Helping startups to scale 🦄 ✦ Driving Halo Lab 7 → 8-figures ARR & having fun ✦ Founder with Design in ❤️

I run Design & Tech Agency helping brands become TOP 1%.

✦ $530 M raised + 9-figure exits by client startups 
✦ 500+ projects delivered
✦ 99+ international awards
✦ 4.9 / 5.0 average rating on Clutch from 80+ verified reviews

This is a real impact in numbers.

—

Over the past 15 yrs I’ve been shaping digital products and brands for category‑defining companies — from NOKIA and OPERA to high‑growth SaaS and Web3 start‑ups.

My core focus is design leadership at scale: I enter as a strategic partner, craft a vision, and lead multidisciplinary teams all the way from concept to launch.

—

I specialize in:

⤷  B2B SaaS Product Design | Guiding startups and enterprise spin‑ups from 0 to 1 — turning complex tech into intuitive, emotionally resonant experiences.

⤷  High‑Performance Digital Presence | Building conversion‑focused brand websites that turn first impressions into lasting growth.

—

Have BIG idea in mind?
Contact me directly: inquiry@halo-lab.com

Artem Borysenko

You can hire a designer.

Or you can hire a design brain.

One gives you beautiful screens.
The other gives you a product that thinks.

When you hire a single designer, you get skills.
When you hire a team that works as one brain, you get experience that compounds.

At Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner, our teams don’t work in silos.
The UX researcher sees what frustrates users.
The product designer connects it to business goals.
The UI designer turns it into clarity and trust.
The developer translates it into something fast and functional.

Each person covers a blind spot the others can’t.
And together, they don’t just design, they solve.

That’s the difference between design as a task and design as a system.
Between a pretty interface and a product that scales, converts, and feels effortless to use.

When founders realize this, everything changes:

1. They stop hiring portfolios.
2. They start hiring thinking systems - teams that anticipate problems before they appear, align design with ROI, and build products that last.

If you’re scaling your product, don’t just hire a designer.
Hire a brain that’s trained to think like your users and build like your business depends on it.

Find you team https://bit.ly/49wqB0p

🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

Founder @ Halo Lab ✦ Design & Tech Agency Helping Brands Become TOP 1%

You’ve raised your Series A.

Now you’re proving you can deliver at scale.

And every week of delay costs runway, users, and momentum.
The big question?
Who’s actually going to build this thing?
You have three choices and each comes with a hidden price.

1. The dedicated team.
(Agency/product squad model)
Fastest to launch.
Move as one unit.
Cross-functional by default.
→ Best for: founders who need traction now and can’t afford to spend 3 months hiring.

2. Freelancers.
They’re flexible, affordable, and perfect for low-risk experiments.
But you become the PM, the QA, and the glue holding everything together.
When people churn, rework kills speed.
→ Best for: quick feature spikes or marketing tests, not your core product.

3. In-house team.
The long-term bet.
You get culture, domain memory, and control.
But it’s slow and expensive.
Median SWE comp in the U.S. sits around $187 K/year, and that’s before benefits or churn.
→ Best for: protecting core IP and scaling once product-market fit is locked.

My take? Go hybrid by design.
1. Dedicated team: ship your core product in < 90 days.
2. In-house team: retain knowledge and own the moat.
3. Freelancers: plug niche gaps when speed matters.

Re-evaluate every quarter: velocity, cost per feature, defect rate.
Because at Series A, your biggest risk isn’t cost, it’s time.

✦ At Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner, we help Series A founders scale with dedicated product squads - ready to ship fast, adapt faster, and grow alongside your in-house team.

♻️ Share this to help make a good choice.
🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

 Dedicated Team vs. Freelancers vs. In-House 

“We need a redesign.”

This is how half of discovery calls begin.

However, 10 minutes into the discussion and it’s obvious - they need a problem statement.

The product is not broken. 
The understanding of the problem is.

Founders say: “Our checkout flow is poor.” 
Users say: “I don’t trust this payment form.”

The difference? One adds a feature. The other builds the right feature.

A good problem statement is not an educated guess.
It’s that moment that your research turns into clarity. 
It translates chaos into focus.

Here is what strong product teams do completely differently:

1. They do not start their process around “what to build.” 
They start their process around “who’s struggling – and why.”

2. They use data and real voices, not assumptions. 

3. They state the problem in a way that the whole team- designer, PM, and CEO can read and ingest in an instant.

When you get the problem right the design almost builds itself.
Your next big UX breakthrough will not come from adding another feature. 
It will come from rewriting the question you are trying to answer.

♻️ Share if it resonates.
🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

The hardest thing about building an AI product is getting people to trust what it does.

You can create a great model all you want, but as soon as users feel the slightest bit of uncertainty, they are going to ponder, hesitate, and leave.

When founders build trust into the product experience, three things happen fast.

1. Users stop second-guessing and start exploring. First session activation goes up because they understand the what and whys.

2. Every click of trust compounds itself into usage, retention, and upsell. Without trust, the best AI feature will remain unused.

3. You do not have to wait for product market fit to learn how users actually feel. Trust patterns can save you weeks of guessing, and reduce the launch chaos.

4. Transparent UX with design-based trust cuts confusion before it even reaches support. No more "I am left wondering why it said that?" tickets or bad reviews for hallucinations.

Most AI products are built for power. 
The real winners are built for confidence.

✦

At Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner, we help founders design AI products users trust enough to actually use and pay for.
If that’s the stage you’re at, let’s chat.

♻️ Share this to help others build AI products.
🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

UI for AI products

Most companies still treat a design system as a visual asset.

In reality, it behaves more like infrastructure.

When a design system is used by a company, it can help reduce costs for all the products the company already has. Also, using a design system can reduce the costs of making new products by different teams in the company.

Here’s where the real financial return shows up:

1. Reduction of duplicated efforts across teams.

When multiple teams are rebuilding and recreating similar elements, there are three new associated costs for each team: a new design, a new coded version, and the need for each team to perform QA. With the implementation of a design token system, this cycle is not necessary.

2. Component scalability across product portfolios.

When a company builds a system to support a group of products, they make more money by creating one design and using it many times for all the products in the group. This is why companies have been able to reduce the time it takes to get products to market by 20-40% without adding more staff.

3. Patterns decrease cognitive load and time spent deciding.

Once an organization sets up design patterns to support their onboarding, dashboards, permission systems, navigational structures, and error state designs, teams won't have to argue about the most important design principles. 

4. The cost of change decreases dramatically.

With no design system: A rebrand, accessibility update, or micro-interaction change triggers weeks of redesign and recoding..
With a design system: Update the source → every product updates automatically.

✦

A strong design system improves:

- Time to market.
- Cross-platform trust.
- Developer throughput.
- Conversion and activation.

✦

Build your design system for the next three products you launch. 
You will begin seeing returns on your investment in the early years.

🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

Your product already makes users feel something.

The question is what?

If your users don’t feel the right thing, they won’t do the right thing.
They’ll bounce, hesitate, mistrust, churn.

Over 500+ products, I’ve learned that the best products aren’t the ones with the most features. They’re the ones with the clearest emotional tone.

Every product leans into one of three emotional modes.

1️⃣ Calm → “I feel safe here.”
Perfect for: health, finance, productivity, wellness.
How it’s built: soft palettes, clear language, gentle interactions, no pressure.

2️⃣ Competent → “I trust this.”
Perfect for: SaaS, B2B, dashboards, enterprise.
How it’s built: structured layouts, predictable behavior, strong signals of reliability (performance, clarity, proof).

3️⃣ Empowering → “I can do this.”
Perfect for: fitness, learning, creativity.
How it’s built: energetic visuals, progress celebrations, milestones, personalization.

When the emotional tone doesn’t match the product’s purpose:
1. A data tool feels playful → trust drops.
2. A wellness app feels intense → stress rises.
3. A learning app feels sterile → motivation dies.

Emotion either reduces friction or adds it. 
What to do before your next sprint.

✦ Pick your emotional tone before UI design.
✦ Build it into your design system (colors, spacing, motion, language)
✦ Test the gut reaction early (“How did this flow make you feel?”)
✦ Make sure every new feature reinforces that emotional mode.

We design products that make users feel the right thing.
It’s about building experiences users want to return to.

♻️ Share this to help others catch hearts.
🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

You didn’t just hire a team.

You hired a risk.

That’s what most founders realize by Sprint 2, but by then, momentum is already bleeding out.

What starts as “a good fit” quickly turns into:

→ Delayed updates.
→ Vanishing senior talent.
→ Quiet budget drift.
→ Process that feels more defensive than proactive.

It rarely breaks all at once.
It just slowly stops working.

At Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner, we’ve inherited dozens of these “almost there” projects.
And we’ve learned to spot the early signals that most teams ignore.

Here’s how experienced founders filter for risk before it shows up on a roadmap:

1. Ask who stays after kickoff.
Bait-and-switch team structures are common. 
Real partners show you the core team from day one.

2. Low prices don’t remove cost. 
Into rework. Into scope creep. 
Into things no one “thought about” until it’s too late.

3. Their process should flex around your product.
If their workflow can’t adapt to your stack, roadmap, or internal rhythm, you're buying overhead.

4. Silence isn’t a “working phase.” It’s a liability.
Communication isn’t a nice-to-have. 
It’s part of delivery.

5. IP, code ownership, and access - settle it early and in writing.
No smart founder leaves this vague.

6. Domain experience is a requirement.
A capable team isn’t enough. 
You need people who’ve solved your kind of problems before.

7. If there’s no post-launch plan, you’re the plan.
Support, iteration, and continuity should already be mapped.

We partner with founders who know that reliable execution is rare and valuable.
If that’s where you are, you’ll feel the difference from day one.

♻️ Share this to help others fint a right partner.
🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

I can’t remember the last time I used an app that didn’t ask me to share, rate, or “engage.”

Every product today (even in B2B) is designed for an algorithm.
Google’s. LinkedIn’s. App Store’s. TikTok’s.

We’ve quietly shifted from designing for people to designing for distribution.
The algorithm rewards speed, volume, stickiness.
And so we chase it - with notifications, widgets, and “viral moments.”

But something gets lost along the way.

When was the last time a product was designed for:
✦ Silence?
✦ Reflection?
✦ A human mistake that wasn’t punished instantly?

You've trained our teams to ask,
“How will this perform in search?”
“Will this trigger engagement?”
“Will this help retention metrics?”

Not:

“Will this make someone feel seen, understood, or at ease?”
We measure time-on-page, not peace of mind.
We optimize funnels, not flow.

And in doing so, we risk turning our users into an interface between two algorithms, feeding signals back and forth.

Maybe the next wave of great design won’t be about more engagement.
Maybe it’ll be about creating digital spaces that breathe.
Moments that respect our attention instead of stealing it.
Because the best products don’t just perform, they pause.
They make us feel something.

What’s one product you’ve used lately that still feels designed for humans, not algorithms?

♻️ Share this if it resonates.
🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

I sat in a meeting where a CEO said something I'll never forget:

“I don’t need it to look beautiful. I need it to make money.”

At the time, it stung a little.
We’d poured weeks into crafting the perfect interface.
But he was right.

If your design doesn't move revenue or retention, it's wallpaper.
That moment changed how we work at Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner.
Now, every design decision starts with a business question:

1. What does this screen earn?
2. How does this feature reduce churn?
3. Can this interaction build trust faster?

We stopped chasing “nice-to-have” visuals and started designing for impact: shorter time to value, higher conversion, more clarity.

Last quarter, applying this thinking helped a SaaS client cut trial-to-paid time by 40%. Design decisions became revenue decisions.

What's one screen in your product that looks great but doesn't move the needle?

🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

Progressive Business Coach for Founders, Teams & Rebels In Corporates | We boost profit & sanity beyond bureaucracy - with self-managing teams, systems & human-centric AI | $50M+ scale-ups & 9-fig exits | Keynote speaker

You’re the brave one, with everything on the line.
Whether you’re starting out, building a team, or scaling to exit, you want a trusted guide riding shotgun.
I deliver clarity in decisions, discipline in delivery, and practical human-centric AI.

Practical human-centric AI turns data into insights, automation into time back, and leads into predictable pipeline and revenue. It enhances - not replaces - your team.

Ex-SaaS CEO & PwC-trained Chartered Accountant, I've led or advised start-up to £50m+ scale ups, 9 figure exits, turnarounds, and AI rollouts for founder-led SMEs/SMBs. £75m funds raised to date. I don’t just coach it. I’ve lived it.

I work with founders, and the leaders they trust.

My no-BS, emotionally intelligent coaching clears the mental, emotional, and operational blocks that hold you back. This unlocks performance across the business.

I call out the bullsh*t, push where others won’t, and hold you to growth—without losing the big picture.

How we do it:

We use my Profit & Sanity framework - a simple Diagnose → Design → Deploy system - to turn plans into outcomes across the following core areas:

Foundations & Systems: Lock in purpose, culture, operating rhythm, and cash discipline. AI can’t be applied to a broken system.

Inclusive Culture: Build environments that harness diverse thinking to fuel innovation and sustainable growth.

AI & Automation: Apply practical tools to grow revenue, reduce cost, and scale what works.

Choose your path:

Content: 
🔔 Follow for straight-talk on leadership, AI, org design, and the emotional side of growth.

Newsletter: 
📨 Subscribe to Founder Group Therapy for disruptive strategies and real-world stories.

Engagements: 
🎤 Keynotes on the future of business in an AI world.

Advisory, Coaching & Fractional: 
💬 1:1 and more involved sessions - based around my profit & sanity framework - tailored to your business; 

🏢 Company-wide programmes fusing AI, cashflow, and practical coaching.

My mission is to remove your blockers and propel you toward durable, compounding growth. While having a life. 

Your revolution - personal and professional - starts here.

Si Conroy

A friend got seriously ill, fast.
It changed what felt important overnight.
Read this while you still have options.

I’ve read plenty of advice.
But the lessons that stuck came with a cost.

🖤 They showed up after mistakes.
🖤 After heartbreak.
🖤 After long, quiet regret.

So I wrote them down, while I still could for when I posted this a while back.

This list?

It’s what I’d share with my younger self if I could.

11 Things People Realise Too Late in Life:

1. You’re not lazy. You’re just uninspired
 ↳ The wrong goals and people can make you forget your fire.
 ↳ The wrong environment will convince you you're broken.

2. No one is coming to save you
 ↳ Harsh? Maybe.
 ↳ But the longer you wait for permission, the further you fall behind.

3. Health is a compounding asset
 ↳ Your body is the business plan.
 ↳ Once it breaks, everything else becomes irrelevant.

4. Being busy ≠ being important
 ↳ Busyness is poor prioritization with better branding.
 ↳ Burnout culture makes people nod and wince at the same time.

5. Self-awareness is a superpower - and a burden
 ↳ Once you see your patterns, you’re accountable for change.
 ↳ Awareness without action becomes suffering.

6. Life is rigged in favour of the bold
 ↳ Caution feels smart - until you’re surrounded by mediocrity.
 ↳ Comfort zones are the enemy of self-respect.

7. You can have a full bank account and an empty soul
 ↳ The real bankruptcy starts when you forget who you are.
 ↳ Peace has nothing to do with your net worth.

8. Legacy isn't built later. It’s built now
 ↳ Every tiny habit, every interaction - it is the legacy.
 ↳ You’re building your story - whether you mean to or not.

9. Silence is the best form of revenge
 ↳ You don’t need to clap back.
 ↳ Success is louder than explanations.

10. Your parents weren’t gods. Just flawed humans
 ↳ Accept it. Forgive them.
 ↳ Or repeat their story without knowing it.

11. You will die.
 ↳ Most people live like they won’t.
 ↳ Let it sharpen your priorities - not your anxiety.

I wrote this for the version of me that needed a jolt.
And maybe for you - if you’re still waiting for clarity.

You can wait until life hits you unexpectedly.
Or let this post be your nudge.

Use these now - before they become scars.

♻️ Share this to wake up someone sleepwalking through life.

🔔 Follow Si Conroy for radical truths most people avoid.

📩 Weekly sanity in my ‘Founder Group Therapy’ newsletter: https://lnkd.in/erk_vfQc

Profit & sanity for founder-led businesses | Ex-SaaS CEO, PwC-trained | Fix the basics → build systems & teams → layer human-centric AI | Founder Coach & Fractional CFO | Strategic Adviser

Most teams don’t fail because of strategy.

They fail because of human friction.

While preparing for a workshop this week using Patrick Lencioni's framework I arrived at this definition of a team:

"A team exists to reduce the cost of coordination while increasing the quality of outcomes."

I then suggested a practical test:

If the team isn’t improving either:
✅ speed of coordination
✅ quality of decisions
✅ consistency of execution
…then it’s a group, not a team.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team:

1. Absence of trust

What it is:
↳ People don’t feel safe being honest.
↳ Mistakes stay hidden. Help isn’t asked for.

What it leads to:
↳ Energy goes into self-protection instead of progress.
↳ Politics quietly replace performance.

What actually helps:
↳ Make vulnerability normal
↳ Share working styles, limits, and personal context early
↳ Call out attribution bias openly (“they’re difficult” vs “I was under pressure”)

🙏🏻 Trust is built by repeated moments of safety.

2. Fear of conflict

What it is:
↳ Disagreement gets avoided.
↳ Debate becomes polite, flat, and fake.

What it leads to:
↳ Side chats. Slack sniping. Quiet resentment.
↳ Bad decisions for fear of disrupting the culture.

What actually helps:
↳ Leaders disagreeing in the room
↳ Highlight dissent when you see it being buried
↳ Set rules for healthy conflict before they're needed
↳ Use a conflict continuum - https://lnkd.in/eWuctPiH - ideas can clash without people colliding

No conflict doesn’t mean alignment.
👉🏻 It usually means fear.

3. Lack of commitment

What it is:
↳ People nod, but don’t commit.
↳ Decisions feel temporary.

What it leads to:
↳ Second-guessing. Slow execution.
↳ High performers get irritated first.

What actually helps:
↳ Get input before asking for buy-in
↳ Force clarity before moving on
↳ The basics: end meetings with explicit decisions and owners

Commitment doesn’t require consensus.
👉🏻 It requires clarity.

4. Avoidance of accountability

What it is:
↳ Peers hesitate to call things out.
↳ Standards become optional.

What it leads to:
↳ Misses compound.
↳ Problems surface late and even messier.

What actually helps:
↳ Short peer feedback loops (“what helps / what hurts”)
↳ Regular reviews against agreed priorities
↳ Remember - accountability only works after trust, conflict, and commitment issues are solved

If everything is “fine,” 
👉🏻 something is probably broken.

5. Inattention to results

What it is:
↳ Ego, status, or silo goals beat the team outcome.

What it leads to:
↳ Misaligned effort.
↳ The system starts to crack.

What actually helps:
↳ Make shared goals visible every week
↳ Treat collective success as the priority
↳ Reward team outcomes more than individual heroics

When results don’t matter, 
👉🏻 politics always win.

Which dysfunction do you see most?

Tag someone below who you think needs to see this 🙏🏽

Image thanks to the amazing Roberto Ferraro - please follow him

I see leaders struggle “managing” things they can’t
The workload isn’t the problem. 
Their control-fantasy is.

As a leader, you have enough pressure without adding more by trying to manage what you can’t control.

A lot of stress isn’t the workload. It’s the extra effort spent chasing certainty, approval, or smooth running when you won’t get it.

Try this: write two headings - “Out of my control” and “In my control” - and sort what’s on your mind.

My examples:

OUT OF MY CONTROL
Everyone else’s highlight reels
→ You’re seeing the edited version.

Peer opinions about me switching off
→ People will have views. Rest still matters.

My motivation on any given day
→ Feelings change. Action is a choice.

Weather, traffic, queue times
→ Expect delays. Move on.

The size of my inbox & unread message count
→ The number isn’t the work.

What people say about me online
→ You can’t control comments. You can control your conduct.

Social pressure to say yes to every invite
→ Every yes creates a no elsewhere.

Kids’ last-minute schedule changes
→ Keep slack in the week.

Everyone loving every decision
→ You need clarity, not approval.

Other people’s “urgents”
→ Urgent isn’t the same as important.

People letting me down
→ You can’t control reliability. You can set expectations and follow up.

Dust, dishes & the myth of a “finished” house
→ “Good enough” is usually enough.

IN MY CONTROL
Single-tasking
→ Finish one thing before starting the next.

Polite no’s + rain checks without guilt
→ Protect time without being blunt.

Eating & hydrating well
→ Better inputs, better decisions.

Digital detox
→ Step away so attention can recover.

Three rituals: Slow breakfast, daily cardio, evening wind-down
→ Put recovery in the diary.

How well I protect my time
→ If you don’t protect it, it goes.

Strength & cardio training regardless of my age
→ Keep energy up.

A hobby that makes time disappear (Music, making, mending)
→ Make space for something absorbing.

Who I work with
→ Choose people who are reasonable.

Doomscrolling
→ Stop feeding distraction.

My response under pressure and after mistakes
→ Pause. Own it. Choose the next step.

Family/friend-first windows blocked on the calendar
→ Book it first.

Sunlight + nature dose
→ Get outside.

One rule for heavy weeks: do one “in my control” action before you respond to anyone else’s urgency.
↳ Plan for ten minutes before email
↳ “Not today, next week” instead of a reflex yes
↳ A short walk before problem-solving

Which “out of my control” are you spending energy on, and what’s the one “in my control” choice you’ll make today?

🔔 Follow Si Conroy and ♻️ Share if you like this.

📩 Weekly sanity in my ‘Founder Group Therapy’ newsletter: https://lnkd.in/erk_vfQc

“71% of US CEOs experience symptoms of imposter syndrome in their role.” (Korn Ferry, Workforce 2024 Global Insights)

You don’t feel like a fraud because you’re bad at this
You feel like a fraud because you care and it matters
Pressure scrambles your judgement.

Imposter syndrome usually doesn’t show up on an ordinary day.

It shows up when the stakes go up:
↳ you’re more visible
↳ you’re being judged
↳ you’re doing something you haven’t done before

Founders and leaders tend to respond in two common ways:
↳ they over-prepare and burn themselves out
↳ or they avoid it, then scramble at the last minute

Either way, the thought is often the same: “I’m going to be found out.”

Here’s a simple way to understand what’s happening.

One part of your brain reacts fast to risk.
It treats uncertainty as danger and pushes you towards safety.

Another part of your brain can think things through.
It can weigh evidence, plan, and remind you what you’ve already done.

When you feel like a fraud, the fast “risk” response is drowning out the slower, evidence-based thinking.

That’s also why success doesn’t always help.

A lot of people don’t take their wins in properly.
They feel relief, not pride.
They tell themselves it was luck, timing, or “they didn’t find me out.”

So the next time a new challenge comes along, the same fear comes back.

There’s another factor that makes it worse: comparison.

You know your own doubts.
You only see other people’s behaviour.

So it’s easy to assume:
↳ they’re confident because they’re capable
↳ you’re anxious because you’re not

In reality, plenty of people look calm on the outside while feeling unsure inside.

What helps in practice?

1. Keep a simple record of evidence:
❌ Not affirmations. Proof.
↳ results you delivered
↳ problems you solved
↳ feedback from customers or colleagues
↳ hard decisions you made that worked

👉🏻 When you’re under pressure, read it. Make yourself look at the facts.

2. Put the feeling in accurate words
❌ Instead of “I’m a fraud,” try:
↳ “This is new for me”
↳ “This matters, and I don’t want to mess it up”
↳ “I’m under a lot of pressure right now”

👉🏻This won’t remove the feeling, but it stops you treating it like a true statement about who you are.

3. Change the habit that keeps it going
↳ If you over-prepare: set a clear “good enough” standard and stop there.
↳ If you procrastinate: start with 15 minutes and make it rough. Just get moving.

👉🏻 Your confidence improves when you build a pattern of doing the work without needing perfect certainty first.

✋🏼 If you lead a team, remember this too:
The person who looks most composed might still be struggling privately.

So don’t reward only confidence.
Reward clear thinking, steady progress, and asking for help early.

If you’ve felt this, what situations bring it up for you most?

♻️ Share to help other leaders in your network

🔔 Follow Si Conroy for more.

📩 Weekly sanity in my ‘Founder Group Therapy’ newsletter: https://lnkd.in/erk_vfQc

The Science Behind Your Anxiety....

A damaging read of this quote is a popular one. 
It turns “take responsibility” 
Into “don’t ask for help.”

No one is coming to rescue you.
But people will help you.

Usually the missing piece isn’t effort.
It’s that you haven’t made it clear what you need.

Most of the time, “no one is coming” really means:
↳ No one can read your mind.
↳ No one knows what you want unless you say it.
↳ No one can fix a problem you won’t name.
↳ No one can move if the key decisions only live with you.

So yes, it’s up to you.

Not to do everything yourself.

But to take the first steps that make help possible:

↳ Say what outcome you want.
↳ Make a specific ask someone can answer.
↳ Put a decision in front of people, not a long backstory.
↳ Set up a simple way of working so progress doesn’t depend on you being there.

A quick reality check:
↳ If the thing is fully in your control (a habit, a skill you can practise), then the quote fits. You just have to do the work.
↳ If the constraints are outside your control (budget, policy, health, safety), then “it’s up to you” can turn into blame. The right move is to change the goal, change the situation, or get proper support.

If you’re a founder or leader, this matters even more.

Sometimes “no one is coming” is a sign you’ve made yourself the person everything depends on.

That’s not sustainable, and it slows everyone down.

Question:
❓ Where are you stuck because you need to try harder, and...
❓ Where are you stuck because you haven’t asked clearly for what you need?

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AI is cheap now.
Trust and outcomes aren't.
That gap is the 2026 leadership test.

Leadership in 2026 is triage plus redesign.
You’re stabilising revenue and rebuilding the machine.

That’s why these patterns matter:

↳ AI capability is everywhere
 But business value is uneven because the processes stayed the same.

↳ Trust is getting more expensive
 Noise, deepfakes, synthetic content - “prove it” is the new default.

↳ Cyber is now continuity
 AI speeds attackers. Geopolitics widens the surface area.

↳ Leaders are running two games at once
 Stabilise today’s revenue. Rebuild tomorrow’s operating model.

↳ Valuations are pricing in AI upside early
 If the payoff is delayed, the correction hits plans, not just narratives.

In this context, the 7 leadership blind spots I’m seeing most, and what I'm doing about them:

1. Treating “AI rollout” as the win
 ↳ Most leaders buy models. Few redesign work.
 ↳ Fix: pick 3–5 profit/risk decisions and redesign end-to-end.
 ↳ Measure: cycle time, error rate, customer impact. Not “usage”.

2. Underestimating trust as the limiter
 ↳ Suspicion slows sales, hiring, partnerships, crisis response.
 ↳ Fix: define “proof standards” for key claims and make verification easy.

3. Treating cyber as IT, not continuity
 ↳ Deepfakes hit payments, procurement, executive impersonation.
 ↳ Fix: run 2 sims/quarter (impersonation fraud + data exfiltration).
 ↳ Tighten identity + approvals for money movement.

4. Planning like the world is linear
 ↳ Single forecast, single plan = slow failure.
 ↳ Fix: 3 scenarios you genuinely disagree about.
 ↳ Add triggers + pre-agreed moves (pricing, hiring, capex, suppliers).

5. Ignoring absorption limits
 ↳ You can’t stack reinvention forever without quality debt.
 ↳ Fix: cap “top priorities” to a small number.
 ↳ Start something new? Stop something visible.

6. Bolting governance on later
 ↳ “We’ll fix it later” is now an expensive reversal.
 ↳ Fix: minimum controls now (model inventory, provenance, human sign-off for high-impact, incident reporting).
 ↳ One accountable owner per domain.

7. Budgeting off the AI productivity boom
 ↳ Productivity gains arrive late and unevenly.
 ↳ Fix: separate base plan from AI upside.
 ↳ Fund AI in stages with hard gates + a cost-reset plan ready.

Don't nod and put this off.
Block time for a 90 minute exercise:
 ↳ List your top 10 business decisions.
 ↳ Circle the 3 that drive profit or existential risk.
 ↳ For each: define inputs, owner, QA, escalation, “proof” standard.

Identify which of the 7 blindspots you are most guilty of from the above.

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I love “Whether you think you can…”

But social media turned it into a lie.

There’s a sensible interpretation of the quote, and a misleading one.

The sensible is: 
✅ What you believe about your ability changes what you do next. 
✅ Over weeks and months, those choices affect your results.

The misleading is: 
❌ If you just believe hard enough, you’ll get the outcome you want. 
❌ That skips over real constraints like skills, time, money, health, access, and plain luck. 
❌ Belief doesn’t replace any of that.

Here’s what scientific research* does support:

1. Belief affects whether you start, how hard you try, and how long you keep going:
↳ People who expect they can improve tend to put in more effort, stick with problems longer, and adjust after setbacks. 
↳ People who expect they can’t often avoid the task, stop early, or don’t try different approaches. 
→ Over time, the difference in attempts and learning is what creates the gap.

2. Belief affects performance under pressure:
↳ If you go into something expecting to fail, anxiety tends to rise. 
→ Anxiety makes it harder to keep attention on the task and easier to get pulled into worry and second-guessing, especially in work that relies on working memory and focus.

3. Belief changes your behaviour in ways other people respond to
↳ If you think you can, you’re more likely to ask for feedback, take another attempt, and stay engaged long enough to be coached. 
↳ If you think you can’t, you’re more likely to hedge or withdraw. 
→ Other people then react to what they see. 

That’s one pathway by which things can become self-fulfilling. It exists, but it’s usually smaller than pop culture suggests, and sometimes “expectations predict outcomes” because expectations are accurate, not because they cause them.

Note: expectations can change felt effort and symptoms (placebo/nocebo effects). It doesn’t mean belief overrides reality. It means expectations can shift experience and, in some cases, marginal performance.

This is real, but it has limits.
It does not remove the need for skill, time, practice, and the basics.

If you want to use the quote in a useful way, try this:
1️⃣ Pick one thing you’ve been saying you “can’t” do.
2️⃣ Define the smallest next step you can finish this week.
3️⃣ Do one attempt a day for 7 days (10 minutes counts).
4️⃣ Write down what you tried and what you learned.
5️⃣ At the end, don’t ask “am I confident?” Ask “what evidence did I collect?”

That’s how belief becomes more accurate: through repeated attempts and clear feedback, not wishful thinking.

What techniques do you use?

♻️ Share if your network would find this insight valuable.

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* Some science:
📈 https://lnkd.in/eX8qP6WV
📈 https://lnkd.in/efrFdJNq
📈 https://lnkd.in/eiixHxpF
📈 https://lnkd.in/e-drUa-J

I took a train to a random stop.
No research. Then walked.
It reset my week in 4 hours.

We can use the words, “pattern interrupt”

The scientists call it "a strong context change that creates a recovery window, then uses control + mastery + approach + real-world reward to lock in the reset"!!!!!!

The important thing is that radically weekending works to reset you better than rest alone can....:

1. Take a train to a random stop and build the day around it
→ One rule: you’re not allowed to research the place beyond safety and return times. Get off, walk, find coffee, keep walking until you find something interesting, and have lunch wherever you end up.

2. Go to something alone
→ Pick a gig, comedy night, talk, cinema, gallery late opening. Go solo. Stay for the whole thing. If you feel awkward, good — that’s the point.

3. Do something slightly embarrassing on purpose
→ Karaoke, a dance class, an improv taster, open mic (even reading a page). You’re practising not needing to look polished.

4. Book a last-minute overnight somewhere you wouldn’t normally go
→ Nearest “why would I go there?” town/coast. One bag. Book a bed and one meal spot. No itinerary. Let the place tell you what the day is.

5. Put your phone in a drawer for 6 hours and tell one person where you’ll be
→ Choose a block (e.g., 11–5). Give someone your rough plan for safety. No scrolling, no “quick checks”. Notice how quickly your mind settles.

6. Spend £50–£150 on a “story purchase”, not stuff
→ Tickets, train, workshop, tasting, class, weird museum, boat trip — anything that produces a memory by Sunday night.

7. Have one honest conversation you’ve been avoiding
→ Pick the person. Set a time today. Open with: “I’ve been putting this off. Can we talk for 20 minutes?” Go in with one clear ask or decision.

8. Volunteer for a shift that puts you around strangers
→ Do one Saturday or Sunday shift: park/beach clean, soup kitchen, event stewarding, charity shop back room, food bank sorting. Turn up, do the work, leave.

9. Say yes to the invitation you’d usually dodge (or host the one you keep talking about)
→ If there isn’t one, create it: “Pub at 6. Come for one drink.” Keep it easy. Don’t over-plan.

10. Mini adventure close to home
→ Early start. New route. One “hard bit” (big walk, long swim, long cycle). End with a proper meal somewhere you’ve never been.

11. See one person in real life you’ve been meaning to but keep postponing
→ Don’t send “we should”. Send a time and place: “Coffee at 10:30 at X?” Make it happen this weekend.

Which are you going to commit to do today? Share below 👇🏼

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Recovery doesn't happen by accident......

Everyone is a little mad.

I’m batsh*t crazy.

What people get wrong is this: they think the way you “scale” a business is by sanding the weird edges off everyone. 

❌ Be more polished. 
❌ Be more consistent. 
❌ Be more normal.

That advice sounds sensible. 
It’s also how you end up with a company that feels safe, bland, and interchangeable.

It happens because most of us have been burned by “difficult” people. So we confuse two things:
↳ a person being idiosyncratic
↳ a person being careless with other people

Those aren’t the same.

A lot of the companies we admire were built around very specific founder oddities that got turned into standards.

Steve Jobs cared about details most people would never notice — and made that level of care contagious.

Jeff Bezos kept an empty chair in meetings to represent the customer. A bit theatrical, yes. Also a constant reminder that “internal opinions” don’t pay the bills.

James Dyson built 5,127 prototypes before the first vacuum worked. That isn’t normal perseverance. That’s stubbornness with a purpose.

Elon Musk slept at the factory during the Model 3 ramp. Extreme? Yes. But it signalled, “This matters, and I’m in it with you.”

Ingvar Kamprad (IKEA) was famously frugal — buying clothes at flea markets and driving an old car — and that personal thrift became a company-level obsession with cost.

Tony Hsieh (Zappos) literally paid people to quit if they weren’t bought in. Strange move. It protected the culture by making “staying” a choice.

The point isn’t to copy any of this.

The point is: businesses don’t succeed in spite of people being unusual. 
They often succeed because someone’s unusual standards are applied consistently.

The adult version of “be yourself” at work is:
↳ be clear about what you care about
↳ be honest about how you act under pressure
↳ put one or two simple guardrails in place so your strengths don’t turn into a mess for everyone else

What’s the “odd” thing about you that actually makes the business better — and what guardrail stops it becoming everyone else’s problem?

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