CORE ARTICLE:
You hired the best people you could find.
Execution still feels slow.
The instinct is to add one more senior leader. That usually adds weight, not momentum.
Smart teams stall when nobody owns the decision. Structure first, then hire.
It is the first thing I test in a portfolio review.
How to Build a Better Team Around You
Other links and useful reads:
So. Much. Valuable. Stuff.
PERSONAL PROGRESS
↳ Wendell Berry and the Promise of the Deep Life — Cal Newport, 7 Sep 2026. Hard work only pays off when it sits inside a vision you actually chose. Strain without a direction is just noise.
→ On a personal note, I stopped answering Slack and email before 10am. Phone in a drawer, two hours on the one piece of work that needs real thinking. Two weeks in, I am shipping the hard thinking by lunch instead of pushing it to the evening, and I have stopped ending days feeling busy but behind.
A bespoke framework and capability model 'DEMAND KARMA' that delivers DD services to investors, VC firms and CEOs.
Retained advisory at funded scale-ups. A simple monthly fee. Helping CEOs build a scalable marketing machine. (Booked out until December)
Book time on my calendar to work through a standalone project or to get answers to your most pressing marketing strategy and execution questions.
