💸 You're losing your million-dollar ideas
The 4-part system for capturing them before they disappear
Ideas are your currency—but only if you capture them.
This week’s letter is all about making your entrepreneurial insights more valuable. Let’s dig in.
Today’s agenda:
📒 The entrepreneur’s capture system
🎙️ Podcast guesting or launching?
🙈 How to uncover valuable hidden feedback
💼 Briefly: Google targets AI content & fake reviews, the truth about view counts, & more
⏱️ Up & coming: Top skill of the future? Thinking.
💡 Never lose another idea
Founders are creatives, meaning you’re filled with ideas and inspiration from the world around you.
The worst thing you can do is let these ideas go to waste. You need a plan for recording your thoughts on a whim so you can someday turn them into action.
⬇️ In my latest video, I show you exactly how to build a fool-proof system for capturing and maximizing your entrepreneurial insights:
✍️ Your 4-step note-taking system:
Capture notebook—pocket notebook, notes app, etc., for catching quick ideas
Thinking notebook—refine and clarify your ideas
Spark file database—your “digital repository” to store and build upon ideas
Sparks into strategies—review your notes to turn ideas into true deliverables
💡 Subscribe to my YouTube channel for more insights that have helped me achieve wealth while maintaining a strong work-life balance.
🎙️ Skip the podcast (be the guest)
Podcasts are a highly effective marketing strategy, but they also are a lot of work to plan, coordinate, and execute—with no guarantee of results. Most podcasts don’t make it past a handful of episodes!
However, the exposure and credibility they offer to your startup is invaluable.
🌎 The best of both worlds? Being a podcast guest.
🫱 Expand your reach without the workload
Benefits of being a guest:
The host already has established trust with their audience, granting you immediate credibility
You’ll start building an audience
You can repurpose the content for your own channels
You’ll get better at sharpening your position in front of an audience
One good episode can drive results for months
▶️ Here’s a clip from one of my recent guest appearances on the B2B Marketers on a Mission podcast with Christian Klepp.
🤙 Want to get on some podcasts? Let’s talk—I can help you develop a podcast guesting strategy that doubles as a smart GTM asset.
🤐 What people aren’t telling you
As a leader, you have to be as aware of what people aren’t saying as much as what they are.
In a recent article for Harvard Business Review, entrepreneur, author, and consultant Jeff Wetzler explores the danger and potential of “hidden feedback”—the unspoken feedback from anyone from your investors to clients, partners, and vendors.
🫣 Why important feedback is often hidden
The person fears your response or repercussions
They think they’re being direct when they’re not
They don’t even realize they have feedback for you
As a result, you’re left in the dark—and are taken by surprise when problems become too big to ignore.
🔑 How to uncover the feedback you need
Look for clues like repeated minor suggestions, sudden engagement from someone in decisions that don’t involve them, or decreases in engagement with no explanation.
Make it “safe” for people to tell you the truth—normalize seeking feedback from others, and reward people for their honesty.
Listen to learn, not to get defensive or prove a point.
🗣️ Wetzler explains that while you don’t have to agree with the feedback or commit to taking any action from it, it’s still important to show that you value what they’re saying.
Briefly
🔎 Google Maps is cracking down on fake reviews and suspicious profile edits in its new update, which leverages Gemini (AI) to identify the false updates and track reviews over time—specifically, when your competitors try to fake 5-star reviews.
🤖 Tired of competing with AI-generated content? Google is cracking down on that, too, by directing its quality raters to flag automated or genAI-created content as “lowest quality” if almost all of the main content is “copied or paraphrased with no effort or added value.”
👀 If you’re placing too much weight on your video “views,” you probably shouldn’t—read The Verge editor’s take on how views are largely inflated to generate interest, and most platforms only require a viewer to scroll past in order to count as 1 view.
📨 Apple’s new Mail app feature aims to simplify your inboxes by automatically sorting emails into categories, including “Primary,” “Transactions,” and “Promotions.” (If you’re a Gmail user, you’re already familiar with this type of feature.)
🧑💻 Which technologies are actually useful for your business? Here are the 5 tech trends you may want to pay attention to as an SMB in 2025, including AI-powered cybersecurity and cloud contact software.
Up & Coming
As we spend more time with AI, are we putting our creative and critical thinking skills at risk?
According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report, employers expect that the most in-demand skills in the future (beyond technical literacy) will be in the realm of thinking and learning.
👉 Read this take on the “triple threat” impacting modern-day workers, and why curiosity is the key to our endurance.