Hello all, I’m taking a break for a few weeks until my home situation is sorted out. Over the past few weeks, things have gotten overwhelming to the point I barely even get to my office. The house needs a tonne of work (DIY decoration, painting walls, moving furniture, restructuring rooms, clearing storage spaces, setting up workspaces), all the while navigating the intense emotional weight this place has for both of us, especially with bereavement. I’ve thought about it carefully, and I’ve written to the people I’m writing about to say that I’m pausing several commitments until I get things in order. It’s impossible to get things moving on my end when our home space is so difficult. It’s utterly draining, and we’re going to take time to establish a firm base to build from. Thanks to the Vision Processing, in particular, I know I have everything I need in place to get moving. I’ll get back into it once things are more settled. Painfully aware of all the stuff I need to do for myself and my work, but this has now become the work. Also, we were supposed to get married this weekend, but we had postponed it because of her mother’s passing. Instead of wedding bells, we were smothered with dust and wood filler–but loved it. In a way, I’m removing a bottleneck that’s preventing me from getting to where I want to be. I'm creating the conditions where I can actually follow through consistently rather than in a fragmented way. It starts at home. Appreciate all the accountability and encouragement this group excels in. Just wanted to be transparent and will be back with a stronger foundation. Thank you for understanding. P.S. Also sharing a couple pics from my office/studio. A few months ago, I set up a large drawing, and this is where it's at. I have, however, just taken this piece down to give me more space for clarity. I needed it to get started once I moved here, and I’ll return to it at a later date. Hope you enjoy!

This is an important lesson. I've been learning these past few years. Most people are looking for opportunities. I’ve learned something different. Everything is an opportunity I didn’t always believe that. - A challenge is an opportunity to grow. - A setback is an opportunity to reset. - A frustrating conversation is an opportunity to connect on a deeper level.. - A closed door is an opportunity to find a better one. When you begin to see life through this lens, you notice opportunities that most people completely miss. Here are a few that I was thinking about this morning as I was journaling. A company kept emailing me about working with them. I already had my own business, so I kept brushing them off. The VP and the CEO continuously reached out to me week after a week. They were relentless😠 Finally, I thought... Wait a second… let’s have a conversation. Twenty-five minutes later, they became my client. - Everything is an opportunity. Years ago, I was selling newspaper ads for a small paper that hardly anyone knew. I just making enough to survive. An upset customer called because they had placed a help wanted ad for a sakesperson in our paper, but it had never been published. After I helped them, I thought, Wait a second… I’m looking for a better sales opportunity. So I called them back. They hired me. That decision changed my career. I went on to break every sales record in that company’s history during my 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 10th years. - Everything is an opportunity. Another time, I received what looked like a phishing email with an invoice attached. Instead of deleting it, I called and asked, “Has your email been hacked?” It had! We started talking, uncovered some business challenges, and he became a client. - Everything is an opportunity. Then there was the guy who sent me one of those spam LinkedIn messages. Instead of ignoring it, I replied: “Would you like to learn a better way to do this so you can get the results you're looking for?”

I discovered the other day that the only known handwritten parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence (besides the original signed parchment in Washington, D.C.) is held here in the small city where I live in the UK: Chichester. How crazy is that? What the chances?! A reason to visit 😂 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1m28ygpndyo

12 months ago it would’ve taken 2 weeks at least. Same brain. Same frameworks. Same standards. Different stack. Here’s exactly what I used and where each tool earned its spot: Plaud + Fathom — Every discovery call, every client conversation, captured and transcribed automatically. No more scrambling to remember what the CEO said about his succession problem or what the COO admitted about turnover. The raw material was all there, word for word. Wispr Flow — I talk faster than I type, and my best thinking happens out loud. This let me dictate strategy notes, proposal sections, and client insights at the speed I actually think, then clean it up in seconds instead of minutes. Perplexity — Research on the client’s industry, their competitive pressures, and the specific behavioral risks tied to a role at their level. What used to take a day of digging took twenty minutes. Claude — This is where it all came together. I fed it the call transcripts, my ProScan PDP data on the client, the 60-30-10 framework, and my own voice rules. It didn’t write the proposal for me. It built the scaffolding so I could focus on the judgment calls only I can make: which framework fits this exact leadership gap, where the real risk sits, what this CEO actually needs to hear versus what he’s asking for. That’s the part people miss. AI didn’t replace the expertise. It stripped out everything that wasn’t expertise, the formatting, the transcription, the first-draft grunt work, so the six hours I spent were pure high-value thinking. Two weeks of my old process was maybe four hours of real strategy buried under seventy hours of admin. If you’re still doing proposals and other work the old way, you’re not protecting quality. You’re just burning your best hours on your lowest-value work.

Watching that call again was uncomfortable, to say the least. I’m sure many of us feel that way when we see ourselves speak, but of course it was incredibly useful. My biggest takeaway from the call was that I fear committing to the unknown. The known brings comfort, but it also keeps you limited. The unknown is where you grapple and figure things out, piece by piece. When action is inconsistent, pathways that may have been valid signals end up becoming noise. Taking action and cutting through the noise brings clarity. And so my first commitment post-Vision Processing is to write to 100 people before our next call on Friday, 10th July. I’ve built endless systems and strategies, but they'll only come into power once I take consistent, focused action. Thank you @Michael Clegg @Mike Ludwig @James Stephenson @Dwayne Van Harberden 💥