RecomMONDAYtions ~ 2026.08.24

Recommended Read

Do Less – Finish More

Quick question: is your to-do list actually a plan, or just a pile?

Dan Rockwell says most of them are piles. Everything you might do, dumped in one place, sorted by nothing. No wonder the day gets away from you.

His fix is almost aggressively simple. Cap the day at five real commitments. Then knock out the biggest one before 10 a.m., before the inbox and the meetings get their hands on your morning.

The magic isn’t in doing more. It’s in deciding, on purpose, what actually counts today, and refusing to let the pile decide for you.

It’s a short read. Might change how tomorrow goes.

Read it here.

Recommended Watch

Why Forcing Yourself To Work… Never Works

Ever notice that the harder you force yourself to do the work, the less of it actually gets done?

Daniel Pink has an explanation. Fifteen years after his book Drive, he sat down to revisit it and pull out the seven ideas about motivation that have held up best.

His core lesson fits in one line: you don’t install motivation in people. You create the conditions for it.

That flips how most of us operate. We try to muscle through on willpower, then feel guilty when the willpower runs out. Pink’s point is that willpower was never the lever. The environment is.

It runs about 15 minutes. Worth it if you lead a team. Worth it too if you’re still trying to white-knuckle your own to-do list.

Watch on YouTube

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Upcoming Webinar

Turn Your Book Into More Clients, 3X Profits, and Greater Freedom

You wrote the book. Now what?

For most authors, the book turns into a fancy business card. A nice credential that sits in a drawer and doesn’t bring in a single client.

It can do a lot more than that. Your book can be the thing that pulls prospects toward you.

I’m running a free training on exactly how to make that happen: how authors use the book they’ve already written to attract leads, land better clients, and boost profits. No tech headaches. No burnout.

If you’ve got a book — or you’re writing one — and it isn’t pulling its weight, this one’s for you.

Thursday, August 27, 6:00 p.m. ET
Claim your free seat here

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Recommended Book

Stop Leaving Money on the Table

If it was the second one, the problem isn’t your sales ability. Nobody ever handed you a system for setting a price. Accountants, lawyers, consultants, coaches, fractional execs. We’re excellent at the work itself and wobbly the second the conversation turns to fees.

Susan Trivers built a fix for exactly that. It’s in her book, STOP Leaving Money on the Table: Why Firms Badly Undercharge and How to Use IMPACT Based Pricing to Increase Fees.

What you’ll take away:

1. The real root of the undercharging habit (not the one you’d guess).
2. How to recognize the client who’s buying the impact you deliver, and will pay accordingly.
3. A single question that turns a discovery call around.
4. A three-option proposal structure that makes saying yes the easy move.

This isn’t another “charge what you’re worth” pep rally. It’s a method you can use on the very next proposal you send.

Better still: Susan is joining us live to walk us through it and take your questions.

STOP Leaving Money on the Table is our August selection for The Mastermind Book Club. Each month, Ted Prodromou and I choose a business book worth your time, then gather on Zoom to dig into it, often with the author right there with us. Attending costs nothing. Join the Club and you also get the online community and replays of every meeting.

One heads-up: the meeting is this Thursday. If the book’s been sitting in your cart, now’s the time to grab it and show up.

This Thursday, August 27, 2:30 p.m. ET
Zoom Link

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Latest Episode: The Story Power Marketing Show

Asim Kumar spent 30+ years as a solution architect unblocking multimillion-dollar networks for global enterprises, with about every credential in the field to his name. But the lesson that stuck came from a harder place: two decades living a double life, celebrated tech consultant by day, quietly hammered by fear and losses in the markets by night. That’s what led to his book, Unblocked: The Power of Real Intelligence in the Era of AI.

His big idea is the RI in the title. AI gives you speed. Real Intelligence — human judgment, empathy, a feel for behavioral risk — is what keeps that speed from turning into chaos. Point AI at a broken process and all you get is a faster mess.

We get into his “tripod of success” (people, process, technology), why he measures impact beyond ROI, and how to trade fear of AI for focus. Measured, optimistic, no hype. Worth a listen if AI has you either overexcited or quietly spooked.

Discussed in this episode

~00:54 — Meet Asim Kumar

~02:21 — Secret Trading Life

~02:52 — Dotcom Crash Wakeup

~05:31 — Finance Dreams Collide

~07:03 — Why He Stayed Quiet

~08:10 — AI Era Turning Point

~10:18 — Tripod Framework

~12:09 — AI Plus Real Intelligence

~13:36 — Tech Amplifies Chaos

~16:57 — Total Economic Impact

~18:39 — Avigna Methodology

~19:22 — EPDF And Phases

~23:47 — From Fear To Focus

~26:17 — Vibe Coding Example

~28:12 — Resources And Links

~30:13 — Parting Thoughts

~31:25 — Host Wrap And Outro

Full episode video: vimeo.com/1219163734

Listen on… Apple | Spotify | Amazon

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Words to Ponder

“The desire to do something because you find it deeply satisfying and personally challenging inspires the highest levels of creativity, whether it’s in the arts, sciences, or business.”

— Daniel Pink, Drive