Insider Fix emails have been providing thousands of my readers with three problem-solving fixes for a couple of months now and allowing them to harvest the benefits of my 1 + 1 + 1 = 10x formula. I hope by subscribing to this newsletter I can help shift your focus from reactive to proactive and ultimately help you grow both personally and professionally. Enjoy.
Paying Attention to Our Attention
“You become what you give your attention to… If you yourself don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will.” Epictetus
I think one of the greatest habits anyone can have is to regularly monitor and control the inputs that come into their consciousness.
I took a social media break for the last two months to limit some of the election chaos. This little move dramatically reduced the contentiousness in my life.
It also changed my morning routine. Instead of consuming news first thing in the morning, each morning I’ve tried to start the day with a few minutes of a positive and resourceful audiobook or TED Talk or some other soundbyte from YouTube. Five-to-ten minutes on one of my optimal go-to topics: mindfulness, stoicism, emotional intelligence, focus, acceptance, discipline, patience, gratitude, love. That message seeps in each morning and has real staying power throughout the day.
For similar reasons, having a nightstand-book on one of those topics is equally powerful. A page a day, upon waking and going to bed, works wonders. I’ve used books by Jon Kabat Zinn, Tara Brach, Tim Ferriss, Ryan Holiday, Dan Sullivan, Tony Robbins, and a hundred others.
Our minds are so fickle with attention and memory. We have to actively cultivate and nurture the attention and memories we want to have. We forget what we read, what we heard, what we learned – sometimes in a few hours, usually in a few days, and definitely longer than that. We have to be intentional about our inputs, timing them well, and repeating them often.
Sales Tax Compliance
If your company sells products and services outside your home state, confirm with your tax advisor that you’re registered correctly with other states for sales and use tax purposes. Getting that answer wrong is expensive. Exposure builds year-over-year.
The now-famous 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision in South Dakota v Wayfair, Inc. eliminated any bright-line requirement for a company to have a physical presence in a state in order for that state to require sales and use taxes collection from that company, which would otherwise collect it from its customers. (Our tax accountants at Marcum put together a great piece on it here).
States have lost a ton of revenue from Covid business closures and a down economy, and are expected to be aggressive in tax collection from businesses going forward.
If you sell products and services out of state, call your tax accountant and ask them whether you need a nexus study performed. That analysis determines whether you have “nexus” with a state for sales tax purposes. You have “nexus” if you are “transacting business” there under that state’s sales tax statutes.
You don’t want to get that wrong. If you do and you get caught, you’re looking at back-payment plus fines and interest, or you may have to file an amnesty application to have penalties waived, but you still have to pay retroactively. Either way, it’s an expensive problem to get wrong.
Get Gottman
If you’re married or in a relationship, check out John Gottman’s Marriage Minute e-mail. I’m pretty much a schmuck most of the time and I need a daily nugget to remind me how easy (and important) it is to show appreciation to my lady, or to just listen to what she’s trying to say instead of making stupid assumptions or talking over her. Seems obvious, but so useful. This e-mail was recommended to me by a brilliant therapist I know and it’s worked wonders for our relationship.
