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The Rundown

• Embracing Change and Stepping Into What's Possible

• Write LinkedIn Comments That Become High-Ticket Leads: 5 Proven Steps

• 7 Habits to Stay Focused in a World Full of Distractions

• 4 productivity tricks I've learned after using NotebookLM since launch day

• Open Deep Search arrives to challenge Perplexity and ChatGPT Search

• Add this book to your reading list

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🔥Quote/Prompt

Use the quote as a writing or thinking prompt to finish your week strong.

A bit from mine:

(posted in our Doer Entrepreneurs Free Community — off social media)

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📈 Performance

Embracing Change and Stepping Into What's Possible

Looking at the same frustrating problems month after month isn't just annoying—it's a glaring sign your comfort zone has become a prison. This thoughtful piece from Psychology Today breaks down why that "safe" place of stagnation might actually be the riskiest spot to stay.

Key Insights:

1. The fear of staying the same should terrify us more than the fear of change—because being stuck without agency is the true nightmare scenario for entrepreneurs.

2. Those persistent thoughts of "what else?" and "what's next?" aren't signs of ingratitude but natural evolution signals that deserve your attention.

3. Changing your core identity is essential before changing your actions—you must internally become "a writer" before expecting yourself to write consistently.

4. Small, intentional habits move you toward reinvention without requiring the dramatic life overhaul that most people fail to maintain.

Read the full article for a six-step framework to identify what's keeping you stuck and concrete exercises to build a support system while quieting your inner critic.

⚙️ Optimization

Write LinkedIn Comments That Become High-Ticket Leads: 5 Proven Steps

Remember when LinkedIn was just digital résumés and corporate humble-brags? Well, the game has changed. While everyone else is busy crafting their next post masterpiece, the smarter play might be lurking in the comments section. This Forbes piece reveals how commenting strategically could be your secret weapon for landing premium clients.

Key Insights:

1. Most business owners waste time creating LinkedIn posts when strategic commenting on other people's content could generate more leads with less effort.

2. Create a hit list of 20 accounts your dream clients already follow, then set up a system to be among the first commenters when they post new content.

3. Stop treating comments as throwaway lines—craft them like mini-posts that showcase your expertise without the desperate selling vibe that makes everyone cringe.

4. The "long game" isn't actually that long when you're methodically following up with prospects who engage with your comments instead of randomly posting into the void.

5. Turn your best-performing comments into a playbook so you can stop staring at your screen wondering what to write next time.

Read the full article for a complete step-by-step system, specific templates for follow-up messages, and a tracking method to identify which comments actually convert to clients.

⏲️ Time Management

7 Habits to Stay Focused in a World Full of Distractions

That constant urge to check your phone while reading this? It's not just you being weak-willed—your brain's been hijacked. This HBR piece exposes how our devices are specifically engineered to keep us in a perpetual state of distraction, and what to do about it before your attention span shrinks to that of a caffeinated goldfish.

Key Insights:

1. That superhuman ability to multitask you're so proud of? Complete fiction—your brain is actually just frantically erasing and rewriting different information like an overwhelmed whiteboard.

2. Scrolling social media during "breaks" is the cognitive equivalent of drinking saltwater when you're thirsty—it feels like relief but actually depletes you further.

3. Your phone isn't a "productivity tool" when you're using it as an emotional pacifier—keep alternative distractions nearby for when the urge to scroll hits.

4. Most people hit peak focus around 11 AM and mid-afternoon, but you'll waste these golden hours if you don't track your personal energy patterns and schedule accordingly.

5. That thing where you check email during Zoom meetings? Everyone notices, and it's destroying both your focus muscles and your relationships.

Read the full article for a concrete seven-step system to reclaim your attention, including practical exercises to strengthen your meta-awareness and specific techniques to interrupt your autopilot behaviors.

💻 Tools & Technology

4 productivity tricks I've learned after using NotebookLM since launch day

It's refreshing when Google actually sticks with one of their promising projects. NotebookLM has evolved from experimental status to become a genuinely useful productivity tool that keeps getting better with consistent updates. This piece from XDA explores how it's transforming study sessions into something more engaging and effective.

Key Insights:

1. Your boring class notes can transform into surprisingly lifelike podcasts complete with hosts who stutter, take breaks, and even attempt jokes that won't make you laugh but still beat staring at a wall of text.

2. Unlike asking ChatGPT to create practice questions that have nothing to do with your actual course material, NotebookLM only pulls from your uploaded sources so you don't waste time studying irrelevant nonsense.

3. The interactive podcast feature lets you interrupt the AI hosts whenever you want clarification—essentially giving you a study buddy who never gets annoyed, needs snack breaks, or tries to change the subject.

4. If you're drowning in 50 different sources (the maximum for free accounts), the Mind Map feature creates visual connections between concepts so you don't have to actually read everything you've been pretending to study.

Read the full article for step-by-step instructions on setting up each feature, tips for customizing the AI to focus on exam-specific content, and how to download the podcasts for offline listening during those precious procrastination walks.

🤖 AI

Open Deep Search arrives to challenge Perplexity and ChatGPT Search

Just when you thought the AI search race couldn't get more interesting, a new player has entered the game. If you're tired of being at the mercy of closed-source AI search tools, researchers at Sentient Foundation have created an alternative that might actually deliver on the open-source promise without the usual performance compromises.

Key Insights:

1. Most innovative AI search solutions have been locked behind corporate doors, but ODS aims to prove that open systems can compete with—and potentially outperform—their secretive counterparts.

2. The system works with both open-source models like DeepSeek-R1 and commercial heavyweights like GPT-4o and Claude, giving businesses flexibility without compromising performance.

3. ODS isn't just copying existing tools—it's introducing two different reasoning agent architectures that are smart enough to know when additional searches are necessary and when they're just wasting resources.

4. In benchmark tests, ODS paired with the open-source DeepSeek-R1 model actually outperformed Perplexity's flagship products and nearly matched GPT-4o Search on certain tasks.

Read the full article for a technical breakdown of how ODS works, performance comparisons against major competitors, and insights into how its modular design means you won't face the dreaded vendor lock-in that plagues so many enterprise AI solutions.

👀 Read, Watch, Listen

This week’s awesome books, YouTube videos, newsletters, etc. to add to your list!

The Gap and The Gain: The High Achievers' Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success (Book)

"The Gap and The Gain" by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy introduces a powerful mindset shift for achieving happiness and success. The book explains that most ambitious people feel unhappy because they measure themselves against an ideal (the Gap) rather than appreciating progress from their former selves (the Gain).

Based on Sullivan's work with thousands of entrepreneurs, this concept helps high achievers recognize their accomplishments instead of fixating on unmet goals. The authors demonstrate how this psychological reframing creates gratitude, motivation, and confidence, especially during challenging times. This simple yet profound shift promises to transform how readers approach achievement, ultimately leading to greater fulfillment and continued success.

🎉 Celebration Corner

Every week Doers Inner Circle members do a weekly review & get help when they need it — check out the progress they made this week!

• Completed quarterly planning exercise/90-day planning formula.

• An agency client returned.

• I made a lot of progress towards being a CEO of a company rather than just being a solopreneur.

What did you do this week? We feature non-member successes too. Just post them here!

🔒Inner Circle: Events & Announcements

• Monday: {EU Time} Work ON Business. Theme: 5️⃣ Finances RSVP here

• Tuesday: Work ON Business. Theme: 5️⃣ Finances RSVP here

• Monday/Friday: Goal Setting + Plan Your Week Party

• Accelerators: May 2 is your Office Hours RSVP here

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I hope you found this valuable!

Wishing you much productivity!

- Jenae :)