You’re reading Create Leverage, a weekly newsletter sharing tips and tools to help coaches and experts turn their expertise into leverage so they can work less, make more, impact lives, and enjoy life.

Creating leverage is the name of the game.

It took me over 5 years of entrepreneurship to realize this.

And now it’s all I focus on because leverage makes everything else easier, better, and more fun.

You have your Dharma, your soul’s mission and calling, and you’re here to play it all out. To share the medicine that’s on your heart, to impact more lives, and to create the life you want while doing it.

But you’re also human so your time and energy are limited.

So “playing it all out” requires you to create leverage—to stay within your zone of genius.

I talk about 3 types of leverage you can create:

1. Financial Leverage - money that creates more money for you

2. Operational Leverage - systems and labor that create more time for you

3. Energetic Leverage - beliefs that create more energy for you

I share how I create leverage (and how you can too) in my community, Dharma Labs.

In today’s letter, let’s talk about the second one: creating Operational Leverage to buy back your time.

Today At A Glance:

• Creating Operational Leverage

• When To Hire

• Who To Hire

• How To Hire

• How To Set Up Your New Hire For Success

Creating Operational Leverage

There’s a silent role every entrepreneur plays.

Some realize it, some don’t.

When you do, how you operate starts to shift.

Alongside the role of being the entrepreneur, creator, and operator… you’re also playing the silent role of an Investor.

Seasoned entrepreneurs play this role more loudly, they invest their profits to create more profits.

Early-stage entrepreneurs who don’t have the financial leverage yet, play the investor role by investing their time, energy, and knowledge.

When you realize this, you’ll start to notice that every second, minute, and hour of your time and energy is being invested.

As an investor, you get to ask yourself: “is this investment yielding what I want based on my investment goals?”

If the answer is no, then you get to look at “how can I better invest my time, energy, and knowledge?”

Investment 101.

There is radical honestly you get to practice here by looking at where your time and energy are being invested and if it’s in the greatest service of your business, your dharma, and the life you want to create.

Radical honestly, then radical acceptance—especially if your answer is no.

Then radical responsibility is what follows.

To shift how and where you’re investing your time and energy.

And taking that a step further, to create operational leverage by buying back your time and energy to invest more in what matters most.

The 2 best ways to create operational leverage:

• Hire to create labor that buys you back your time and energy

• Create systems that replace labor with optimized efforts

Let’s talk about the first one: hiring.

The first question I hear a lot is “when should I hire?”.

When To Hire

I see many entrepreneurs following the traditional path of hiring when they feel their business needs a certain role.

Ex. when their marketing scales, hire a marketing person.

I’ve learned that the right time to hire is when your time and energy can be better invested in what it’s currently invested in.

Hire to buy back your time and energy.

If most of your time and energy is spent on administrative and operational tasks but could better be invested in marketing, then hire to buy back your time from admin tasks.

If it’s spent in marketing but could better be invested in creating better client results and experience, then hire for marketing to buy back your time.

The next question I hear is: “how do I know who to hire first (or next)?”

Who To Hire

Look at where your time and energy is currently being invested.

More specifically, look at where it’s being ineffectively invested.

Hire the person who can replace you there.

A tool and practice I get all my clients to do is the Time & Energy Audit. Grab the free tool here.

This will quickly tell you who you need to hire next.

If you don’t have a team yet, I recommend your first hire should be your EA (executive assistant).

To take off all the administrative and operational tasks off your plate.

Allowing you to invest your time and energy on tasks that grow your business.

How To Hire

This topic can be a whole newsletter on its own.

I’ll just make it easy for you, here’s a comprehensive Hiring Guide I created for one of my clients and partnered company, Atlas Assistants.

Which btw, if you need an EA, they’re the best in the game at training and staffing assistants.

And they’re the sponsors for today’s newsletter.

How To Set Up Your New Hire For Success

This is where operational leverage is created.

Sadly, most entrepreneurs fail at this stage.

Hiring someone, alone will not create operational leverage. You need to set them up to successfully help you reclaim your time and energy.

Here are some best practices I’ve used to help my clients build and scale 7-figure businesses with lean and self-managing teams.

Create Alignment on Role Expectations

If operational leverage is the goal, then it is the expectation.

Expectations can only be well met when they are well communicated.

Create alignment on the role expectations by clearly defining role responsibilities and key outcomes.

You can do this by creating a Role Scorecard for each role you hire.

I wrote an article on Role Clarity here.

Don’t just create the Role Scorecard based on the standards of the role title. Create it based on how this role is going to help you reclaim your time and energy.

Then assess candidates and hire based on this operationally leveraged Role Scorecard.

Make sure there is full alignment and commitment to the expectations.

Review the Role Scorecards often and keep updating it to match what you need to reclaim more of your time and energy.

Create a Roadmap for Success

To perform at their best and in flow, people need a balance of safety and challenge.

That means they need a level of clarity (what am I supposed to do and what’s expected of me).

And a level of challenge (what am I working towards that feels exciting and fulfilling).

You create this polarity of safety and challenge for people you hire by co-creating a Success Roadmap with them.

This can be a 30-60-90 Day Strategic Plan that’s tied to their Role Scorecard and your vision and goals for the business.

I recommend creating this Success Roadmap with all new hires after they complete the initial onboarding with you.

Paint clearly what success looks and feels like in this role for them… and for you (your reclaimed time and energy).

Define the Standard for Communication

I see entrepreneurs hiring to get back their time, only to fall into the trap of wasting MORE time and energy ineffectively communicating with their new hires.

We’ve all been there… where you’re hours deep into responding to slack messages and emails and no productive work has been done.

This is where you create operational leverage by having clear frameworks for our communication works.

Define how you want communication to work:

• How tasks are assigned, received, and discussed

• How problems are surfaced, discussed, and solved

• How feedback is given, received, and integrated

• How support is asked for and given

You do this with structure.

• Weekly 1:1’s for performance review, feedback, and alignment on next steps

• Start-of-day, end-of-day, and end-of-week reports

• Meetings to review goals and progress

• Dedicated communication channels

• Tracking issues so nothing falls through the crack

• Logging lessons learned for continuous improvement

Create a standard for excellence communication and you’ll waste less time and energy on unproductive communication.

Delegate Well & Give Better Feedback

Setting clear expectations is one thing, effectively delegating is another.

Operational leverage is created when you’re effectively delegating things off your plate in a way where they are achieving the results you want.

Many leaders and entrepreneurs struggle with letting go because of the fear of not getting the same results they would get if they just did it themselves.

They’ve delegated before, didn’t get the results they expected, and gave up there.

Personally, I believe this is a lack of radical responsibility.

If you want operational leverage, you need to take full ownership and responsibility for creating it.

That includes getting better at delegating and providing feedback and training.

Yes, this takes time. But operational leverage is created by investing time and energy to create more of it.

Delegate well. Provide feedback and training.

The 10-80-10 method of delegating is a great start.

• Spend 10% of the time delegating by defining clearly the task and outcome. Paint the DoD (Definition of Done)

• Spend 80% of the time allowing the person to execute

• Spend the last 10% of the time reviewing the output. If it meets expectations, explain why and acknowledge. If it doesn’t, explain why and provide feedback and training.

Delegating is more about you than it is about the person you’re delegating to.

• Are you delegating the right things?

• Did you clearly define what you’re delegating?

• Is the outcome and definition of success clear?

• Have you provided them with everything they need to succeed?

• Are you providing the right feedback to get the results you want?

• Are you communicating in a way they fully understand?

Mastering the art of delegation is the most important skill in creating operational leverage.

Leverage is in the Processes

You’ll know you have operational leverage when you’re no longer actively part of processes that operate and grow the business.

And they continue to generate results.

This allows you to focus your time and energy on the processes that matter most in the current season of your business.

Each season will require you to focus on different things.

Operational leverage allows you to shift that focus each season knowing that when you shift your attention, the previous processes will continue to operate and create results as usual.

Setting up your new hire for success includes getting clear on what processes you are expecting them to take over. Not just a set of tasks, but ownership of processes.

I shared my framework for Process Mapping and Documentation in this article.

The goal here is to:

• Create accountability to results

• Never solve the same problems twice

• See where systems and automations will be helpful

• Create ease in replacing yourself

Better processes will set you free.

Wrapping It Up

As an entrepreneur and business owner, you’re by default an investor.

If it’s not investing financially into building assets that create more wealth and freedom.

Then it’s investing your time and energy to build operational leverage that creates more time and energy.

To reinvest in what matters most to create the financial leverage for the life you want.

If you want to level up your game with building leverage (financial, operational, and energetic)…

Consider joining my private membership community, Dharma Labs.

I created courses in there on building momentum, growing your coaching business, and leveraging AI. Will be launching a new course soon on creating operational leverage with systems and teams.

Plus, our special launch pricing is still on. See you inside!

Otherwise, I’ll see you in the next letter.

Your Pal,

Colin

You’re reading Create Leverage (formerly The Evolved Entrepreneur), a weekly newsletter sharing tips and tools to help coaches and experts turn their expertise into leverage so they can work less, make more, impact lives, and enjoy life.

Hey there Evolved Entrepreneurs… I’m back!

I started the year with a 6-week break from writing.

• To finish building my membership community (opening next week!)

• To reset my content strategy

• And to zoom out on the long game

Most put “consistency” on a golden pedestal, but don’t value enough the power of “intentionality”—and intentional breaks.

I’m not talking about the “I don’t feel like doing it” kind of breaks. I’m talking about intentional separation to create alignment and focus.

• If a problem seems big, zoom out.

• If your progress seems slow, zoom out.

• If a task feels meaningless, zoom out.

Don't be the problem. Step away and see the problem.

Intentional separation helps us see our role in the issue and how our actions or thinking might be contributing to the problem.

Most of our issues stem from playing a short-term game in a long-game world.

Step back, zoom out, realign, and then redesign for momentum. With intentionality.

This is the way.

Ahhh, it feels good to be back. I have lots I want to share with you.

Starting with a training I recorded last month on how I created my 2024 Strategic Plan within a couple of hours by leveraging AI as a strategic thinking partner.

Game changer.

Let’s dive in.

Creating your Strategic Plan with AI

I spent most of my December running strategic planning sessions for my clients and my portfolio companies.

Helping them zoom out to align with the bigger picture vision and long game, then zooming in to create a strategic and operational plan for unstoppable momentum in 2024.

This used to be a long process for me and my clients. Days, sometimes weeks.

I wanted to find a faster, easier, and better way to do strategic planning so I started playing around with AI prompts to help.

And got the whole process down to a couple hours!

I recorded a walkthrough for you, in case you’re needing to create your 2024 Strategic Plan still.

If you’re all set for this year already, great on you! You can still check out the process for next time.

In the free training, I covered:

• How to create an effective Strategic Plan that bridges long-term vision to short-term operations

• How to clearly define your Client-centric Mission (using AI to synthesize your mission)

• How to define and align your personal and business 3-Year Vision

• How to set your 1-Year Targets using AI as a strategic thinking partner

• How to set your 10X Goal up for a Quantum Leap this year

• How to create your Quarterly Objectives and turn them into OKRs (using AI)

• How to do Weekly & Daily Momentum Planning to keep you hyper-focused and aligned

• And more…

The full step-by-step with the exact AI prompt templates I used.

My clients pay me a lot to run this process with their teams. You’re getting it for free because I’m feeling extra generous this year.

Here’s a link to the free training & AI prompts:

Enjoy!

If you found the training and process valuable:

1. Reply to this email or drop me a DM (on IG or LinkedIn) and let me know! I’ll share more free trainings like this if I know they’re valuable to you.

2. Consider joining the membership community that’s opening up next week. DM me “COMMUNITY” for more info.

Much appreciated!

Your Pal,

Colin

What’s Happening In This Newsletter

A couple of updates to this newsletter:

• Renaming this newsletter to Create Leverage (previously The Evolved Entrepreneur)

  • Same weekly deep dive guides like the Momentum Series and trainings like today’s letter. But more focused on helping you create leverage with business systems and AI automation.

• Monk Mode Mondays will be moved to a new newsletter, the Dao Of Entrepreneurship.

  • Subscribe here to get weekly insights on mindset mastery, inner work, and finding balance by bringing Eastern philosophy and wisdom to the path of entrepreneurship.

I’m separating the two newsletters to keep each one focused.

Simplicity is magic, simplicity scales.

Happy New Year my fellow evolutionary entrepreneurs!

A new year means a new opportunity to reset: to give yourself permission to evolve.

To become WHO you need to be to call in and hold your vision.

Sometimes, that means giving yourself permission to change everything you do.

Letting go of what no longer serves you, and calling in what will serve you and your vision better.

I love to kickstart my years with a simple reset. Here’s how I do mine:

• Get clear and realigned with my desired outcome

• Then let the outcome go and focus on the process

• I look at what I need to STOP, START, and KEEP doing

• Then I create systems around it for unstoppable momentum

Less is better.

Noise and pressure is the enemy of momentum.

It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you allow yourself to get obsessed with ONE outcome and be relentless with the process.

Countless companies and teams have used the Stop-Start-Keep method.

Why? It’s simple and it works.

You ca take this method and use it in all areas of your business and personal life:

• For teams: what should we Stop-Start-Keep doing this year?

• For business owners: what should I Stop-Start-Keep doing this year?

• For relationships: what should we Stop-Start-Keep doing this year?

• For personal goals: what should I Stop-Start-Keep doing this year?

• For financial goals: what should I Stop-Start-Keep doing this year?

• For anything…

I took the day to reflect on my reset.

After 32 weeks of writing and posting daily on LinkedIn, and 40 letters published in this newsletter last year, I learned a few things.

I read and analyzed all your comments and feedback. I hear you.

That’s why I am remaking my whole newsletter. Here’s what I’m going to Stop-Start-Keep doing this year…

Stop:

• Writing about generalized “WHAT to do” content

• Writing about generalized mindset stuff

• Adding noise and pressure to your inbox

Start:

• Niching down further to write specific “HOW to do” content

• Creating deep-dive trainings on YouTube

• Go all-in on building a membership community

Keep:

• Sharing my best knowledge and expertise on these newsletters

• Sharing ready-to-use templates and systems

• Learning, testing, and mastering my frameworks

On a personal level, here’s what I’m going to Stop-Start-Doing this year:

Stop:

• Saying yes to everything - more of less this year

• Tolerating things and people that don’t elevate my energy - love begins with self-love and self-respect

• Choosing to do things the hard way - it gets to be easy and leverage is the answer

Start:

• Having more fun and sharing more joy

• Getting more obsessed with serving my people powerfully

• Deepening my connection with Source

Keep:

• Prioritizing a regulated nervous system

• Prioritizing my peace of mind

• Systematizing my business and life for momentum

One purpose - to help you turn your knowledge and expertise into a thriving online business while working less and enjoying more of what matters to you.

Expect a new evolution of this newsletter in 2024.

Thank you for your continued support and attention.

Now it’s your turn… reset and realign.

What are you going to STOP-START-KEEP doing this year?

Let’s keep winning together,

Your Pal

Colin

Hey there Evolutionary Entrepreneurs! You’re reading my 2x weekly newsletter where I share actionable tips on business, mindset, and creating leverage so you can build a profitable coaching business doing what you love and sharing your dharma.

Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive!

Is it just me or did this year go like this:

• January

• February

• March

• April

• May

• Jun-Jul-Aug

• December 😂

If it felt like that for you too then it’s a good time now to plan out for your 2024 so you can go into January with absolute clarity and unstoppable energy.

The best way I’ve found to do this… to design your system for momentum.

Today, we’re wrapping up with the final part of the Momentum Series.

If you missed Parts 1-4, you can go back and read them here.

It’s been a fun series to share and today I’m going to end it with a hard truth.

If you know me, you’ll know I like sharing hard truths that most entrepreneurs are avoiding.

Why?

As Leland Val Van De Wall put it - “The degree to which a person can grow is directly proportional to the amount of truth he can accept about himself without running away.”

Face and accept the hard truth you’re avoiding and find the wisdom to grow both your business and personal life.

Today At A Glance:

• The Truth Of Metrics

• Understanding Metrics

• How To Start Measuring Your Metrics

• Foundational Things To Measure

The Truth Of Metrics

Over the last 4 parts of the Momentum Series, we have:

• Identified what creates Noise, Pressure, and prevents Momentum

• Installed processes to eliminate the noise and pressure

• Got clear on Outcomes from long term vision to short term goals

• Create a strategic and actionable plan to achieve the outcomes

• Redesigned our personal operating system for momentum

The final part is measuring our metrics to keep the momentum going.

The tricky part is that metrics can be uncomfortable for many entrepreneurs. Some track too much of it and get overwhelmed by the pressure. Most avoid it and don’t track at all.

But here’s the thing: you can’t grow your business profitably, predictably, and sustainably without measuring your metrics.

The same is true for anything you want to achieve in your life.

Want to grow or improve anything, you have to measure the metrics behind it.

Why?

Metrics create Awareness and Attribution.

• The worst place to be - not making progress and not knowing why

• The second worst place to be - making progress and not knowing why

• The best place to be - making progress and knowing what to keep doing

• The second best place - not making progress but knowing what to improve

Attribution is knowing where you’re at and why you’re where you are at.

Most entrepreneurs assume they have a sales or marketing problem when in fact they have a metrics problem.

They aren’t measuring their metrics so they don’t know which part of the value process is not performing and what to improve. Is it your lead gen? Is it your conversion rate? Is it a capacity issue? Is it a team member’s performance issue?

Most entrepreneurs also assume they have a productivity problem when in fact they have a metrics problem.

They aren’t measuring their metrics so they don’t know which part of their operating system needs to be improved. Is it time management? Is it calendar management? Is it bandwidth? Is it poor project management? Or is it just poor sleep and lack of movement?

Understanding metrics and how to better measure them will change everything in your life.

Understanding Metrics

There are two types of Metrics:

• Lagging metrics - measures the result or outcome

• Leading metrics - measures the activity that creates the results or outcome

You need both.

Most entrepreneurs make the mistake of measuring only their lagging metrics:

• Revenue

• Net Profit

• ROI

• Body weight

• Personal income

• Relationship status

• Happiness

Lagging metrics will tell you where you’re at but they won’t tell you how you got here and what needs to improve to change the results.

Leading metrics are where the magic is at. They can be:

• Number of cold outreaches done

• Sales conversion rate

• Cost per lead or acquisition

• Days you worked out

• Steps you’ve taken

• Money you invested per month

• Date nights you’ve done

• Hours worked per week

• Hours of sleep per night

They’re predictive measurements that signal future results of lagging metrics.

Measuring your leading metrics will give you the attribution and awareness of what to improve and how to keep momentum going toward your outcomes.

How To Start Measuring Your Metrics

Looking at the outcomes you’ve mapped out and the strategic plan you’ve created in the previous parts of this momentum series.

You want to look at what metrics you need to track and measure to keep the momentum going.

Step 1: Identify the metrics to measure

• List out the Lagging Metrics associated with your Outcomes

• Pick one and work backward

• Identify the Leading Metrics that contribute to that Lagging Metric

• Then identify the repeating tasks that drive those Leading Metrics

These repeating tasks are the ones you want to optimize to do better and more efficiently.

Sometimes that means automating them and building systems around them. Sometimes that means hiring or training the person responsible to do them better.

For example:

• Outcome = Grow business to $20k per month

• Lagging Metric = Monthly Recurring Revenue

• Leading Metrics

  • New Membership Signups

  • Webinar Signups

  • Lead Magnet Opt-ins

  • Outreach DMs per day

• Repeating Tasks

  • Send 20 outbound DMs per day

  • Send 20 inbound DMs per day

  • Follow up with all DM conversations

  • Offer free lead magnet

  • Promote webinar to leads twice a week

  • Do a monthly webinar

  • Sell membership program on webinar

  • Follow up with webinar attendees

Another example:

• Outcome = Build a deeper relationship with my partner

• Lagging Metric = Relationship Satisfaction Score

• Leading Metrics

  • of Date Nights

  • of Relationship Check-ins

  • Hours of quality time spent per day

• Repeating Tasks

  • Schedule weekly date nights

  • Do weekly relationship check-ins

  • Schedule 3 hours of quality time per day

Step 2: Create a dashboard where you’re tracking both your Lagging and Leading Metrics

Once you’re clear on the metrics you’re tracking, put it into a dashboard to track daily, weekly or monthly.

You can keep it simple and track your metrics in a spreadsheet.

I like to have my metrics in tools like my Business OS and Personal OS where I can track all my leading and lagging metrics:

And then create visual dashboards to quickly see where I’m at each week and month:

Want cool dashboards like this to track your metrics?

I’ll be sharing them in my private community. Get on the waitlist to join here.

Step 3: Automate the tracking of your metrics

Updating your metrics each month, week, or even day can be time-consuming.

Automate the process of tracking and updating your metrics dashboard. There are two ways:

• Automating with tools and software (I use Airtable and Zapier)

• Delegating to someone on your team (I delegate to my admin assistant)

Using a combination of automating with tools and delegating to my team, I have quick and easy visibility over my metrics at all times.

This allows me to make data-driven decisions to move my business forward.

Step 4: Create a routine and process for reviewing your metrics and making data-driven decisions

If you completed Parts 1-4 of the Momentum Series, you’ll know that I’m a huge advocate of Weekly Planning and Daily Planning for momentum.

During my weekly planning sessions, I’ll pull up my metrics dashboard to review them.

I’ll look at my lagging metrics that are off target, then look at the leading metrics to find out why they’re off target.

Once I’m clear on which leading metrics are disrupting momentum and growth, I’ll look at the repeating tasks to see what can be improved.

If they’re tasks I’ve delegated to someone on my team, I’ll reach out and explore with them how we can optimize the process to improve the leading metrics.

Improving the leading metrics will usually always lead to improving the lagging metrics, which puts me closer to achieving my desired outcomes.

This is the way you predictably and sustainably grow your business (or anything in your life).

It’s a boring and methodical approach. But having clear metrics gives me clarity on what needs to be done to create momentum.

Foundational Things To Measure

On top of using this approach to measure the metrics that lead to your desired outcomes, there are two essential things you should be measuring as an entrepreneur:

• Business Cash Flow

• Personal Cash Flow

When working with entrepreneurs, one of the first few things I like to dive into are these 2 areas.

Are they tracking and measuring these? How are they doing it?

I believe that NOT measuring these 2 things is the biggest bottleneck to growth.

Your purpose as an entrepreneur is simple:

• Build and grow your business profitably

• Create financial and time freedom for yourself

• Build generational wealth

Of course, there’s making an impact as well. This is your dharma, your calling, your purpose.

But that can only be done at scale when you have leverage. Create leverage in order to create impact.

You can’t do that unless you’re measuring the metrics that allow you to build a profitable business that creates freedom and generational wealth.

Let’s dive into each one at a high level.

Measuring your Business Cash Flow

This is about measuring the fundamental metrics of your business to make sure you’re growing profitably and sustainably.

You want to be measuring your P&L (profit and loss) each month. Metrics like:

• Revenue

• Expenses

• Profit Margin

• Taxes

• Net Profit

• Cash on hand

What you’re optimizing for is profitability and cash on hand (leverage for growth).

Measuring your Personal Cash Flow

Same way you’re measuring the P&L of your business, you want to be tracking your personal income and expenses. Metrics like:

• Income

• Expenses

• Taxes

• Liabilities

• Assets

• Cash on hand

What you’re optimizing for is cash on hand and cash-flowing assets (leverage for generational wealth)

When you understand that your goal is to become an asset, not a liability. You start to measure and optimize the metrics that lead to that outcome.

Here’s a free P&L Template you can use to start tracking your cash flow in your business and life.

If you want the Personal OS and Business OS tools to track and automate all this, come join my private community.

I hope by now you’re realizing the power of measuring your metrics and how it can help you maintain your momentum toward your outcomes and goals.

It was fun putting together this 5-part Momentum Series for you. If you enjoyed it, please:

1. Implement the exercises so you can keep winning in your business and life

2. Share it with your friends so they too can keep winning

Lots more on building a business that creates freedom, impact, and generational wealth coming your way in 2024.

I’m stoked and I hope you are too.

Onwards!

Your Pal,

Colin

Hey there Evolutionary Entrepreneurs! You’re reading my 2x weekly newsletter where I share actionable tips on business, mindset, and creating leverage so you can build a profitable coaching business doing what you love and sharing your dharma.

Welcome to Monk Mode Mondays, a simple practice to play the inside-out game of entrepreneurship!

What is Clarity and how do we find it?

Fun fact: I started a podcast back in 2013, before podcasting was popular.

The podcast was called The Undeniable Clarity.

I taught mindfulness and mindset stuff back then. Honestly, I would cringe if I were to listen to what I shared back then.

The irony is that I lacked the most amount of clarity back in that season of my life. I created that podcast mainly for myself.

To talk myself through the process of creating clarity in my life.

Here’s what I’ve learned from a decade of chasing clarity.

We all want clarity because clarity gives us permission to move forward.

Most people hold back from moving forward, consciously and unconsciously, because of uncertainty and fear.

So clarity is that permission slip to move forward, even if things will be uncertain. Most are.

Most people think clarity is knowing the HOW to do something or get somewhere.

Here’s the thing I’ve learned from my experiences and from observing and coaching others…

Clarity doesn’t come from knowing the HOW, it comes from knowing the WHAT and removing all the noise the pressure in the way of that what.

More specifically:

• Know WHAT exactly you want

• Be willing to claim what you want

• Accept where you are right now (in relationship to your want)

• Then remove all the noise and pressure

Very rarely do you need to know the HOW to move forward.

We live in a world that’s so resourceful that figuring out the HOW is the easiest part of anything.

The hardest parts?

Knowing what you want, why you want it, and accepting the hard truth about where you are right now.

Everything outside of this is noise and pressure. Remove it.

• The inner voice questioning if you deserve what you want - let it go

• The fear of judgement for claiming what you want - let it go

• The fear of failing along the way - let that go too

• All the other lesser wants - yup, let it go

When you know what your core desire is and you’re willing to be obsessed with achieving it…

The next step to get there becomes obvious.

Next step, not all the steps. You just need to know the next step.

It’s obvious. But obvious often gets drowned in noise and pressure.

Sometimes that noise comes from your avoidance of accepting the hard truth about where you are right now.

I’ve found that almost always, my “lack of clarity” was just a disguise for my avoidance of accepting a hard truth about myself.

The next step forward is almost always simple and obvious. Once you stop avoiding it.

Ok, I think you get the point.

So I’ll leave you with this to reflect on over this last week of 2023:

• What is it that you truly desire for 2024?

• Are you willing to fully own and claim that desire?

• Where are you at right now?

• Are you willing to accept the truth of it?

• What’s the simple and obvious next step forward?

I’d love to hear your reflections if you’re down to share them with me by email or social.

Otherwise, have an amazing holidays!

Your Pal,

Colin

Hey there Evolutionary Entrepreneurs! You’re reading my 2x weekly newsletter where I share actionable tips on business, mindset, and creating leverage so you can build a profitable coaching business doing what you love and sharing your dharma.

Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive!

This has been a popular quote circling the internet since James first said it in his book, Atomic Habits.

While there’s some truth to it, I don’t fully agree!

I believe we’re complex and dynamic beings. And speaking to our whole self in absolutes can be limiting.

I believe you DO rise to the level of your goals. AND you DO fall to the level of systems. It depends on which part of you that you’re speaking to.

More on this shortly.

If you’re new here and missed the previous 3 parts of the series, I recommend going back and binge-reading them. Trust me, it’ll be way more worthwhile than binging Netflix.

We talked about stabilizing noise and pressure, getting clear on your 3-Year and 1-Year goals, and then strategically creating an actionable and operational quarterly plan.

Today, I’ll show you how to redesign your Personal OS (operating system) to create unstoppable momentum week after week.

Today At A Glance:

• Goals and Systems

• Design your Ideal Week Map

• Weekly Planning System

• Daily Planning System

• Daily Review System

• Weekly Review System

• Build your Personal OS

Goals and Systems

As I was saying, I believe you DO rise to the level of your goals. AND you DO fall to the level of systems.

It depends on which part of you that you’re speaking to.

Your conscious self will rise to the level of your goals when you’re clear on your desired outcome, clear on who you need to BE to achieve the goal, and strategically clear on how you’re working towards it.

Your unconscious self, however, will fall to the level of your systems because it is designed to habitually operate based on programming.

So that’s why we’ve been redesigning and rebuilding systems in our business and life for both parts, our conscious and unconscious self, in this Momentum Series.

We’ve gotten clear on your long-term vision and bridged it back to the short-term operational plan, creating a Domino Effect of momentum.

With a clear outcome and clear plan, your conscious self can rise to the level of your goals.

Now we need to redesign your systems so that when your unconscious self falls, and it will, it’ll default to a standard of excellence that’s still in service of the goals you’re aiming for.

Study successful people and you’ll see this bridge between their conscious and unconscious self.

They have a clear vision of what they want and who they need to be to achieve it. And then they reprogram their unconscious behavior so that success feels natural to them. Success is practically automatic for them.

Pro athletes have mastered the art of this as well.

Where most entrepreneurs struggle is their unconscious behaviors are not reprogrammed to match the goals they’re trying to achieve.

So how do we reprogram our unconscious behaviors?

We redesign and upgrade the systems that our unconscious self falls to.

I’ll show you where to start.

Design your Ideal Week Map

Optimizing your Personal OS is all about optimizing how you manage your:

• Time

• Energy

• Attention

Now that you’ve created your 3-year Vision, 1-Year Goals, and Quarterly Plan, a good place to start is redesigning your Week for momentum.

You do this by designing your Ideal Week Map - what a momentum-generating week looks and feels like.

I say IDEAL week because not every week will happen exactly as you plan. But having a clear picture of what an ideal week looks like keeps you as closely aligned to it as possible.

When something is off, you’ll know why. When something is working, you’ll know why.

Here’s how to design your Ideal Week Map:

Step 1: Download my Ideal Week Mapping Template

Go to File and Make A Copy to duplicate the template.

Step 2: Start to map your Ideal Week

The first tab is an example. Go to the ‘BLANK TEMPLATE’ tab to build your own.

Create color-coded time blocks for the 4 main types of activities:

• Deep Work - for working on your Quarterly Objectives

• Rest & Recovery - to regulate the noise and pressure

• Management - daily operations, meetings, admin work

• Personal - for ****family time, eating, social and hobbies

Organize your time blocks to optimize for Energy, not for Time.

• Schedule your Personal time first (prioritize YOU)

• Schedule your Deep Work, then Management work

• Build in Rest & Recovery to elevate your energy

Plan AND be willing to adapt and redesign for each season of your life and business.

Step 3: Transfer your Ideal Week Map into your Calendar

I use this as a guiding map to organize my tasks and activities throughout the week.

I always notice that the weeks I feel off are the weeks I fall out of alignment with my Ideal Week Map.

This process is simple, but when done right, will help create unstoppable momentum.

Next step is to design your Weekly and Daily Planning System to keep you on track toward your Quarterly Objectives.

Weekly Planning System

Schedule a 30 min Weekly Planning session at the beginning of your work week.

Yup, time block this into your Ideal Week Map.

In this Weekly Planning session, you’ll plan your Weekly Commitments:

• List out: What CAN I do this week to move towards my Quarterly Objectives?

• Rate them: from most to least important, “1” being most important and impactful.

• Commit: What WILL I do this week to move towards my Quarterly Objectives?

• These are your Weekly Commitments.

What doesn’t make your Weekly Commitments list is now considered “Noise” for this week. It may be prioritized at a future week, but this week, it’s a distraction.

Your Weekly Commitments will now help drive your Daily Planning each day this week.

Daily Planning System

Schedule a 15 min Daily Planning session at the beginning of your work days.

Again, time block these into your Ideal Week Map.

In these sessions, you look at your Weekly Commitments and decide on your Top 3 Priorities for the day.

Write down:

• What’s my Intention for today?

  • This is not your To Do list. To Do’s are what you’re doing, Intentions are how you’re going to show up.

• Where is my Energy Level at today?

  • Am I holding onto anything that’s preventing momentum?

  • If so, what can I do to offload this?

• What are my To-Do’s? List out everything (tasks, meetings, activities)

• What are my Top 3 Priorities?

Everything else on your To-Do List is “noise”. Either delegate them, or let them come secondary to your Top 3.

Time block your Top 3 into your calendar.

Daily Review System

Schedule a 15 min Daily Review session at the end of your work days.

In these sessions, you reflect on and write down:

• What am I grateful for

• What are my wins today

• What was left (undone, unsaid, unfelt, unowned)

Do NOT skip your daily reviews.

Momentum is generated by a series of forward-moving cycles.

Reviews provide feedback and potential energy for Planning. Planning sets and resets the direction forward.

Weekly Review System

Schedule a 30 min Weekly Review session at the end of your work weeks.

In these sessions, you reflect on your week and write down:

• What went well this week?

  • What did I move forward or overcome

  • What created momentum

  • What are my wins

• What lessons did I learn?

• Where do I need support?

  • Where am I feeling constraint and friction

  • What’s slowing me down or disrupting momentum

  • What are the roadblocks

  • What help do I need

  • Who can help me

Again, reviews complete the cycle and provide feedback for forward momentum.

Build your Personal OS

If you followed all the steps above, by now you’ll have a pretty solid system for creating momentum week after week.

The next step is to bring all this into one system to easily track and manage your time and energy each week.

• Option 1: you get a planner or notebook and do this the old-school way with pen to paper.

• Option 2: you take it online with a digital notebook, even Google Docs can work. Here’s a template if you want it.

• Option 3: you get real nerdy with systems, like me, and build a tool for it.

I like Airtable and have built a Personal OS system on it for myself. I’ve shared it with my coaching clients and now I will be giving it away to the founding members of my new membership community that’s launching soon.

If you want it, get on the waitlist for the community.

Here’s what the Personal OS dashboard looks like…

One system where I can see my Quarterly OKRs.

And my Momentum Planner where I log and track my Weekly Planning and Reviews.

Same with my Daily Planning and Reviews.

Even my Vision, Values, and Goals.

One system that keeps everything visible and top of mind for my conscious self to stay aligned to the bigger picture and short term focus.

And designed to reprogram my unconscious self to behaviors for momentum and success.

You rise to the level of your goals AND you fall to the level of your systems.

In the next and final part of the Momentum Series, we’ll be talking about the most overlooked part of creating momentum - measuring your metrics.

Onwards!

Your Pal,

Colin

NEW: The Evolved Entrepreneur Pro

This newsletter has been growing fast and I’m so incredibly grateful to get to share my knowledge and experience with you each week.

My goal is to take this newsletter to the next level in 2024 and make it even more valuable and insightful for you.

With that, I’m opening up a premium subscription to add some awesome benefits.

On top of the 2 weekly newsletters (Monk Mode Mondays and Deep Dives on Thursdays), you’ll get:

• Access to the Audio version of this newsletter so you can listen to them instead of reading them.

• Monthly Leverage Codes Guides - you’ll get step-by-step guides and cheatsheets on how I leverage AI in my business to buy back my time.

• Access to the Leverage Codes Library - all the AI templates and tools in one place, growing every month.

• Access to premium Business Deep Dives - if you think this Momentum Series was awesome, wait till you see these.

• Early access and exclusive discounts to new products I’m releasing

• To continue to support my work by sponsoring me a ☕️ each month.

Here’s a sneak peek of the Leverage Codes Library:

Hey there Evolutionary Entrepreneurs! You’re reading my 2x weekly newsletter where I share actionable tips on business, mindset, and creating leverage so you can build a profitable coaching business doing what you love and sharing your dharma.

Welcome to Monk Mode Mondays, a simple practice to play the inside-out game of entrepreneurship!

The Utility of Your Thoughts and Emotions

Happy Monday my Evolutionary Entrepreneurs!

I reflected on my list of pending projects and tasks this weekend and was hit with a wave of thoughts and emotions.

• There’s still so much left to do but I should take the next few weeks off.

• Damn, I said I was going to finish that project but I didn’t. This is bad.

• Crypto is going for a bull market, I should have invested more.

• No wait, my focus should be on finishing up the membership community.

• I haven’t completed my xmas shopping list yet, I’m terrible.

• I hit my targets for 2023, but it should have been more.

• My strategic planning for 2024 is fire! I should probably get a head start.

The list goes on with a range of feelings triggered by each thought.

If you’re anything like me, there’s an ongoing train of “should and shouldn’t” or “good and bad”.

Each time I catch one of these trains, I’m reminded of the paradox of our mind.

How it’s both our most powerful asset in creating freedom and at the same time our greatest prison.

We can leverage (and monetize) our knowledge and experience to create freedom and impact.

And can also be imprisoned by our own thoughts and emotions.

The Buddhists teach that the root of suffering and misery comes from attachment. Our attachment to a desired outcome creates behaviors of craving or aversion.

The solution is to practice acceptance. To be ok with whatever the outcome is, to be balanced and centered.

Easier said than done, right?

Trust me, I know. I’ve practiced this as a monk for 7 years and 15 years after that.

Radical acceptance is transformational. And it’s not easy.

There is a practice I’ve found to be a great stepping stone toward mastering acceptance.

It’s about changing the lens you use to look at your thoughts, emotions, and situations.

Our habit is to look at ourselves and the world through the lens of:

• Should and Shouldn’t

• Good and Bad

This judgment creates a prison we put ourselves in.

It creates space for shame and blame.

Instead, a better lens we can use to look at our thoughts, feelings, and circumstances is to look at the utility of them.

When observing your thoughts and feelings, ask yourself if this is:

• Useful or Not Useful

• Effective or Ineffective

This lens invites curiosity instead of shame and blame.

Does this thought currently serve the best version of myself I’m trying to be?

Is this thought useful for the vision and goals I’m building?

If there’s utility in your thoughts and feelings, great let’s leverage it.

If there’s no utility, let it go: “thank you, but not now”.

While we continue to practice and strive towards a monk-like radical acceptance, an easier and perhaps more useful approach is to find the utility in our thoughts and feelings.

Hope this mind medicine serves you in the final weeks of 2023.

Onwards,

Colin

Hey there Evolutionary Entrepreneurs! You’re reading my 2x weekly newsletter where I share actionable tips on business, mindset, and creating leverage so you can build a profitable coaching business doing what you love and sharing your dharma.

Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive!

To achieve your desired outcome, you have to change what you do and how you do it.

Momentum is not just about consistency.

More of the same, only creates more of the same.

Momentum requires the reorganizing of your inner and outer systems to align with your desired outcomes.

• Your inner systems change your behaviors.

• Your outer systems direct your behaviors.

This is as true for business goals as it is for personal and relationship goals.

In the last two Momentum Deep Dives, I talked about the first two steps to creating momentum:

1. Stabilizing your Personal OS - nothing prevents momentum more than feeling overwhelmed

2. Regulating the Pressure - how to increase your capacity and energy for momentum

Today, I’m going to share with you the third step in this Momentum Series.

How to use a strategic planning system to transform your Vision and desired outcomes into day-to-day execution and results.

Let’s dive in.

Today At A Glance:

• The Domino Effect

• Define your Mission

• Define your 3-Year Vision

• Create your 1-Year Goals

• Create your Quarterly Objectives

• Evolutionary Entrepreneurs Community

The Domino Effect

In this Momentum Series, we’ve been talking about the Momentum Formula:

• M = (O - N) E

• Momentum = (Outcome - Noise) Energy

• Momentum is created by having a clear outcome, reducing the noise and pressure, and then amplifying it with your elevated energy

If you haven’t read the first two parts, I highly recommend starting there and doing the exercises.

Each part stacks upon the next.

In part 1, you distilled the noise and pressure in your life, relationships, and business to reveal your core desired outcomes.

Here’s the thing: knowing what you truly want is important and aways the first step, but you can’t stop there.

You need to take that desired outcome and strategically reverse-engineer it into a clear and actionable plan.

This plan needs to be designed in a way that creates the “Domino Effect”—where every action you choose to take each day and week cascades toward your desired outcome.

Momentum is designed right into your operating system.

Willpower alone will not get you there. Discipline is the true power here.

Why? Because every day you open your eyes and get out of bed, you will be at battle with the old programming of your Past Self and the desire to be your Future Self.

Without discipline and the systems designed to be aligned with your desires, you will spend more time and energy at war with yourself than working on the things that move you forward.

And if you’re reading this newsletter, I know you have a deep dharma (calling) to answer, transformation you’re meant to facilitate, people you’re meant to serve.

Let’s get you spending more of your time and energy serving your dharma.

Back to the Domino Effect.

How it works is by bridging your long-term vision to your short-term direction and further on to your daily activities.

• Your Mission and Dharma

• Your 3-Year Vision

• Your 1-Year Goals

• Your Quarterly Objectives

• Your Weekly Commitments

• Your Daily Top 3

Completing one leads to the natural completion of the next one up.

When you have long-term vision but no operational structure in your day-to-day and week-to-week, you’ll lack focus.

When you’re deep in the day-to-day but don’t have a clear long-term vision and direction, you’ll be reactive.

You’ll need both, strategically and methodically organized for alignment and momentum.

Here’s my process for using a strategic planning system to create the Domino Effect.

Define your Mission

Start by clearly defining your mission, your dharma, the great work you’re called to do.

If you’re a coach or service provider… this is your client-centric mission statement.

It has nothing to do with what you get from your art and work. It has to do with the impact or transformation you create with your art and work, for your clients. It is the purpose of your business.

Your Mission clearly defines two things:

• Who are you serving?

• What transformation do you help create?

Refined into a clear, bold, simple, and specific statement.

For example, my mission is to help coaches and conscious entrepreneurs create wealth and freedom by building a thriving and leveraged business that allows them to play their dharma full out.

My why: conscious coaches and entrepreneurs are the biggest source of positive change and impact in the world.

Your Mission becomes your Core Focus. Your Obsession that you align all actions and decisions to.

If an opportunity arises that doesn’t align with your mission, the answer gets to be simple: No or Not Now.

Not sure how to refine your Mission?

Search up “Ikigai” and use that framework.

Refine and keep refining.

The goal is not perfection, but alignment.

Can your mission evolve?

Yes, and it will.

Become the best in the world at what you can uniquely do. Keep refining what you do until this is true.

Define your 3-Year Vision

Next up is to define your long-term vision. Why?

• It keeps you from getting stuck in day-to-day reactivity

• If defines WHO you need to BE (your Future Self) to make this happen

Step 1: Start with your 3-Year Vision for your Personal life.

This is your relationship with Yourself and Others.

• What will your life look and feel like 3 years from now?

• What personal accomplishments are you celebrating?

• Do you have a family? Do you have kids? How old are your kids then?

• What do your day-to-day interactions with your partner and kids look like? How involved are you with their daily lives?

• What activities are you doing with them? What events are you attending regularly?

• Are you traveling or taking vacations as a family? How often?

• Where do you live? What does that look like?

• What personal activities, hobbies, or passions are you involved in?

• How many hours a week do you work?

• How much income are you taking home from your business?

• What other investments are you making to build your wealth and legacy?

Step 2: Define your 3-Year Vision for your Business.

• What will your business look and feel like 3 years from now?

• What are the biggest accomplishments you’re celebrating?

• What industry have you dominated?

• Who are you serving, and what problems do you solve for them?

• How is your business doing financially?

• What does your team look like? What’s your relationship with them like?

• What role do you play in this business then?

Step 3: Make sure there’s alignment between the two.

Does your Business Vision fit into your Personal Vision?

Alignment is key here. Entrepreneurs are visionaries and often collapse time in the way they think. This is a superpower for achieving great things normal people couldn’t dream of achieving.

But where this can be an issue is when their business vision doesn’t align with the personal life they desire.

When it’s not aligned, you’ll continue to unconsciously sabotage your business to protect what you personally desire.

Always choose alignment.

Create your 1-Year Goals

These are the outcomes you need to achieve this year to be on track toward your 3-Year Vision.

Remember, you want to create a Domino Effect. By accomplishing this, I naturally move the needle forward.

Step 1: Look at your 3 Core Outcomes.

These are your desired outcomes in your relationship with Yourself, Others, and Business that you revealed from the exercise in Part 1 of Momentum Series.

Step 2: Look at your 3-Year Vision.

Reverse engineer both to come up with what needs to be done to get there.

Step 3: List out all the potential goals for this year.

What COULD I do this year to move toward my Core Outcomes and 3-Year Vision?

(If you’re doing this mid-year, create goals for the remaining time left in this year)

Step 4: Choose 5 Goals you’re committing to.

What WILL I do this year to move toward my Core Outcomes and 3-Year Vision?

• 1 Goal for Yourself

• 1 Goal for your Relationship

• 3 Goals for your Business

Less is better. Less means more focus.

Just because something didn’t make the Goals list doesn’t mean it won’t be worked on, it just means it is not your highest priority.

Create your Quarterly Objectives

Once you have your clear Year-End Goals, the next step is to create your Quarterly Objectives.

These are your short-term 90-day outcomes—projects and measurable targets achievable in 90 days that move you closer toward your 1 Year Goals.

They must be specific, tangible, create a forward-moving impact, and of course, excite you.

Step 1: List out potential objectives.

What COULD I do in the next 90 days to move toward my 1-Year Goals?

Step 2: Rank them.

Stake and rank the items on your list from most to least impact it’ll have on your 1-Year Goals

Step 3: Choose and commit.

What WILL I do in the next 90 days to move toward my 1-Year Goals?

Choose 5-7 Objectives. Again, less is better. Less is more focused.

Step 4: Turn your Quarterly Objectives into OKRs

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) is a goal-setting framework for defining and breaking down desired outcomes into clear and measurable milestones.

• Objective (O) defines the desired outcome

• Key Results (KR) define the measurable milestones leading to the outcome

Take one of your Quarterly Objectives, this is your O.

• Reverse engineer it into 3 Key Results

  • Can be 3 tangible milestones to get to the outcome

  • Can be 3 monthly targets leading to the outcome

• Repeat for each Quarterly Objective

Review your OKRs and make sure there’s a domino effect upwards from Key Results > Objectives > Goals > Vision

Step 5: Assign clear owners.

Review your Key Results, if responsibility can be delegated to someone on your team, assign them as the person responsible.

If responsibility cannot be delegated, you’re the owner. Identity who can support you with execution and list them as a Support.

Closing Words

As humans, we’re driven by our habits and perspectives. Most of which we learned from our past and carry forward.

Every new desired outcome requires a new set of habits, way of thinking, and way of decision making.

To achieve any outcome, we need to unlearn the old, learn the new way, and then make the new way a habit — a behavioral pattern that allows momentum toward that outcome to be natural.

This strategic planning system allows you to reorganize and redefine what to focus on and how you do it with each new desired outcome you have.

This is the game we get to play.

In the next letter, part 4 of the Momentum Series, I’ll show you how to take these Quarterly OKRs and design a weekly and daily operating system that ensures you accomplish them each quarter with forward momentum.

Let’s get it my fellow Evolutionary Entrepreneurs! 🙌🏼

Your Pal,

Colin

Evolutionary Entrepreneurs Community

If you’re enjoying this Momentum Series…

You’ll want to consider joining the Evolutionary Entrepreneurs Community that I’ll be opening up soon.

You’ll get access to courses, live trainings, monthly challenges and more.

I’m throwing in early access to the Momentum Lab course I just created, just for those on the waitlist.

You’re reading The Evolved Entrepreneur, a 2x weekly newsletter sharing practical insights to go from being overwhelmed to operating your business more profitably, predictably, and peacefully… like a true Evolutionary Entrepreneur.

Welcome to Monk Mode Monday, a simple practice every week to play and win the inside-out game of entrepreneurship!

Desire & the Hidden Contract of Unhappiness

“Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.”

I was rereading the Almanac of Naval Ravikant this past week and that quote hit home.

Btw, I highly recommend this book if you’re an entrepreneur looking to build wealth and freedom without sacrificing your inner peace.

Let’s talk about desire.

Have you ever had that burning desire to hit your sales targets, design the perfect marketing campaign, or nail that perfect product?

And in that desire, felt the pinch of discontent, the subtle wave of frustration?

If it rings a bell, you're not alone.

What you might find is that underneath this desire lies an unsigned contract stating “I will not be happy until I achieve this.”

Desire is like fire.

It can cook your food, warm your house, or it can cause devastation.

It's not the fire, but how we manage it, that ends up defining our happiness and peace or lack of.

Now there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having desires. In the realm of entrepreneurship, where dreams meet the work, it's essential to have clear desired outcomes and to work towards them.

The key is to choose your desires mindfully, rather than being lost in your desires.

Most of us go around desiring things unconsciously and then wondering why we’re unhappy.

The Monkey King (the mind) within all of us sometimes gets the better of us—aspiring to conquer the whole jungle in one breath.

Keep it simple. One core desire, one mission at a time.

And remember that you are choosing to sign this contract with yourself.

The belief that a change in your outside world will present you with the holy grail of joy and peace is delusional.

It doesn’t mean you should do things on the outside. You totally should. We’re living creatures, evolutionary hunters biologically wired to seek growth, transformation, and forward action.

You’re meant to do something. Called by the universe to do something great. You should go and do what you’re meant to do.

The key is in being aware that in the doing, it’s your desire that is also the source of your suffering.

Being aware of this reminds you that happiness and peace are your default state. It’s always there when you remove the sense of something missing in your life.

“The three big ones in life are wealth, health, and happiness. We pursue them in that order, but their importance is reverse.” - Naval

Happiness, peace of mind, love, and joy aren’t things you find. They’re choices you make.

Choose your desires wisely and prioritize your inner peace.

Now that you're armed with this insight, it's time to put it into action. This week's challenge is designed to refine your understanding and help you navigate the maze of desire.

Challenge: Unmasking Desire

1. Think: Spend 5 minutes contemplating one of your biggest desires. How does it make you feel? Unsettled or excited?

2. Write: In your journal, write down the emotions and sensations that arose when you focused on this desire. Be honest with yourself.

3. Reflect: Journal about how this desire might be contributing to your unhappiness. Jot down if you’re allowing this desire to veil your present joy and peace.

4. Re-align: Based on your reflections, realign your relationship with this desire? Can you pursue it without compromising peace and contentment?

The challenge aims to help you befriend your desires rather than dread them.

Remember, in the dance of entrepreneurship, let desire lead the rhythm, but never allow it to determine the music.

On this note, may you embark on your week—conscious, aware, and rooted in your inner truth. Less of discontent, more of aligned doing. Less of craving, more of aligned creating.

Catch you in next week's letter.

Happy Monk Mode Monday,

Your Pal Colin.

Hey there Evolutionary Entrepreneurs! You’re reading the 2x weekly newsletter where I share practical tips to go from “drowning in work” to OWNING your business and life.

Intentions matter, but Actions are more important.

It’s that time of the year when entrepreneurs are winding down, reflecting on their year, and setting intentions for the next.

As I’ve been doing my reflections, something struck me.

Why is it that entrepreneurs, creators, and visionaries are so good at setting intentions, but most fail to follow through to making their intentions a reality?

Well, it’s quite simple. Action.

There is an old two-part rule that often works wonders in business, science, and art:

1. Take a simple, basic idea and

2. Take it very seriously

To me, that means finding something to be obsessed with, and creating momentum with consistent forward action.

Then the question to ponder now is… what stops or prevents momentum?

And that’s my current obsession: how to create and sustain healthy momentum in business and life.

You’re reading Part 2 of the Momentum Series.

Last week in Part 1, we discussed the first of five steps to creating momentum: Stabilizing your Personal Operating System by Defusing the Noise.

Today, we will explore the second step: Regulating the Pressure.

Let’s dive in.

Today At A Glance:

• To create Momentum in business, you need to elevate your energy

• How to regulate Pressure through Alchemy

• Mental Alchemy: mastering your thoughts

• Physical Alchemy: regulating your nervous system

• Emotional Alchemy: transforming feelings into creative fuel

• Relational Alchemy: building secure relationships

Regulate the Pressure, Elevate your Energy

The Formula for Momentum:

• M = (O - N) E

• Momentum = (Outcome - Noise) Energy

Momentum is created by having a clear outcome, reducing the noise and pressure, and then amplifying it with your elevated energy.

The part around elevated energy is important and often overlooked.

You can create a clear outcome and plan, and eliminate the noise and distractions. But if you’re operating from a depleted tank or low state of energy, momentum will be nearly impossible to create.

This is why burnout and overwhelm is an epidemic in the work and creative space. A silent killer of intentions and goals.

Noise and Pressure, when left unchecked, diminishes your energy.

While noise can be reduced, even eliminated. Pressure is inevitable on the entrepreneurial journey.

What you can do is regulate the pressure, and in doing so:

• You increase your capacity to hold more

• You elevate the energetic state you operate at

• You allow yourself to pour more of YOU into creating

Creating your outcome, your art, your dharma.

How To Regulate The Pressure

Alchemy.

Alchemy is the art of transformation, inner liberation, and change.

You regulate the pressure by transforming it into creative and strategic fuel for forward action and momentum.

There are 4 Forms of Alchemy I’m teaching in my upcoming course:

• Mental Alchemy: transforming chaotic thoughts into clarity

• Physical Alchemy: regulating your nervous system to expand capacity

• Emotional Alchemy: processing your feelings into creative fuel

• Relational Alchemy: creating secure attachment with Yourself, Others, and your Business

The goal is to understand how each form works and then design Energy Rituals and practices into your business and life to create momentum.

I’ll share a few practices in today’s letter and show you how to weave this into how you operate your business.

Mental Alchemy: Master Your Thoughts

Your Thoughts can sometimes create pressure and disrupt Momentum:

• Overthinking: Over-analyzing every minor detail of a project instead of taking action

• Worrying: Imagining worst-case scenarios and failures even when things are going well

• Self-criticism: Beating yourself up over small mistakes which lowers confidence

• Comparing: Seeing others succeed and feeling inadequate or not enough

• Future Tripping: Getting ahead of yourself, worrying about handling future problems

• Scarcity: Believing there isn't enough time, money, or energy to take action on goals

• Inflexible Perfectionism: Refusing to adapt or delegate slows forward progress

Mental alchemy is learning to organize your thoughts, remove the noise, and stay focused on what’s important.

Practice: Create an ongoing Issues List

• Similar to the Defuse the Noise exercise, keep an ongoing Issues List for the 3 Relationship Categories

• Every time an issue comes up, get it out of your head and add it to the list

• Every time you resolve one of the issues, cross it off your list

• Every time you have anxious thoughts, worries, judgments, or stressful thoughts… write it out in a simple sentence

• Writing it out won’t always eliminate the anxiousness, but simply getting it out of your head and onto a list helps defuse the noise and stop the mental spiraling

You’re training your mind and body to think, “I notice and acknowledge this thought, but now is not the time to worry about this, I’ve captured it and will come back to resolve this when I need to.”

Practice: Question your Thoughts

Byron Katie has the best framework for this.

When you have a thought that is triggering stress, question it using her 4 question framework:

• Is it true?

  • The answer to the first two questions is just one syllable: either yes or no. Be still and find your honest yes or no as it arises to meet the question. If your answer shows up as a yes, move to question two. If it’s no, then experience that no for a moment and then move to question three.

• Can you absolutely know that it’s true?

  • If your answer to question one is yes, ask yourself: “Can I absolutely know that it’s true?” Take this opportunity to look again. Shine the flashlight on that moment in time again, and see what reveals itself to you.

• How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?

  • Close your eyes and witness the feelings, body sensations, and behaviors that arise when you believe that thought.

• Who would you be without that thought?

  • Closing your eyes, return to the situation. Take a moment to reflect, observe, and experience the situation again, this time without the thought. Who or what you would be without the thought? How would you see or feel about the other person? Drop all of your judgments. Notice what is revealed.

Questioning your thoughts allows you to regulate yourself while being with the thought as it is.

Physical Alchemy: Regulate Your Nervous System

When you understand how your body and nervous system operates, you’ll realize it is nearly impossible to create momentum without building a body that can hold momentum.

• Chronic stress: Being in a constant "fight, flight, freeze, fawn" mode makes it hard to focus and take strategic action

• Adrenal fatigue: Feeling constantly drained leads to lack of motivation and energy to work on goals

• Poor sleep: Not getting enough sleep or rest makes it hard to operate at full capacity

• Physical tension and pain: Headaches, muscle tightness, back pain, etc. are physically limiting and drain mental focus

• Hormone imbalances: Fluctuating hormones like cortisol can impact mood, focus, and decision-making abilities

• Inflammation: Chronic inflammation in the body is taxing and can manifest as brain fog, fatigue, and poor concentration

Physical Alchemy here is about regulating your nervous system, releasing stress in your body, and expanding your somatic body’s capacity to hold more.

Window of Presence

• You’re regulated and present when operating within your nervous system’s window of tolerance

• You’re dysregulated or disassociated when you’re consistently operating outside your window in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn

• You want to be operating within while also expanding your window (capacity)

The Key To Regulation

• Resourcing Safety

• Finding ways to consistently bring our nervous system back within our window of presence

• Processing stress and creating a sense of safety

Key To Expansion

• Pendulation and Titration

• Pendulation: oscillating back and forth between safety and outside the window of presence

• Titration: slowly introducing and allowing the body to interface with states outside the window to expand its capacity

• You know you’ve expanded your capacity when the Noise and Pressure that used to disrupt your momentum no longer does

Practice: Full Body Somatic Release

When you’re feeling dysregulated or overwhelmed:

• Pause and notice where in your body you’re feeling the stress or tension.

• Stand up and do a full body shake. Imagine shaking the stress out of your body.

• If the stress could make a sound, what sound would it make? Make that sound and let it out.

• Tap your body from head to feet and back up. Releasing stress from your tissues and muscles.

• Then come back to stillness and regulate with a few deep breaths

Practice: Joy Alarms

The energy of Joy regulates your nervous system:

• Removes Spotlight Effect: You stop taking yourself so seriously or fixating on what’s going wrong.

• Stress Reduction: Sudden positive activity like dancing jolts your body, reducing levels of the body's stress hormones.

• Release of Endorphins: Triggers the release of endorphins, the body's natural feel-good chemicals.

• Promotion of Relaxation and Fear Reduction: By stimulating the production of serotonin and inhibiting stress hormones, it can aid in relaxation and lowering the perception of fear.

• Shift Your Energy: Law of Entrainment is when two frequencies meet, the lower one will rise to meet the higher one.

Set 1-3 Joy Alarms throughout the day (put on repeat daily):

• When the alarm goes off, stop what you’re doing

• Stand up and dance or shake your body

• Tap into the energy of Joy for a minute

• Then come back to stillness

• Regulate with a few deep breaths

Emotional Alchemy: Transform Feelings Into Creative Fuel

Noise and Pressure trigger sensations and feelings that drive our behaviors.

Trigger > Sensation > Feelings > Perception > Thought > Behavior

Unregulated emotions can disrupt momentum in business:

• Repressed emotions: Ignoring or suppressing feelings like frustration, anger, sadness allows them to build up and eventually erupt, disrupting work

• Emotional reactivity: Flying off the handle when triggered leads to conflicts with your team and customers, distracting you from your goals

• Lack of self-awareness: Not understanding your own emotional patterns leads to repeating self-sabotaging behaviors

• Creative blocks: Getting emotionally stuck prevents ideation and innovation required to stand out in business

• Decision paralysis: Unregulated feelings can lead to emotional paralysis and stalled choices to move work forward

Emotional Alchemy is the transformation of our feelings and emotions into creative fuel for momentum.

Practice: Process your Feelings

1. Define the core emotion you’re feeling

2. Locate the sensation in your body

3. Allow and Accept the emotion and sensation

   1. Can I allow these feelings to be here?

   2. Can I accept these feelings as they are?

   3. Can I appreciate that they carry wisdom for me?

4. Process the Emotion with Healthy Expression

   1. If this feeling could make a sound, what would it be?

   2. If this feeling could move, how would it do it?

5. Feel your Feelings through to completion

6. Regulate your Nervous System

7. Draw the Wisdom from your Feelings

Wisdom of Emotions:

There is wisdom in our emotions if we slow down enough to listen:

• Anger: what wants to be changed?

• Sadness: what wants to be let go of?

• Fear: what wants to be faced?

• Joy: what wants to be celebrated?

• Sexual Feelings: what wants to be created or acknowledged?

Relational Alchemy: Build Secure Relationships

All issues come down to a relationship issue:

• Your relationship with Yourself (like your physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial health)

• Your relationship with Others (like your partner, family, friends, team)

• Your relationship with your Business (like your company, finances, clients, marketing, responsibilities)

Having an insecure attachment to your business can create pressure that disrupts momentum:

• Anxious attachment: Constantly needing external validation and reassurance to feel worthy stunts independent progress

• Fearing criticism: Over-focusing on avoiding rejection or critique prevents taking the risks needed for business growth

• Difficulty trusting team: Micromanaging team due to lack of trust slows scalability and reach

• Abandonment fears: Worrying team members and clients will leave can spur desperate behavior rather than thoughtful strategy

• Emotionally detached: Remaining too detached from your business prevents putting in the passion and care required for success

• Avoidant attachment: Withdrawing when challenges arise leads to self-abandonment and giving up more easily

• Identity enmeshment: Having self-worth overly tied to external outcomes like revenue can spur emotional reactivity to normal business ebbs and flows

Most business issues can be solved by creating a secure attachment to your business, team, and clients.

Relational Alchemy is the transformation of unhealthy attachment to secure and healthy attachment to your business.

Practice: Secure Attachment Journalling

• What’s an issue I’m experiencing this week?

• Which of the 3 Relationship Categories (Yourself, Others, Work) does it fall under?

• Breaking it down a bit more, what sub-category (area of life or business) does it relate to?

• What’s my relationship with this area like?

• Where on the Attachment Style Spectrum would I describe my relationship with this area?

• How do I know? What are some examples of behaviors, feelings, and thought patterns I’m experiencing here?

• What CAN I do this week to move closer to a Secure Attachment with this area?

• What WILL I do this week?

Putting It All Together

Regulate the pressure to elevate your energy and expand your capacity for momentum.

Combine all 4 forms of alchemy:

• With this pressure I’m experiencing, what thoughts and stories am I creating?

  • Write them out (Mental Alchemy)

• What feelings am I experiencing?

  • Process the feeling (Emotional Alchemy)

• How is my nervous system responding to this?

  • Regulate your nervous system (Physical Alchemy)

• What would a secure attachment look and feel like?

  • Create a more secure attachment (Relational Alchemy)

Hope you enjoyed this second part of the Momentum Series.

In the next part, we’ll explore the process for refining your desired outcome and turning strategy into a clear operational plan for execution.

See you in the next letter!

Your Pal,

Colin

The Weekly Round-Up

Awesome content and things I’ve shared this past week…

• All Issues Are Relationship Issues (Monk Mode Monday)

• Why Create Company Core Values (YouTube)

• Defining Your North Star (YouTube)

You’re reading The Evolved Entrepreneur, a 2x weekly newsletter sharing practical insights to go from being overwhelmed to operating your business more profitably, predictably, and peacefully… like a true Evolutionary Entrepreneur.

Welcome to Monk Mode Monday, a simple practice every week to play and win the inside-out game of entrepreneurship!

All Issues Come Down To A Relationship Issue

Happy Monday Evolutionary Entreprenuers!

I’m coming to you this week with two principles I wish I learned much sooner in life:

1. All issues come down to a relationship issue

2. All issues can be solved by creating a secure attachment to that relationship

Take any one of your issues or frustrations.

In business or life.

Sit with it in deep reflection, distilling it down to its core.

What you’ll find is it’ll always come down to a relationship issue.

We have a relationship with everything in the universe. Few are conscious, most are unconscious.

For entrepreneurs, you can sum it up into 3 high-level Relationship Categories:

• Your relationship with Yourself (like your physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial health)

• Your relationship with Others (like your partner, family, friends, team)

• Your relationship with your Business (like your company, finances, clients, marketing, responsibilities)

As you can see, each category can be further broken down into sub-categories.

The point is, ALL your issues and frustrations can be distilled down to a relationship issue you have with yourself, others, or your work.

Let’s look at some examples.

Say you’re struggling to get new clients. It’s easy to default to blaming your marketing, sales, product, team or even the market.

But distill that issue down to the root issue and you may realize it’s your relationship with one of those areas:

• Your product/service isn’t compelling enough and you’re avoiding the work to make it better because that would mean facing the hard truth that it’s not good enough

• Your messaging doesn’t create trust and resonance with your audience and instead of refining it, you’re overly focused on pushing sales out of fear of not hitting your targets

• Your team is not performing well and you’re avoiding the hard conversation with them about performance out of fear of them leaving

It’s easy to blame the “thing” the issue is about, rather than addressing your relationship with it.

But that’s where the real issue lies. And also where your greatest opportunity lies.

The moment I realized this universal law, I couldn’t unsee it in everything I struggled with in both my business and my life.

And seeing it showed me exactly what I needed to focus on with each of my issues.

Change your relationship and you’ll solve the issue.

So how do you change the relationship?

Principle 2: All issues can be solved by creating a secure attachment to that relationship.

In relationship work, there’s a concept called Attachment Theory.

Attachment Theory focuses on the psychological explanation for the emotional bonds and relationships between people, particularly between a parent and child and between romantic partners.

It talks about 4 main Attachment Patterns or Tendencies:

• Anxious Attachment

• Avoidant Attachment

• Disorganized Attachment

• Secure Attachment

Source: Julie Menanno

I believe a lot of the principles behind Attachment Theory can also be applied to creating secure and healthy relationships with Yourself, Others, and your Business.

As Julie Menanno puts it:

“Attachment theory is NOT meant to be a prison sentence. It’s meant to help you better understand yourself so you can grow. It’s about emotional support, healthy communication, solving problems, co-regulation, and every kind of connection.”

Attachment styles and tendencies live on a spectrum, from very insecure/unhealthy to very secure/healthy.

Source: Julie Menanno

“The goal isn’t to magically go from one end to the other, but rather to meet yourself, and your relationship, where you are, and do the work from that place. Find the balance between being gentle with yourself and your partner, and holding yourself and each other accountable. That in itself is a trial and error process. Growth is never a dramatic experience. It happens with consistent effort over time. Just keep moving forward, pick yourself up and start over when you stumble, and one day something will happen and you’ll say “wow, I (we) really handled that differently than I (we) did in the past. Look at that growth.”

Bringing the principles of relationship work into my business has been game-changing, to say the least.

Being someone who grew up with avoidant tendencies, my go-to question to ask myself every time I’m faced with an issue or problem in my business or life:

Where am I being avoidant and what am I avoiding?

The answer to this question ALWAYS led to the solution of my issues.

I challenge you to give it a shot.

Today’s MMM Practice:

Take out your journal and reflect on these prompts:

• What’s your biggest or loudest issue this week?

• Which of the 3 Relationship Categories (Yourself, Others, Work) does it fall under?

• Breaking it down a bit more, what sub-category (area of life or business) does it relate to?

• What’s your relationship with this area like?

• Where on the Attachment Style Spectrum would you describe your relationship with this area?

• How do you know? What are some examples of behaviors, feelings, and thought patterns you’re experiencing here?

• What CAN you do this week to move closer to a Secure Attachment with this area?

• What WILL you do this week?

Go get it my fellow Evolutionary Entrepreneur!

I’d love to hear your takeaways, stories and experiences with these MMM practices. Share it with me at team@colinpal.com

Your Pal,

Colin

Welcome to The Evolved Entrepreneur, a weekly newsletter where I share practical tips to go from “drowning in work” to OWNING your business and life.

Now is NOT the time to do more.

Now is when “Less but Better”, is better.

I talked about seasons in the last letter and how this season is a good time to focus on strengthening your FOUNDATION and STRUCTURE.

If you’re going to build a tall building, your level of risk is correlated to the structural design of your foundations. So the bigger the building… the deeper and stronger your foundation needs to be.

And here’s the thing, you can’t BUILD UP at the same time as you BUILD DOWN. Your building will crumble or you (and your team) will drown trying to do so.

Your business should follow a methodical, steady and enjoyable pace and process of growth.

That means singular focus on one thing at a time, knowing what to focus on at each phase.

This phase or season is about strengthening foundations.

It’s not about taking on more but about doing less, and focusing the “less” on rebuilding the foundations to create MOMENTUM for the next phase.

I’ve been OBSESSED with the concept of Momentum. So I will do a 5-part deep dive series on How To Create Momentum In Your Biz & Life for 2024.

Today is on Part 1: Stabilizing your Personal OS.

Ok, let’s dive in!

Today At A Glance:

• The formula for creating Momentum

• Why stabilize your Personal OS comes first

• Reclaim your Time & Energy to create Momentum

• Defuse the Noise, Reveal the Outcomes

• Redesign your Personal OS around the Outcomes

The Momentum Formula

If you’re an Evolutionary Entrepreneur (I’m assuming since you’re on this newsletter)…

Your business, life, and art should be centered around creating MOMENTUM.

When you have momentum, everything happens on its own. With grace and ease.

How do you create momentum?

This is what I’ve been obsessing about and after studying those with it, I’ve discovered a formula they all follow:

The Momentum Formula.

• M = (O - N) E

• Momentum = (Outcome - Noise) Energy

Momentum is created by having a clear outcome, reducing the noise and pressure, and then amplifying it with your elevated energy.

You direct your obsession and attention to one desired outcome.

You eliminate everything that creates noise and pressure. The distractions, the shiny objects, the self-sabotage, the limiting stories, and anything that’s dysregulating your nervous system.

Then you turn it up. You match your energy to the loudness of the universe calling you to show up and serve.

When you’re in this state, nothing can stop you. Absolutely nothing.

You then surrender to the momentum and just let it guide you.

I know you’ve tasted the nectar of momentum before. We all have.

But maybe the noise got too loud, drowning the clarity of your calling. Maybe your energy dropped, leaving you feeling like you can’t move forward anymore. Maybe your vision got blurry, letting uncertainty and fear drive your decisions.

You’ve done it before, you can get there again.

I believe in you.

Part 1: Stabilizing Your Personal OS

The first part of creating momentum is to stabilize your Personal Operating System.

Stabilizing YOU. The human behind the business, the calling, the art, the dharma.

Your Personal OS is how you manage your:

• Time

• Energy

• Attention

When your Personal OS is not stabilized, overwhelm kicks in and disrupts momentum.

Overwhelm comes from a combination of 3 things:

• Uncertainty

• Noise and pressure

• Unregulated nervous system

Stabilizing your Personal OS turns overwhelm into momentum:

• Clear Outcome —> eliminates uncertainty

• Reduce Noise —> eliminates pressure

• Regulated Nervous System —> amplifies Energy

Strengthen your personal foundation first, then transfer that momentum into your business.

Let’s talk about how.

Do a Time & Energy Audit

Overcoming overwhelm and creating momentum starts with knowing where you’re spending your time and energy.

And what’s creating noise and pressure for you.

Master your time and energy and you’ll master the element of focus.

• Time management = what you DO with your time

• Energy management = how you BE with what you do with your time

• Time optimization = picking better things to do with your time

• Energy optimization = maximizing energy elevations and minimizing energy drains

To do this, start with a Time & Energy Audit.

I did a deep dive guide on how to do a Time & Energy Audit here.

Here’s the process:

1. Download the Time & Energy Audit Template

2. Audit your daily tasks and activities over a span of 2 weeks

3. Score your task and activities on Value level and Energy level

4. Review your audit to identify what adds noise and pressure

5. Delegate, automate, or offload low-value and energy-draining tasks

6. Reallocate your time and energy to what will create momentum

Don’t pass over this exercise.

Most of what creates noise and pressure for you can be found in how you’re spending your time and energy.

Defuse the Noise, Reveal the Outcome

Next up, stop the spiraling of your overwhelm.

When you’re stuck in the rut of overwhelm, it’s easy to feel lost, unmotivated, anxious, and like you’re being pulled in every direction. You’re operating outside your nervous system’s window of tolerance.

It’s frustrating, sometimes even defeating.

What you need to do is defuse the noise that’s creating pressure, and regulate your nervous system.

The process for this is way more simple than you’d think.

Write it out, get it out of your head. Then reflect inwards to create clarity from the inside out. This will reveal your most desired outcomes.

Remember: a clear outcome eliminates uncertainty and is the first part of the Momentum Formula.

Now you’re thinking: ok, so what am I writing out?

Pull out a pen and paper and follow this exercise step by step. Don’t just read this guide, do the work!

Step 1: List out all your issues, worries, frustrations, and anything creating noise and pressure in each of your 3 Relationship Categories

All your issues come down to an issue with one of your 3 Relationship Categories:

1. Your relationship with Yourself
   (your physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial health)

2. Your relationship with Others 
   (partner, family, friends, team)

3. Your relationship with your Business 
   (company, finances, clients, your responsibilities)

Pick one Relationship Category to start with:

• Write out all your issues and everything creating noise and pressure

• Don’t overthink it, just write what comes to mind

• Don’t judge yourself or downplay anything, just write it all out

• This can be confronting and uncomfortable — pause and take breaks, go for a quick walk, take deep breaths to regulate yourself

Repeat for all 3 Relationships Categories, a separate list for each.

Step 2: Rank them from most to least important

Pick one list:

• Go through and rank them, “1” being the most important

• Importance here means resolving this issue will make the most impact

• Again, don’t overthink it

Again, pause and take breaks to regulate as you need.

Step 3: Explore the Top Issue

Take your number 1’s in each category.

These are your Top Issues, they’re likely the ones that:

• Create the most amount of noise and pressure

• Prevent momentum from starting

• You’re avoiding the most

They hold your biggest opportunity. Let’s explore them deeper to defuse the noise.

Pick one of your Top Issues and write out:

• What are you making this Issue mean to you? Or about you? (stories you’re creating in your head)

• What is your most dominant emotion or feeling around this issue?

• How does this issue feel in your body?

• What is the uncertainty, fear, or lack of clarity you’re experiencing around this issue?

• What distractions or limitations are causing you to avoid confronting this issue?

Stand up and shake it off. Take 3 deep breaths and regulate.

Then repeat for each Relationship Category.

The noise and pressure should start to be more clear now. And you may notice some of that pressure feels offloaded just by writing this all down and getting it out of your head.

You’re doing great, let’s keep going!

Step 4: Explore the Cost

Now you’re going to explore the cost of inaction.

The cost of you not doing anything about your Top Issues. The cost of letting the noise and pressure run your life.

Pick one of your Top Issues and write out:

• What is leaving this issue unresolved costing you?

• What is staying attached to your stories, limitations, and fears costing you?

• What is letting your nervous system stay dysregulated costing you?

• What or who else is this issue impacting in your life?

• What is possible if this was no longer an issue?

Repeat for each category.

Exploring the cost of inaction will help elevate your commitment to moving forward.

Step 5: Reveal the Outcome

Now look at your Top Issue in each category.

Write out, in one simple and specific statement, what you really want for this Relationship Category.

• What is your core desired outcome?

Don’t overthink or overcomplicate it.

Create one Core Outcome for each of the 3 Top Issues.

Examples:

• Top Issue: I’m in the worst shape of my life 
  —> Outcome: I want to feel healthy physically, mentally and emotionally

• Top Issue: I have a distant relationship with my partner 
  —> Outcome: I want a have a deeper relationship with my partner

• Topic Issue: My business is not profitable 
  —> Outcome: I want my business to be profitable with at least 30% margins

Now you might be thinking…

“But Colin, I could have come to this realization without the whole journalling exercise!”

True, you could have.

But unless you reflect and write things down, the noise and pressure will continue to live in your head and body. The simple act of writing it out illuminates and defuses the noise that’s been living in your head and body.

And narrowing things down to ONE core issue and ONE core outcome allows you to create focus and momentum forward.

When you have 99 problems and 99 solutions in your head, momentum is impossible.

Ok, one more step to wrap it up!

Step 6: Make the Outcome REAL

Having a CLEAR OUTCOME means being able to visualize it so clearly as if it already happened.

When you can visualize the outcome with this level of clarity, you reprogram your body to operate as if it already happened. This attracts and creates the outcome into reality.

Choose one of your Core Outcomes and write out:

• What does this outcome look like? How will you know you achieved it?

• What does this outcome feel like when you achieve it?

• What are you doing when this outcome is achieved?

• What do you have or get from this outcome achieved?

• Who are you being when this outcome is achieved?

Repeat for each of your 3 Core Outcomes.

Take a moment, a few breaths, and just acknowledge what you’ve done here…

You’ve gotten clear on your Outcome. You illuminated and started to defuse some of the Noise and pressure.

M = (O - N) E

Momentum = (Outcome - Noise) Energy

All that’s left is to redesign your Personal OS in a way that prioritizes your core outcomes, continues to reduce the noise, and ELEVATES YOUR ENERGY.

Wrapping It Up

Ok, we covered a lot of ground in this letter:

• The Momentum Formula

• Why stabilizing your Personal OS comes first

• Reclaiming your Time & Energy by auditing it

• Defusing the Noise to Reveal the Outcomes

If you enjoyed this guide, you’ll want to consider checking out my course.

Biz Ops Mastery Course

A 5-Step Action Plan to Create Momentum in your Business & Life

Go from overwhelmed to ownership and creating unstoppable momentum by:

1. Stabilizing your Personal Operating System

2. Defining your North Star

3. Creating your Operational Plan

4. Streamlining your Value Creation Process

5. Building leverage through Ownership & Accountability

If you want early access to the video course and community, join the waitlist.

The Weekly Round-Up

Other things I’ve shared this past week…

• 35 Lessons I’m Bringing Into 2024 - my birthday reflection post! (LinkedIn version)

• Entrepreneurship is driven by trauma (YouTube)

• Creating Inner Harmony (Monk Mode Mondays)

• People Pleaser Leaders (YouTube)

• I don’t want to be a millionaire (YouTube)

You’re reading The Evolved Entrepreneur, a 2x weekly newsletter sharing practical insights to go from being overwhelmed to operating your business more profitably, predictably, and peacefully… like a true Evolutionary Entrepreneur.

Welcome to Monk Mode Monday, a simple practice every week to play and win the inside-out game of entrepreneurship!

Creating Harmony Between The 2 Players

Your entrepreneurial journey is centered around getting momentum.

Why? Because when you have momentum, things happen with ease and flow.

What gets in the way of momentum? Noise and pressure.

Especially the noise and pressure created within: the self-sabotage.

In last week’s Monk Mode Monday, we talked about recognizing the 2 Players within us:

• Player 1: the “Coach”

• Player 2: the “Player”

The key to mastering anything and creating momentum lies in the relationship between Player 1 and Player 2.

The default relationship for most entrepreneurs is filled with criticism, doubt, control and even sometimes shame. You know that inner critic that always has something to say about how you’re performing, constantly adding more noise and pressure…

That’s your Player 1 looking down at your Player 2, diminishing your potential, your work, your magic, your art, you.

The golden relationship you want between your two players is harmony, confidence and trust.

Where your Player 1 is looking up to your Player 2, in awe and recognition of its potential and natural intelligence to learn, grow, and achieve all your desired outcomes.

If Player 1 is your inner critic, Player 2 is your body.

• Your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual body

• Your supermachine of a brain and memory bank

• Your resilient AF nervous system

Player 2 is this incredible ecosystem and network of components that allows you to create the reality you desire. It’s naturally resilient, adaptable, and never stops evolving.

What it doesn’t already know, it can pick up and learn with ease. When it is allowed.

The keyword there is allowed.

You know what prevents Player 2 from growing and creating momentum?

Player 1’s judgment and need for control. Like an overbearing mother who won’t let her child naturally learn and grow. Or that micromanaging boss who won’t let you work your magic.

I want to leave you with a simple process today to create inner harmony:

• Silent Player 1 - by letting go of judgments

• Trust Player 2 - by allowing it to learn and grow

Simple, not easy. But you didn’t come here to do the easy work.

Letting go of judgments is a practice of seeing and feeling things just as it is, without adding the extras of good or bad, right or wrong.

When your Player 1 is free of judgment, it sees Player 2’s actions just as they are, allowing the space for P2 to naturally learn, adapt, grow, and master its art.

Practice this over and over, consistently, deliberately… and I promise you, magic will happen.

Practice:

What does creating inner harmony between the 2 Players look like in action?

1) Pick a desired outcome you’re trying to achieve.

This can be a desired outcome you want in your business or in your life:

• Start a YouTube channel

• Start a newsletter

• Launch an offer

• Learn to play the guitar

Get physically fit

2) Visualize the desired outcome clearly

Your Player 2 learns not through words but through senses.

Communicate to it by giving it the clearest possible image of your desired outcome:

• What does this outcome look like?

• What does this outcome feel like?

• How will you know this outcome has been achieved?

• Who are you being when this outcome has been achieved?

If you can’t fully and clearly see and feel it, do you really even want it?

3) Allow it to happen

Allowing here means letting it happen, not making it happen.

You’ve made the request for Player 2 to create the outcome, now get out of your own way and let it happen.

Let Player 2 do the work needed to practice, fail, learn, adapt, grow and master the art. Mastery creates momentum, momentum leads to the outcome.

4) Practice non-judgmental observation

Player 1 will have the urge to judge, criticize, doubt, control, or shame.

Notice that urge or when Player 1 judges. Recognize this is just Player 1’s default way of relating to and protecting Player 2.

Yeah, default. But you don’t have to live life by default, you can live life by design.

Shift the awareness from judgment to noticing things just as they are. Shift the attitude from looking down on Player 2, to looking up at and acknowledging Player 2’s potential and capacity.

This is not about positive thinking. Letting go of judgments does not mean ignoring mistakes and failures. It’s simply seeing them as they are without adding the noise.

• What happened?

• Did I get the results I wanted?

• No? Ok, what behavior or habit needs to change to adapt?

• Let Player 2 learn, adapt and evolve

• Did I get the results now?

• Yes? Great, acknowledge Player 2 and keep going

It’s about trusting Player 2, the part of you that’s capable of learning and growing from failures, and mastering the art to accomplish anything you desire in business and life.

YOU are limitless, if you allow yourself to be.

Welcome to The Evolved Entrepreneur, a weekly newsletter where I share practical tips to go from “drowning in work” to OWNING your business and life.

Most entrepreneurs are afraid of slow seasons. The great ones take advantage of it.

Like the universe, your business operates in seasons and natural cycles.

You can either swim upstream against the flow… or ride along with it.

While there’s no right or wrong way to do this, my experience has been that business and life were always easier and more enjoyable when I flowed with seasons and cycles.

I’m going to share with you how I turn my slow seasons into a catapult for momentum and growth.

Snapshot of Today’s Newsletter:

• How to make the best use of this season

• 4 best practices to strengthen your business systems and infrastructure

• 3 best practices to strengthen your personal systems

Seasons in Business & Life

Bloom follows winter, in the natural world and in your business.

As the months cool, trees shed, animals hibernate, and the vibrancy of summer fades.

But this period of decline sets the stage for the future cycle. The long nights and cold days of winter nurture the soil, build energy reserves, and lay the foundation necessary for an abundant bloom in the next season.

Your business follows a similar pattern.

Periods of rapid external growth alternate with quieter seasons where you get to redirect the focus internally. When business is booming, it’s tempting to capitalize on every growth opportunity. But that continuous hyper-output takes a toll on both you, your team, and ultimately your customers.

Like an ever-blooming plant exhausting itself to produce flowers year-round, you risk depleting your resources when constantly operating in overdrive.

Many businesses in this season, and possibly you, are experiencing a call to slow down right now.

While continuing to push for growth is not impossible, it might feel like you’re trying to push a boulder uphill. Like it’s costing more energy and resources to get the same results you’ve been getting.

This is a great time to honor that change in seasons and to turn inward, both in your business and personally.

It’s time to redirect your energy towards strengthening your systems and infrastructure, preparing for your next season of growth.

It’s time to stabilize your foundations, eliminate the noise and pressure, and ultimately expand your capacity. Both in your business and personally.

I’ll share with you what I do for my companies and for my clients.

Strengthen your Business Systems & Infrastructure

If you and you’re team are feeling too overwhelmed to add anything to your plate or to push on growth further, then don’t.

Take a pause and instead, focus on stabilizing your systems and infrastructure.

These 5 best practices will set you up for greater momentum in the next season:

1) Stabilize your responsibility to your Clients

Instead of tunnel-visioning on client acquisition, focus on client success.

• Catch up on client deliverables and promises

• Surprise and delight by overdelivering with your current clients

• Review and optimize your client delivery systems

Not only will this clean up the current queue of client delivery and free up capacity on your team, but making your clients extra happy this season can mean some juicy referrals to kick off the next season.

2) Stabilize Revenue, Expenses, and Profit

How are finances doing? What are your projections for 2024?

• If your revenue continues as is, will you be ok? If not, what needs to be done to stabilize?

• Do an audit on your subscriptions and expenses. Eliminate whatever is not needed.

• Catch up on bookkeeping, accounting, and taxes.

It’s a good time to review, analyze, and stabilize your numbers.

3) Review and optimize your infrastructure and systems

Where is there operational friction or bottlenecks in your processes?

• Review your Value Processes and improve for efficiency. Automate workflows.

• Review your SOPs and update your Knowledge Base.

• Review your meetings system, eliminate noise and time killers, optimize for productivity.

• Clean up communication channels and eliminate unused or noisy channels.

Go fix it now before it becomes an issue during growth season.

4) Review your North Star and plan out 2024

Get ahead of the game and create your strategic plan for the next season and year.

• Review your Vision, Mission, and Values. Make necessary updates and reinvigorate your team.

• Create your Goals for 2024

• Create your OKRs for the next season

Don’t wait till next year to start planning next year. Start now and you’re already ahead of your market.

Strengthen your Personal Systems & Infrastructure

Creating momentum in business also requires that you expand your personal capacity.

Take advantage of this season to turn inward and stabilize your inner systems.

1) Regulate your Nervous “System” = expand your Capacity

You’ve been in the constant “fight-flight-fawn-freeze” grind of the growth season.

Time to switch gears to recovery and rejuvenation.

High performers, like athletes, spend more time in recovery than in high performance. That’s for good reasons.

Recovery allows you to stabilize and expand your nervous system’s window of tolerance. This increases your capacity to operate in high gear without burning out.

Give yourself more time and space this season to disconnect from work and to work on YOU.

2) Review your personal Vision and Goals

Same way you would plan 2024 for your business, plan for your personal life.

• Revisit your personal vision and goals

• Re-embody your Future Self today

• Create a plan for what you want to prioritize in 2024

Your business game will always be a reflection of your inner game.

3) Reassess your Values and Commitments

When you operate on autopilot for some time, you sometimes make commitments that aren’t in alignment with your values.

Now is a good time to review them and eliminate everything that not’s aligned.

• Revisit your personal Values

• Audit each area of your life (work, relationships, social, wellness, purpose)

• Audit your commitments and where you spend your time, energy and attention

Anything that’s not a full-body FUCK YES (aligned with your values), eliminate them.

Clear the noise and pressure. Create space to tune into your wisdom.

Operate from there.

Cheering for you this season!

Your Pal,

Colin

The Overwhelm To Ownership 5-Week Action Plan

It’s a fast-track course on building the foundational systems, and operational structure for a TRUE business that's sustainable, profitable, and enjoyable.

5 Steps to go from Overwhelm to Ownership:

1. Stabilize your Personal Operating System

2. Define your North Star

3. Create your Operational Plan

4. Streamline your Value Creation Process

5. Create leverage through Ownership & Accountability

Launching in December, get on the waitlist for the sweet bonuses!

Learn more about the Biz Ops Mastery here.

The Weekly Round-Up

Awesome content and things I’ve shared this past week…

• Playing the Inner Game of Entrepreneurship (Monk Mode Monday)

• Creating Avatar Clarity with 3 Ideal Client Profiles (LinkedIn)

• Turning expectations into agreements (YouTube)

• How to retrain your new hires (YouTube)

• Secret to business success (YouTube)

Welcome to Monk Mode Mondays, a quick and simple practice each week to help you win the Inner Game of entrepreneurship!

Monk Mode Mondays

Hey Evolved Entrepreneurs!

I’m adding one more article each week to this newsletter. We’re calling it Monk Mode Mondays!

I’ll be sharing quick and simple practices every Monday to help you win the Inner Game of entrepreneurship, to operate your business and life on Monk Mode.

No fluff, no guru, no BS… just me sharing my experiences and insights I’ve learned from 7 years living as a monk and almost 15 following years doing the deep inner work.

My intention for you is simple: to be your best self, do your best work, and live your best life.

You’ll still get the usual weekly deep dives on business stuff every Thursday, but this one will add a spark of inner work magic to your Mondays!

The Inner Game

Every game has two parts: an outer game and an inner game.

The outer game is played against an external opponent, to overcome an external obstacle, and to reach an external goal.

• Growing a business

• Developing a personal brand

• Achieving financial and time freedom

• Building a healthy relationship

The inner game is played against yourself, taking place in the arena of your mind, to overcome your inner obstacles and unlearn the habits of your mind:

• Self-doubt

• Self-abandonment

• Worrying and fearing

• Attachment and controlling

The inner game is played to obtain something far greater than the satisfaction of achievement: the fulfillment of self-mastery.

Winning the inner game doesn’t add to your list of accolades and accomplishments. But the rewards and benefits you gain are lifelong and contribute to every single arena you decide to step into.

Whenever I meet someone who’s successful, I always ask them: “I want to play at the level you’re playing at, what advice would you have for me?”

The answer’s almost always something along the lines of: “master your personal habits”

I find this hilarious because when I tell my clients how important it is to build better systems, processes, and habits for both self-mastery and business… they smile, nod, and then ask “what else?”.

They’re looking for something more exciting, profound, and groundbreaking:

• The latest marketing tactic

• The proven growth strategy

• The most profitable business model

I get it, personal habits and systems are so boring.

But study, analyze, and reverse engineer every successful (and truly happy) person and you’ll discover that they’ll attribute their success and fulfillment to the same thing: self-mastery of the inner game.

So my invitation for you is to reflect on:

• What outer game are you playing in this season of your life and business?

• What does winning this outer game look and feel like?

• What inner game are you playing in this season?

• What does winning this inner game look and feel like?

• How will winning the inner game contribute to the natural win of the outer game?

If reflecting on this excites you… you’re going to love the Monk Mode Monday series.

Today’s practice for you…

Recognize The 2 Players

When you’re standing in the arena, there are 2 parts of you that are playing the game:

• Player 1: the “Coach”

• Player 2: the “Player”

The key to self-mastery, or mastering anything, lies in the relationship between Player 1 and Player 2.

Player 2 plays the game. It holds all the potential, skills, and experience to naturally play and win the game. Player 1 tells Player 2 how to play the game, how well or poorly they played, and what outcomes to aim for.

Seems simple, a powerful duo and much-needed formula for peak performance.

Yes, and the problem is when Player 1 doesn’t trust Player 2 to achieve the desired outcomes, despite Player 2 embodying all the potential and power to do so.

This is where your personal habits, beliefs, and thought patterns get in the way:

• Self-criticism: “you did a shitty job there”

• Self-doubt: “you’re not ____ enough for this”

• Over-controlling: “try harder”

• Worry, fear, guilt, shame…

The 2 parts of you are conflicting, creating noise and pressure that gets in the way of you operating at your best.

Both parts are needed, neither good or bad, right or wrong. Both parts need to play well together, this is what we call integrating your parts.

Step 1 is Awareness. To be aware that these 2 parts exist within us and to recognize which part is in the driver's seat at each moment of the game we’re playing.

Practice:

• When facing challenges or issues this week, pause and reflect

• Recognize and call out the 2 Players: the coach and the player

• Which player is in the driver’s seat?

Just recognize and notice.

Nothing to do at this stage. Practice putting in the reps of awareness.

We’ll explore more next week!

Welcome to The Evolved Entrepreneur, a weekly newsletter where I share practical tips to go from “drowning in work” to OWNING your business and life.

A common mistake most entrepreneurs make is not getting clear on who they do and don’t serve.

This isn’t about “niching down” or “niching up”.

It’s about Avatar Clarity: being clear in your offers on who you say YES to working with, who you say NO to, and knowing the difference.

The clarity is not just for you, it’s also for:

• Your team to know who to create for and how to best support them

• Your future clients/customers to know if and when they are the right fit

• Your brand to speak directly to your ideal clients

Clarity creates alignment.

Alignment creates momentum.

I’m about to give you what most coaches and consultants typically charge thousands of dollars for.

Snapshot of Today’s Newsletter:

• What is Avatar Clarity and why not knowing this will hurt your business

• How to create the 3 Levels of your Ideal Client Profiles

• How to integrate this all into your business and team

What and why Avatar Clarity?

Avatar Clarity is being crystal clear on who your offer, product, or service is for and not for.

Entrepreneurship is a path of service, not a self-serving endeavor. And through service of others and the world, we get gifted the ability to create a life of freedom, fulfilment, and joy.

I believe entrepreneurs are the biggest source of human evolution and transformation in the world.

The root of that comes from us answering the call of service from the universe.

To be in service requires being clear on WHO you’re serving.

Avatar Clarity is understanding the demographics, behavior, and psychographics of your ideal clients and customers.

This sounds simple and straightforward, and yet, almost every client I’ve worked with has struggled with clearly defining their ideal audience and customer.

Let’s start with why Avatar Clarity is important:

• It’s challenging to be the best in the world at multiple things. It’s surprisingly simple to become the best in the world at something specific.

• Your marketing is far more powerful and meaningful when you know exactly who you should be talking to.

• Having a specified audience makes it exponentially cheaper and faster to scale your business

• In today’s world of diffused attention spans, marketing to everyone means you’re marketing to no one.

• People are self-centered, they care about what your offer will do for them, not your products or services. Understanding what they truly desire helps you create better products or services.

• People trust people who talk like them and affirm their beliefs. People buy from people they trust.

• Clarity allows your team to provide the best support, meeting your clients where they’re at on their journey

I can go on but I think you get the point.

Let’s talk about how to create Avatar Clarity by creating the 3 Levels of your Ideal Client Profiles.

What are Ideal Client Profiles?

Ideal Client Profiles (ICP for short) define the demographics, behaviors, and psychographics of your ideal clients or customers.

These profiles must live in a document or somewhere everyone on your team has access to, like your Business OS or business command center.

Back to ICPs.

You want to create 3 levels of ICPs and even your Non-ICP:

• ICP 1 - your “Golden” Clients

• ICP 2 - your “Bread & Butter” Clients

• ICP 3 - your “Hand Holding” Clients

• Non-ICP - your “Do Not Sell To” people

Let’s break down how to define each one.

Defining your ICP 1

Your ICP 1 are your “Golden” Clients.

They are your BEST clients, the easiest people for you to work with and create results for. They require the least amount of time and energy from you and your team to achieve the desired outcome.

They typically make up less than 5% of your audience.

Describe their demographics:

• What is their age?

• What is their gender?

• Where do they live?

• What is their relationship status?

• What is their average income?

• Any other general information?

Describe their behaviors:

• What kind of products or services have they purchased in the past related to what you’re selling?

• Who else has the attention of your perfect clients and prospects? (What other experts or influencers do they follow?)

• What are their favorite movies, TV shows, or Netflix series? (List 1-3 each)

• What are their favorite magazines, online publications, or sources of free content they follow?

• What are their favorite books?

Describe their psychographics:

• What is their single BIGGEST problem or pain they want to solve?

• What are the 5 biggest mistakes they are making when trying to solve their problem on their own?

• What is their single BIGGEST fear that keeps them awake at night?

• What are their top 3 frustrations on a day-to-day?

• What core/dominant emotion do they feel right now? What do they want to feel?

• What are the beliefs or rules they live by? What are their beliefs about their problem/situation?

• What do they DESIRE or want to HAVE?
  (Example: health, time, money, popularity, improved appearance, comfort, freedom, pride, fulfillment, self-confidence, prestige…)

• What do they want to BE?
  (Example: good parents, good partners, good leaders, creative, proud of their business, influential over others, productive, recognized and appreciated, loved…)

• What do they want to be able to DO?
  (Example: express themselves, travel more, be present with family, acquire or build assets, impact people, improve themselves…)

• What do they want to SAVE?
  (Example: time, money, energy, discomfort, worry, doubts, risks…)

• What do they want to AVOID?

• What would their 5 biggest objections be about purchasing your product or service?

Describe what attributes make this person the BEST client for your business.

• If you’re in B2B, it could be attributes of their business. What stage of business they’re in, what industry they’re in, what elements of their business they already have that make them easy and fun to work with.

• If you’re in B2C, it could be what stage of their journey they’re in, what experience they already have, and what qualities they have that make them easy and fun to work with.

Knowing who your ICP 1’s are helps your team identify and attract the best potential clients in your audience.

Document all this in your ICP 1.

Defining your ICP 2

ICP 2 are your “Bread & Butter” Clients.

They’re fun and great to work with and require the expected amount of time and energy to serve and help get results.

Ideally, these clients make up the majority of your client base.

Define your ICP 2:

• Describe their demographics or note any differences from your ICP 1s.

• Describe their behaviors or note any differences from your ICP 1s.

• Describe their psychographics or note any differences from your ICP 1s.

• Describe what makes this person a GOOD fit for your business and what difficulties you may encounter working with this type of client that keeps them from being the BEST clients.

Knowing who your ICP 2’s are not only helps your team identify and attract them. But it also helps you better design your products and services to get your clients results faster.

For example, say you’re a YouTube growth consultant helping wellness experts build and grow their YouTube channel.

And you know the differentiator between your ICP 1 and ICP 2 is that your best clients have a warm and engaging email list that they’re already sending emails to frequently.

Then one thing you can do to provide additional support to help your ICP 2’s get results is a mini-course or training on how to warm up your email list with email nurture sequences that way they can leverage their email list to promote YouTube growth and engagement.

Clearly define your ICP 2 and document it.

Defining your ICP 3

ICP 3 are your “Hand-Holding” Clients.

These are clients you would take on and work with but you would want to be mindful of how many you’re taking on because these clients require the most time and energy from you and your team to help get outcomes.

Define your ICP 3:

• Describe their demographics or note any differences from your ICP 2.

• Describe their behaviors or note any differences from your ICP 2

• Describe their psychographics or note any differences from your ICP 2

• Describe what challenges this type of client is dealing with that makes them difficult clients to work with or to get results for

• What other products or services (down-sell or referral) can you guide this person to so that they can quickly become ICP 1 and ICP 2’s

Ideally, these clients make up less than 20% of your client base.

Your main focus is to build and market your core offer to your ICP 1’s and 2’s.

Once you’ve tapped out on attracting the ICP 1’s and 2’s in your audience, then you can move on to your marketing for your ICP 3’s.

But here’s the thing, because they’re “hand-holding” clients, you don’t want to bring them directly into your core offer.

You want to build separate products or services that turn your ICP 3’s into ICP 1 and 2’s so that they’re a better fit for your core offer.

Let’s use the scenario above with YouTube growth consulting.

If the differentiator between ICP 2 and ICP 3 is they have an existing audience or email list vs building a YouTube channel from scratch.

You don’t want to be enrolling these ICP 3’s directly into your core offer because your team is going to have to invest more time and energy working with these clients.

Instead, you can create another course or program that teaches your ICP 3’s how to build an email list first, before launching and going all in on building their YouTube channel.

Once they’ve completed the course and have an email list audience, they become an ICP 2 and have a higher chance of being successful in your core offer.

(FYI this is a hypothetical scenario and not actual YT growth advice!)

Clearly define your ICP 3 and when ready, design products and services to help them transform into ICP 1 and 2’s.

Defining your Non-ICP

Non-ICPs are people you absolutely will not take on as clients or work with.

They either:

• Are not ready for your products and services

• Are not aligned with your company’s values and mission

• Are not aligned with your personal values

Define your Non-ICP:

• Describe their demographics or note any differences from your ICPs.

• Describe their behaviors or note any differences from your ICPs

• Describe their psychographics or note any differences from your ICPs

• Describe what makes this person a Non-ICP

Document all this in your Non-ICP.

It’s important that your team knows who NOT to build and market to, and why.

Integrating your Ideal Client Profiles

What to do with these ICPs?

• Organize your ICPs somewhere everyone on your team can easily access.

• Share them with your team and educate them

• Train your Sales and Marketing team to identify each ICP and speak directly to them

• Train your Delivery team to identity each ICP and provide support meeting them where they are at

• Tag your clients with ICP labels in your Client Management System or CRM so everyone on your team is clear where each client is at

Colin’s Recommendations

Cool tools and things I personally use and rave about…

If you’re trying to level up your game on Linkedin, a tool I can’t recommend enough is Taplio (not an affiliate link)

What I like about it:

• Allows me to schedule and automate my posts weeks in advance

• Allows me to auto-plug a CTA in the comments immediately after a post is published. This way I can keep my post links-free for the algorithm and instead put any CTA links in the comments.

• Has AI features that help with generating hooks and viral content ideas

• Makes it easy for me to engage with other top creator’s posts on LinkedIn, helping me build relationships and increase engagement

• Has features to automate outreach and start conversations that build relationships and find prospects for my offers.

Taplio has been a game-changer for my LinkedIn growth strategy. Which btw, if you’re not already following me on LinkedIn… connect with me here.

The Weekly Round-Up

Awesome content and things I’ve shared this past week…

• 7 Ways To Build Mental Fortitude As An Entrepreneur (LinkedIn)

• How To Save Time On Meetings With Asynchronous Updates (YouTube)

• Special Invitation to the Biz Ops Academy (you won’t want to miss this!)

Welcome to The Evolved Entrepreneur, a weekly newsletter where I share practical tips to go from “drowning in work” to OWNING your business and life.

What makes the difference between a good entrepreneur and a great entrepreneur?

Many would say talent and intelligence.

But the research studies I’ve found and the entrepreneurs I’ve spoken to say that talent and intelligence account for less than 50% of their achievements.

What made the bigger impact than talent or intelligence?

Mental fortitude.

Snapshot of Today’s Newsletter:

• Building mental fortitude is more than just developing mental toughness, it’s about building capacity

• 7 practical ways to build mental fortitude as an entrepreneur and leader of people

7 Ways To Build Mental Fortitude

Mental fortitude is more than just mental toughness.

I just got back from co-facilitating a warrior training retreat for men. A conversation with one of the guys there really stood out for me.

He came to the retreat wanting to build more mental fortitude to show up more powerfully in his work and life.

I asked him what would help forge that mental fortitude for him.

He wanted tools and practices to build mental strength, warrior-like focus, and emotional steadiness.

I hear this a lot from entrepreneurs I work with. They associate mental fortitude with grit, stoicism, and hyper-masculine traits.

Yes, mental fortitude is all that AND it’s much more and runs much deeper than just that.

True mental fortitude is the capacity to respond to a range of emotions and experiences without being attached or stuck in them.

As an entrepreneur, you understand the roller coaster of emotions and experiences in the entrepreneurial journey.

Mental fortitude is being able to ride the flow of that roller coaster without drowning in the highs or lows. To choose how you define each experience, what you want to take away from it, what you want to let go of because it doesn’t serve you, and more importantly, to keep moving forward.

Here are 7 practical tips to build mental fortitude as an entrepreneur:

1. Write down your Issues and Problems

Write it out and it’s halfway solved.

The surest way to not solve your issues and problems is to keep worrying about them, in your head.

Worrying and overthinking will disconnect you from the present moment.

It’s only in the present moment that you can strategically think of the solution, create a plan, and execute it.

Writing out your issues and problems is a way to organize your thoughts.

If you don’t already have one, create an Issues List for your business (and even one for your personal life).

• Write out all the pending issues and problems

• Prioritize which ones are most important to solve right now

• Choose one to start with

• Come up with the solution and plan

• If it can be delegated, decide who can this be delegated to

• Delegate it (not to be confused with abdicating it)

• Track the progress

• When resolved, mark it completed

• Do the same with all the issues on your list

• Keep adding to your Issues List as you go

The key here is to have a living document to keep tracking ongoing issues. A single place for you to log and organize your thoughts.

Invite your team to contribute issues they’re seeing or experiencing in your company.

2. Organize your Feelings, Regulate your Nervous System

Similar practice to the first.

Create a Feelings Journal or log, track and organize your feelings and emotional triggers.

While your Issues List should be public to your team, your Feelings Journal can be private to you.

The Habitual Hustler archetype by default is avoidant to their feelings, often believing their emotions make them weaker and are a distraction to their entrepreneurial muse.

The Evolved Entrepreneur understands that their feelings carry wisdom and being attuned to them allows them to tap into a source of power and creativity for their muse.

Mental fortitude is less about emotional resilience and more about emotional flexibility and responsiveness. It’s a capacity to meet all your emotions—anger, frustration, sadness, grief, fear, joy—and regulate your nervous system.

I’ve found that an unregulated nervous system, personally and collectively as a team, is the biggest obstacle to mental fortitude and momentum in teams.

How do you lean more into your feelings when they’re uncomfortable or come second in priority to your work?

Create a system to organize and track them.

• Create a Feelings Journal

• Time block the end of your work days

• List out the feelings and emotional triggers you experienced each day

• Check in with your body, which one still feels present (loud or subtle)

• Where in your body are you holding that feeling

• If that feeling could express itself, through sound or movement, what would it do

• If it has a voice, let it speak. If it wants to move, let it move through body

• Process the feeling until completion, then come back to your calm center

• Check in, what do you (or your body) need right now

• Honor that

Notice how it has nothing to do with the person, thing, or event that triggered that feeling.

Your mind will want to go straight to problem solving or “fixing”. But that’s what the Feelings Journal is for, leave the problem solving in the Issues List.

Your Feelings Journal is about organizing and processing your feelings, regulating your nervous system, and building capacity so you move forward.

3. Let go of what happened, focus on what you’re going to do about it

Mental fortitude is to operate in creator consciousness, not victim consciousness.

It’s not about what happened, it’s about what you choose to do about what happened.

• Your launch didn’t go the way you wanted

• Your new hire is not meeting expectations

• Your numbers went down this month

Dwelling on what went wrong in your business gives more power to what you can’t change, the past.

• Reflect on what went wrong

• Draw the lessons from it

• Integrate the lessons into what you’re going to do next

• Focus on creating your future

Lots will go wrong on your journey, it’s built into the definition of entrepreneurship.

You can view it as something happening TO you. Or you can view everything as happening FOR you.

This not only builds mental fortitude for you, but trains your team to operate in creator consciousness as well.

Victim consciousness attracts more victim consciousness.

Choosing to create the business and life you want, gives your team permission to do the same.

4. Turn off the Spotlight Complex

One of the biggest obstacles keeping entrepreneurs like you from showing up fully in your work and life, is the spotlight complex.

The reality is, nobody is thinking about you the way you’re thinking about you. Everyone is busy thinking of themselves.

Nobody is evaluating you the way you’re evaluating yourself. They’re all busy evaluating themselves.

Yet, we give so much power and energy to what we think others are thinking about us.

Turn off the spotlight complex, stay present and focused in your lane, and go all in.

5. Shapeshift into a mentally stronger version of you

Mental fortitude is the capacity to respond to all emotions and experiences.

Mental fortitude is to be a shapeshifter.

To be able to shift into an identity or version of you that better serves where you want to go.

The opposite of mental fortitude is not mental weakness, it’s mental rigidity — the inability to change or adapt.

Each season of life, stage of business, and level of entrepreneurship will call for a new version of you.

The ones who struggle with mental fortitude are the ones who stay in denial and avoidance when called to shift and transform.

The ones who answer the call, discover a power and strength that comes with the identity shift.

Don’t get me wrong, shapeshifting will come with its share of challenges too. You will experience resistance, the death of the old self, grief, and likely feel confusion and lostness during the transition. Surrendering and taking ownership of this shift will create the magic you’re looking for.

But it’s by far less challenging and draining than staying complacent with a version of you that no longer serves you and what you’re being called to do.

If you’re feeling that call to shapeshift:

• Realign and get clear on your long term vision

• Identity WHO you need to be to make that vision a reality (your Future Self)

• Close your eyes and visualize what your Future Self’s life looks and feels like

• What are the qualities, beliefs, and values of your Future Self?

• What would it look and feel like to embody your Future Self now?

• Notice any resistance in your body. If there are any, where are you experiencing it?

• What does this resistance to this new identity need?

• What would letting go of this resistance look/feel like?

Your nervous system needs to feel safe to hold this new identity and uphold this new set of beliefs in order for you to shapeshift.

Most people think building mental fortitude is mindset work, it is and more truthfully, it’s identity work.

6. Cultivate deep presence in your work, your life, and your body

Presence is the cornerstone of leadership potency and power.

Signs of low mental fortitude:

• Obsessing with work as a way to distract yourself from what’s really going on

• Checking out instead of being fully present with people around you

• Disconnecting from your body and avoiding what it’s trying to tell you

We disassociate from our body to ignore the pain, at the cost of cutting our connection to our emotions and our ability to experience.

You can’t build mental fortitude without allowing yourself to experience the pains and pleasures.

Presence allows you to interface with reality, instead of just your ideas of reality.

As Thoreau wrote in Walden, presence is the difference between an invisible man/woman leading a life of “quiet desperation” and a man/woman who turns heads as they walk into a room.

You can feel the potency of a leader’s mental fortitude through their presence.

Being present means not being drowned in your mental chatter, anxiety, and fears. Not drowning about the past, what has happened, or what others are thinking about you.

The key to presence is:

• Attention and retention of attention

• Connecting to your senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell

• Being grounded in your body

Presence is the cornerstone of potency and power in mental fortitude, leadership, and heck, even sex.

7. Face your Shadows, integrate them, and leverage them

Alongside Identity Work, I believe Shadow Work is one of the most powerful tools to build mental fortitude.

You are only as strong as your ability to explore and integrate the parts of you that you don’t love.

To integrate your shadows is to take back your power from them.

Until you integrate your shadows, your 7-year old self (unconscious self) will be the one running your business and leading your team.

Mental fortitude is to operate your business and lead by DESIGN, rather than by DEFAULT.

I’ve helped many entrepreneurs take their business to the next level, simply by guiding them to meet and integrate the parts they don’t love about themselves. The power they reclaimed poured into their business and team. The “strategies” and “tactics” solved themselves along the way.

There’s too much to write about when it comes to shadow work. I’ll save this for another newsletter.

In the meantime, here’s a great guide I recommend on doing shadow work.

There you have it, the 7 ways to build mental fortitude as an entrepreneur:

1. Write down your Issues and Problems

2. Organize your Feelings, Regulate your Nervous System

3. Let go of what happened, focus on what you’re going to do about it

4. Turn off the Spotlight Complex

5. Shapeshift into a mentally stronger version of you

6. Cultivate deep presence in your work, your life, and your body

7. Face your Shadows, integrate them, and leverage them

The Weekly Round-Up

Awesome content and things I’ve shared this past week…

• Why Hiring Is Not Always The Solution (YouTube)

• Team Hack: Asynchronous Weekly Updates (YouTube)

• 13 Principles of The Evolved Entrepreneur (LinkedIn)

• We’re launching the Evolved Entrepreneurs free community soon, join the waitlist!

Welcome to The Evolved Entrepreneur, a weekly newsletter where I share practical tips to go from “drowning in work” to owning your business and life.

We rebranded the newsletter!

From the “20 Hour Founders” to “The Evolved Entrepreneur”.

Same practical and implementable content every week.

Slight shift in focus.

Bigger why.

Today at a Glance:

• Why we rebranded the newsletter

• What is The Evolved Entrepreneur

• 13 Principles of The Evolved Entrepreneur

Why We Rebranded?

Evolution.

Entrepreneurship, building and growing a business, is the most transformational and spiritual journey we get to have in our lifetime.

It’s increasingly challenging, yet we continue to endure it, and at times thrive through it.

There’s a joy, or what Carolyn Elliot calls an “Existential Kink”, that we find in this challenge.

Because through it, we get to evolve while being a source of human evolution for others.

As I’m going through this journey myself, I’m called to a much deeper commitment to entrepreneurship, teaching, and therefore, this newsletter.

When I started the 20 Hour Founders newsletter had one focus: to help you design your business, systems, and teams in a way that gives you freedom in your life.

In this next chapter of the newsletter, the focus has shifted to helping you take full ownership of your business, your entrepreneurial journey and your life.

To step up into what I’m calling the “Evolved Entrepreneur”.

What is The Evolved Entrepreneur?

The Evolved Entrepreneur is an archetype.

Archetypes, by Jungian studies, are universal symbols and models of people and personalities that play a role in influencing human behavior.

You’ll see archetypes in many different bodies of work.

In men’s work, there are 4 archetypes of masculinity: King, Warrior, Magician, Lover.

In women’s work, there are 7 feminine archetypes: Mother, Maiden, Queen, Huntress, Sage, Mystic, and Lover.

In branding, there are 12 brand archetypes: the Innocent, Everyman, Hero, Outlaw, Explorer, Creator, Ruler, Magician, Lover, Caregiver, Jester, and Sage.

In my own personal journey of life and entrepreneurship, I’ve noticed different archetypes that have played a role in influencing my conscious and unconscious behaviors in each chapter.

At a high level, I went from being a Wounded Boy to a Monk to a Habitual Hustler, and now stepping into my Evolved Entrepreneur.

Each archetype contributed to my transformational process. It brought out the shadows and challenges I needed to face.

It brought me closer to the man I wanted to be for my family and community, as well as the entrepreneur I wanted to be for the world.

I’ve come to realize that the old way of operating as an entrepreneur no longer served me, my vocation, and the world around me.

This called for a new way of operating and a new way of being for me.

Here’s my invitation to come join me on this journey, especially if you too, are feeling called to step into a new way of entrepreneurship and leadership.

Old way = Habitual Hustler

New way = Evolved Entrepreneur

The easiest way I can explain this is by pointing out the principles that shaped the old way vs new way of operating as an entrepreneur in this new era.

13 Principles of the Evolved Entrepreneur

1. The “Second Mountain” quest is more fulfilling

The Habitual Hustler chases what David Brooks calls the “First Mountain”, where the primary goal is self-satisfaction and accomplishments. This is what most entrepreneurs set out to accomplish when they start their entrepreneurial journey. To build a successful business, to hit the $100k months, to be acknowledged for something.

The Evolved Entrepreneur is on a quest for something deeper, the “Second Mountain”. Brooks explains that while the climb of the first mountain can be exhilarating, reaching the top will only open your eyes to a much deeper and more profound commitment. A quest to surrender and give themselves away to a vocation, to do what the world has called them to do, not just what they want to do.

2. Family and Community are the most important responsibilities and assets

The Habitual Hustler prioritizes business first above life and relationships. They are consumed by work, neglecting health, relationships, and self-care. They hustle 24/7, frequently burning out mentally and physically, giving their family and community what’s left.

The Evolved Entrepreneur prioritizes family, relationships, and personal growth, knowing that business growth will expand as a byproduct. There is no “balance” with their family and relationships, they get my best and everything else comes 2nd place.

3. Create Leverage with better Systems & Teams

The Habitual Hustler will push themselves to exhaustion in the name of productivity. They glorify the hustle to get “more” done. They stay stuck in solopreneurship and avoid expanding through leverage. They strive for control, thinking control is what brings them freedom.

The Evolved Entrepreneur sees time, attention, and energy as precious resources to be optimized. They design systems and build highly effective teams to create leverage. It’s not about doing more but about doing more of the right things and delegating the rest. Creating leverage and letting go of control is what sets them free.

4. Go all in on people, People outrank Opportunities

The Habitual Hustler leads through control and self-interest. They prioritize wins, numbers, and opportunities over developing people and building relationships. Their ego drives their decisions.

The Evolved Entrepreneur leads with authenticity, integrity, and service. They invest in building relationships and creating empowered leaders. They don’t just want to have a reputation, they want to be known as an advocate of people. They understand there’s a difference between caring about someone and caring about what someone can do for you.

5. Entrepreneurship As A Spiritual Journey

The Habitual Hustler sees business as a vehicle for gain and ego gratification. They numb themselves with work, as a way to disassociate from the pains and challenges of their life.

The Evolved Entrepreneur sees business as a vehicle for personal and spiritual growth. They allow the challenges of business and life to be a reflection of what needs to be worked on from within. Each challenge leads to another level of evolution, self-expression, and self-expansion.

6. Be In Flow With Seasons

The Habitual Hustler is always on, in hustle mode, regardless of what season of life and work they’re in.

The Evolved Entrepreneur is attuned to the push and pulls of seasons and cycles of their energy. They design their workflow accordingly. During push seasons, they’re committed to getting things done and moving the business forward. During pull seasons, they create space for rest and recovery.

7. Be Driven by Joy and Fulfillment

The Habitual Hustler seeks validation through external achievements and accomplishments. Their satisfaction and happiness are temporary and conditional.

The Evolved Entrepreneur knows happiness is good, but joy is better. Happiness fades, we get used to the things that used to make us happy. So instead, they cultivate inner joy, peace, and meaning. Living with joy, wonder, and fulfillment is self-sustaining.

8. Face and Own your Shadows

The Habitual Hustler avoids facing their shadows and healing their traumas. They suppress and repress their shadows and traumas, allowing them to unconsciously drive the way they reactively and impulsively operate. Their Past Self dictates their plan, drives their business, and leads their team.

The Evolved Entrepreneur chooses to operate by design, rather than by default. They meet their shadows and integrate them. They work on their traumas and find healthy ways to consciously meet their needs and wants. They find joy and “kink” in this process of evolution and growth, allowing their Future Self to be their guide for the present and the leader of their business.

9. Be the Main Character

The Habitual Hustler is the version of you that plays by the scripts and programming handed to you. They let everyone else around them tell them how entrepreneurship should be done. They chase the success stories and highlights of other entrepreneurs.

The Evolved Entrepreneur is the version of you that is no longer playing by the scripts of entrepreneurship that were handed to you by other people–friends, influencers, marketers, experts, or the media–but rather, by the vision that you get to create yourself. They play the main character, and they play it all out.

10. Centered and Groundedness is Sustainable

The Habitual Hustler is addicted to chaos and overwhelm. The chaos despite being challenging feels familiar and “safe” to them. They unconsciously choose chaos and wonder why their team is always overwhelmed.

The Evolved Entrepreneur chooses to be centered and grounded. Being centered means having a calm mind and not being off balance. Being grounded means being rooted and connected to your body. Centered and groundedness creates a co-regulating space for their team. A centered leader hits the team’s nervous system differently.

11. Your Word is Magic

The Habitual Hustler is reactive and therefore, doesn’t see the power of their word. Their word disempowers themselves and those around them.

The Evolved Entrepreneur is conscious of the power of their word. They practice saying what they mean and meaning what they say. Their word becomes magic, when they say, it is so.

12. Keeping Customers > Getting Customers

The Habitual Hustler focuses on getting clients to drive up revenue. They prioritize marketing and growth over customer delivery, fulfillment, and satisfaction. Keeping them stuck in the feast and famine of entrepreneurship.

The Evolved Entrepreneur plays the long-term game and focuses on keeping clients to sustain profit and business health. They prioritize creating great products and services that create true value for their customers.

13. Structure & Process Sets You Free

The Habitual Hustler avoids structure and process because they feel it keeps them in a box, constricting freedom and flow. They value rapid growth over sustainable growth.

The Evolved Entrepreneur thrives with structure and process because they know it will set them and their team free. They prioritize creating systems, and processes, and building their team around the infrastructure. They are methodical and strategic, even with the boring but necessary work.

Join The Evolved Entrepreneur’s Community

I’m feeling called towards building a community of Evolved Entrepreneurs.

A place where we can come together and share lessons, stories, and insights.

If you’d like to follow along and join me, hop on this waitlist to be notified when I open up this free community later in November.

Here’s what I’m thinking:

• Curated discussions and live Q&As

• Monthly community challenges

• Knowledge base of content

• Courses and trainings

• Pre-built systems

If that’s something you’d be interested in, join the waitlist here:

Welcome to the 20 Hour Founders, a weekly newsletter where I provide actionable insights to help you build better systems and teams to scale your business and reclaim your freedom.

Today at a Glance:

• The words you speak reinforce and recreate your experience of reality

• The level of leadership you’re seen for will match the integrity of your word

• Saying No protects your integrity, and therefore, your leadership

• Know when to Say No with 3 Simple Questions

The Power Of Your Words

Your words have tremendous power: over you and those you lead.

The words you speak are a reflection of your inner beliefs. They reinforce and recreate your experience of reality.

And when you’re in a position of leadership, they will also impact the people you lead.

Using disempowering language towards yourself will reflect and reinforce a limiting belief about your identity.

• I’m not good with marketing and sales

• I’m not great with building and leading teams

• I’m always struggling or failing with business

You’re unconsciously convincing yourself that these thoughts are true.

And when you believe them, you codify them into your reality.

Disempowering thoughts and the inner critic is inevitable. So what should you do instead?

Rewrite your words and you’ll rewrite the code.

• Catch the habit of using disempowering language

• Pause and step back without judging or shaming yourself

• Rewrite and choose words that match the reality you want to create

The key here is to believe the words you’ve re-coded.

• What do I need to learn to get good with marketing and sales?

• What would make me better at building and leading teams?

• What did I learn from my struggles and failures that make me now better at business?

All this also applies to words you use towards those you lead.

Choose disempowering words and you reinforce their belief, and therefore, their experience of their reality.

Re-choose your words and you train people to re-code their belief and reality.

Integrity is Leadership

As an entrepreneur, it’s easy to put all your focus on building and growing your business.

Forgetting an equally (if not more) important role you’ve taken on: leadership.

The level of leadership and influence you’re seen for by your team, customers, and community is directly proportionate to the integrity of your word.

Integrity here can be applied to 2 things:

• To say what you mean and mean what you say

• To do what you say you’re going to do or not do

Read those again and let it really sink in.

Then be radically honest and rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, how strong is the integrity of your word.

• Do you say what you mean, not withholding your truth?

• Do you mean what you say, not saying what you want people to hear?

• When you say you’re going to do something, or accept a task, do you complete it?

• When you say you’re not going to do something, do you honor it?

If you’re feeling really courageous, go and ask the people you lead (your team, customers, community, family) to rate you.

Want to step up into greater leadership, start with crystallizing the integrity of your word.

Saying No

Being in integrity with your word sometimes (probably most times) requires Saying No.

Saying no to projects, tasks, and opportunities given to you will protect your integrity.

Struggling to say no is a “people pleaser” pattern.

People Pleaser Leadership is weak leadership. A bit harsh? It’s a truth I subscribe to and invite you to reflect on.

People pleasing is a behavioral pattern where people seek approval and validation by being extremely nice and accommodating to others, even at the expense of their own needs.

This stems from a fear of rejection and a desire to please others and be accepted. While the intention may be good, the impact does more harm to both you and others.

It chips away at your integrity, your leadership, and your team’s trust in you.

A leadership flex is knowing when to say no and modelling this integrity to your team.

Know When To Say No

With 3 simple questions.

I learned this practice from a relationship and communication coach.

It’s when you have something you want to say to someone—especially when you’re angry or emotionally triggered—you ask yourself first:

• Does this actually need to be said?

• If so, does this need to be said by me?

• If so, does this need to be said by me right now?

If I answered no to any one of those, then I would pause and take a step back from saying it.

I would reflect on the power of the words I wanted to say, and decide if I needed to rewrite and recode them. Then I decided when I should say them.

Not only did this practice change the way I communicate in my relationships. It also works when applied it to my workflow.

When projects, tasks, or opportunities fall onto my plate, I ask the same 3 questions before saying yes to them:

• Does this actually need to be done? Maybe it’s irrelevant, unnecessary, not a good use of my time, or not aligned with my company’s goals.

• If it does need to be done, then I ask: Does this need to be done by me? Maybe there’s someone else on my team this is better suited to, or maybe it could be automated.

• If it does need to be done by me, then I ask: Does this need to be done by me now? Is this important enough that it needs to be done now or can it be scheduled for later?

This helps me filter out projects and tasks that are irrelevant, can be delegated or automated, or simply don't need my attention right now.

That way I’m prioritizing what’s most important AND I’m protecting my integrity by only committing to what I know I’ll do and complete.

Use these 3 questions as your filter for deciding when to say yes or no to things that your team gives you.

Stay in integrity, strengthen leadership, and model the power of words.

To wrap things up…

The well-known magic word “abracadabra” translates to “I create that which I speak”.

Your word is magic.

You teach people to know that if you said it, it is so. You also teach the universe that if you believe it, it is so.

Colin’s Recommendations

A book I just finished reading and recommend…

10X Is Easier Than 2X by Benjamin Hardy

Why I like it:

• Hardy breaks down the science and practice of the previously vague concept of “10X’ing”

• His process and methods are counterintuitive but when put into practice, gives me the sense of “of course!”

• All this can be applied to both business and life

The Weekly Round-Up

Awesome content and things I’ve shared this past week…

• The 3P’s of Operational Excellence (LinkedIn)

• The ICE Scoring Framework for Prioritization (LinkedIn)

I’m starting a YouTube channel this week!

Yup, that means video content and in-depth trainings coming soon.

Come follow along and subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

Welcome to the 20 Hour Founders, a weekly newsletter where I provide actionable insights to help you build better systems and teams to scale your business and reclaim your freedom.

Most entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking A-Players have the same needs as them.

What you need to be a rockstar entrepreneur, is different from what your team needs to be an A-Player. Confusing the two will prevent you from building your dream team.

Today at a Glance:

• The Hierarchy of Needs for A-Players

• What your A-Players need at each level

• How to give them what they need to elevate to the next level

A-Player’s Hierarchy of Needs

Your job as an entrepreneur, founder, or business owner is to build up a team of A-Players who can operate your business and actualize your vision.

If you want to do that, you must first understand what A-Players need to be A-Players.

You’re probably familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which outlines the levels of human needs.

From the bottom of the pyramid, there are the fundamental needs of:

• Physiological needs (water, food, housing, etc.)

• Safety

• Love and Belonging

• Esteem

Then going up the pyramid are the higher-level needs:

• Cognitive

• Aesthetic

• Self-Actualization

• Transcendence

When your needs at the current level are met, you elevate to the next level with a new set of needs.

Here’s the thing, what your needs will look like (as an entrepreneur) can be very different from what your team members’ needs (as an employee or contractor) will look like.

As entrepreneurs, we often make the mistake of thinking they want what we want.

We want freedom (aka fewer meetings, more space to do whatever we want).

They don’t want too much freedom. Yes, they want autonomy, but they also need:

• Clear outcomes they’re supposed to work towards

• Feedback and validation to know they’re on the right track

• Celebration when they hit the outcomes

• Then next outcomes so they can keep growing and achieving

This requires the right amount of meetings, the right amount of space, and the right amount of guidance and structure.

To build up A-Players, you must understand what they need at each level and provide it to them. Let’s explore what those can be!

Safety

We’re going to skip Physiological Needs because that’s the same for both you and your team members.

For Safety, they need:

• Job security

• To know what the baseline of performance is required

• To know what’s going to cost them their job security

As an entrepreneur, your tolerance for risk and danger is much higher. Theirs is less so providing them what they need to “feel” safety is essential.

Action: Create clear Role Scorecards that outline the baseline expectations of their Role, Responsibilities, Results, and Requirements.

Belonging

A-Players need:

• To feel like they’re part of and contributing to the team

• To feel Seen & Heard

At work, you may find your belonging and love through your network of colleagues and masterminds you’re in.

Your A-Players may not have their own masterminds, so at work, they’ll need to find belonging through their team.

Action: Create opportunities for them to contribute their unique perspectives, ideas, and opinions…and be seen and heard regardless if they’re right or wrong.

Esteem

A-Players need:

• To feel recognized for their expertise and skills

• To feel self-confident in their role

You find self-confidence through the results of your business and accomplishments. They find self-confidence through the results of their role.

Action: Provide clear expectations of results, outcomes and KPI targets so that there can be clear evidence when they’re winning.

Cognitive

A-Players need:

• To feel like they’re learning and growing

• To feel challenged and motivated to rise to the next level

Learning and growing are built into your role as an entrepreneur by default. To be challenged is in your nature.

Learning, growing, and challenges are not always built into your team member’s roles.

Action: Set big goals and outcomes with them to challenge them, and provide coaching and mentorship to help them achieve their goals. Then keep setting bigger goals so they can keep winning.

Aesthetic

A-Players here need:

• To feel in AWE of the impact they’re making

• To see and appreciate the beauty and joy within their work

You will experience the AWE of the impact your business is making. But your A-Players may not until you make it clear how their role and work is connected to the impact your business is making.

Action: Make the connection between their Role and work to the impact it makes for your business and clients. Highlight the beauty of their work and results.

Self-Actualization

A-Players need:

• To feel like they’re unraveling their highest potential

• To see clearly what mastery looks like and the path to get there

• To know at what point they need to move beyond their current role here

Help them achieve their fullest potential here. Sometimes, that means being clear with them when they need to move into a new role or even move on to a new company to get to the next level.

The most transformational thing for me when I was an employee, was when my boss told me, “Colin, you’re done here, you need to go start your own business and share your expertise with the world.”

Action: Create a career growth roadmap with them and a game plan to get there. Provide them with the mentorship and resources they need.

Transcendence

A-Players here need:

• To feel like they’re elevating and operating at a higher level of consciousness at work and outside of work

The highest level of transformation you can provide your A-Players is giving them what they need to raise the level of consciousness they operate at.

This goes beyond professional development, it’s personal and spiritual growth.

They become more than just an A-Player at your company, they become an A-Player in life.

Action: provide personal growth coaching and mentorship to help them grow beyond just their career but also as a person.

Conclusion

There you have it, an A-Player’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Where to start?

• Pick 1-2 of your top A-Players on your team

• Do a 1:1 with them and review the Hierarchy of Needs together

• Explore which level they feel their needs are not fully being met

• Create an action plan and start leveling up your A-Players

• Repeat with each team member

Develop A-Players on your team by meeting them at whichever stage they’re at and providing them with what they need to get to the next level.

Colin’s Recommendations

Cool tools and things I personally use and rave about…

Magai: one of my favorite AI tools that my team and I use daily.

What I like about it:

• I get premium versions of GPT-4 and Claude 2 for one subscription

• Can create custom AI Personas and save them for quick access

• Can save prompts I like and easily share it with my team

• Folders where my team can organize chats (marketing, content, operations, etc)

• Can generate images with Midjourney

• Can read PDFs and auto-fetch YouTube transcripts

Pretty much an all-in-one AI tool for me and my team, with one subscription.

The Weekly Round-Up

Awesome content and things I’ve shared this past week…

• 7-Part Post Series on the 7 Ways Entrepreneurs Self-Sabotage [LinkedIn]

• How to Create Role Clarity & Accountability On Your Team [LinkedIn]

• Free (and Open Source) Role Scorecard Library - 25+ role scorecard templates