Elite Impact Education Platform

Don's Thoughts

January 28, 2025 | Volume 25

Before we get into today’s edition, I want to wish a Happy Birthday to my wonderful wife, Carla. There is no extraordinary family without you.

On to extraordinary careers. Last edition, I invited you to complete your Personal Compass, a tool that has been indispensable to me in building an extraordinary organization, career, and family. But the Personal Compass alone, no matter how much energy you put into creating it or reflecting on it at the end of the year, isn’t enough to drive success. Other Elite Tools can strengthen your 20-Mile March to success (however you personally define it), but they’re just tools.

The foundation for success starts with self-discipline, or what author Anthony Iannarino calls “me-management.” While he lays out this concept in his best-selling book for sales professionals, The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need, its application is universal.

So what is it?

Why—and How—to Master Me-Management

First and foremost, me-management is a mindset. It’s a shift to living a life of intentionality, where the decisions you make, from what you say no to, to what you never fail to do, all directly support progress toward your larger goals. It isn’t something you practice at work and leave behind when you’re home, it’s mastering self-discipline and holding yourself accountable, even in the most challenging moments. It starts with learning to keep the most important commitments you make: the ones you make to yourself.

Big and small, many of us are guilty of breaking the commitments we make to ourselves. “I won’t snooze my alarm tomorrow;” “This is my last Oreo;” or something I’m willing to bet many of you have already become less dedicated to, our New Years resolutions. When we lack the discipline to follow through on the commitments we make to the most important person in our life (ourself), we can’t be surprised at how easily we make excuses for our commitments to others or to the larger commitments that could drive our success.

**Success isn’t magic; success is a choice.**

I did not say success is easy, because it isn’t. Anyone who is trying to sell you on the idea that it is is selling you snake oil.

Success is hard.
Success requires hard work.
Success requires GRIT and perseverance.
Success requires doing the things others will not do.

But success is also inevitable if you are willing to commit to consistent and purposeful action.

And it starts with honoring the commitments we make to ourselves. This is me-management. This is self-discipline. This is what separates those who are leading highly successful lives from those leading average lives.

If you’re ready to embrace me-management, I recommend giving The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy a read. I’ve read a lot of books on getting into the rhythms of self-discipline and this one is by far the best.

Winning 2025: Wenner Family Goals and My Personal Compass

Part of what makes self-discipline so powerful in driving success, both personal and professional, is the way it propels you forward. When you have the discipline to honor your commitments, large and small, you reduce the likelihood of losing motivation or getting lazy. As you see what you can achieve when you master self-discipline (an entire week without a snoozed alarm; not remembering the last time you reached for an oreo), your confidence grows. When your confidence grows and you believe in what you can accomplish, your goals get bigger. When your goals get bigger and you have the discipline to achieve them, success is there waiting for you.

Reframing goals into disciplines is a powerful exercise to get you started. At DLP, we focus on “winning the day.” Each day, what discipline needs to be adhered to to make active progress towards achieving our larger company goals and winning the year? This is not goal-setting. Goals are achieved or not achieved by a certain date (i.e. losing 20 lbs), while a discipline has no end (eating healthy, low calorie meals to fuel your ongoing performance).

The Personal Compass is an example of discipline: the discipline of making your commitments in writing. A discipline that takes slightly more courage is making your commitments public, which I am going to do with you now, as I do every year, with my 2025 Personal Compass.

The discipline to write down your commitments and share them with others increases your accountability and the likelihood that you honor them. Me-management. Giving the gift of discipline to my own family here, these are the top goals Carla and our two eldest boys are working towards in the year ahead.

Carla

-Finish reading the bible and spend 30 minutes a day in scripture
-Reach healthy weight with exercise and nutrition
-Learn calligraphy
-Daily devotional 5+ days a week

Donny

-Make middle school basketball team
-Eat daily fruit and vegetables a minimum of 6 days a week
-Workout 3x a week, following a plan
-Improve math FAS 8th grade score from 2 to a 3+

Alex

-Win at least 3 pickleball tournaments
-Consistently reduce sugar and gluten
-Be able to read music sheets for all songs played on violin
-Workout 3x a week, following a plan
-Earn a grey belt (white strip) in jujitsu
-Read a minimum of 325+ days

We’ll have some fun along the way, of course. We have several trips lined up to get us closer to our family goal of sharing 1,000 extraordinary days together in 100 different places before our eldest son goes to college. In addition to mission trips in the Dominican Republic and Guatemala, we’ll spend part of the Summer seeing National Parks in California, Wyoming, and Utah, travel to the northeast and see Bar Harbor, ME, Newport, RI, and Martha’s Vineyard, and make the long trip to New Zealand.

Aligning on the 20-Mile March Forward at Vision Day

We kicked off the year, as we always do, with our annual Vision Day, coming together to celebrate successes, pivot to address misses, honor team member accomplishments and milestones, make an impact through the Positive Return Foundation’s Dream On program, and align on where we go from here. And what a year it is going to be.

2025 is set to be the company’s most transformational year. We have a stronger team of leaders at the helm than at any other point in our history. The teams we have built are highly engaged and deeply committed to our purpose and mission. We are better positioned than ever to live up to the year’s annual theme: make an extraordinary impact.

At the core of that? Discipline. We will be extraordinary at doing the ordinary, honoring the commitments needed to win the day and in turn win the year across all teams. Our focus this year isn’t on getting bigger, but on getting better.

Top 5 Priorities
1. Hire impact players (a concept from author Liz Wiseman) in the top three leadership positions for each platform.
2. Subscribe $600 million in capital.
3. Achieve return targets for all DLP Capital sponsored funds, maintaining our track record of doing so for each fund since inception.
4. Originate $2 billion in deals, with a maximum of $200 million where DLP is the sponsor.
5. Achieve business plan and recapitalization of 90%+ assets that are a part of our WIG (wildly important goal).

To get there, we’ll be doubling down on our discipline. Here’s what DLP is NOT doing in 2025.

-No new asset classes. We will execute extraordinarily on the product types we have in process.
-No key outcomes or priorities without clear ownership.
-No overcomplicating things.
-No indecisiveness.

You can hear more about how we’re going to get there from myself and the Senior Leadership team in this recording from the day’s presentation. We’ll be sharing the incredible stories of some of the Dream On recipients in our upcoming Quarterly Impact Report. Make sure you’re signed up to receive news from DLP Capital so you don’t miss it.