Q3 begins with remembering Blue(Bluesy, Baby Moose, Blusifer) who was a fixture in our family and also with some of my clients, teams and work for nearly 11 years. He passed suddenly in early September. He was a close friend, trusting, trustworthy, a big dork, rockstar model, protective, obsessed with training people to retrieve rocks and toys and damn near human.

I’m taking advice I give clients and others for my Q3 review. I focus on what I learned and what to keep(and do more of), stop and start doing to close out the year in Q4 to improve and accelerate outcomes into 2025.

Like companies I have worked with and teams I have led, the two re-learning of themes for the year and this last quarter are be consistent and have simplicity of focus. When they are deviated from, progress and the success at the level of doing something great stops. The last relearning is from 7 days in the Wind River Range, that we don’t need nearly the volume of food we think to go all day.

For those of you doing corporate reviews, I start with what I am going to do going forward as the rest of the story is better told in person. I’ll spare you and my blog all the notes leading up to this and stay on the outcomes and the actions to happen in Q4.

Health– cut weight, keep muscle, improve conditioning Q3 Grade- B+

• “Keep the goal, the goal” on weight loss without losing too much muscle. I’ve made good progress for the year, but will be much closer to the long term goal by Mid November
• Continue focus on consistency in eating. Protein feeds fitness when cutting. Eating window and low/no sugar, dairy and grains
• Stop alcohol for the remainder of the year. Mostly done already.
• Take my own personal fitness test and blood markers by end of the year. I’ll blog separately on those. My fitness test is a good one for people of all abilities in their 40’s, 50’s and maybe 60’s. I developed it with a friend of mine years ago and it is a reliable reflection of general fitness. It might be a bit more strength focus as I hate cardio.

Professional: Keep Consulting to Scale Growth and Change- Find team to join by end of year. Q3 Grade C-

• Continue marketing consulting(facilitating, transformation, and operational excellence); I know few consultants that enjoy this aspect. I do as my work is the challenge of growth and change but much of the effort in Q3 was waylaid by a number of things.
• Keep looking for the right team in capital markets to join. Right fit right time. International, driving technology, and working to create some thing great. Bonus is opportunity to be/live outside the U.S. for some period.
• Stop looking for opportunity in environmental voluntary markets. Voluntary carbon markets; you’re dead to me. It’s not me its you…. its likely flawed as a model.
• Do more of AI use case application especially in the areas of agents. Take the AI integrations we have completed, learn from them and look for practical needs and opportunity for automation and use for engaging staff and customers

Personal: travel(work in Europe on project/team), simplify, write Q3 Grade: A-

• Stop and don’t fall for the temptation of spreading myself too thin
• Continue simplifying focus
• Continue writing, start submitting for publication
• Continue Vipassana
• Start submitting articles and decide on book

I’ll post later on the multi decade fitness test that some friends and I have done for years. Otherwise. The main focus like anyone in Q4 is hustle.