Recent years have seen a rise in the personal productivity approach of building a “second-brain”; The idea of capturing thoughts, notes and ideas in one central software repository.” – This sentence should be split into two: “Recent years have seen a rise in the personal productivity approach of building a “second-brain”. The idea involves capturing…
There’s a point in a growing business where things often take a sudden shift from “Wow, this is going well” to “Help, it’s all falling apart”. It’s rarely one thing, but instead a rapidly growing undercurrent of things being missed, inconsistent delivery and decreasing morale. A panicked leader might even try to fix it by…
All good things come to an end and your involvement with your agency will be no exception. It’s no more avoidable than death or taxes (and will possibly involve at least one of those things). Despite this, many agency leaders never give serious consideration to this inevitable business milestone. They should. Knowing where you want…
It’s easy to get caught up in the pursuit of speed in our businesses. We all want to enjoy the fruits of our success sooner and it seems logical that moving more quickly will get us there faster. In fact the whole language of business emphasises the importance of speed: “Act now” “Move fast” “No…
High up on my personal list of “Mistakes agency owners know they’re making (but just keep repeating)” is allowing things that are urgent to take priority over what is actually important. Whilst this is a pitfall for any type of business, the nature of the model makes it particularly common in agency world: Constant deadlines,…
There’s a word that I and others have been using to describe me over the last few months, that I think I am going to stop using. It’s not an entirely inaccurate description of me, but it’s a C word with problems. The word is, of course, “Coach”. When I exited my own agency in…
Interest in, and experimentation with, AI text generation systems has exploded in the last 2 years. The catalyst for this was undoubtedly OpenAI adding GPT-3 to their open beta. GPT-3 is 117 times as powerful as it’s predecessor*. This quantum leap in capability combined with an easy-access API created a gold-rush of interest in AI…
When a senior Google Exec suggested that nearly 40% of young people favour TikTok and Instagram over Google when searching for a place to have lunch, I was intrigued. TikTok’s rise has been incredible to watch and it was clear that a shift was happening, but 40% seemed a strong number. Whilst I am certainly…
One of my favourite questions to ask Agency Leaders is how they build new business. Together with questions around size and specialism, how an Agency brings in new business tells you a lot about how the business ticks. When I do ask, there is no source most Agency Leaders like to talk about more than…
Do you ever find yourself looking at an article on a business website and wondering why they bothered to publish it? I’m not talking about the moment or horror of finding something entirely inappropriate on a company website. I just mean that vague “Well yes, but what was the point?” feeling . I do. A…