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We hear it all the time: “New Year, New You!”

Why?

Because it sells stuff. It sounds easy. Throw out that old you that’s not working out and get a new one.

I would like to invite you to never say it ever again.

You have spent many years becoming the you that you are. Your knowledge, relationships, skills, habits, ideas, beliefs, convictions, passions all make up who you are.

Most of it is good. All of it is you.

The Self Loathing of “New Year, New Me”

What does it imply to say “new year, new me?” It implies that the old you, the you who is saying those words, is crap.

If I say “new year, new washing machine,” my old washing machine is ending up in a landfill. Does your current self, your entire self, belong in a landfill? Of course not, and I’ll prove it.

Sit down right now and write the 10 best things about yourself. Does the person who those 10 things apply to need to be thrown out and replaced.

NO!

You don’t need a new you next year. You need the you that God made, that you are right now, slightly better next year!

Same You, Slightly Better

My car runs quite well, in spite of its 188,000 miles, but sometimes it has a slight hesitation accelerating under certain situations.

The effect is the whole car, but it’s probably just one small part, maybe the fuel pump.

Take a look a this. It’s the whole car and the fuel pump in proportion to it…

In the whole big car, there’s one tiny part that maybe needs to be replaced or fixed. Every other part of the car is great.

You are this car

Maybe you need a new, clearer set of goals.
Maybe you need new habits.
Maybe you need a new budgeting system.
Maybe you need to finally clean your office.

In 2025, you will be the same wonderful, brilliant, passionate, inspired child of God that you were in 2024.

Do you need to grow? Absolutely.
Do you need to learn? Definitely.
Do you need to change everything? NO!

-Michael Whitehouse
The Guy Who Knows a Guy

Rowan, my 9 year old daughter, says many wise things. 

Some on purpose, others unintentionally.

A friend recommended that I should listen to a “Bible In a Year” program, and, always open to new ways to become inspired as I do my exercises, I started today.

My daughter happened to walk in as Nicky Gumbel was discussing how we are all made in God’s image.

To this, she made the sort of quip that 9 year olds are wont to do, that contains wisdom they do not realize.

She made a face and said, “It this in God’s image?”

(Not the actual face the she made, but close enough for the story)

First, I chuckled at her expression.

At first, I was about to give the adult answer that, no, that’s not what it means.

But I stopped myself.

I paused to hear the wisdom in her childlike humor.

That is not all of what it means, but it is some of what it means.

That precisely the image of the God who created the platypus.

It is the image of the God who puts a hilarious billboard on the highway next to the traffic jam we are stuck in.

It is the face of God who, in the midst of our most serious and weighty world creates regular moments of levity, humor, and joy.

Take a look at your own face.

(Take a selfie if you don’t have a mirror handy)

Created in the image of God that is.
Take a moment to think about that. 
Every wrinkle, blemish, and imperfection, created in the image of God.
All of your foibles, errors, mistakes, and weaknesses are created in the image of God.

And what if you don’t believe in God?

That’s okay. But even if you don’t, I encourage you to try this little exercise of looking at yourself and saying “That is in the image of God.”

Just try it on. See how you like it.

No need to take it too seriously. It’s just some advice out of an email from some guy.

Maybe make a funny face while you do it.

Did you know I produce a daily podcast called Morning Motivation?

It’s true, and it’s a lot of stuff like this: thoughts to get you motivated in the morning (thus the name)

You can find it here.

Why do so many people hate networking so much?

🤝Networking is about building relationships, sharing resources, helping people, finding support, building a community. 🤝

Who could hate that?

We hate networking because the concept of networking has been Corrupted.

REAL Networking is about collaboration, relationships, and communities.

But Corrupted Networking is about elevator pitches, prospects, leads, sales, and predatory tactics.

If something is corrupted, then someone corrupted it, and I have come up with 5 archetypes of networking Corruptors, which I then asked DALL-E to draw for me. (I’m not sure which one is which in the picture)

Continue reading “The Corruptors of Networking” →

The first time I used the skills of what I would later come to call coaching was at the age of 15.

I’m going to get into some fairly heavy issues in this message including abuse and suicidal ideation, so if you’d rather not continue, you can read this article about how I married the most beautiful woman in the world instead.

OK, on with the story.

Friends, especially female friends, would come to me and share their problems, and I would listen. 

Some of these problems were quite serious. 

One friend’s father physically abused her. 

Another dealt with powerful body image issues. 

Yet another had developed tremendous insecurity from the medical establishment telling her that she was defective.

Self harm and suicidal ideation were common.

Various adults told me that if a friend expressed suicidal thoughts to me, that I should tell the authorities and let the professionals handle it.

Except I didn’t trust the authorities. Many of these friends had been through the system, and many had come out worse for it.

Taking someone in crisis and ripping them away from all coping mechanisms and support structures to put them in a strange place surrounded by people with more severe issues overseen by an overworked and exhausted staff doesn’t always yield the most positive results. 

The overreaction of their parents leading to an increase in their already overprotective and authoritarian tendencies didn’t help either.

Add to that the inherent sexism of a mental health industry in the 90s that saw teenage girls as inherently defective, and I did not see that as a respectful choice to make for them..

When you’re young, everything seems possible and everything seems normal. Whatever your life is is what it is, so this seemed perfectly normal to me.

Doesn’t everyone talk their friends in high school out of suicide attempts?

Looking back, two and a half decades later, I realize that the fact that, every week or so, I’d be the one talking someone down from a potential self harm or suicide attempt is not the typical teenage experience (although more common that we might think.)

I didn’t have training for this. I didn’t have any support, because if I did ask anyone for help, they would call in the authorities. I didn’t even have the Internet in 1995.

What I did have was a desire to help, the gifts of intuition and empathy that God had granted me, and the arrogant sense of duty of a 15 year old boy placed in a situation where he could step up.

No one I was talking to ever made a suicide attempt.

Did I prevent them? Who can tell?

Did I give them an ear and a shoulder when they needed it? I think so.

A few years ago, one of these friends reached out to me after not talking for 20 years because she was in crisis again, which tells me I must have been doing something right.

I learned a great deal from the experience. 

I learned about the challenges of growing up female in the 90s (many of which continue to exist today although some things are improving), trying to make impossible compromises among competing needs, drives, and expectations.

I learned the importance of a parent understanding their child and working for their best ultimate outcome, rather than seeing them as an extension of the parent.

I learned that the worst way to prevent a kid from doing something is strict, authoritarian rules.

I learned that the authoritarian parenting style that many parents were taught (and too many are still taught) is ineffective at best and destructive at worst.

I hadn’t thought much about this in a long time, but for some reason, I woke up thinking about it today.

The skills I used in high school are the core talents of a coach. Since then, I have gotten coaching certifications and more formal training, much of which gave me some great clarity on why things I did instinctively worked so well.

I don’t do much crisis coaching anymore, but I do help people to identify their blocks, clarify goals, and uncover power they didn’t know they have to achieve their best life.

This is what I do for my coaching clients.

If you feel called to explore becoming one of those clients, let’s have a call.

I will share more about what a coach does, what I do as a coach, and how I might serve you.

If that’s not you, but you know someone who it might apply to, feel free to forward this to them, or just share the call booking link.

I believe that Facebook is no longer a platform that we, as entrepreneurs can trust, and by the end of this story, you will as well.

“It looks like someone may have accessed your Facebook account,” was how the message started that I got earlier this week.

Continue reading “Why entrepreneurs can’t trust Facebook” →

I’ve never felt right using swipe copy.

Signing my name under someone else’s words and sending them out to my community didn’t feel in integrity.

So I developed a new way to promote partners.

Continue reading “The JV Guest Letter: A New Approach to Swipe Copy” →

“I thought heating oil was made from coal.”

When she said that, I knew what kind of person I was dealing with: a person who does not know how to ask questions.

It’s not that she didn’t care. She apparently spent hours watching documentaries about “the truth” in the world, but she couldn’t be troubled to spend 3 seconds typing a simple question into Google

(The answer, in case you don’t know, is that heating oil is very similar to diesel and is produced from crude oil.)

There are no stupid questions, only stupid people who don’t ask questions.

The challenge, especially in business is that many of the questions we ask cannot be answered by Google. If you ask a factual question like the one above, there are authoritative sites.

But if you ask a question like “What social media platform should I be on?” or “What is the next step in my business?” or “How do I build an audience?” you will get advertisements.

I don’t just mean the paid results at the top. I mean that everything that Google gives you is an ad for something because everything you will see is there because money was spent on SEO, and they expect a return.

So the sites you’ll go to for your “answers” will give you “answers” that would suggest that the solution to your problem is to buy their thing.

Whether or not you buy their thing, you will get bad information because it is information that is given to you for reasons other than your own best interest.

One of the greatest benefits I have gained from having a network like I do is that I have access to high quality information. If I have a question, whether technical, strategic, or even philosophical, I have people I trust that I can get good advice from.

It is this asset, which has been invaluable to me, that I have built the Entrepreneur Mentor Community around.

I have invited dozens of the most trustworthy and knowledgeable people I know to be Mentors in the community. These are people who know good information, and who share it for your benefit..

I’ve also found that, because I have done a little and this a bit of that and whole lot of the other thing, I’ve had occasion to ask most of the questions that entrepreneurs ask, so I either know a top level answer, or I know who does.

This is what I do in the Ask Me Anything Solution Sessions which are one of the privileges of membership.

Want to check it out? The next one is at 11 AM (Eastern) Wednesday. (They’re every Wednesday at 11.)

You can come once as a guest, and members can come as often as they need to.

To attend, just use this Zoom link at 11 AM Eastern today (or any Wednesday).

You can only visit once, but it’s only $47 to become a member, so if you find it valuable, it’s easy to join.

“If this deal comes together, your commission could be $5,000,000.”

👀

That got my attention.

I’ve been coming across more and more of these kinds of opportunities. Situations where if I can connect the right people, substantial commissions are to be made. But there’s a problem.

My network is substantial, but the true power lies in the network of my network, and their network, and most of these arrangements are built around the idea of a single connector making connections to their rolodex.

Have you ever made an introduction that down the line lead to substantial money being made, but you didn’t see a piece of it? 😰

With these opportunities, there are two issues I need to address.
1) How to fully activate my entire network to find the one person that my contact needs to meet
2) How to make sure everyone involved in making it happen is rewards.

😀 Enter The Connector Nexus or (Connexus because Connector Nexus is really hard to say). 😀

It’s simple. You fill out that form and give me permission to inform you of opportunities I come across.

Then, you introduce me to people you think might know the people I am looking for.

The form asks you for who introduced you to me, so I can track the chain of connections.

If a commission is made, that commission is shared up the chain. Naturally, the closer to the actual connection, the more they get, but the result is that you could introduce me to someone who introduces me to someone you don’t even know, and you get a portion of what comes of it. (You can see the math here)

Amazing connections occur.
Everyone gets rewarded.
We all win.

All you need to do is fill out the short form, read the updates I send you, and introduce me to well connected people you know.

I’ll do the rest, and if something comes of it, you’ll automatically get paid through PayPal.

I’m going to share two pictures with you that are very exciting to me but may require a bit of explanation to understand.

Exciting? Amiright?

OK, a little explanation…

The first picture is now the view from my desk. Previously, there had been no whiteboards there and the nook on the left was a jumbled mess. (My capacity for success is limited only by how many whiteboards I have to map out ideas on, so now it is increased.)

Continue reading “Working with My Wife” →