Hi Reader Most founders & business leaders I meet believe two things about their own performance. The first is that working harder produces more output. The second is that when the output starts to drop, the answer is to work harder still. Neither belief is examined and both are the operating assumptions underneath most daily and weekly calendars. Both are wrong. Not partially wrong. They’re wrong in a specific way that turns effort into an active force against performance rather than a...
11 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader A few weeks ago I told a sports-tech start-up founder something he didn't want to hear about how he was showing up in his sales meetings. It was something specific enough that he couldn't easily deflect it; I'd mulled it over for a fortnight before saying anything. He listened & nodded in the right places. Asked one or two clarifying questions and thanked me for my honesty. All good, I thought. Then he went into his next prospect meeting and did exactly the same thing. I know...
18 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader Napoleon walked his camps at night. Not to inspect or plan; he walked to talk to the sentries. One story, possibly apocryphal, has him finding a sentry asleep at his post. A capital offence in any army before or since. Instead of court-martialling the man, Napoleon picked up the musket and stood the watch himself until the relief arrived. Whether that particular night happened as told, the practice around it is documented. He knew the names of veterans from campaigns years earlier....
25 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader In 1979, Akio Morita was about to release a portable cassette player with no recording function and headphones-only output. The market research was unanimous: people wanted recording. Buyers wouldn't pay for listening they couldn't share. Sony's own engineering team thought it was a mistake. Morita shipped it anyway. The Walkman sold over 400 million units across its lifespan and created a category that didn't exist before he forced it into the world. A bad idea, according to...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader The sports-tech founder sent me his sales pipeline on a Saturday morning. Eight deals at an advanced stage, all green, all moving…and he was buoyant about it. Fair enough, I thought. The sales team had been busy, the activity metrics were up, the forecast looked like the best one he'd put in front of his board in months. He also sent me three sales-call recordings, "for context," he said. He wanted me to hear how well the sales team was handling the buyers (football academies). So I...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader I was sitting in the corner of one of those flash, modern glass meeting rooms in a sports tech startup about two and a half years back, watching a deal I had no business being nervous about. It was before I did any of this properly, if you get my meaning. It was just a favour for a friend. He'd founded the company, closed the first seven deals himself with his charisma and product knowledge and a willingness to discount more than he probably should have, and now there was a new...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Hi Reader You know when someone says something to you but their body language screams that they’re bracing for a reaction? I went quiet. Just looked at him for a second. He held it. Didn't flinch, didn't qualify it. "Yeah," he said. "You heard me." We were about forty minutes into a conversation about why the sales report & pipeline looked the way it looked. They had a really good product with a decent team. And a founder who hadn't slept properly in four months. Somewhere in the middle of...
2 months ago • 5 min read
Hi Reader Last Friday at 1.15pm, a few days after Edition 100 of this newsletter was delivered, a founder I am beginning to work with sent me a voice note. Not an email. A voice note…that kinda tells you something about where he was, doesn't it? Anyways, he'd spent the morning sitting with a call recording from his best rep. Just listening. He'd blocked the time in his diary like it was a client meeting, which in his world meant other things didn't move it. "I felt like a bit of a fraud," he...
2 months ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader Welcome to Edition #100 of Fine Lines! Many thanks for sticking with me and welcome to my newest subscribers. I asked a sports tech start-up founder about 9 months ago how much time she spent preparing her team to perform versus actually performing alongside them. She thought about it. For more time than I expected…and told me something in itself. Then she said: "We don't really have time for that kind of thing right now." Not confidently. Almost apologetically. Kinda like it was a...
3 months ago • 4 min read