Doug Wagner, Author at Sunwapta Solutions

30 Jul 2013

3 Ways You May Be Stealing Success From Your Business

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-12T13:24:18-06:00July 30th, 2013|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Marketing, Mindset and Motivation, Sales|

No theft stealing focus business success When we spend time doing things that don’t add value and pretending it is work we are stealing. The only question is from whom?

The Law of Value states:

“Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.”

Bob Burg and John David Mann – The Go-Giver

Stealing From Your Employer

As an employee you are paid to deliver value to your employer that far surpasses the amount of money you take in payment. The more […]

22 Jul 2013

Underperforming in Sales: Check Your Beliefs

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:26:58-06:00July 22nd, 2013|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Marketing, Mindset and Motivation, Sales|

Are your beliefs holding you back in sales?

If you don't believe you can sell until…

You have a killer web site,
You have a flawless script,
You have a gorgeous glossy brochure and beautiful business cards,
You have been trained for countless hours,
You have 10,000 followers on Twitter and 5,000 page likes on Facebook,
Essentially, everything is perfect…

You won't!

Just like anything else you choose to do, it is extremely difficult to exceed your own expectations.

Sales starts with attitude.

If you are the only one selling, your business will die or at the very least, you will starve.

Positive mental attitude sales success […]

19 Jul 2013

Strategic Drivers

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:27:13-06:00July 19th, 2013|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation|

Watching how people drive can tell you a lot about how people think. My hypothesis is that people tend to predominantly think a certain way across multiple areas of their lives.

I am not talking about the ages old good versus bad driver. Most people consider themselves to be above average drivers and statistics say half of them are wrong.

This observation first hit me on the long drive from Calgary to Edmonton watching someone else drive. Much of the highway is two lanes in either direction and the speed limit is mostly 110 km/hour. The challenge is to maintain a constant […]

11 Jul 2013

Everyone Is In Customer Service – Just Do It!

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:27:28-06:00July 11th, 2013|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Leadership, Marketing, Sales|

We've all heard it.

"Everyone in your company or organization who interacts with a customer or provides a product or service to a customer is in customer service."

The same is true for marketing. Or branding.

If you extend this to include everyone inside your organization who could impact the reputation of your organization; you pretty much include everyone.

Zappos starts everyone out in their call center. I read that WestJet expects employees and spouses flying for free or on discounts to help clean the plane.
Business person overwhelm help keeping up […]

3 Jul 2013

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff – Attitude Matters

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:27:35-06:00July 3rd, 2013|Categories: Current Events, Doug's Blog, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation|

Yesterday could have been a bad day.

An Apple A Day

I lost all of the contacts on my iPhone. I got distracted while connecting the phone to my computer to restore from backup and missed cancelling the automatic Sync and backup process.

I went to restore the contacts and the only options were backups from a few minutes ago with the corrupted data.

Not good.

Brief Rant: Seriously Apple, you should allow me to set how long I want to keep backups for (at least a week); I have lots of hard drive space. People don't always notice the problem right away and aren't technically […]

27 Jun 2013

The Flood of Knowledge Workers…

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:27:45-06:00June 27th, 2013|Categories: Business Strategy, Current Events, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

I work in Calgary. On the evening of June 20^th, 2013 and into the weekend, Calgary flooded. Many low lying areas along the Elbow and Bow rivers received a lot of damage. 10's of thousands of people were evacuated in less than 24 hours.

Calgary Flood 2013 Disaster Recovery On the 25^th of June I decided to take the shuttle bus downtown to our office building (which fortunately was undamaged and had power). The Calgary Transit light rail tracks were damaged on the south line.

As […]

17 Jun 2013

Entrepreneurial Time Estimating Learned From My Father

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:27:55-06:00June 17th, 2013|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation, Software Development|

With Father's Day just past I was reflecting on what I learned from my own father. Actually, I learned it from observation because I am pretty sure he was not intentionally passing on his wisdom.

If fact, like most entrepreneurs of the visionary bent, he was extremely optimistic in estimating effort for new ventures.

It usually went something like this.

"Doug, I am replacing the stairs on the deck and could use some help for an hour or so."

Deck construction time estimating business Now if he said […]

11 Jun 2013

Using Your Super-Powers for Market Feedback

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:28:04-06:00June 11th, 2013|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Marketing, Sales|

I was looking for wording on a new motto for myself the other day. So I asked some people on social media (Twitter) for feedback on:

"If you can't be funny, at least be odd."

After listening to feedback from my friends around the world on Twitter, I changed it to:

"If you can't be funny, at least be different."

Parrot, humor, business, core values

After thinking about it, even the Monty Python crew used to say "and now for something completely different", even […]

6 Jun 2013

12 Success Attributes for an Ideal Coaching Client

By Doug Wagner|2017-06-07T21:12:45-06:00June 6th, 2013|Categories: Doug's Blog, Go-Giver Coach, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation|Tags: business advice, Business Coaching, business strategy, business success, Coachable, Coaching, Coaching Client, Continuous Improvement, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Go-Giver Coach, Ideal Client, Ideal Clients, Ideal Coaching Client, Learning, self-awareness, small business owner, success, Trust|

Are you a business coach wanting to find better clients or working with a coach and want to get more from the deal?

I was thinking about what an ideal coaching client would look like. Then I realized that the attributes of the ideal coaching client are that exact same attributes for:

Personal Success
Career Success
Sales Success
Leadership Success
Business Success

Yes, coaches want to work with clients who REALLY want to win, take action and apply what […]

28 May 2013

Suffering For Your Art (or Work or Business)

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:28:33-06:00May 28th, 2013|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

I know quite a few artists.

Musicians. Dancers. Writers. Painters. Creative types.

In the broader sense of art that Seth Godin uses I know far
more artists. People making a big difference in the world by pouring themselves
wholeheartedly into what they do. Creating art.

Paintbrushes artist create Some artists suffer from pain (ranging from clinical, sensitivity,
to heartbreak) and practice their art as a release. It brings them respite, joy
and gives meaning to their world.

Some artists are struggling through the hard work of both
mastering their craft and finding enough people […]

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About Doug Wagner

Stealing From Your Employer

An Apple A Day