About Doug Marshall

Partner at Marshall+Viliesis and Founder of sPlan5.

For Family, Friends & Acquaintances – I ask your help

My business partner Peter Viliesis and I have worked for over three years to develop a unique planning system for business owners. It is now time to get the word out to a broader audience and we decided to start with friends, family and acquaintances. It will be nice to know you will at least give a listen because sometimes it just feels like we are shouting into the wind. This is the nature of startups.

We named the system Business Value Protection Planning.

The amazing thing is we have not been able to find anyone out there who has taken this type of approach to help business owners in the way we designed the planning system. It is different from our original vision but it is more accurate to say what we created was more of a series of evolutionary leaps as we gained insight into how business owners think and what they truly need.

The business owner is the hero of the story.

We invite business owners into a story when we work with them where they are the hero of the story and they have a problem. Our role in the story is we are simply guides, we offer a plan to help them solve their problem and avoid failure. In Star Wars Luke Skywalker is the hero and Yoda is the guide.

Rather than make you suffer through several descriptive pages of I’ve created a few short (under 2 minute) videos stored in the world of YouTube. They describe the basis and the foundation of what we do. We designed the planning system to be simple yet it is sophisticated. These can be shared with anyone and I hope if you have questions or suggestions you will speak up, let us know where we can improve.

Business owners who apply the principles of Business Value Protection Planning will be far better off than they are now even if they use them separate from our direct help.

The hero’s journey starts with one simple pie chart. Here is the playlist of videos……….

Inside Bill’s Brain (Again)

If you want to challenge yourself and this is not about trying to convince you about anything it is simply worth looking at this three part series on Netflix.

1 – Episode One looks at ways to turn human waste into drinkable water.

2 – Episode Two digs deep into Bill Gates and documents how he needed partnership with others to move forward.

3 – Episode Three will challenge you to think differently about how we produce energy now and how nuclear still might be a viable and out best option to reduce carbon emissions.

Plus you will meet some radically fascinating people you would never have otherwise know. It is a good three hours spent. And don’t forget his desire to defeat polio once and for all.

Brandon Stanton – Tim Ferriss

Have you heard about Humans of New York? Created by Brandon Stanton it has over 25 Million Followers. A few years ago I had the privilege to hear him in person with my daughter Jessica. It was her Christmas gift to me. Tim Ferriss interview Brandon and if you need a great listen this weekend check this out.

You can fast forward through the first part until you get to the interview. Brandon lays is all out when talking about his journey.

PeterDoug

I have two WordPress personas. One is JDougMar and the other is PeterDoug. When I first worked with WordPress I created an account with the user name JDougmar. When I started to create a business web site for Marshall+Viliesis I created a WordPress account for the partnership and decided to call it PeterDoug. At the time I did not know I was creating a second WordPress persona.

It is easy to stick with both and so I will always have the reminder that partnership is important and I some may remember me as PeterDoug long after I am gone.

Having two of these personas has required me to switch back and forth between accounts and since I spend more time on the work side you will see more posts from PeterDoug but it is still me.

Have a great Sunday! – JDougMar and PeterDoug