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

But bad UX silently kills revenue, retention, user trust.

How does it look in your product:

❌ Focus on action, not on the result for the user.
❌ Complex password requirements.
❌ Two fields for the email address.
❌ Unclear question & option. 
❌ Annoying captcha.

Why does this matter for founders?
Bad UX = friction.
Friction = drop-offs.
Drop-offs = lost revenue.

Investing in clarity, consistency, and simplicity is a growth lever.

✦ Before spending more on ads, check:

→ Can users complete your core flows in seconds without thinking?
→ Are you showing users what happens next at each step?
→ Is every element earning its place, or just adding noise?

At Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner, we’ve seen micro UX cleanups increase demo bookings, reduce support tickets, and boost LTV.
Because great products don’t just work, they feel effortless.

✦

Want a quick UX audit on your product?
Drop your URL below or DM me.
We’ll send you one actionable UX fix that could move your metrics this quarter.

♻️ Share this to help others build better products.
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Founder @ Halo Lab ✦ Design & Tech Agency Helping Brands Become TOP 1%

Bad UX examples

But bad UX silently kills revenue, retention, user trust.

How does it look in your product:

❌ Inconsistent UX writing.
❌Too much content, perceived as overload.
❌Linear progress bars aren’t mobile-friendly.
❌Overloaded layout that pulls attention away.
❌ Key details are hard to spot, and the offerings feel like a maze.

Why does this matter for founders?
Bad UX = friction.
Friction = drop-offs.
Drop-offs = lost revenue.

Investing in clarity, consistency, and simplicity is a growth lever.

✦ Before spending more on ads, check:

→ Can users complete your core flows in seconds without thinking?
→ Are you showing users what happens next at each step?
→ Is every element earning its place, or just adding noise?

At Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner, we’ve seen micro UX cleanups increase demo bookings, reduce support tickets, and boost LTV.
Because great products don’t just work, they feel effortless.

✦

Want a quick UX audit on your product?
Drop your URL below or DM me.
We’ll send you one actionable UX fix that could move your metrics this quarter.

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

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

In reality, it behaves more like infrastructure.

It's a one-time capital investment that reduces operating costs across every product, every release, and every team.

Here’s where the real financial return shows up:

1. Reduction of duplicated efforts across teams.

When teams reinvent or create their own designs for elements like spacing, colors, states, or micro-interactions, they incur the following new costs: a new desig, codebase, QA.

With a standardized token system, there is no longer any need for this cycle to occur. 

2. Component scalability across product portfolios.

A system built for a suite compounds value:
Build once → reuse for every new feature → reuse for every new product.
This is how product orgs cut delivery time by 20–40% without adding headcount.

3. Patterns decrease cognitive load and time spent deciding.

Standardizing onboarding, dashboards, permissions, navigation, or error states will eliminate debate about core design principles among teams. Instead, team members will spend more time identifying the activities that will result in increased KPIs.

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!

Therapy of the future: how we helped ensure a better patient experience by updating the design of the myReha digital platform.

myReha, created by nyra health, is a digital neurotherapy platform that helps stroke survivors and patients with neurological conditions continue recovery.

When the nyra health team, led by Mario Zusag, reached out, they had a clear goal: make the platform more consistent, intuitive, and scalable without disrupting what patients already loved.

The challenge?
Functionality was not consistent across devices, resulting in multiple users experiencing friction accessing the platform and seeking simplicity and reassurance.

So, we focused on what truly matters in healthcare design: clarity, confidence, and care.

1. We unified card designs for consistency.
2. Clarified CTAs for premium upgrades.
3. Improved streak and progress screens.
4. Optimized dashboards and navigation for clinicians and patients alike.

The Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner team fine-tuned the system to ensure it could scale fast and support nyra health’s insurance readiness and market expansion while staying deeply patient-centered.

Huge thanks to the nyra health team for trusting us with such meaningful work.

✦

If you’re building a product that redefines how patients heal, we’d love to help bring your vision to life.

🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

Case Study

That’s the moment most brands lose people.

In that split second when something just feels off.

You’ve felt it too.
Website that looks polished but somehow doesn’t feel real.
The words are there.
The design is fine.
But it doesn’t connect.

That’s a trust gap.
In those first few seconds, visitors are quietly asking:
→ “Is this for people like me?”
→ “Do they actually understand my problem?”
→ “Can I explore without being sold to?”

If your homepage doesn’t answer those fast, even a great product starts to feel risky.

The fix isn’t louder headlines or flashier visuals.

It’s smaller, more human details:
1. Clear language that sounds like something you’d actually say.
2. Honest proof that real people built this, not a faceless company.
3. Calm, confident design that gives users room to breathe.

Trust doesn’t start with “we’re the best.”
It starts with “we get you.”

♻️ Share this to help others build trust with customers.
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Homepage Psychology

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.

🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

I audit real websites. I show what’s broken.

I explain why it doesn’t work.
And I give fixes you can apply today.

These are to help YOU avoid the same mistakes.
Every carousel = free consulting.
If you take the time to apply the lessons, your site will convert better.
Guaranteed.

In each post, you'll find:
✅ Conversion blockers you might not see.
✅ Layout tweaks that improve clarity.
✅ Real examples of what not to do.
✅ UX advice backed by data and practice.

✦

New audit just dropped.
Go through the carousel.
Steal what works.
Fix what doesn’t.

And if you want your site reviewed next:
Comment “ROAST ME” below.

Let’s build stuff that sells. Not just looks good.

♻️ Share this to help others design better webpages.
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Website roasting

Helping people move better shouldn’t feel complicated. 

That’s what makes Rytmo such a powerful idea.

When the Rytmo team first shared their vision, it was inspiring.

They were building 

- A way for people recovering from injury or training with a specialist to feel guided, not overwhelmed.

- A way for coaches and physiotherapists to finally track movement in a way that feels intuitive.

- A way for patients to feel progress, not pressure.

Our role at Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner was simple in intention but meaningful in impact:

1. Turn complex motion-tracking technology into a visual language anyone can understand.

2. Design an interface that supports both ends (the patient and the specialist ) without friction.

3. Create a unified UX that reinforces trust, motivation, and confidence with every action.

We redesigned flows so users never feel lost.
We shaped progress screens that celebrate even small wins.
We built a design system flexible enough to scale as Rytmo grows without ever losing its gentle, supportive core.

Huge thanks to the entire Rytmo team for trusting us with something this important.

Your commitment to building a better experience for patients and specialists is real, rare, and deeply needed in the industry.

✦

If you're building something meaningful in healthtech - a product that helps people feel safer, stronger, healthier - we’d love to collaborate.
Let’s create the next story together.

♻️ Share this to inspire others.
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Most founders think onboarding is just a checklist.

A few tooltips, a welcome email, maybe a product tour.

Big mistake.

First 7 days don't only determine retention, they forecast lifetime value.

The best products don't "teach" features. They create habits.

Here is what distinguishes your high-LTV onboarding from the rest.

1. Show value quickly.
Don't explain — show. 
Get your users to the "aha" moment in minutes, not days. 

2. Guide behavior, not swipes. 
Organize onboarding around your user's journey, not your feature tree. 
Day 1: Solve a problem. 
Day 2: Build context. 
Day 3+: Reinforce success and add proof.

3. Make it personal. 
A marketer ≠ an engineer ≠ a founder. 
Ask one smart question, customize the flow, and you can expect 25-50% higher activation.

4. Build habit loops. 
Cue → Simple action → Instant reward. 
“Don’t lose your progress” is always better than “Complete your profile.”

4. Measure what matters. 
Forget “onboarding completed.” 
Measure: 
• Time to first value.
• % of users hitting core action Day 1.
• Retention at Day 3 and 7.

Onboarding is not your tutorial. 
It’s behavioral design. 
And as soon as you start to treat it that way, your retention will improve, as will your revenue.

♻️ Share this if it resonates.
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Good interfaces are built for humans with roles, moods, habits.

And most “design rules” don’t cover that part.

Here are the non-obvious principles we now swear by:

1. Design for roles.

An operator, manager, and analyst can see “the same tool” but they are living three different narratives.

2. Tell a story.

Good UI behaves like a scene in a movie: each frame indicates, “Here’s what happens next.”

3. Simplicity isn’t minimalism.

It’s knowing what to conceal. A complex system should feel simple, even if it is not.

4. One action per screen.

Every screen should answer one question. The moment users have to pause, you’ve lost the moment.

5. Adapt, don’t copy.

There is no “best practice” for everybody.
A healthtech dashboard and a crypto wallet shouldn’t look/feel the same, and that’s a feature not a flaw.

6. Accessibility is a growth strategy.

It’s how you earn trust and give access to the people your competitors are forgetting.

The best interfaces don’t impress. They disappear.
You’re not noticing them because they are busy making you feel capable.

What was the last interface you loved using is, and why?

♻️ Share if you agree.
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I have looked through hundreds of product interfaces.

And most trust issues come from invisible details that are saying, "We did not care enough."

1. Text locked in images.
It seems nice... until you realize:
Google can't read it.
Screen readers aren't being able to get through it.
It is going to break on mobile.

✅ Fix: Always use proper, responsive HTML text overlaid on visuals. That communicates quality and care.

2. Stock photos with zero context.
If your visuals could go on any website, they shouldn't be on yours. 
People simply don't connect with "perfect smiles" and "handshakes in glass offices."
User's even notice when an image doesn't match what they are viewing.

✅ Fix: Use visuals with your product, actual people or even simple, authentic brand illustrations. Authenticity scales better than aesthetics.

3. Inconsistent spacing.
Uneven padding. A headline that is floating. Tight corners next to wide gaps. Users may never name the issue, but they feel it.
That feeling? Uncertainty. And uncertainty is lethal when it comes to conversion.

✅ Fix: Use a modular grid and consistent spacing system. Regular rhythm = subconscious trust.

What’s the smallest design detail that instantly makes you lose trust in a product?

🔔 Follow Artem Borysenkofor more updates!

Guess which of our projects gained more views?

Drop A, B, C, or D in the comments.

But don’t just guess. Consider:

🔹 What details stand out? 
🔹 Which design feels more refined? 
🔹 What makes one stronger than the other?

This isn’t just a fun test.
It’s how you train your creative judgment.
The more you analyze, the faster you recognize what works.

A, B, С, or D? Drop your guess below! Let’s level up together.

The best design

Most founders struggle to explain their product in 10 sec.

And that’s usually why people forget it.

Founders jump into features, tech, or long backstories.
But the products that stick are the ones described with immediate clarity.

After helping dozens of teams simplify their pitch and homepage messaging, here are 3 frameworks that consistently work:

1️⃣ The “Movie Trailer” Line.
Hit emotion + problem + solution in one shot.

Structure:
“We help [audience] solve [problem] through [unique solution].”

Example:
 “We help remote teams brainstorm faster with an AI whiteboard that auto-organizes ideas.”

This gives people the whole story instantly.

2️⃣ The “Six-Second Test”. If you can answer these in one tight sentence, you’re done:
• Who it’s for.
• What it does.
• Why it’s different.
• What problem it solves.
• What outcome it creates.

Example:
 “For busy parents, our app plans healthy meals automatically — saving hours and reducing food waste.”

3️⃣ The “Anchor to the Familiar.”
When something is new, you need a shortcut.

Structure:
 “It’s like [familiar thing], but for [your context].”

Example:
 “It’s like Airbnb, but for campers.”
It reduces cognitive load and accelerates understanding.

If someone can’t repeat your product back to you after 10 seconds, you don’t have a messaging problem, you have a clarity problem.

What’s your 10-second product explanation?

♻️ Share if this helped.
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What founders actually need from a design partner.

Across many startup projects, one pattern is clear:

Founders don’t need resources.
They need a partner with a product mindset.
That team will give you clarity, speed, and traction.
Let’s look at the difference.

1. Designers make wireframes.
Product thinkers define outcomes.

2. Designers ship features.
Product thinkers shape systems.

3. Designers follow tasks.
Product thinkers challenge assumptions.

4. Designers deliver visuals.
Product thinkers deliver clarity.

5. Designers optimize screens.
Product thinkers optimize revenue.

A design partner shouldn’t just make your product look good.
They should make your business stronger.
Because the right partner doesn’t just design interfaces,
they help you think, operate, and grow like a product company.

✦

If you’re scaling and you need a dedicated team that thinks like your co-founder, not your vendor, let’s talk.

♻️ Share if it resonates.
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Last week, I tried to book a demo of a new tool.

Those 20 seconds told me everything.

Product UX failed here.
I scrolled twice. 
Clicked the wrong button. 
Didn’t find clues.
And gave up.

Review your product like a first-time user.

And try to fix UX issues.

1. Watch the heatmaps.
When a user pauses, backtracks, or clicks twice, that’s a red flag.
Confusion shows up in body language before it shows in analytics.

2. Check forms first.
Long fields. Missing confirmations. Mobile layouts that break.
Forms kill more conversions than bad marketing ever will.

3. Scan for “dead weight.”
Buttons nobody clicks. Copy nobody reads. Features nobody touches.
If it doesn’t guide the user forward, it’s friction.

4. Run 10-minute heuristic checks.
Navigation, readability, error states, consistency.

These basics sound boring, but they fix 80% of user frustration.
You don’t need a 3-month research sprint to uncover UX flaws.
You need sharp eyes, real users in mind, and the discipline to ask:
“Where does this experience break trust?”

♻️ Share this to help others avoid UX issues.
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 How to find UX problems

“$5K for a full app” should set off alarm bells.

I’ve seen founders get burned by quotes that sound too good to be true.

And here’s the reality: they usually are.

A credible app budget runs anywhere from $50K–$250K+, depending on scope and complexity. 

At $5K, what you’re really buying is a prototype, a landing MVP, or a template, not a production-grade product.

The hidden costs show up later:

✦ No discovery → scope creep and endless change requests.
✦ No QA → your users become the testers.
✦ No maintenance plan → apps break as OS versions and APIs update.
✦ No IP clarity → some “cheap shops” keep the repo keys, locking you in.
✦ No security → exposing you to compliance fines or breaches (the average costs $4.9M globally).

So what does a serious proposal include?

1. Discovery: user flows, integrations, edge cases.
2. Delivery plan: milestones, QA, release strategy.
3. Security & compliance baked in.
4. Ongoing ops & maintenance plan.

🚩 If a vendor quotes $5K for the whole thing, don’t think “deal.” 
Think “demo.”
The real bill will come later, in rewrites, downtime, or lost trust.

The smarter play: if budget is tight, scope a small, clear MVP with defined limits and a real path to production. 

That way, your “cheap” start doesn’t become an expensive rewrite.

♻️ Share it resonates
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The plan is clear, the prototype is exciting.

But there’s a quiet signal that something is wrong.

Because the MVP shape is wrong.
Too frequently, MVPs wind up created as demos.
They’re polished enough to show, broad enough to dazzle users, and thin enough that they can’t generate persistent, repeatable value.

Here’s the shift that will actually move the meter: An MVP is not the smallest version of your product. It is the smallest engine of recurring value.

That distinction forces you to ask:

1. What is the one capability users must succeed at?
2. What must be there so the system works without us holding it together manually?
3. What closes the feedback loop, not just opens it?

When you design an MVP from that perspective, you start developing outcomes:

✔ Clarity on measurable value.
✔ One solution for users with or without you.
✔ One core workflow that gains repetitive usage.
✔ Just enough automation to avoid operational drag.
✔ One feedback loop where you learn every time - how to scale.

This is how products gain traction early.
Build the smallest version of your value engine.
That’s the MVP you actually need.

♻️ Share this to help others create MVPs.
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The MVP You Actually Need

“How much does a website cost?”

Everyone loves the safe answer: “It depends.”

But that doesn’t help when you’re budgeting, forecasting, or explaining ROI to your board.

So here’s a straightforward breakdown.

1️⃣ Landing Page.
$1,000–$5,000
A single, conversion-driven page. Perfect for launches or campaigns.
Simple structure but every word, interaction, and visual must earn its place.

2️⃣ Small Business Website.
$5,000–$15,000
Usually 4–6 pages: Home, Services, About, Contact, and maybe a Blog.
You get custom branding, clean UI, and a structure that builds trust fast.

3️⃣ eCommerce Website.
$25,000–$100,000
Product listings, filters, navigation logic, checkout systems, mobile optimization.
At this tier, UX becomes critical because every friction point = abandoned carts.

4️⃣ SaaS Marketing Website.
$75,000–$300,000
Your website becomes part of the product experience.
It must tell your story, guide users to demos, handle content, and match your product’s design language.

5️⃣ Enterprise Website.
$20,000–$100,000+
Think of it as a digital ecosystem:
Dozens of templates, multilingual support, role-based navigation, integrations, governance rules.

The real question isn’t the price.
A website is your 24/7 sales team.
If it doesn’t convert, educate, or build trust, the real cost is the revenue you’re not capturing.

So instead of asking: “How much does a website cost?”
Ask: “How much is a weak website costing me every month?”

♻️ Share if this helps someone price smarter.
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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.
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Design Patterns For AI Interfaces

Every product fosters feelings.

Slack develops curiosity (you check threads). 
LinkedIn develops affirmation (you observe reactions). 
Airbnb develops trust (you reside within somebody else's space). 
Uber develops control (you follow the car, the route, the pricing).

The emotional loop your product supports, becomes the habit that makes users return - or leave.

And here is where many teams miss.
Your design doesn't just support feelings. It influences them.

✦

For every engagement, a micro-feeling is triggered - frustration, relief, pride, fear. 
These micro-feelings accumulate into a memory. 
Then memory drives retention.

Behavioral design studies confirmed that:

✦ Positive feelings (clarity, control, competence) are proven to increase engagement by 30-40%.

✦ Unresolved frustration (human error, waiting, loss of context) is the leading cause of churn within SaaS and consumer apps.

So when your UX creates anxiety (loading uncertainty, unclear steps, overwhelming dashboards) - the user has accomplished their task, but subconsciously will avoid returning.

Ways to audit emotional design in your product.

1. Avatar: the emotion you want your users to feel. (Do you want them caring, empowered, energized, etc.?) 

2. Map the emotion to each interaction. For every step: "What is this moment teaching?" 

3. Test the users' reactions, not just the usability. Record facial expressions or tone, or even keywords in a survey, after each interaction. 

4. Design feedback loop(s)- use motion, microcopy, timing, etc. to bake in positive emotions in the experience.

♻️ Share this if it resonates.
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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 that turns data into insights, automation into time back, and leads into predictable pipeline and revenue.

Ex-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

You don’t need another genius on your team.
You need someone who finishes what genius starts.

You try to be the big thinker and the finisher.
That’s why you feel stretched, stalled, or stuck in the weeds.

History proves the same pattern again and again 👇🏼

1. Walt & Roy Disney 🎢
Walt imagined worlds.
Roy kept the money and risk under control.
→ Without Roy, Disneyland was a beautiful overdraft.

2. Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak 🍎
Jobs set the bar for meaning and design.
Woz built the boards, circuits, and machines.
→ One raised the vision.
→ One stayed in the lab until it worked.

3. Page & Brin with Eric Schmidt 🔍
Page and Brin explored ideas fast.
Schmidt added systems, hiring discipline, and real structure.
→ Exploration + execution.
→ Research + company-building.

4. Bowerman & Knight (Nike) 👟
Bowerman experimented with soles.
Knight built the brand and supply chain.
→ One tinkered.
→ One scaled.

5. Dalí, Picasso & their dealers 🎨
The artists reshaped culture.
The dealers priced, sold, and defended the work.
→ Art has no impact if no one sees it.

6. Watson & Crick + Rosalind Franklin 🧬
Watson and Crick built bold models.
Franklin produced the images and data that proved them right.
→ Vision + proof.
→ No data, no double helix.

We retell these as stories of lone geniuses.
They never were.

If you’re a founder or leader 🧠
Ask yourself:

1. Which mode do you default to — imagination or execution?
2. Who balances you out?
3. Where are you forcing yourself (or someone else) to carry both roles?

Your next breakthrough may not be a new idea.
It may be the right pairing.

Where do you need to remix the brains in the room?

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Profit & sanity for founder-led SMEs/SMBs | Ex-CEO, PwC-trained Chartered Accountant | Fix the basics → build systems & teams → layer human-centric AI | Founder Coach & Fractional CFO

Your company’s biggest risk isn’t the market.

It’s your mind.

Most businesses assume leaders see clearly and decide rationally.
Daniel Kahneman* spent decades proving we don’t.

Here are 5 lines every founder, exec and board should treat like operating instructions.

“The world makes much less sense than you think. The coherence comes mostly from the way your mind works.”

Your strategy isn’t reality - it’s a narrative your brain glued together.
Treat every strategy as a test, not a truth.

“The confidence people have in their beliefs is not a measure of the quality of evidence but of the coherence of the story the mind has managed to construct.”

The loudest person often wins because their story is cleaner, not smarter.

Fix this by changing the system, not the people:
 ↳ Pre reads
 ↳ Written bets
 ↳ Silent, blind voting before debate

This strips out ego and forces judgment, not performance.

“A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.”

Inside companies, repetition turns guesses into “how we do things around here”.

Run monthly assumption audits:
 ↳ List your top 5 “truths”
 ↳ Try to break each one
 ↳ Keep only the survivors

This is how progressive orgs evolve fast - and how traditional teams avoid drift.

“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.”

You’ve seen this:
One crisis hijacks a whole week.
Then becomes irrelevant a month later.

Create one meeting a week where you cannot talk about this week.
Only systems, bets, direction.
This single ritual upgrades judgment more than any offsite.

“The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future.”

Most retros and board packs quietly overfit to last quarter.
Then the same flawed narrative drives next quarter.

In every review, separate:
 ↳ Facts
 ↳ Interpretations
 ↳ Guesses

Label them. Decisions get clearer instantly.
Behind all this is noise -
the invisible variation in how different leaders judge the same CV, pitch, experiment or performance.

Noise runs your hiring, reviews, promotions and investments - unless you redesign the system.
None of this means humans are broken.

It means:
🧠 Ignore cognitive science and you operate with a buggy OS.
🧠 Design with it and your org - hierarchical or progressive - becomes sharper, calmer and far more accurate.

Cognitive science isn’t a nice to have.
It’s the user manual for judgment.

Which of these cognitive traps is costing your org the most right now - hiring, meetings, or strategy? 👇

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*Daniel Kahneman - Nobel laureate, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, and one of the most cited psychologists on the planet - spent a lifetime proving leaders are far less rational than they think.

You only have one life. 

Choose carefully.

The chart shows you spend more waking hours with your team than with anyone else.

That is not good or bad. 
The question is whether you chose it.

Look at the other lines:
1️⃣ Parents and siblings → time drops fast in your early 20s.

2️⃣ Friends → time fades almost every decade.

3️⃣ Children → time peaks for a short spell, then falls as they leave home.

4️⃣ Alone → time with yourself keeps rising.

Every hour you give to one line comes from another.

The real risk is drifting into these trade-offs without noticing.

I’m not talking about “work–life balance”.

Life moves in seasons:

🌋 Season of obsession → you pour energy into building something that matters.

😌 Season of exhale → you choose more space, more connection, slower days.

Both can be great.
Both can hurt if you sleepwalk into them.

I’ve worked with ultra high net worth founders at both ends:

💼 Some in their 50s, 60s and 70s still work most hours and feel alive doing it → they love what they do.

🌅 Others have stepped back, sold, or shrunk things and now enjoy quiet, planned lives.

The happiest are not the richest.
They are the most intentional.

The least happy did not land where they are on purpose.

Work crept outwards → time with the people they care about shrank.

Only later did they see the cost.

Neither path is wrong.

🏢 You can build a company you live inside of → if you choose that life with open eyes.

🏡 You can design a calmer life → if you choose that with the same intent.

What matters is this:
1️⃣ You know yourself.

2️⃣ You are honest about what you want from this one life.

3️⃣ You decide how you spend your time to match that.

You cannot avoid trade-offs.
You can avoid a lot of regret by choosing on purpose.

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Nothing kills motivation faster

than seeing laziness rewarded.

McKinsey found that top performers can be 400% more productive than the average employee – and up to 800% in complex roles.

When poor performers coast, you don’t just lose fairness.
You lose your best people.

Here’s the real problem:
High performers and low performers need different support.
Treating them the same drags everyone down.

Below is the simplest way to build two clear paths.

7 ways to develop your good team members:

1. Give them autonomy, not extra work
 ↳ Let them choose how to reach the goal. Don’t load them with more tasks.

2. Rotate them into high-impact roles
 ↳ Short roles like “Sprint Owner”, “Customer Insight Lead”, or “Debrief Host”.

3. Use a simple decision process
 ↳ Gather input.
 ↳ Consult the right people.
 ↳ Make the call.
 ↳ Share the reasoning.

4. Pair them with strong peers
 ↳ Growth comes from equals, not from carrying others.

5. Show a clear path forward
 ↳ Make the next skill and next level visible.

6, Increase challenge, not hours
 ↳ Give harder problems, not heavier loads.

7. Let them fix one broken workflow
 ↳ Ask: What would you redesign first?
 ↳ Then give them room to do it.

7 ways to improve your struggling team members:

1. Make work clear and visible
 ↳ Use simple plans, checklists, or weekly expectations.
 ↳ Confusion is often the real issue.

2. Separate skill issues from system issues
 ↳ Fix unclear workflows before judging performance.

3. Create small, specific commitments
 ↳ “Deliver X by 3 pm” is better than “Improve this week”.

4. Use short, frequent check-ins
 ↳ Five minutes for clarity beats a long, vague meeting.

5. Focus on one skill at a time
 ↳ Remove overwhelm. Build momentum.

6. Let them shadow someone who excels
 ↳ People learn fastest by seeing the work done well.

7. Set a clear improvement window
 ↳ Define the timeframe and support.
 ↳ Standards stay high. Dignity stays intact.

Most leaders avoid this work because no one taught them how to run two paths at once.

But if you want a team that grows instead of stalls?

Build a system that lifts your strongest people and helps your struggling ones rise, without treating everyone the same.

💭 When have you been frustrated by the treatment of a low performing colleague?

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Box someone in and you miss their humanity.
Too quiet. Too loud.
Too foreign. Too old.

Too queer.
Too “not like me.”

But what if we stopped sorting and started seeing?

Because behind every accent is a story.
Behind every call centre voice is a family.

Behind every faith is a fear overcome.
Behind every difference is the same beating heart.

When we unbox others, something powerful happens:
We return to the source.
We remember we are one.

You see - 
It’s not just about diversity checklists or “inclusive” language.

It’s about choosing kindness as a leadership skill.

About treating the cashier, the colleague, the stranger on the bus -
with the same reverence we reserve for our ‘inner circle.’

Whether they grew up in a war zone or a wealthy suburb...
Whether they believe in God, Gaia, or nothing at all...
Whether they’re transitioning, grieving, celebrating, or surviving...

They are us.
We are them.

🌍 We’ve all danced.
💔 We’ve all felt lonely.
🌈 We’ve all longed to be seen.

So next time you feel the urge to divide - 
Pause.
Choose to connect.

🌀 Let’s lead with love.
And build teams where every human belongs.

What’s one stereotype you’ve unlearned recently?
Let’s swap stories.👇

—

♻️ Share this to remind someone that we’re all more alike than we think.

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🎥 ©️ TV 2

AI is eating tasks.
Automation is eating workflows.
Systems are eating whole management layers.

But nothing replaces the inner world
of the people who make your business work.

Which is why the sentiment:
“If you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business.”
Today, means something very specific.

It’s not about being nice, empathetic, or “good with customers.”
It’s about recognising the forces that quietly drive every choice you, your team, your customers and your investors make:

🧠 Attention under pressure
 ↳ People notice what feels urgent, not what you wish they cared about.

🧩 Meaning-making
 ↳ They remember the moments that confirm their story about you.

⚠ Threat detection
 ↳ Fear of loss outweighs any logical argument.

🎯 Mental shortcuts
 ↳ When time shrinks, bias wins.

💓 Emotional regulation
 ↳ Stress changes judgment more than data ever will.

🤝 Trust calibration
 ↳ Safety determines honesty, not job titles.

🔥 Identity cues
 ↳ People protect who they believe they are - always.

These forces shape:
✅ how employees show up
✅ why customers buy
✅ when investors back you

Once AI standardises the work,
this is the only real advantage left.

You can’t outrun these forces.
You can only design for them.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:
⚙ Reduce friction
 ↳ Make the next step obvious so people don’t have to think twice.

🧭 Make decisions visible
 ↳ Show how choices were made so people don’t fill the gaps with fear.

🕯 Create simple honesty rituals
 ↳ Quick check ins. Clean conflict. Real debriefs.

📌 Build clarity into the environment
 ↳ Clear norms. Clear ownership. Clear constraints.

🤝 Pair humans with AI to protect attention
 ↳ Let tools filter noise so people can stay present.

🎚 Tight where accuracy matters, loose where creativity matters
 ↳ The brain likes certainty in some places and freedom in others.

👐 Give real agency
 ↳ People commit more when they choose, not when they’re told.

Because now that machines handle the easy work,
people are left with the hard work:

❤️ Meaning.
❤️ Focus.
❤️ Courage.
❤️ Interpretation.
❤️ Connection.
❤️ Judgment.

If you don’t understand those in your people, customers and investors…
you don’t understand business in 2025.

You can automate the work - not the human mind.

💬 What is one human pattern in your world that your systems still ignore?

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