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That Little Joke Is Costing You
I was on a coaching call with one of my clients when he referred to himself as “one of the old gits” at a conference. In fact, he was one of THE most experienced professionals there, frequently asked for advice, or to chair a summit, lead a session or speak on stage....
WHEN AI STARTS REPLACING YOUR BRAND…
I bloody love AI. There. Let’s get that out of the way first. I use it pretty much every day for research, interrogating ideas, finding information, challenging my thinking, pulling apart things that aren’t quite working and, occasionally, creating completely...
HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY MISS THAT?
I'm still, after all these years, a big Buffy and Xena fan, and this week I found myself in a thread about the relationship between Faith and Buffy that's been openly discussed by the writers and the actors for years – and half the replies were people insisting, with...
WHAT’S ACTUALLY WORTH HARVESTING
We're at the point in the year when day and night sit almost exactly level, right before the balance tips toward the dark – traditionally when the harvest gets brought in, whatever's grown over the last several months, gathered in and looked at before winter makes...
THE STORY YOU KEEP TELLING WRONG
I hear the same opening line constantly, in pitches, in bios, in the first thirty seconds of a networking conversation: "I've been doing this for [x] years." Nobody's ever leant in because of a number. Most people, when they introduce themselves professionally, lead...
Niche Through, Not Niche Down
Every bit of business advice going tells us to pick a lane. Niche down. Pick one thing. Be the person for one specific problem and one specific client – the riches are in the niches, and anything else is just diluting your message. I've built a business doing...
THE TIDE ALWAYS TURNS
It's Bank Holiday weekend, which for a lot of us means the last proper pause before fixed rhythms come back – schools, terms, the version of the year that runs on a timetable again whether we're ready for it or not. I think about the sea a fair bit. It's part of how I...
The Moment Before The Cold Water
There's a specific second, every single time, before deciding to get in and actually submerging myself. Nothing about the water has changed: not the temperature, not the discomfort – everything is exactly as certain as it was thirty seconds earlier. Only my nerve has...
DEADLINES DON’T CARE HOW WE FEEL
I was sixteen when I filed my first story that actually made the page, and nobody cared that I hadn't slept, or that some part of me wanted five more minutes to make it perfect. The deadline didn't care how I felt about any of it. It never has. Lesson #1– the...
THERE’S NO BLUEPRINT FOR THIS…
A few years ago now, I was on the exercise bike, mid-ride, doing nothing more ambitious than trying not to fall off, when an idea landed so fast and so complete it felt like it had been downloaded into me from somewhere else entirely. I picked up my phone right there...