Hey 🙂 You don’t really have a strategy until you know what you’re saying no to. I’ve written about this a few times over the last year, but this week gave me the clearest example of it I’ve seen in a while, and I want to get it down while it’s fresh. A few weeks back, the four of us...

Hey 🙂 There’s a project sitting on my list right now that I keep telling myself I’m going to get to. It’s not urgent. Nobody’s chasing me for it. But I’m interested in it, I like the idea of it, and if I’m honest, some part of me wants to be the one who builds it. Not because I’m the...

Hey 🙂  It’s that time again — the 3-1-3.  If you’re new to this or it’s been a minute since you’ve done one, here’s a quick reminder of why this matters: this is potentially the most important 10-15 minutes you’ll spend all week. Every single week, it’s so easy to drift slightly off track. Distractions creep in, “urgent” stuff crowds...

Hey 🙂 I was over in the States recently. Part of my job as CEO now is to organise these ‘off-site sessions’, so I planned and facilitated four days of strategic discussions with my business partners. Four days is a long time to sit in a room and think about a business. But the same pattern shows up every time,...

Hey 🙂 I recently facilitated a four-day strategy session with the owners at The Question First Group. We worked hard — heads down, deep in the business — and it wasn’t until the very end that I asked them this: “Let’s say it’s three years from now and you’re personally earning a million dollars from the business. What are you...

Hey 🙂 A few years back, my friend Scott said something that I’ve never forgotten. He pointed out that one of my challenges is that I can turn my hand to a lot of things. Which sounds like a strength, and it is — but it’s also a massive distraction. You end up doing somewhat important things instead of the...

Hey 🙂 For the past few months, I’ve been slowly building the agenda for a four-day off-site strategy session with my business partners. What started as a simple agenda has turned into a mammoth strategy document — which has created it’s own challenge! To get our heads in the right space before we get in the room together, I sent...

Hey 🙂 This past month has been a bit of a challenge with my 3-1-3 since committing properly to the CEO role at QFG. The main sticking point has been the focus area — specifically, the single most important thing. That’s gotten messy. Part of it is just the nature of the job changing. Before officially stepping into the CEO...

Hey 🙂 This week’s prompt is one I’m working on myself over the weekend: What’s the most prominent constraint holding your business back from growth right now — the one that, if you solved it, would make everything else easier or unnecessary? You might find yourself writing down a handful of constraints before the real one surfaces — that’s a...

Hey 🙂 A few weeks ago, we made it official that I’d be taking on the CEO role at QFG. And almost immediately I pulled five people together and said: we need a Revenue Team. I’ve been working with organisations on sales and marketing alignment for the better part of seven years now, and I’ve seen the same thing happen...

Hey 🙂 So, at the start of May I put my hand up for the CEO role at The Question First Group. No fanfare. No announcement. Just me, in our Thursday owners huddle, saying: “I’ve got a big idea. I think I should be the one to build out the CEO role. Everyone said yeah, let’s do it. And that...

Hey 🙂 The villain in all of this, as I see it, is the always-on expectation. The idea that when someone sends you a message, you’re expected to reply immediately. That constant, instant communication is the enemy of great work. It’s the enemy of good culture. I don’t want to work in a place that promotes that, and I don’t...