It happened with the cloud. Software used to live on your computer, then on a local network, then in the sky. Some people said it was incredible. Some people said it was dangerous.

The ones who said it was incredible got ahead.

We are in that moment again.

Software used to be where we do our work.

That is no longer the case.

Now it is what is doing our work.

I have been saying this for over a year. Writing newsletters about it. Telling anyone who would listen that the traditional interface was ending, that one day we would talk to our software and it would act on what we said, that humans would stay in the loop to judge the output but a massive layer of manual work was going away.

This week we shipped it.

Any text field in FM Dashboard now has a microphone. You talk, it transcribes, it analyzes the note, and it acts on what you said. Work order ETA updated. Flag toggled. Status changed. One voice note. Nine cents.

You can speak a new work order into existence. No more clicking and tapping, just message and productivity.

Contractors no longer have to fill out invoice forms. They just upload their invoice document, and the form fills itself out.

AI is compressing departments into individuals. Another way to look at it: it is expanding individuals into departments.

Both things are true at the same time.

If you have a software provider telling you not to worry about AI, that it is hype, that it is dangerous, I will tell you exactly what that means. They have not used the tools. They are operating from a defensive position. They do not want their job to change.

You owe it to your customers to find out what is actually possible right now.

We did. We are not waiting anymore.

.

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But first, a little back story.

I started writing about how AI was changing the way I work last year.

My first post was last February, and it was about how feeding a sales transcript to ChatGPT saved a sale and earned my business a very large annual contract. You can read it here.

My second post was in February of last year. I talked about how AI doesn’t need menus. It just needs access to data, and that one day I think that people will interact with software the same way they communicate with other people, through text messaging, email, phone conversations. You can check that out here.

And my third post was in April. I talked about how people are going to need to shift from being doers of tasks to people who can make good decisions about what needed to be built and what good work looks like. And you can read that here.

And then I stopped writing about it for a while because I was using it. I believe the best way to understand something new is to immerse yourself in it. Because this technology is going to have such a giant impact on my business and the way that work gets done on computers, I felt like it was irresponsible to simply dabble.

What I’m about to say next sounds insane. 11 days ago, I installed a piece of software on an extra computer and accomplished more in that time than I’ve accomplished in the last six months.

But the insane part is that I did most of this by sending messages to that software on Telegram. I asked it to do something. It did it, and I reviewed and gave feedback back on the output.

I immediately began to think about a book that I read back in 2013 that changed the way that I managed time. The book was called The 4-Hour Workweek, and it gave me a framework for creating processes and delegating them to people that I had been missing.

But now that playbook is outdated.

For years I tried to apply those principles with what was available. It worked, sort of. But there was always a gap. The system required you to have enough capital to hire people to delegate to, which is not a reality for most individual workers and definitely not a reality for new founders. We often have to wait for the revenue to catch up in order to put the people in place to do the things that we need to do, and we’re stuck filling in the gaps.

I’ve never been short on good ideas. I have been short on resources and skills to execute on them more times that I like to count.

Three Moments That Broke the Pattern

The first: I handed ChatGPT a legal document. It explained it back to me better than most attorneys I’ve paid. I sat with that for a minute.

The second: I used Claude Code to build software. I am not a programmer. I have never been a programmer. But now I contribute code regularly to my company’s SaaS product and build side projects for fun.

And the third moment was when I installed OpenClaw on that old computer and started talking to it on Telegram.

11 Days

Again, I know this sounds crazy. Hello.

It’s been 11 days since I set that machine up.

In those 11 days I have built two working web app prototypes, both deployed to servers on the internet, a storefront to sell my book, the foundation of an AI agent product for my company, reviewed more than 50 research reports about my industry and technology, my dream digital notebook app, a content automation system, and other projects that I decided to not pursue.

And an 80-plus page book about the AI and the last 11 days.

This is how work is going to be done in the future. It’s how work is being done for me right now. I decide what needs to get done. I delegate it to an AI agent to do it. I review the output, give feedback, and decide what goes out into the world.

The gap between wanting to do something and being able to do it is disappearing.

The 4-Hour Workweek told me to build a team. I just didn’t expect the team to run on a computer on an office shelf.

What I Wrote

The book is called “The Agent-Powered Workweek: How OpenClaw Gives You a Team While You Sleep.”

This is in theory or hype; it’s the actual setup and workflow that I’m using. I share what I delegate, how I interact with the agents as teammates instead of tools, and how to close the gap between when you need to do something and when you can actually do it.

I wrote it because I’d been having conversation after conversation with everybody that I know and love, imploring them to change the way they think about how they work now, before the people who do start working in this new way, leave them behind.

I wrote it for the person doing too much alone. The founder who is also the marketer, the researcher, the writer, the analyst, and somehow also the one responsible for everything.

That was me, and to a degree it still is. I just have some more help now.

The book covers what changed in my thinking, how I setup the system, what I delegate, and what I learned about building trust with an AI agent.

It also covers where it falls short and what I do differently.

The Price

Starts at $10. That’s today’s price.

Every 10 copies sold, it goes up $1. By the time a hundred people have bought it, it’s $20.

This is intentional. Early readers get rewarded. You’ve been here since the idea guy post. You get the best price.

Get the Agent-Powered Workweek

Why I’m Telling You This

Last year, I started writing about a shift I saw happening in real time.

This book is the clearest version of what I’ve learned.

If you’ve been reading since the beginning, this is where it was always headed.

If you’re new here, start with this. Then go back.

The idea guy post was me discovering what was possible.

The interface post was me understanding what was changing.

The workforce post was me getting honest about what was at stake.

This is me telling you that this new reality is here.

Go get the book.

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--Scott

I was unpacking boxes into my new office the other day. I found a journal from 15 years ago. It was a chance encounter with my former self. Buried in a mountain of notebooks. I was flipping through and saw the word: Chattanooga. I had just visited the city for a day trip with my family. I gushed about it. I wrote about how leaving this place felt like leaving home. Then I saw the dream I put into place years ago. “I am going to live here!”

It took 15 years and it nearly didn’t happen.

Every day, I drive down a winding road from the gorgeous plateau where I live. I look for the landmark: a giant boulderjust off the right side of the road. Beyond it is a view I never want to take for granted. The sun is low and casting an aqua-magenta hue over the valley. The trees are coming back to life right now. All sorts of shades of green. Full of contrast and dancing with life. The Tennessee River snakes in and out of my view. If there’s no oncoming traffic, and I slow down enough, I can turn my head left and upwards to take in a waterfall that must be over a hundred and fifty feet tall. It’shidden in the trees and gushing from the recent rain.

And then the city comes into view. Downtown Chattanooga. The Scenic City. Plateaus that we call “mountains” everywhere you turn to look. The buildings have personality and character. A mix of history, renovation, and new. This is a place where most people are here because they want to be. Because it imprinted their souls and the feeling never faded.

But dreams don’t follow straight paths. Mine took detours through fear, practicality and catastrophe before finding its way home.

My wife and I were sitting at my makeshift desk a year ago. Chattanooga was our dream, but our six sons were our reality. We’ve been parenting since we were teenagers. Making decisions through the filter of our responsibility. Did we really want to disrupt the kids?

We had almost made the move twice before. Once in 2017. We found a house at the top of a hill in North Shore. It was big enough for our then family of six. We could afford it. I could ride a bike down the hill to my future office. I could almost taste it. But we bought a house in the Atlanta suburbs instead. A beautiful house with a two-story balcony in the front. Cul-de-sac. The whole deal. Our kids settled in and we decided this would be forever. This was safe. It was a good idea. I let my dream go.

Then, in 2020, the world shut down. My business was failing. We had to sell our safe, forever home or face losing it. We were going to have to go somewhere. Why not Chattanooga? The dream flickered back to life, then quickly dimmed again. We tried to find places. Too expensive. Wrong neighborhood. Too far from town. We settled. Rented a smaller house close by. I hated it but pretended it was a blessing.

I was slowly giving up on my business. Giving up on my dreams. Struggling to make anything work. I pretended to have it together all day. I tossed in my bed all night. Wrenched by stress dreams about waiting tables and forgetting orders or trying to brake and being unable to.

I avoided driving by my old house. The two-story balcony at the end of the cul-de-sac towered over me. It taunted me like a monument of my inadequacy.

But I kept going. My business partner spoke confidence back into me. My wife reminded me that we’ve overcome worse. I caught some lucky breaks. Picked up some customers. Started growing the business again.

My family spent over two years in that house. Putting up with a bathtub that leaked into the kitchen. Fighting off mildew that kept regrowing in the boys’ bathroom. My wife and I learned toughness again. Toughness like we had when we were teen parents out to prove to the world that we had what it takes.

The time came to make another move. We’d had enough of this place and we were back on our feet.

Chattanooga came back into view.

This time felt different. The fear of regret outweighed the fear of change. Choosing to move meant trading comfort for potential. It meant uprooting our kids. Putting them in new schools. Living in a place we had only visited. For me, the decision felt like now or never. We were going to do this, or I was going to give up on the dream. I did not want to desire something that was not going to happen. Too much discontent in that. I was ready to let it go. Move on.

Thankfully, we decided to give it a year. We would see how it goes. We could always go back if it wasn’t what we hoped.

We signed the lease and then headed up to visit the house. Show the kids. There was a lot of uncertainty for them. But my wife and I felt settled. This place felt like home to us long before it was.

I decided to take surface streets through the city on our way out of town that day. We crossed the Market Street bridge. The city was showing off. Golden hour. River flowing beneath us. People playing in the park. I broke down crying. It was the last time I’d be leaving this city to head to a house that wasn’t here.

That moment on the bridge connected to the twenty-five year old in that journal from fifteen years ago.

I think about that feeling every day I drive down the “mountain” to work. I think about the notebook where I first planted this dream. I think about it every time I run “The Brow” looking at the city. Every time I head into Prentice Cooper. Every time I take my wife on a date in the city. Every time we get an email from a teacher telling us how much they enjoy teaching our kids. Every sporting event. Every weekend where we don’t have to look too far for something to do. I can go on.

The road to Chattanooga wasn’t just about a place. It was about perseverance. About patience and not letting go. Pushing back against fear and finding the courage to leap when the moment came.

I am so grateful.

I had a kid at 19. Dropped out of college to start making money. Had a family to look out for. And also insatiable ambition. Being a teen dad intensified it. I was going to make something of myself. I had to learn as much as possible.

The internet became my university. I learned to write sales copy for Copyblogger.com. I learned how to code from Codecademy. Brad Feld’s blog taught me about startups. Seth Godin talks on YouTube taught me about small business and marketing.

I leaned in hard. I learned enough to make me an effective leader. Enough to give me confidence to start my own thing. I kept leaning on the internet to help me out, but it started to let me down.

Algorithms stole my attention. The internet stopped being the place I learned what I wanted to learn. It turned into a slot machine. Pull the lever and get some content. But the content wasn’t helpful. I stopped searching for knowledge. Started scrolling to see what the internet had in store for me. It became the place where I procrastinated.

I was sick of it. Tired of wasting time. Tired of feeling distracted. Tired of wanting to learn but ending up down a tunnel of junk food-style content.

Then ChatGPT came around.

I’ve been playing with it since OpenAI released GPT-3. I watched an app turn a sketch into a website. I was shocked. I forked out 20 bucks. I had to see what this new tool could do.

I started feeding it questions and giving it assignments.

• What questions should I ask my customers to discover new product ideas?

• Design a marathon plan and put the daily and weekly mileage on a table.

• What would [some expert] advise me to do about [my problem]?

• Pretend you are a support agent who works in a maintenance department. Help me troubleshoot an issue I am having.

The results were all over the place. Sometimes they were helpful. Other times they were nonsense. It would have been easy to write off the new tech as not ready. But one thing was consistent. It kept getting better. Better at a faster rate than any other tech I’ve ever used. Years better in months. It keeps happening. Faster and faster.

It became more reliable. More useful.

One day, I was struggling to close some new business. The prospect was haggling over price. I was trying defend our value. It was going nowhere. I asked ChatGPT for help. Gave it all of my call transcripts and emails. Asked it to be the best enterprise software sales person that ever existed. Told it to help me save the deal. It found something I failed to see. I closed the deal.

AI is simultaneously the biggest opportunity and the biggest threat to my business.

On the threat side, I fear one day people won’t need to buy software. They won’t need my software. Instead of buying software from a company. They’ll just fire up a chat in a AI app. Tell it what they want to do. AI will make them all the tools they need to hit their goals.

Maybe you want to start a company. You can tell an AI what you want to do. It will start building your resources and tools. One chat thread will turn into everything you need. It will plug into any third party service. It will spin up accounting software, an email server, get your website online. You’ll be able to do the work of 20 plus people. You’ll have a consultant in your pocket. This won’t happen for a decade, but it will happen.

While this scares me, it excites me. Because if this is the new reality, it will be the reality for me. I know what I can do with it.

I’m excited about what AI makes possible right now. There’s never been a better time to be an idea person. If you have vision, taste, and communication skills, you can get a lot done with a ChatGPT Pro account. It does what I used to hire people on Fiverr to do. It made the image for this post. It reviews contracts. Writes them too. Performs research projects. Answers questions. Edits my work. (I still have not been able to get any real software development done. Maybe because I don’t know enough to know good work from bad work. I can only judge working or not.)

I have a growing toolkit of AI apps for specific purposes. My favorite right now is called Spiral. I feed it a meeting transcript and it turns it into whatever I want. Writes it like I write based on examples I give it. It takes work I’ve already done—my words—and turns it into something else that’s useful. ChatGPT is still my workhorse.

The better these tools get, the better I get.

But maybe you are reading this and it scares you. It shouldn’t. Every new technology was exciting to the people that built with it and scary to the people who didn’t. People eventually caught up. Started using new technology themselves. Most people’s lives improved whether they contributed to progress or not.

AI is no different. You’ll either adopt it and benefit, or you’ll benefit from the people who adopt it. But either way, life will get better for people on general basis.

AI is only revolutionary in the hands of people who build, make, grow, and do. Most people won’t do anything with it. It will be the same as other tools and tech. The minority will use it to make things. Most will use it to entertain themselves. Consume. Do less. Waste more time.

Management skills and idea skills will take the place of knowledge skills.

You have to be able to set a vision, communicate clearly, and be an excellent judge of good work. So you need great ideas, clear thinking, and great taste.

Where do I land? I'm the teen dad who needed to learn fast and make something of himself. Now I have a workforce in my pocket. I am excited. Grateful to have tools that help me overcome what I cannot do alone. Tools that help me work faster. Move past obstacles. Keep me from procrastination. The internet university I once loved is finally back, but this time it's interactive, adaptive, and always ready to help.

It feels silly to be a 40-year-old man and say out loud to a room full of guys that I wish I had more friends. But it’s true, and it’s exactly what I did.

A year ago, I moved to Chattanooga—a place I’d fallen in love with over a decade earlier—drawn here by its mountains, trails, vibrant downtown, and potential. I envisioned myself surrounded by people who share my passion for the outdoors, who love building new things, who appreciate the beginnings of ideas, and who seek opportunities to improve their community.

But a year passed. While my business grew and my family thrived, I found myself mostly unchanged: still working, still running and climbing solo, and still not experiencing the sense of community I had imagined. Friendships were not materializing on their own.

Life doesn’t come to you. If you want something—whatever it is—you have to put yourself out there, intentionally. I’d been passively hoping that like-minded people would somehow show up and invite me into their circles. But life doesn’t work that way. If you want something—anything—you have to put yourself out there, intentionally. I needed to stop waiting and start acting, even if it meant doing something uncomfortable.

So, along with a friend, I decided to create Whiskey & PowerPoints—an evening of hanging out, where three people each give a 15-minute presentation on a topic they’re obsessed with, followed by conversation. To be honest, I worried no one would show up. Or worse—that they’d show up and think the whole thing was stupid.

Instead, what happened was incredible.

Almost everyone we invited came. They didn’t just attend—they immediately connected. People said things like, “The moment I heard about this, I knew it was something I’d been missing,” and, “I can’t wait for the next one. I know exactly who I want to invite.” What felt like a risk—putting myself out there with an untested idea—became the very thing that helped me with my quest to make new friends in a new city. It turns out I wasn’t the only one waiting for someone to invite me into a group.

The format itself wasn’t magic—what mattered was that I finally did something—anything—to create the community I wanted instead of waiting for it to find me. The simple act of extending invitations, of saying, “I want to connect,” was what made the difference.

I learned something powerful: confidence doesn’t just come from waiting for opportunities—it comes from creating them. It’s built by doing hard, meaningful things on purpose. This is true whether you’re pulling yourself up a boulder, grinding out a trail run, or putting yourself out there in a new city.

This experience crystallized what I want this newsletter to be about: the power of breaking inertia. Of choosing action over waiting. Of recognizing when you’re stuck in a pattern of hoping instead of doing. Because that’s where I was—waiting for community to happen to me for an entire year when I could have created it at any time.

Chattanooga isn’t just the place where I live. It’s my muse and my proving ground. It’s where I run, climb, think, and build. Where I’m raising my six sons in the hopes that they absorb this place, its culture, and its energy. It’s my backdrop and my catalyst, a city full of potential waiting to be unlocked.

If you’re reading this and feeling like you missed out on something—good. You’re exactly the type of person I want to know. If you’re in Chattanooga, hit me up. If you’re not, ask yourself what you’ve been waiting for someone else to start. Then start it yourself.

Don’t wait. Do something.

Because confidence comes from doing.

Action over comfort.

In 2012, I quit my comfortable facilities management job to build software for an industry I knew intimately. I had six figures in startup money, a somewhat-working prototype, and the naïve confidence that success would come quickly.

I was wrong about almost everything.

My first "office" was my dining room table. My first sale took four months longer than expected. My savings drained twice as fast as I'd projected. And within 18 months, I was seriously questioning whether I'd made the biggest mistake of my professional life.

Fast forward to today: FM Dashboard now serves facilities managers across thousands of locations in North America. But that growth didn't come from following conventional startup wisdom—it came from painful lessons that contradicted much of what I thought I knew about entrepreneurship.

I'm not sharing these lessons because they're universally applicable. I'm sharing them because they're rarely discussed in entrepreneurial circles obsessed with hustle culture and growth hacking. These are the unglamorous truths that shaped our path and still guide me today:

1. Organizational Support is Underrated—And So Is Prioritization

Before FM Dashboard, I was the hotshot Director of Customer Relations for a growing contractor who thought I was single-handedly growing one of the biggest self-performing companies in the maintenance industry. My ego came crashing down three weeks into entrepreneurship.

That "revolutionary" process I'd created? It only worked because the operations team executed it, the field management team adapted it, HR found talent to support it, and customer support smoothed over the rough edges I never saw. Suddenly, I was the support system—no established processes, no ready-made teams, just me answering support calls at 2 AM while simultaneously trying to figure things out one step at a time.

It forced me to understand something crucial: you can't do everything at once. I created a brutal prioritization system: "Will this task directly lead to a sale today?" Everything else waited. We missed product deadlines, delayed feature launches, and ignored marketing opportunities—and it was exactly the right thing to do.

One month in, we were two weeks from insolvency. Six months in, we were profitable. The difference? Ruthless prioritization. Learning this saved me from burnout and became a cornerstone of our early success.

2. Customers Should Drive Your Product

FM Dashboard exists today because of how spectacularly I failed at first. I spent six months building what I was certain would revolutionize facilities management - a simple, user-focused tool that was quick to learn and inexpensive. It kind of worked, but we built a lot of features that weren't used and didn't have a lot of features that were sorely needed.

I also thought that if we just built something that was simple, people would just sign up and start using it. And I couldn't have been more wrong. The real problem that our customers were experiencing in the industry was not software, it was the support that those software companies provided.

It wasn't fancy features or slick marketing that won our customers; it was our willingness to adapt based on their feedback. listening to customers also created another service line that is growing fast, bootstrapped and profitable. When customers talked, we listened.

That's how we ended up creating our Virtual Maintenance Coordinator (VMC) program. During a routine check-in call, a frustrated client mentioned they'd been trying to hire a maintenance coordinator for eight months. "I wish I could just rent yours," she joked. Our customer service rep brought this to our weekly meeting, and within 30 days, we had three clients paying us $3,600 a month for a service we'd never planned to offer.

Today, that "accidental" service line generates 40% of our revenue with margins that subsidize our software development. It was a solution born directly from customer conversations, turning customer service from a nice-to-have into our biggest competitive advantage.

3. Never Stray from Your Core Mission

In 2019, with a solid business and growing momentum, I made what I now call my “irrationally optimistic mistake.” A restaurant chain VP, who was a very good customer of ours, suggested we build a specialized software for their operations team. “You guys are software developers, and this application is really simple + a lot of people need it.“ The market was huge, and the connection was strong.

We invested tens of thousands of dollars into development and quickly grew to $10,000 in monthly recurring revenue from restaurant clients. On paper, it looked like a win. But beneath the surface, cracks were forming. Our developers were splitting time between two completely different applications, and our core facilities maintenance platform—the one paying most of our bills—started suffering. Features were delayed. Bugs lingered. Our most loyal customers were getting restless.

Then March 2020 happened. Overnight, restaurants shut down nationwide, and every single one of our new restaurant clients either closed or froze all technology spending. The country shut down, our customers stopped paying, and the software died. This was a huge distraction away from a strategy that was working and one that would have kept us out of a lot of financial hardship and loss during the pandemic had we simply stayed the course.

The lesson cost us nearly $200,000 and a year of momentum. From then on, we implemented what we call our "Mission Filter"—a mandatory cooling-off period for any new opportunity, followed by a team review that asks one simple question: "Does this directly serve facilities managers?" This discipline has been the difference between distracted failure and focused growth. By recommitting to our core mission, we navigated the pandemic better than competitors who tried to diversify, and by 2022, we'd not only recovered but doubled our pre-pandemic revenue.

4. Empower Your Entire Team with Your Mission

In 2017, I was the bottleneck destroying our company's potential. Every decision required my approval. Every feature needed my sign-off. Every customer complaint landed in my inbox. I was working 70-hour weeks while our growth stalled.

During a particularly exhausting week, I missed several critical calls and found myself responding to emails at 2:00 AM. When my wife found me working late one night, she asked a simple question that changed everything: “Isn't your company supposed to give people their time back?”

That hit home hard. Our mission statement—to "give facilities managers their time back"—had become just words on our website. I realized that if my team didn't truly own this mission, we'd never scale beyond my personal capacity.

So I did something radical. I gathered everyone together and announced that from now on, any decision that honored our mission didn't need my approval. I created a simple framework: "If it gives our customers back their time and we can deliver it reliably, just do it."

The transformation was messy at first. Mistakes were made. But within six months, something remarkable happened. Our support team created a self-service knowledge base that reduced tickets by 30%. Our developers built automated reporting that clients had been requesting for years. And as mentioned earlier, our VMC program—now our fastest-growing service—came from a support rep who was empowered to solve a customer problem without my involvement.

My workweek dropped from 80 hours to 50. But more importantly, our customer satisfaction scores rose from "acceptable" to "exceptional" in less than a year. I didn't just delegate tasks—I delegated purpose. Turns out that when everyone owns the mission, innovation comes from everywhere.

5. Play the Long Game—Success Takes Time

My darkest entrepreneurial moment came in 2021, nine years into building FM Dashboard. We had just gone through the pandemic. I was suffering the dual failures of a failed new product and lower sales from my loss of focus. In just twelve months, we'd lost 80% of our restaurant customers and watched 50% of our total revenue evaporate. I felt like a failure and I wanted to quit.

"Maybe we should just sell this thing and do something else," I said to my co-founder.

But thankfully, he didn't let me off the hook.

"If you knew everything you know now and had to start all over again, what would you do differently?" he asked, pushing a notebook across the table. "Write it down."

I filled three pages. As I wrote, something became clear: the 7 years of success we'd enjoyed and the 2 years of failure we'd endured had provided us with experience, perspective, and resilience that couldn't be acquired any other way. Our competitors who were just starting out would need a decade to learn what we now knew.

Instead of giving up, we decided to lean into our experience and play the long game. We created a 5-year vision. We stopped setting quarterly goals and started focusing on what we could accomplish in a year. We got back to the basics of ruthless prioritization: "If this task doesn't result in earning a new customer or keeping a current one, then it's not worth doing."

The results were stunning. Within a year, we doubled our sales and started expanding our team again. Within two years, we surpassed our pre-pandemic revenue by 35%.

I went from feeling like a failure to understanding a fundamental truth about entrepreneurship: the biggest advantage isn't having more capital or better technology—it's having the perspective that only comes from weathering both success and failure over time. True overnight success stories are actually "10-year overnight success stories" that the media simply discovered late in the journey.

Conclusion

Conclusion

These five lessons cost me over $500,000 in mistakes, countless sleepless nights, and nearly a decade to fully comprehend:

1. Build your support systems first — No entrepreneur succeeds alone, no matter what their ego tells them.

2. Let customers shape your path — Your best ideas will come from listening, not from your own brilliant insights.

3. Stay laser-focused on your core mission — Every time we've strayed, we've paid a painful price.

4. Empower your entire team with purpose — Delegating decisions is good; delegating mission is transformational.

5. Play the long game — The "10-year overnight success" isn't a cliché; it's a mathematical reality.

The journey from 2012 to now transformed not just FM Dashboard but me as well. I started as an ambitious facilities manager who thought I knew everything. Today, I lead a team of people serving over tens of thousands of locations across North America, and I'm humbled daily by how much I still have to learn.

Our mission—to give facilities managers their time back—remains our compass. But perhaps the most important lesson is this: entrepreneurship isn't ultimately about building a business; it's about building yourself into someone capable of overcoming whatever challenges tomorrow brings.

The world doesn't need more "hustle harder" advice. It needs entrepreneurs willing to prioritize ruthlessly, listen deeply, focus intensely, empower genuinely, and persist patiently. Do these five things consistently, and your success isn't just possible—given enough time, it's inevitable.

This isn't science fiction—it's the next evolution of enterprise software. While the mobile revolution changed where we use software, the AI revolution will fundamentally change how we interact with it. The transformation will be even more profound than mobile, but to understand why, we first need to examine why enterprise software exists in the first place.

Traditional enterprise software was built to solve three fundamental challenges that every organization faces:

One: Information Fragmentation

Think about your last major project. Crucial information probably lived in dozens of places: requirements in Jira, discussions in Slack, documentation in Confluence, spreadsheets in SharePoint, and critical context in people's heads. Enterprise software promised to centralize this scattered knowledge—to create a "single source of truth." But as we'll see, it's largely failed to deliver on this promise.

Two: Risk Management

Every organization needs guardrails. Who can approve a $50,000 purchase? Who can access customer data? Who can deploy code to production? Traditional software approaches this through rigid permission systems and approval workflows. But these blunt instruments often create more friction than protection.

Three: Process Automation

The dream was to turn complex business processes into simple, repeatable workflows. Today's software can send notifications, create tasks, and chain together actions with a click. But it still relies heavily on humans to make decisions and move work forward—even for routine tasks that follow clear rules.

Despite decades of development, these solutions have created new problems:

• Information remains fragmented because software can't naturally participate in human communication. Instead, humans must constantly context-switch and manually transfer information between systems.

• Risk management tools have become productivity bottlenecks. Rather than preventing mistakes intelligently, they force everyone to work at the pace of the most restrictive use case.

• Automation remains shallow. While we can automate individual actions, we can't automate judgment. Every decision point requires human intervention, creating endless notification spam and approval queues.

This is where AI fundamentally transforms enterprise software. Let's imagine how each challenge gets solved:

From Information Silos to Ambient Knowledge

Imagine your company's AI assistant silently participating in every conversation, like a highly competent team member who never sleeps. When you're discussing a customer issue in Slack, it automatically:

• Links relevant support tickets and previous interactions

• Updates the CRM with new information

• Drafts follow-up tasks based on commitments made in the conversation

• Surfaces relevant documentation or similar past issues

No more manual data entry. No more "can you update the ticket?" The software becomes an active participant in your natural workflow.

From Rigid Controls to Intelligent Guidance

Instead of binary yes/no permissions, AI enables dynamic risk management:

• Flags potential issues before they become problems ("This contract is missing our standard liability clause")

• Suggests improvements rather than blocking progress ("Based on past approvals, you might want to include more detail in this expense report")

• Learns from patterns to automatically grant temporary access when appropriate

• Coaches users on best practices rather than just enforcing rules

From Simple Automation to Autonomous Work

Rather than just moving work around, AI actually gets work done:

• Drafts responses to routine customer inquiries for human review

• Proactively identifies and resolves potential issues in processes

• Manages follow-ups and coordination without human prompting

• Makes routine decisions based on company policies and past precedent

The End Result: A New Kind of Software

Enterprise software evolves from being a passive tool to an active collaborator. Instead of forcing humans to adapt to software interfaces, the software adapts to human ways of working. It's always present, always helpful, but never in the way—like having a skilled executive assistant who anticipates your needs and handles the details automatically.

The Rise of the Invisible Interface

This transformation represents more than just an improvement in enterprise software—it's the end of software interfaces as we know them. Just as the mobile revolution freed us from our desks, the AI revolution will free us from clicking, typing, and navigating through endless menus and forms.

The best interface is no interface at all. In the AI-first era, enterprise software will fade into the background, becoming as invisible as electricity—a ubiquitous force that powers our work without demanding our attention. We won't talk about "using software" anymore, because software will simply be the medium through which work naturally flows.

For businesses, this isn't just a matter of convenience—it's a competitive necessity. Organizations that embrace this AI-first future will unlock massive productivity gains as employees shift from managing software to creating value. Their processes will become more efficient, their decisions more informed, and their operations more resilient.

The transition won't happen overnight, but it's already beginning. The question isn't whether enterprise software will evolve in this direction, but how quickly organizations will adapt to this new paradigm. Those who move first will gain a significant advantage in productivity, employee satisfaction, and operational excellence.

Welcome to the era of invisible software—where technology finally adapts to humans, rather than the other way around.

Reflect on your previous week’s work. Consider what was useful and what wasn’t. About 80% of your busy work this week was unproductive. What if you ignored it? Nothing.

Two: There’s a lack of serious people.

Most people aren’t serious. I don’t mean solemn. I mean they can’t be taken seriously. They’ll say, “I want to lose weight,” or “We should get together,” or “I need a new job.” But they won’t do anything about it.

We need more serious people who are committed to their words and actions.

Three: Software will change.

The first wave is that software will resemble web content. There will be more of it, and most will be poor quality.

The second wave will redefine software. It will shift from where things get done to what does the things.

Both scenarios advantage people with strong ideas, excellent taste, and clear communication skills.

We are entering an era of massive production capability, but most people will use it to make and consume low-quality products.

Four: Few things are as great or bad as your imagination suggests.

The news wants you to rise and fall to its drama and hope levels. It’s better to get out of that cycle. Most of their claims aren’t as bad as they seem or as positive as they want you to believe.

Live your life. Talk to people. Get hyper-local. Take the long view. Focus on what you can control. Enjoy the outdoors. Do stuff.

You will feel more content.

Five: What would you like to know?

I’m obsessed with the consultant on my devices. ChatGPT is transforming my worldview.

My first love affair with technology was when blogs taught me everything I needed to know to be a great salesperson and become an entrepreneur. There was so much to learn.

Then came the algorithm. My habits shifted from “What do I want to know?” to “What does the internet have for me today?” I’m not proud of it, but I’ve scrolled and refreshed my YouTube feed for extended periods, adding videos to my “Watch Later” playlist without watching them. It’s digital junk food.

Then AI chat emerged. My mind shifted back to “What do I want to know?” and I can follow up with, “Show me how to do it.”

The barrier between idea and action is decreasing. It’s the best time to be someone who sees what should exist. It’s an exciting time to be alive.

I’ve never been more optimistic about a year and what it will bring than I am about 2025.

For one thing, I can’t remember I time where I’ve been more rationally confident than I am now. Maybe it’s being (almost) 40 and having learned some major lessons in humility, resilience, knowing what I am capable of -- who I am. I feel really good, and not in a superficial way.

And then there’s the circumstantial stuff. The stuff that’s outside of my control. It’s never been a better time to be an idea person. Ideas used to have a giant barrier to entry. AI is changing that.

Thanks to tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, I have a rationally thinking consult in my pocket. And that consultant is one of the best assistants, thought partners, document creators, insight finders, recipe makers, and advice givers around.

Most of the world is asleep when it comes to the radical tool they have access to, and I feel like I am still peeling my eyelids open and trying to adjust to the flood lights.

I couldn’t fall back asleep the other morning. So, at 4am, I pulled out my to do list and a web browser. In 3 hours, I completed everything I planned on completing over the next week.

With the help and step by step instructions from AI tools:

• I wrote a sales process and set up dashboard in my CRM to track KPIs.

• I scraped a data list for leads that matched our ideal customer profile.

• I wrote an email sequence.

• I wrote an objection handling resource for my sales team based on the ones they were hearing the most.

• I consolidated two non-matching spreadsheets, eliminating duplicates, for a customer.

• I wrote an SOP for a customers’ dispatch team based off a transcript from a meeting and the transcripts of a half a dozen screen recordings.

Productivity is not the same thing as efficiency, but it’s really great when the two line up. I have never been this productive in my life.

And this is just the easy stuff. Every day, I play with new tools that link together little AI programs into an automated process. These are things you used to have to hire a developer to do that you can now do with a drag and drop application.

A friend of mine built a knowledge base app for his team with a no-code tool that lets someone chat with a bot that gets answers about business processes from a database. If the answer is missing or is bad, it emails the person who is most likely able to answer. Their reply goes back into the database and to the person who asked the question. He did most of this by describing what he wanted to a chat app.

Everything is changing.

One thing I think about all of the time is how user interfaces are changing. Right now, must data entry is done by people who benefit the least from the data. They have low incentive to make it accurate and usually have other things to do. So data in most enterprise apps, especially field apps, suffers.

Soon, people will not need to learn how to use software. They will just tell a chat interface what they are trying to do. That chatbot will normalize their text into data and ask for missing information. Data aggregation will be easy and much better.

I hear a people talk about how so much of the buzz around AI is hype. There is a lot of hype to be sure. The thing about any tool, especially time saving tools is this: What are you building with the tool? What are you doing with the extra time?

I try to think about AI this way. What do I want to know? I feel like it’s the killer use case for me.

Search only answers parts of questions. With AI, I can have “conversations” with the answers. I can push back, debate, argue, ask for clarification and more info about what I don’t understand.

AI has increased the value of meetings. At least it has for me. I get transcriptions for as many meetings as a I can. Then I feed the transcript into a reasoning model ChatGPT along with a prompt that asks questions and delegate tasks about what we talked about. Things like:

1. Give me the action items I need to make sure get done.

2. Give me ideas for how to be more effective.

3. Show me things that I may have missed in the conversation that are actually high-value insights.

4. Wow me with something I haven't thought of asking.

5. Write me 5 short LinkedIn posts.

6. Write me a case study I can use to market to new customers.

7. Write a short follow-up email I can send to everyone.

30 minutes of conversation yields actual production -- real output. It’s wild. This process helped me save a deal the other day. It picked up on something a prospect said that I missed. I sent a follow up email and had a contract request the next day. This process has given me more raw marketing copy based on customer-centric value than I have ever been able to come up with myself.

But mostly, I think the thing that I love the most about this tool, is that I am becoming more curious. I am asking more and better questions. My mind is developing a voracious appetite for knowledge and how to apply it. I have learned and done more in the last month than I did last quarter, and the tools are goin to keep getting better.

This experience kicked off a curiosity that I have not been able to restrain. What is possible? What can this help me do?

--Scott

We built a reputation for being the helpful software company that doesn’t tell its customers “No,” to things the big companies were unwilling to do.

I don’t want to lose that reputation, but I also don’t want our beautiful, speedy software to turn into the thing I originally set out to displace.

Which is why we needed some rules to make sure we have the best of both worlds.

We started adhering to these ideas at the beginning of the year, and I am happy with the results. Here they are, and feel free to use what you like.

"Not yet," policy.

We will accept any and all customer feature requests. But, we do not react to customer requests.

All new requests are vetted through the following criteria:

1. They must be directly tied to a major customer initiative.

2. They must be based on a proven and vetted customer process.

3. They must be helpful to all (or most) customers.

Six-week development cycles.

Will commit to 8, six-week development cycles each year. This is 2 cycles per quarter with some time in between for planning and review.

Six-week cycles break down as follows:

• Week 1: Scope development and mockups.

• Week 2: Front end design.

• Weeks 3-4: Development.

• Week 5: Quality assurance and refinement.

• Week 6: Documentation, announcements, and rollout.

50/50 rule for developers.

50% of developers time should be spent on new features. The other 50% should be spend on bugs, refinement, refactoring, and speeding up the application.

So, we should not commit to any feature product that will take up more than 50% of a week's work.

Start with the slowest pages and refine them according the refinement algorithm.

Refinement algorithm. (I stole this idea from SpaceX.)

The current application and new features must meet the following refinement requirements in order to keep FM Dashboard lightest, snappiest, and easiest-to-use maintenance platform in the industry:

1. Question every requirement.

2. Delete unnecessary features and processes.

3. Make it as simple as possible.

4. Make it obvious to layperson.

5. Make it searchable.

6. Make it configurable.

7. Make every page load in less than 0.3 seconds.

I want FM Dashboard to be the simplest, yet most configurable maintenance and environmental compliance software in the industry. That can't happen if we are not focused and strategic about how we build new features.

It’s so easy to react to what’s coming at you and forget about what you originally set out to do.

What are you reacting to?

Take some time and think about how you do things compared to how you want to do things. You don’t have to have rigid processes (I hate them), but I think you are dragging around unnecessary weight if you don’t have some guidelines about what you say yes and no to.

Stuff to check out.

• Die with Zero: A friend recommended this book to me, and I really love the message. There is less stuff we can do the older we get, so enjoy your money now by having great experiences. You can’t take any of it with you.

• Elon Musk: Love him or hate him (I’m indifferent), there is a lot to learn about one of the most influential people of our time. It’s funny, most of the bad reviews about this book are really bad reviews of the man himself. Walter Isaacson did an amazing job of giving a 360 degree portrait. Each chapter reads like a short vignette which makes this giant book more digestible.

First things, first.

This post is part three in my book notes series on The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Someone gave me this book when I was 19 and about to be a dad. It made a huge impact on my life.

I’m also writing more on LinkedIn, Instagram, and X (Twitter). Here’s a post about a win of the day.

I will be publishing at least one new newsletter each week, and it won’t always be about the book I’m reading. Make sure you follow along by subscribing.

Subscribe now

Begin with the end in mind.

It’s super weird to park a car in front of someone’s house and stare at it, but that’s what we were doing. A few weeks earlier, my girlfriend and I found out that she was pregnant, and news like this tends to make think about your future.

“I want to live in a house like this one day,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“And I want four kids. Two isn’t enough, and I don’t like odd numbers,” she added.

“Really?” I was still coming to grips with the idea of having one kid. “I’m going to have to own my own business then.”

“Sounds good.”

We spent a lot of spare time like that. Two kids living in a bedroom in her parents’ house, making ambitious plans for a remarkable life.

Some of it has come true. We have six kids now—because we are overachievers. I have a business. We’ve owned a couple of homes.

We are still dreaming and making plans. She wants a farm now. I want a cabin office on the property with a wood-burning stove. We both want to create a paradise for our future grandkids (though we are hopefully a few years away from that).

Steven R. Covey wrote:

“Begin with the end in mind” is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There’s a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation.

You are either going to intentionally create your future or accidentally create it.

I heard Ryan Holiday say that discipline isn’t about doing things you don’t want to do or giving up stuff. It’s really about knowing what you want. Because when you know what you want, you will make decisions that get there.

Beginning with the end in mind applies to more than long term goals. Before you send that text or email, have that conversation or meeting, before you walk in the door after work, think, “What’s the outcome I want here?”

Understanding your values.

When beginning with the end in mind, it’s super helpful to consider your values. Does the end you imagine line up with what you really want in life—what you value? If it does, great! If it doesn't, then no matter how grand the vision, it’s not going to lead you to a fulfilling life.

You have to understand your center.

What ever is at the center of our life will be the source of our security, guidance, wisdom, and power.

Usually, a person’s center is a spouse, family, money, work, possessions, pleasure, or a friend or friends.

However, you should aim to be centered on principles.

Unless you are centered on principles, the way you view your live, your mood, and—most importantly—your actions will be swayed by an unreliable center.

If your spouse is upset, you are upset. If your family life is strained, you will be stressed. If you lack money, you will lack confidence. And on it goes. The opposite is also true.

But if you are centered on principles, outside forces cannot affect your mood and behavior.

Our security comes from knowing that, unlike other centers based on people or things which are subject to frequent and immediate change, correct principles do not changes. We can depend on them.

And…

Principles are deep, fundamental truths, class truths, generic common denominators. They are tightly interwoven threads running with exactness, consistency, beauty, and strength through the fabric of life.

Come up with a personal mission statement.

Habit 1 is the idea that “You are the programmer.” This habit says, “Write the program.”

You get to decide your principles. The author suggest writing a personal mission statement for as many of the following areas that matter to you.

1. Spouse

2. Family

3. Money

4. Work

5. Possessions

6. Pleasure

7. Friend

8. Enemy

9. Church

10. Self

What are your values when it comes to these areas? How do you respond to good and the bad? How do you behave? What are your rules and guidelines?

Writing or re-viewing a mission statement changes you because it forces you to thing through your priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behavior with your beliefs. As you do, other people begin to sense that you’re not being driven by everything that happens to you. You have a sense of mission about what you’re trying to do and you are excited about it.

Here’s my mission statement.

My mission is to inspire others to live their lives to their fullest potential.

To fulfill this mission:

I am disciplined: I am clear on my goals, so I do the things that will lead to accomplishing them and avoid the things that will set me back.

I am community-minded: I include others and make sure everyone wins together.

I think big picture: I set big goals and work towards them.

I take action: I do it now when possible. Otherwise, I schedule it or delegate it.

I learn: I read and listen to gain as much information as possible.

I share: I teach others, both to inspire and to further understand what I am learning.

These roles take priority in achieving my mission:

Husband: My wife is the most important person in my life. We are a power couple, working together to build a remarkable life and a generational legacy.

Father: I help my children learn the skills they need to live confident and fulfilling lives.

Son/Brother: I bring my family together (the way my dad did for his siblings).

Entrepreneur: I create businesses that help people and create wealth for everyone involved.

Spiritual: I have a deep understanding that everything is connected and serving a greater goal, that God loves Creation, and that my value comes from these truths.

Leader: I create opportunities for others by inspiring and serving them.

Scholar: I relentlessly pursue and apply new lessons every day.

Health: I eat mostly plants and exercise every single day.

This becomes a sort of code of conduct. It’s a list of what it means to be me. It keeps me centered and focused on the things I value and the life I want to live.

What you should do with this.

You are not pursuing happiness. You are craving confidence.

The best way to build confidence is to decide the direction you want to take your life, make promises to yourself about the actions you are willing to take to get there, and then take action.

You will feel increasingly better and more fulfilled each time you keep a promise you make to yourself.

1. Accept personal reponsibility for your actions.

2. Figure out what you value.

3. Decide where you want to go.

4. Take actions that will get you there.

   ---

YouTube gems.

I am a YouTube junkie. Lately, I’ve curated my viewing towards business and productivity education. Here’s some of my favorites stuff I’ve watched this past week.

A great growth system. Cal Newport, the author of Deep Work and Digital Minimalism, put out version two of his Deep Stack productivity system. It goes hand-in-hand with today’s post. Watch Deep Life Stack 2.0 to Reinvent Yourself.

Why it’s made. I love things that are made by people who love what they do, and I love hearing from makers talk about what went into design a product. Watch the Founder of Vero Engineering on his most sought after knives.

That’s it for this week. Reply back or leave a comment to let me know what you think.

And, if you subscribe, and are enjoying this weekly articles, please consider sharing with a friend.

Share Scott’s Notes

First things, first.

I am taking a break this week from posting about The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People because this post just sounded fun. Don’t worry, I have drafts queued up already and will resume next week.

I’m also writing more on LinkedIn, Instagram, and X (Twitter). Here’s a re-introduction and some thoughts on trying hard things.

I will be publishing a new newsletter each week, and (like this week) it won’t always be about the book I’m reading. Make sure you follow along by subscribing.

Subscribe now

About those apps.

I’ve tried out a lot of productivity software, but these are the tools I don’t want to work without.

• Fantastical

• Loom

• Basecamp

• Notion

• Apple Mail

When it comes to work software, I have three criteria:

First, they have to be nice to use. I appreciate great user interfaces and user experiences. I want to use products that feel like they were made by people who care about what they are doing.

Second, they must make me work more effectively. There is no point in using something that distracts me or slows me down. This goes back to the first reason.

Third, they need to work really well with Apple products (most software does). I have been using Mac products as long as I’ve been an adult. I know all of the shortcuts. I have dialed in my set up and features. Working on a Mac is like wearing my favorite pair of jeans. It’s comfortable, and I keep them forever.

That being said, here are the apps.

Fantastical

My calendar is my to-do list. When a task comes up, I either do it now, schedule it, delegate it, or ignore it.

Fantastical makes it easy to create new tasks with natural language.

I just type “Call with Bob Smith tomorrow at 2pm /FMD” into the creation box, and BOOM! Fantastical puts a meeting on my work calendar for tomorrow at 2pm, sends an invite to Bob Smith and adds in a Google Meet link. It’s that simple.

Fantastical also has a Calendly alternative called Openings. It’s the best automated scheduler because I can create scheduling links for any of my calendar accounts—including my iCloud—and I can use all of my calendar accounts to determine availability.

Finally, if I don’t want to send a scheduling link to someone, I can send them options instead. I simply create a new event with a few proposal times. Fantastical will hold all of the times open, and then close them when the recipient picks the one that works the best for them.

Loom

Our team is entirely remote, and our culture is built around accountability and time autonomy. Meetings get in the way. Loom is better.

I can record my screen and instantly share it with a link. (Here’s an example.)

Here’s how I use Loom.

Feedback - Instead of describing something, I can actually show what I am talking about. I just start a recording and give my feedback. We opt for the AI add-on with Loom that creates a transcript. So I can copy and paste from my transcript to write an email or update our project management app. I sen the link to the Loom with the text for context.

Delegation - I no longer have to tell someone who I do something. I can record how I do it. Then I ask my team member to record themselves performing the task to close the communication loop and make sure I explained what I want clearly. This great for complex tasks.

Training and culture building - If I see something I want to share with my team, I just start a Loom. I can explain what I am thinking along with the video. We have a training library in our Loom account where these things can live forever.

Basecamp

This is on the list because it’s what my development team likes. The only thing we use in Basecamp is the card-based project management tool.

New ideas and bugs go into the Triage section. Then we move it to Planning > In Progress > Ready for Review > Ready for Production > Done.

We use one card per item and break bigger projects into into several cards. All of the communication, feedback, and Looms stay with the card.

Notion

I’ll admit, I have an on-again, off-again relationship with this app. Not-so-secretly, I want to move away from Basecamp to Notion now that has really good card-based project management. But, that’s not how I use it currently.

Notion has databases which make if a very powerful digital brain. Here’s what I mean.

The apps you use save information you enter into databases. Each database is for a different type of item. At my software company, items like locations, users, work orders, quotes, invoices, contractors, etc., all have their own database. We create relationships between the databases to use their information on one place.

Notion’s databases work the same way. The default view looks like a spreadsheet, but you can show the items in card, calendar, and other views.

Notion let’s be build mini applications inside of a productivity app without having to write any code.

I use it mostly as a note taking app, and I’m working on building a company wiki using the Loom videos I’ve been recording.

Notion can be as simple or sophisticated as we need it to be.

Apple Mail

Apple Mail works, and it keeps getting better with every MacOS update. Aside from knowing the keyboard shortcuts, I especially love the follow up and snooze features. I either…

1. Respond and archive

2. Schedule a time to respond and then link to the email from the calendar event.

3. Snooze an email until later.

4. Delete the email.

If I send an email that asks a question, Mail flags it for follow up and puts in back in my inbox a few days later. Brilliant!

I try to process all email down to an empty inbox twice a day, and it’s my main means of communication.

There you have it!

YouTube gems.

I am a YouTube junkie. Lately, I’ve curated my viewing towards business and productivity education. Here’s some of my favorites stuff I’ve watched this past week.

DIRT: Alaska. My favorite YouTube series is made by Huckberry, a clothing retailer, but the series is not about clothes. The host travels around a state grabbing local ingredients for a feast, before making it at the end. It’s a who about people, food, and adventure—some of my favorite things in life. Check out DIRT Episode 6 — Alaska.

Sam Corcos shows how Levels uses Notion. My current productivity guru has a decently-sized library of productivity and process best practices. Check out Increase Team PRODUCTIVITY with Notion.

Open AI's custom GPTs. Soon, you will be able to build custom chat apps in ChatGPT without any code. This video is barely scratching the surface of this tool. Imagine a library of experts living in your you ChatGPT app. That’s what we will see with this, and anyone with data can participate. Watch Introducing GPTs in ChatGPT.

That’s it for this week. Reply back or leave a comment to let me know what you think.

And, if you subscribe, and are enjoying this weekly articles, please consider sharing with a friend.

Share Scott’s Notes

First things, first.

I’m currently re-reading a book that had a huge impact on me, and sharing my notes along the way. You can check out the last post here.

I’m also writing more on LinkedIn, Instagram, and X (Twitter). Here’s a post about effectiveness.

I will be publishing at least one new newsletter each week, and it won’t always be about the book I’m reading. Make sure you follow along by subscribing.

Subscribe now

Be proactive.

I was 18 when I found out I was going to be a dad, and 19 when my son was born. Sometime between these two events, someone gave me a copy of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven R. Covey. I read it, and it catapulted my immature mind into adulthood.

At 20, I quit my job waiting tables to sell land and commercial real estate full-time.

At 21, I bought a house for my family.

At 22, the real estate market crashed, and I was at risk of losing my house. I took the worst job I had ever worked, but also learned the most about sales that I’ve ever learned.

Eventually, I went to work for a family member in the retail maintenance and construction industry, and later went on to build my company.

My life, like pretty much every person who ever lived, has been filled with ups and downs, successes and near total losses.

The quote above, the one in the subtitle of this article, is one that I fall back to all of the time. It keeps me grounded when things are going well, and it gives me hope when things are bad.

Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. (Pg. 78)

Decide how you spend your time.

It’s a simple idea.

Every human has self-awareness, the unique ability to look at ourselves as if we are someone else. Our ability to see ourselves clearly and honestly is either the enabling or the limiting factor in our capacity for self-improvement.

Because of this ability (and a few others), we are able to control our behavior.

It works like this. Something happens, and we act.

And in between the stimulus and the response, we can use our self-awareness, imagination, conscience, and independent will, to make a decision.

All we can do is control our behavior. Everything else is out of our control.

And in this ability, we can decide what we spend our time on. Here’s a quote from the book.

Many people wait for something or someone to take care of them. But people who end up with the good jobs are the proactive ones who are solutions to problems, not problems themselves, who seize the initiative to do whatever is necessary, consistent with correct principles, to get the job done. (Pg. 83)

We can choose to either act, or be acted upon. When we choose to act, we give ourselves more control over the circumstances we find ourselves in. Take our language for example. We either choose reactive-oriented language, “I can’t,” or proactive-oriented language, “I choose.”

Ultimately, our life is the product of our choices. There is nothing that we have to do, only things we choose to do based on the outcomes we want or the consequences we want to avoid.

Direct, indirect, and no control.

So, what should we spend our time doing?

Ineffective people spend too much time on problems they cannot control. They can’t be solved. These problems should be avoided.

Similarly, indirect control problems are ones that can only be solved through influence. Things like our kids’ behavior or a co-worker’s performance.

However, direct control problems are problems we can solve by working on our habits. The more effective we are, the better we perform, and the greater our influence on others.

There is a lot to worry about that is outside of your control, but the good news is, if you open your mind to it, you will find there are so many things to work on inside of your circle of influence that you can improve your situations and achieve your goals in spite of the things that you cannot control. You have so much more autonomy than you may believe, but you have to change your personal behavior and where you choose to focus your personal actions.

Consequences.

Just because we can choose our actions and choose to be proactive does not mean we have control over the outcomes of those choices. Sometimes things don’t work out the way we want them to.

Sometimes we make mistakes, and we suffer the negative consequences of those mistakes. Our tendency is to mope and whine or beat ourselves up. So, it’s important to understand that we have no control over what has already happened. We should learn from it, and then realize these problems are in the “no control” category.

Commitments.

I’ve already included this quote in a previous article. But it’s so important. In fact, it’s the reason I’m writing about this book. The most proactive thing we can do is to follow through on the promised we make ourselves. You should save this quote and read it daily.

The commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity in those commitments, is the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity.

It is also the essence of our growth. Through our human endowments of self-awareness and conscience, we become conscious of areas of weakness, areas for improvement, areas of talent that could be developed, areas that need to be changed or eliminated from our lives. Then, as we recognize use our imagination and independent will to act on that awareness — making promises, setting goals, and being true to them — we build the strength of character, the being, that makes possible every other positive thing in our lives.

It is here that we find two ways to put ourselves in control of our lives immediately. We can make a promise — and keep it. Or we can set a goal — and work to achieve it. As we make and keep commitments, even small commitments, we begin to establish an inner integrity that gives us the awareness of self-control and the courage and strength to accept more of the responsibility for our own lives. By making and keeping promises to ourselves and others, little by little, our honor becomes greater than our moods. (Pg. 99)

I am convinced that this idea is the single most impactful contributor to self-confidence and self-esteem. Every feeling of inadequacy and despair stems from aimless wandering and a life spent reacting.

Deep down, we yearn to have dominion over the only thing we can truly control: ourselves.

YouTube gems.

I am a YouTube junkie. Lately, I’ve curated my viewing towards business and productivity education. Here’s some of my favorites stuff I’ve watched this past week.

Tricks marketers use on you. Craig Clemens gave a masterclass on marketing on My First Million. Learn why people like to feel like rebels, how expert proof influences you, and more. Check out “How I’ve sold $1 Billion in Products Online” on MFM.

My favorite comedian on SNL. Nate Bargatze hosted SNL, which is amazing to me on so many levels. His monologue was hilarious, and you should look up his specials on Netflix and Amazon Prime if you like this one. Nate Bargatze Stand-Up Monologue.

That’s it for this week. Reply back or leave a comment to let me know what you think.

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First things, first.

I’m currently re-reading a book that had a huge impact on me, and sharing my notes along the way. You can check out the last post here.

I’m also writing more on LinkedIn, Instagram, and X (Twitter). Here’s a re-introduction and some thoughts on trying hard things.

I will be publishing a new newsletter each week, and it won’t always be about the book I’m reading. Make sure you follow along by subscribing.

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First principles.

There’s nothing like having a kid that can teach you that other people don’t see the world the same way you do. That’s one of the silver linings of becoming a dad while still being a teenager. I got to learn this lesson early.

Paradigms are the augmented reality glasses we wear. They make us see the world through our own lived experience. They affect every decision we make and every relationship we have.

As Stephen R. Covey puts it in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are — or as we are conditioned to see it.”

If we can operate with the understanding that other “realities” exist, the more capable we are to make good decisions, interact with people, and ultimately be more effective.

2 personal development schools of thought.

Covey teaches that most of personal development literature during the rise of the information age was based on what he calls the “personality ethic.” It’s the idea that we can improve our effectives through superficial skills like communication and influence strategies, changing our personalities, and telling ourselves mantras to improve our self-confidence.

But, he argues that the superior school of thought is the “character ethic” which emphasizes values like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, simplicity, and kindness. By working on who our base-level, our character, we will also improve the superficial-level.

If you want to improve your effectiveness, you have to improve your ability to recognize your paradigms (and your biases), so you can make better decisions and interact with people on a deeper level.

Introducing the 7 habits.

The 7 habits are broken up into three categories.

The first three help us become more independent. They are be proactive, begin with the end in mind, and put first things first. These ideas shaped the way I approached my first real job, a project manager at a retail construction and maintenance company, and it’s the foundation for my “batch, stack, and automate” process I teach my employees.

The second three help us become more interdependent. They are seek win-win, seek first to understand-then be understood, and synergies. To be honest, these are the habits I need to improve, and are behind the hardest lesson I am learning as an entrepreneur.

The final habit is simply constant development. As I’ve said before:

It’s true that sometimes, the things we are doing stop working. But it’s probably more often the case that we stop doing the things that are working.

YouTube gems.

I am a YouTube junkie. Lately, I’ve curated my viewing towards business and productivity education. Here’s some of my favorites stuff I’ve watched this past week.

David Perrel has a great new podcast about writing with amazing guests. I am normally an audio person, but the set he built is too good to not watch it on YouTube. Check out “How I Write.

I’m using Loom a ton, so it was great to see a founder I follow talk about how they use it at their company. If you’re not familiar, Loom lets you record your screen and instantly share the link to the video with anyone. I use it to give feedback and instructions mostly. Check out the video here.

That’s it for this week. Reply back or leave a comment to let me know what you think.

I’ve been chasing the sense of optimism, confidence, and progress I felt the year leading up to starting my company.

So, I picked up a book I read that year, and this passage jumped out at me.

The book is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. Here is the passage.

The commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity in those commitments, is the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity.

It is also the essence of our growth. Through our human endowments of self-awareness and conscience, we become conscious of areas of weakness, areas for improvement, areas of talent that could be developed, areas that need to be changed or eliminated from our lives. Then, as we recognize and use our imagination and independent will to act on that awareness — making promises, setting goals, and being true to them — we build the strength of character, the being, that makes possible every other positive thing in our lives.

It is here that we find two ways to put ourselves in control of our lives immediately. We can make a promise — and keep it. Or we can set a goal — and work to achieve it. As we make and keep commitments, even small commitments, we begin to establish an inner integrity that gives us the awareness of self-control and the courage and strength to accept more of the responsibility for our own lives. By making and keeping promises to ourselves and others, little by little, our honor becomes greater than our moods.

Simply put, we feel better about ourselves when we do the things we say we are going to do. We trust ourselves and grow more confident in our abilities.

It’s true that sometimes, the things we are doing stop working. But it’s probably more often the case that we stop doing the things that are working.

That’s what I did. Somewhere along the way of starting and growing businesses, of facing setbacks, pivoting, and slogging through a pandemic, I began to let myself down.

I chose to let myself off the hook. I stopped making good on the promises I had made to my younger self. This choked out the fire, the confidence, I had when everything was an opportunity and the sky was the limit.

I’ve spoken to a lot of entrepreneurs, and most of them say they’ve gone through something like this. When you choose the path that puts the weight of responsibility squarely on your shoulders, the weight can wear you down.

I’m so grateful for books like these that have the power to wake me up and put obvious, yet forgotten, truths in front of me. I am excited to read back through this book, and the others, that have been instrumental in my success.

I’ll be breaking these books downs and sharing my personal takeaways here on my Substack. If that sounds interesting to you, make sure you subscribe to follow along.

I heard a great line the other day.

When people ask Mark Manson for writing advice, he tells them to go write 100 articles and come back to him.

It’s a twist on the fable about the greatest salesman in the world.

The point is, if you do something enough times, and you’re paying attention, you’ll figure it out. You won’t need advice. You’ll have something else.

I’ve been thinking about this idea a lot. Especially when I hear about all of the mental health issues people are facing these days.

Life’s never been easier, and people are still unhappy. Maybe it’s a part of the human condition.

The more I think about this the more I believe that people don’t really want to be happy.

What they really want is to be confident.

Think about it. Anxiety presents itself as dread over future events. Literally extreme fear over something that has not happened yet.

How do you overcome fear? You have to act. You have to confront the thing you are afraid of.

The more you rely on products and services to do everything for you, the more you avoid discomfort.

The more you avoid discomfort, the less able you feel to deal with new situations.

You spiral into compounding feelings of inadequacy until you have unreasonable, completely made up fears: dread over future events.

I know for me, I feel the worst when my daily actions don’t line up with my aspirational identity. The key here is my “daily actions.”

It’s not about how I measure up to others. It’s not about how far away I am from a goal. It’s about whether or not I am taking action, doing things.

I am not perfect at this. I procrastinate and avoid things on a weekly basis. There’s a list of sales calls I need to make right now, and I am writing this article instead. (It’s the advice I need to hear.)

I just know from experience that the best way to feel better about yourself, to be happy, is to build confidence. And, you can’t build confidence without taking action.

Fear is the most intense right before experience.

And I know the catharsis of overcoming fear.

It’s worth it.

Now, go do something.