#76 The Learning System

Hello, friends.

Now that my kids are of school age, summer no longer recedes with the daylight. It just stops. One day they’re on vacation and the next day, they go back to school. Summer over.

What I’m Learning

Not too long ago, I took the CliftonStrengthsFinder assessment. My scores came back to say my top theme was “learner”. While there are multiple profile sets, the ones I’m keying in on right now is my propensity to absorb information quickly and challenge myself to improve.

My goal is to leverage this skill to better serve my family, clients and customers. The framework I’ve been trying out is Receive. Apply. Advance.

Receive

Listen and consume relevant information that could be useful.

Apply

Find ways to deploy and try out what I’m learning.

Advance

Use and teach what works to grow

Whether this system is used to guide marketing efforts, product development or practice leadership, the framework holds up.

Changelog

Honestly: We added a new engagement manager a few weeks ago. Also, in collaboration with our friends at Fifth Letter, we have a new info product rolling next week. I’ll share more about it next time.

LOFT: Last week we met for our quarterly leadership meeting. . It’s been right at a year that we opened the doors for LOFT. I’m constantly amazed at the team we’ve assembled After 12 months, we have 47 applications under management and over $300k in ARR.

CrewPay: We continue to make progress with CrewPay. New contractors are being added every week but growth isn’t accelerating as quickly as we’d like. It’s been fun and challenging to build a fin-tech product. Recently, we had to handle our first fraud situation which led to a new process.

Pttrns: We continue to see mixed results from our digital ads but hoping to turn the corner now that we have an audience size large enough to retarget. Active users are up but paid users have declined a bit. In addition, we’re starting to plan some updates to the platform that will enable easier screen uploading and improve the login experience.

Until next time.

-David

P.S. We just finished up an environmental design project for a new science building at a local University. During our research, I ran across this wonderful science illustration blog: http://tabletopwhale.com/

P.P.S. I’ve been fascinated by this one. A story so outlandish, it couldn’t be made up: Billion Dollar Whale (Wait. Did I have back-to-back "Whale references"?)

P.P.P.S. If you’re into home automation/smart home stuff, these cameras are completely worth the money: Wyze Cam