Free Power Hour
For the past ten years, I have offered power hours, which is an hour with a person (usually a business leader or senior c-suiter), a company or an institution where I help and support.
I have ran power hours for:
Creators
CEOs and founders
Startups
Known Marketplaces
For SMBs
For leadership teams at a school
& for large businesses
Sometimes it is a sanity check, other times the time is used as a lunch and learn for their teams, others use it an AMA and then for some, it becomes a coaching session. It is more clinic (clinics are similar to office hours at a VC firm with their portfolio companies) than therapy but I’m always happy to support.
I am opening this up a little further to readers and visitors of my site and wider than I have before, so if you would like a power hour with me, please complete the form below or DM me on LinkedIn.
So get in touch and let me know how you’d like to collaborate and where you might need help, a sanity check or an AMA with your team/department.
My Recent Recommendations To Coaching, Consultancy And Advisory Clients
Here are the most recent pieces of advice I have given my coaching, consultancy and advisory clients over the last six months.
Learn The Tools: Learn the comms tools (especially new tools) - Gmail, Slides, PowerPoint, Slack/Teams. The tools will help you do more in a quicker time (here are my 7 ways to get the most out of Google Workspaces)
Use The Tools Your Customers Use. That means Discord, Snapchat, and TikTok. That could also mean Notes app, Excel, Sheets, Strava or Pendo etc
Understand AI - I will not tell you to learn every prompt and every tool, however, understanding how ChatGPT works, playing with Claude (Claude is better output than ChatGPT IMHO) and using the new features inside work tools are going to be a competitive advantage for you and cut through when your team might be just using AI tools
Reverse Coaching: Team members will know the new tools, they will know the newest tactics and tricks to help improve the performance of your department or company, set up sessions where the team can officially coach you and reverse coach you, make this their session and help them set out the training. Offer this as a two-way street, they coach you, and you then coach them.
Culturalise Frameworks: Other people’s frameworks and templates only work if you customise and culturalise them for your business. If you don’t you’ll have to teach everyone how it works and then they fail.
OKR Struggles: If you are struggling with OKRs (most people do) look at think BIG, act small by when as an alternative. Here is a free Think BIG act small by when template for you to use. If you’d like to read more about this framework read my think big act small by when post.
Refresh: Get into a fresh environment when you’re stuck. Outside in the garden in the sun, if you’re working from home get a commute and walk for 10-15 minutes, block out time for lunch and break down the days to recap the day and write down the good, the bad and the ugly to give you chance to attack the next working day
Hot Ones Success Broken Down At Paleylive
A Deep Look Into The Internet Sensation Show Hot Ones & Why Guests Love Sean Evans Talk Show For Promo
Why Watch?
Learn:
Why the remixed British talk show host format with hot wings led to breaking the star PR / media-trained answers
How it became a huge success beyond just a new format
How actors see the Protagonist and story arch in the talk show format (and why many are flying them to record them on the show)
Why cutting it down from 45-60 minutes to the TV show format of 22:30mins was critical to its success
How the inbuilt viral moments, shorter form social sharing videos and the meme organically grew from the format
Which stars made it break out to paying to record the show on set for films
Why did the deeper and the level and depth of the research led to better questions and shocking the guests of the unique questions asked
Here are some insane stats for First We Feast Channel (via viewstats)
Total Views (as of 22/07/2024) 3,846,829,699 (this is 3.84b views)
21.8m views in the last 7 days
That makes them the 2855th most popular channels by views on YouTube
Estimated Views: Long Views - 9.6M Shorts Views - 12.2M
Examples Of The Formats Genius
The Most Viewed Hot Ones - 126m+ views with Gordon Ramsey
Inbuilt Viral Moments - Da Bomb Reactions
How Hot Ones Leverages Short Form Clips
If you liked this breakdown, check out the art of going viral with MSCHF post and video.
Ask Fatigue Impact On Your Business
Ask Fatigue is when companies constantly ask for more from their customers without any value exchange.
Here are just a few requests I have had in my email inbox & SMS over the last week:
More orders
Spend more
Share more pics or videos with us (to include in our Marketing)
More reviews (asking for TrustPilot, Feefo and Google reviews)
More upgrades (upgrade to x package)
More UGC requests (for the brand to use in their advertising)
Spend more for free delivery (to increase their AOV)
Costs more for returning orders (which used to be free)
Costs for click and collect (the convenience of collecting isn’t genuinely a value exchange)
Increase your subscriptions
I am a commercially minded executive, I know first-hand and have felt the pressures companies are under to improve financial performance, however, always asking for more and creating an associated ask fatigue, your business is skating on thin ice especially when the cost of living is higher and the unlimited amount of competitors in your space.
Something I push in my consultancy and advisory roles is to reduce the ask fatigue from your customers and if you ask what is the value exchange you are going to provide? If you cannot provide any value exchange
If you would like to hear me discuss ask fatigue more, here are two resources:
Podcast Appearance: One more question
Conference Talk: Community as the next business moat
What We Want Vs What You Need
When you work with brands and C-suites you always go through:
this is what we want
and then you have to work out
what they actually need.
The dance is then - helping senior leaders understand what they want and what they need are often aligned but can feel incredibly different.
Or when what they want is so different it is going to meet what they need at x point in the journey. If those journeys don’t meet, don’t expect to work together successfully.
Most of the smartest in-house operators will connect the dots, if they can’t it is on you as the consultant or advisor to ensure you connect the dots quickly. It is the same for agencies, if you are pitching your services and the wants and needs are so different you won’t land the client and will never become their strategic partner.
To make yourself stand out, you have to connect the dots quickly and concisely and often draw the map and journey together.