Doug Wagner, Author at Sunwapta Solutions

19 Dec 2012

Serendipity and Defining the Ideal Customer

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:33:44-06:00December 19th, 2012|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Manifast, Marketing, Sales|

Having the discipline to define and focus on your ideal
customer at the exclusion of all distractions is a skill that eludes many
business owners.

We naturally want to say “everyone” can use our product or
service. After all, what if we exclude someone and they want what we have?

Marketing to “everyone” is very expensive and the message usually
becomes so vague it doesn’t really catch anyone’s attention.

You need a story that resonates to a group of people, your
ideal customer. So you need to be clear who that is.

Defining Our Ideal Customer

We started out with the idea Manifast was for any small […]

11 Dec 2012

You Get What You Measure: Choose Wisely

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:33:52-06:00December 11th, 2012|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Leadership|

I am sure you’ve heard the expressions:

"That which gets measured tends to improve."
"If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it."
"You get what you pay attention to."

In many ways in business you get what you measure.

What if you are measuring and focussing on the wrong thing?

Unfortunately, you will get that too.

How Most Do It

Say you are running a customer support or call center.

People call in or complete a support request online and the job
at hand is to resolve customer problems.

Since call centers are expensive and generally are […]

30 Nov 2012

“Learning” the Fiddle (How Hard Can It Be?)

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:34:08-06:00November 30th, 2012|Categories: Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

What are you doing to learn something new?

Your future success and even mental health likely depends on it. (I'll come back to this.)

Bob Burg asked me to share about my background as a musician and so I wrapped it up in a blog post with some other things.

Fiddling Around

A little more than 8 years ago I took up playing the fiddle. I was just shy of 40 when I did it and had been running our business for about 4 years at the time (and apparently didn't have enough to do).

I had been enjoying some Maritime music groups and they […]

27 Nov 2012

Secret: Employees Don’t Need To Know That (or Do They?)

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:34:16-06:00November 27th, 2012|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams|

There seems to be a fair number of businesses that believe the key to their success is knowledge… tightly held knowledge.

Secrets.

Such important secrets that not even employees need to know.

Classified-RF

They want to hire great employees and grow their businesses. They want their business to run without them so they can:

Focus on the bigger picture,
Take longer vacations without having to stay connected,
Work less hours,
Grow the business,
Etc.

The key to this is delegation.

So they delegate pieces to a few key managers. Not too much.

Just enough so they can […]

19 Nov 2012

Big Dreams Are Accomplished By Great Teams

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:34:21-06:00November 19th, 2012|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

I have to warn you up front, I was watching Larry Winget videos on YouTube prior to writing this post. Here goes.

I recently read a tweet that said something like:

"If you are working for someone you are fulfilling their dreams and not yours."

This is the classic I made it doing X, if you do X just like me you will succeed too expert advice that is being oversold.

What a load of crap. If you are working for someone and are not accomplishing any of your goals or moving forward towards them in some way "it your own damn […]

12 Nov 2012

Do or Die Trying: A Strategy That Needs Help

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:34:27-06:00November 12th, 2012|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Manifast|

Is that your business strategy? Set a course and go… until you do or die?

That can certainly be exciting… for a while. In some rare cases it can even be essential.

But it is usually not the best path. At least not one to Manifast your dream business!

As Yoda said:

"Do or do not, there is no try."

So in case you had doubt, dying has no value.

Strategy

I define business strategy as something like:

"A forward looking vision (destination) and plan (path) that takes into consideration what you think is going to happen in the future to give you an advantage in […]

8 Nov 2012

“Start with Why”: So Why Manifast?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-04T15:36:21-06:00November 8th, 2012|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Manifast|

One of the books I am reading right now is “Start with Why” by Simon Sinek.

This is not the first book I’ve read on the importance of knowing your purpose or having a mission.

The book talks about “why” as opposed to “what” and “how”. The businesses that create the most loyalty and avoid being commodities do this right.

“Inspire” rather than “Manipulate”. When people are aligned with your “why” they will pay a premium or suffer inconvenience to stay with you. The rest need to manipulate their customers into buying.

Lots of great stuff here but rather than talk theory… […]

5 Nov 2012

The 3 Sacred Rules of Leadership Trust (If they are so Easy…)

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:34:38-06:00November 5th, 2012|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation|

You can't build a great business unless you can get everyone behind the mission, sharing the core values and building a strong culture.

Part and parcel of that is strong leadership. There is no one leadership style that guarantees success or failure but there are some basic rules of leadership that guarantee a lack of trust and inspiration if broken.

Basic Leadership

Praise in public, criticize in private.

Praise should be in the order of 10x the amount of criticism. Praise has to be genuine and assumes that you and your team are competent.

If you have a clear mission, clear core values and a […]

1 Nov 2012

A Dog and Pony – Re-framing Abundance and Receptivity

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:34:48-06:00November 1st, 2012|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

I was thinking about manifestation, receptivity and abundance a lot the other day; especially from a personal and business success perspective.

Part of it was my own learning and observation, part of it was triggered by comments during our Wednesday coaching call… but it was my own dog who really put it all together for me.

A Dog and Pony

Our dog Kaylee was visiting a friend's house. They happen to have kids. Kids tend to leave lots of toys laying around.

She entered the house not knowing what to expect. She had never been there before.

As she ran around exploring and checking […]

30 Oct 2012

Expending Energy in all the Right Places

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:34:54-06:00October 30th, 2012|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

Recently, I have been revisiting where my time is actually going. Everyone should do this periodically.

It is especially important for entrepreneurs, business owners and self-employed people.

Reflecting

I did a detailed review of where I actually spent my time over the last 12 months with additional focus on where it was trending.

Not surprising that the trend was drifting from where I wanted to be.

Common wisdom is that you should do the work that adds the most value to the organization.

This time around I also considered what I should be doing at a deeper level.

What work gives me energy? What drains it?

I took […]

dwagner

About Doug Wagner

Defining Our Ideal Customer

How Most Do It

Fiddling Around

Strategy

Basic Leadership

A Dog and Pony

Reflecting