Doug Wagner, Author at Sunwapta Solutions

28 Apr 2016

Your Relationship with Time and Money Is Hurting You

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-12T11:43:17-06:00April 28th, 2016|Categories: Business Strategy, Manifast, Mindset and Motivation, The Good Men Project|Tags: 80/20 rule, advice, business, business startups, entrepreneur, happiness, Investing, leverage, marketing, men and money, money, small business, small business owner, smart investing, time management, trade time for money|

Your ability to invest and leverage resources determines your success in business. How do you measure up?

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The Internet has taught us we can be experts in anything we choose. So we try to be experts in everything. Or worse, we learn just enough to fool ourselves into thinking we are experts because we don’t have the time or passion for achieving mastery.

I see this a lot with small business owners.

For example, they figure out how to build their website and do online marketing because […]

11 Apr 2016

Being Self-Aware Enough to Know Your Value is the Path to Creating Exceptional Value

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:11:02-06:00April 11th, 2016|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation, The Good Men Project|Tags: achieving happiness, adding value, advice, authentic leadership, business, business advice, business leadership, Derek Sivers, Dysfunctional Entrepreneur, happiness, hidden talents, leadership, manhood, perceived value, relationships, self-awareness, success, talents, teams, Work|

Team of Self Aware Business People - Startup

With people walking the Earth claiming to be the “greatest” at everything, it is easy to lose sight of your personal potential for greatness.

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When I think of personal greatness, I don’t mean the narcissistic “look at me, look how great I am” of an adult child clamoring for constant approval. A little limelight is good for the soul. Tying your sense of self-worth to the […]

7 Apr 2016

The Power of Knowing Your Entrepreneurial Focus

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-12T11:44:15-06:00April 7th, 2016|Categories: Business Strategy, Manifast, Mindset and Motivation, The Good Men Project|Tags: advice, business, business strategy, business success, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, focusing on results, leadership, mission, purpose, self focus, strategy, success, workplace|

It is very difficult to focus on a business mission and yourself at the same time. Clarity makes all the difference.

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“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Robert

Robert has somewhere between seven and a dozen small business ventures on the go at any time.

If he sees an opportunity or has an idea, he is quick to launch it. One of the businesses started out in managed information technology services. Then a client asked
if he could build her a […]

5 Apr 2016

Going High to Access Alberta’s Ocean

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-17T13:22:16-06:00April 5th, 2016|Categories: Current Events, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Oilfield Pulse, Sales|

Imagination, Innovation and a Boy in Box

Alberta wasn’t always landlocked. Now is the time to reimagine our competitive advantage.

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Alberta wasn’t always landlocked. Anywhere from 600 million years ago until 85 million years ago, give or take some rounding errors, the salt water of the ocean covered Alberta by varying degrees.

Then for 2 million years, Alberta went through about 80 glacial cycles. The last ice age finished about 10,000 years ago, bringing us to relatively modern times.

The federal government got elected […]

28 Mar 2016

Stuck? Begin With the Start in Mind

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:11:26-06:00March 28th, 2016|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, The Good Men Project, Working on the Business|

Begin with Start - Writing Business Ideas

Are you excellent at picturing the end-solution and then working backwards? There are times when that approach fails.

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As an entrepreneur, I can imagine, in great detail, a lot of possible things I could do or build. I’ve run into plenty of others in the same boat. Ideas are rarely in shortage.

Call it chasing the squirrel or the shiny blue ball syndrome.

The solution in most cases is to […]

21 Mar 2016

Manage Your Brand: Win the Hearts of Customers

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:11:51-06:00March 21st, 2016|Categories: Business Strategy, Current Events, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Oilfield Pulse, Sales|

Happy Customers - Branding

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People buy Apple products, because Apple has a powerful brand that connects to their ideal customer.

Consumers can see the connection to the iPhone in their hand or the MacBook Pro in their lap along with the company itself.

It doesn’t matter if the products are manufactured offshore by companies and people they don’t know exist. It doesn’t matter if the components in the phones are fabricated by other companies most of us have never heard of. […]

17 Mar 2016

Win-Win Always Trumps Creating Losers

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-12T11:44:54-06:00March 17th, 2016|Categories: Business Strategy, Current Events, Manifast, Mindset and Motivation, The Good Men Project|

You don’t have to make people lose to win. In fact, it is usually a bad long-term strategy.

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“You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.“ ~ Zig Ziglar

If you have been watching Donald Trump in the news lately, you are probably quite aware that he embraces an overt and aggressive bullying technique when dealing with any opposition.

Most recently, this included attacking the credibility of a disabled New York Times reporter […]

14 Mar 2016

Why Having an Opinion Isn’t the Same as Thinking

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:12:09-06:00March 14th, 2016|Categories: Books and Courses, Doug's Blog, Leadership, The Good Men Project|

Lion Listening in Africa

Does the sheep really care that the lion doesn’t care about his opinion, and other challenges you’ve probably never considered.

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I’ve been challenging some commonly held beliefs (or memes) for a while. Often this conversation is in my head. Sometimes it is with clients and their beliefs about how their industry works. (I may even talk to myself when no one is around, but I am not aware of any proof.)

I was recently reading […]

7 Mar 2016

Partnering Starts with Brand and Trust

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:12:22-06:00March 7th, 2016|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Oilfield Pulse|

Trust and Partnering In Tough Times

Critical Parts of Successful Collaboration

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Over our last 15 plus years in business and consulting, I’ve run into many cases of small businesses attempting to work together to deliver better client value, win larger projects, and share marketing and sales costs.

This is one example of what it often looks like:

Five to ten small firms targeting a similar target market form a marketing group or shell company.
They all remain autonomous and […]

1 Mar 2016

Stop Hoping For a Hero to Save You

By Doug Wagner|2020-08-11T13:07:29-06:00March 1st, 2016|Categories: Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Leadership, The Good Men Project|

As an entrepreneur, you have more problems than time. So you try to hand your biggest problems to someone else to make them disappear.

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We love our heroes.

In the movies, sometimes they start out as hero material, and sometimes they are reluctant heroes; forced into the role.

In sports, our heroes range from the all-star lineup of the favored team to the quarterback on the opposing side who leads the underdog team in a playoff run.

We want […]

dwagner

About Doug Wagner

With people walking the Earth claiming to be the “greatest” at everything, it is easy to lose sight of your personal potential for greatness.

Robert

Alberta wasn’t always landlocked. Now is the time to reimagine our competitive advantage.

Are you excellent at picturing the end-solution and then working backwards? There are times when that approach fails.

Does the sheep really care that the lion doesn’t care about his opinion, and other challenges you’ve probably never considered.

Critical Parts of Successful Collaboration

As an entrepreneur, you have more problems than time. So you try to hand your biggest problems to someone else to make them disappear.