an author listed, use a free tool like Rapportive or FullContact to find their email address.

Crafting the Perfect Pitch

Once you've found the contact information you need, send them an email and ask to be featured. This is the tricky bit, and you'll need to brace yourself for rejection (it will come eventually). But as they say in sales, every "no" pushes you closer to a "yes". Keep it up your request will soon be granted.

One idea that works quite well is offering to write the post for them (or mentioning that one of "your writers" can handle it). Remember that a lot of these blogs need fresh content on a regular basis. If you can provide them with content it eases the pressure a little and can be a great help.

Alternatively, try using a cold email formula to reach out. If you tweak it correctly -- and send it out enough -- you're bound to receive enough positive responses to get the ball rolling.

You can take this a step further by signing up with a tool like Right Inbox. This tool will automatically remind you if your prospects haven't responded after a certain number of days. However, I'd recommend only following up the once. Persistence pays, but in the blogging world you run the risk of being a pest if you follow up too aggressively.

However, if you've followed the above steps and found relevant blogs to contact, the right people to make it happen, and written a great email... following up should be a last resort.

Save Yourself a Little Hassle with Paid Tools

If you can afford to shell out a little cash, you can easily save yourself some time and effort using a few tools. As I've spent more time in the business world, I've begun to realize the priceless value of time. If the time spent finding and contacting bloggers could be better (i.e. more profitably) spent elsewhere, try investing in one of the following tools:

Pitchbox -- Pitchbox is my go-to tool for outreach and PR. The tool will automatically find blogs and contact information for folks receptive to your product. To get started, punch in a topic that relates to your product and choose "Get Ideas". This will give you a list of keywords that Pitchbox will then use to find relevant blogs. Then, all you have to do is write the email and wait for the response. Pitchbox will even follow up with your recipients if they haven't responded after a certain number of days.

BlogDash -- BlogDash is an outreach platform built of over 200k bloggers around the world. If you can't seem to get any traction using the above methods, give BlogDash a try. They have a Free plan that connects you with 30 bloggers if you'd simply like to try them out.

The Power of Perseverance

Look, this approach isn't easy. It's going to take some serious commitment and effort on your part. However, that's part of what makes it such an effective strategy. The relatively high barrier to entry means that a lot of your competition will simply give up when they get their first rejection.

But if you can get over these initial setbacks, you could potentially see your website or product featured across the web, reaching potential customers you otherwise would have had to pay big bucks to advertise to -- customers your competitors are already paying huge sums to talk to.

So keep at it, and don't stop until you get what you're after!

Tactics work better when you know your direction. I built a free tool that helps you define your personal vision and mission. Clarity on purpose makes every marketing decision easier. Build yours →

The Lean Startup: Done is Better than Perfect

Tue, 08 Dec 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Two weeks ago, we talked about The Dip -- a book about recognizing your own limitations and narrowing your focus in order to achieve great things. This week, we'll talk about Eric Ries's, the Lean Startup, and look at what that kind of narrowed focus can accomplish.

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

The Lean Startup is kind of like the Bootstrapper's Bible. It's one of those books that is so essential to understanding the contemporary startup world, that you're actually at a significant disadvantage if you haven't read it.

The book is about what it takes to succeed as a new company, after the Dotcom bubble. In it, Ries explains how you can focus your attention on a singular object, the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), in order to get your company up, running, and building a customer base.

The MVP is critical to your success. Without it, you're in danger of spending too much time on unimportant things. Wasting your money, energy, and resources pursuing goals that don't play into your long-term success.

Done Is Better Than Perfect

The Lean Startup is full of advice on how to build your product quickly, get it to the right people, and continually improve it based on their feedback. However, lets look at the "why" behind those ideas. What makes the MVP such a critical component to your success?

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/the-lean-startup-done-is-better-than-perfect-fig.svg" alt="A four-step diagram showing why shipping a Minimum Viable Product matters: it validates the idea, saves resources, and generates immediate ROI." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — Why the Minimum Viable Product is critical to success</figcaption> </figure>

Idea Validation -- Your MVP is the most basic version of your product, with only the most critical features. By narrowing your focus and devoting 100% of your effort to its completion, you allow yourself to get off the drawing board and into the market. And this is where your "big idea" is battle-tested to see if it truly brings value to your customers.
Saves Resources -- By concentrating your energy on building your product and nothing else, you save money and time you might have wasted elsewhere. You won't spend $500 on a logo, $300 on company t-shirts, or two days at startup workshop. Instead, you spend your time and energy where it matters most: building a product and finding customers.
Immediate ROI -- By getting your idea in front of customers quickly, you can begin charging what you think your product is worth. This is a huge step for any future investors. If they see your product is bringing in revenue from real, paying customers, they're many times more likely to give you the cash you need to take the next step.

This is just some of the "why" behind your MVP. And truth be told, it's only about 10% of the whole book. The rest of the book will tell you:

How to change directions when your product isn't working (called a pivot)
How to get your first customers
How to react to market feedback
How to break product cycles into a self-reinforcing, "Build > Measure > Learn," loop

Of all the books we've reviewed so far, The Lean Startup is easily the most practical. Until now, the other books have been guidebooks for building your entrepreneur mindset. But pick up a copy of this book, and you can put that mindset to work building something great.

Before you build, know why you're building. I made a free tool that helps you define your personal vision and mission. Direction before execution. Build yours →

A Simple Cold Email That Makes Networking Easy

Thu, 03 Dec 2015 00:00:00 GMT

I'll be frank: networking is hard. Really hard. Especially in the early days when no one knows you, when you don't have a lot social proof, when you're introducing yourself 90% of the time and being introduced 10% of the time.

It's hard.

Unfortunately, it's also an inevitable stepping-stone on your quest for success. So today, I want to share with you a powerful email formula that will help you connect with your industry's top talent. The head honchos. The big cheese.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/simple-cold-email-makes-networking-easy-fig.svg" alt="Numbered five-step cold email formula: open with praise, sell your skills quickly, make a specific ask, offer to pay for their time, and send at volume." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — The cold email formula, step by step</figcaption> </figure>

Shutting off the Lizard Brain

Right off the bat you're doing something unique. Instead of immediately jumping into a long soliloquy about who you are and why you're awesome, you do something neat -- you tell your recipient why they're special and why they're awesome.

This is key.

Writing your email with this kind of opener shuts off your target's "lizard brain" and stops them from immediately moving your email to its new home -- the spam folder. Instead, they see a warm compliment and can't resist opening your email to learn more.

Congratulations, your foot is in the door. Now, let's establish some credibility.

Sell Your Skills... Quickly

OK, we've got their attention. Now what?

Well, if you want your prospect to take you seriously, you need to give them a reason to do so. Quickly, toot your own horn a little bit to let them know what you do. Why should they hear you out? What kind of qualifications would impress them?

But be careful when writing this section. Try to keep it to one or two sentences and no more. You don't want to sound arrogant or like you have something to prove. Keep it short, to the point, and then move on.

Answer their Burning Questions

As it stands, you've successfully piqued their interest and told them who you are. Now, answer the burning question in the back of your prospect's mind:

"What's this all about?"

Here's where you tell your client why you're contacting them. Quickly pitch your idea and mention how you think they could help. Keep this personal, and try to mention something specific that your target has written, created, published, etc. that gives them credibility in your eyes.

By keeping it personal, you hammer home the idea that they aren't receiving yet another blast email and are instead receiving a targeted request for their attention. Do this, and you'll skyrocket your chances of connecting over a call.

Schedule That Call... The Right Way

The last step is to ask for the call. No need to complicate it, just ask to speak to them in order to get their thoughts on your situation. Pretty simple. However, there's one piece here that makes your email 100x more powerful than any other generic networking email...

...Offer to pay for their time.

Chances are, the professional you're contacting is busy doing incredible things. Chances are, that's exactly why you're contacting them. And chances are, they value their time extremely highly.

Don't overlook this. Stand out from the crowd by recognizing the high value they place on their time and don't worry about the price. Because chances are, they'll admire your passion so much they won't even charge you.

Using This Template

One final thought on making this work: networking is a numbers game. While this template is powerful, it's only going to work if you send it out over and over again. The more connections you attempt to make, the greater your potential for beginning a successful relationship.

Great networking starts with knowing yourself. The Big 5 personality test shows you how you come across to others and where your natural strengths lie. Free, AI-powered, takes 10 minutes. Take the test →

How to Read Hard Books

Wed, 02 Dec 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Developing yourself as an entrepreneur isn't easy. In addition to learning and practicing new skills -- networking, public speaking, leadership -- you're also going to spend a huge portion of your time with your nose in a book. It's actually one of the most common things I hear from other professionals: "Read. Read often. Read everything."

Unfortunately, not all books are created equal. If you're like me, you may find that some books can be a little dense. Others are confusing. Others may put you to sleep halfway through.

And while it's tempting to simply put a book away when it becomes too challenging, you'll soon find that doing so is a great way to miss out on key information. If you really want to make the most of your self-education efforts, you need to learn how to read hard books.

So how can you consistently make it through difficult, mind-numbing tomes? It all starts with a dictionary...

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/how-to-read-hard-books-fig.svg" alt="A diagram of five numbered strategies for reading hard books: use a dictionary, add the audiobook, ditch the highlighter, get directions first, and quit for a new book when needed." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — Five ways to get through hard books</figcaption> </figure>

Get a Dictionary. Use it.

If you don't know a word, look it up. Don't carry on assuming you'll understand the context of it. Just getting the gist of a game-changing book is unacceptable. Don't allow an unfamiliar word keep you from progressing.

Simple enough? Let's talk audio.

Get the Audiobook Too.

It's often hard to find a book these days that isn't also available on tape (well, mp3). If you're having difficulty making it through a particular book, try picking up the audiobook too. Having the text read to you can help alleviate boredom and wring every last drop of advice from the text.

However, I'd caution you to avoid plowing through the whole book on audio alone. Try reading the physical copy along with the audio. This is an old strategy used by language learners and is extremely effective. Doing this, you'll allow your brain to process information using two senses -- meaning you'll retain more of what you read.

Get Rid of Your Highlighter

Studies have shown, over and over, that highlighting important information does almost nothing for retention. Some studies even suggest that highlighting can lead to worse long-term retention due to the false sense of security they create -- "it's OK, I'll highlight this now so I can come back later."

Do yourself a favor: keep the highlighter far away from your book.

Get Directions.

Cracking open a new book can be exciting. Especially if it's one recommended by your colleagues, friends, people you look up to. Often, we go out of our way to avoid spoilers, "no don't tell me!" in anticipation of the journey we're about to embark on, starting with page one.

However, while this is fine for fiction, non-fiction is actually better served with as much context as possible. Instead of waiting until page one, start your education early. Look up book summaries, Amazon reviews, and other's notes on the book before you read it. This gives you a big picture view, like seeing the box art of a jigsaw puzzle before you get started.

Yes, you might spoil the surprise. But the added value you'll get from understanding how each piece fits will make it totally worth it.

Get a New Book

OK, so at the expense of ruining your self-imposed education, let me offer one final piece of advice: if you hate the book, stop reading it.

I know. I just said that you need to push through if you want to get anything out of the material. But honestly, if you're torturing yourself to finish the second half of a particularly grueling book, just move on. It could be that the next big idea is lurking in a different, more accessible book. Go read that one.

Curious about how you learn? The Big 5 personality test reveals your openness, conscientiousness, and other traits that shape how you absorb information. Free, AI-powered, takes 10 minutes. Take the test →

How to Use Pain to Become a Stronger Person

Mon, 30 Nov 2015 00:00:00 GMT

I've spoken before about embracing pain and accepting its presence in your life. After all, expecting to live a life without pain and tragedy would be a foolish pursuit. Pain is inevitable. If you aren't comfortable embracing it, it will destroy you.

However, this week I'd like to open the floor to a good friend of mine, Zach McCall, who has some incredible comparisons to make between fire and pain. Namely, the idea that pain can both destroy, and refine the things that it touches... and how to use its refining powers to become a stronger person.

Zach recently spoke about this idea, and I wanted to share some of the key points on how to use pain. Read through to the end and I'll include a link to his complete talk.

How Will Pain Affect You?

Whether physical, emotional, or mental; each time you come face to face with it the choice is yours -- how will you allow pain to affect you? Because like fire, pain can either destroy or refine everything it touches. But it's important to remember that successfully learning how to use pain as a tool is entirely dependent on you and how you cope with it. If you wish to be made stronger by your painful experiences, try paying attention to the decisions you make about these three key areas: ownership, healing, and vulnerability.

<figure> <img src="/images/blog/how-to-use-pain-to-become-stronger-fig.svg" alt="A two-column comparison of letting pain destroy you through blame and victimhood versus being refined by it through ownership, healing, and vulnerability." loading="lazy" /> <figcaption>Fig. 01 — Pain destroys or refines — you choose</figcaption> </figure>

Ownership

When you first encounter pain, it can be tempting to avoid claiming any kind of responsibility for it. We do this all the time. When a relationship ends, we often lay 100% of the blame on our partner. If we have a car accident, we think about what would have happened if "the other person was paying more attention."

Unfortunately, this kind of behavior ruins us. This is where the fire is allowed to destroy us, making it impossible for us to truly heal.

Instead, it's essential that you accept full and total responsibility for what happened. Only by doing this are you able to take control of the situation. It's also the only way you'll grow to be stronger. As McCall says, "I am who I am because of my choices."

Healing

When pain is introduced into your life, you need to allow yourself time to heal. However, don't dwell in your misery. Heal quickly and move on.

Too often, we can be tempted to play victim whenever calamity strikes. This is akin to picking the scab of a wound. When we do this, we're looking to bask in the bittersweet glow of sympathy. And while it may feel nice in the moment, this is no way to heal.

In order to move on, you must refuse to play a victim. Recognize you're hurt, then move on as quickly as possible. Otherwise you risk allowing pain to control you and hold you back.

Vulnerability

We've all had our battles with vulnerability. Think about the first time you fell down and immediately screamed "I'm fine!" This is a classic example of blocking others out and attempting to shoulder your pain solely by yourself.

Do not do this.

When you refuse other's help, you make your recovery much more difficult than it need be. This may be as simple as refusing to admit when you're hurt, or could be as serious as neglecting professional help when you're feeling suicidal.

In order to be refined by the pain in your life, you need to accept its presence and welcome the help of others. Open up, and allow yourself to be helped.

Which Path Will You Take?

McCall ends his talk by reminding us that while pain is inevitable, it is fully within your control whether or not it will be destructive or beneficial. The next time you come face to face with pain, will you make excuses, play the victim, and refuse the help of others? Or will you open up, heal what needs healing, and accept full responsibility for what happens?

One path leads ruin, the other will help you rise from the ashes, stronger than before.

Values are your anchor when pain hits. I built a free AI tool that helps you discover your personal core values. When everything shakes, these hold. No signup, takes 15 minutes. Define your values →