No one is an overnight success. It just doesn’t happen. For every story you hear that looks like an overnight success is happening, there were probably years and years of planning, working, banging on doors and getting rejected. It’s only from consistent action in the right direction that momentum moves and then it starts to snowball. ...

There’s little point making little plans. There is little point because no one cares. But more importantly, you don’t care. Making goals and plans that don’t fill you with excitement is pointless, because you won’t be motivated to see them through. Even if you do, you won’t care enough to celebrate or they won’t make a noticeable diffe...

The fastest way to be happy is to feel grateful for what you have. By shutting your eyes, picturing something you’re thankful to have in your life and thinking about that one thing. Then another thing. Then another. Nothing is ever so bad that you can’t find three things to be grateful for. The fastest way to be unhappy is to compare y...

If you truly believe you’re onto something amazing, that your product or service or invention can genuinely save lives or make people happy or solve a problem; dream big. Be audacious with your plans. Go after the huge goals and the achievements that you can't quite fathom coming true. It’s so often the case that doing things in a bigg...

Ask yourself this question: who is in charge? Is it your clients? Do you jump as soon as they click their fingers? Are they demanding your time, energy and headspace above what you promised? Are you working with them or for them? Are you doing your best and being appreciated or will your efforts never be enough? Is this how you picture...

If someone else didn’t prepare, and now they’re rushing around trying to sort something out, it’s not your problem. It’s so easy to get an urgent request and fall for it. I definitely have done. I have moved my plans to help someone else who said it was urgent. Until I realised that it’s their lack of preparedness that brought the dram...

You know when you’re triggered, right? Someone says something, someone does something, something happens and all of a sudden you turn into a different person. You’re riled, ready to pounce and react. What is that? It’s really easy to think it’s about the thing that just happened. So it’s that stupid driver or it’s that stupid comment t...

“It’s not for you” is what great businesses are happy saying to people who aren’t their ideal customer. For some people, the idea of turning customers down can make them uncomfortable. Rather than exclude a buyer who isn’t quite right, they bend their business around this person. They make exceptions, agree to concessions and they go a...

1. Home is wherever you happen to be 2. Overthinking is a trap that spirals until it’s too late 3. There are simple solutions to most problems 4. A decision-making crossroad is a good problem to have 5. If you can’t decide, the answer is neither 6. There’s never a downside to making people feel good 7. There is no competition, only col...

Having it easy If you had it easy, you’ve been given a gift. If you grew up in a decent neighbourhood, did well in the parent lottery, never wondered where your next meal was coming from and had nearly everything you wanted, all of this was a gift. Maybe you had a few struggles and a little drama, but nothing huge. If you live a comfor...

A truly happy person will never try to bring you down. They don’t see separation; they don’t show judgment. They are only ever rooting for your success. They are on your side. You can feel it, you can feel their energy. They aren’t trying to change you or prove you wrong or compete, they are there, next to you, working through things w...

If something is easy it’s probably not super lucrative because lots of people have figured it out and are doing it. That restaurant where it’s always easy to get a table. The publications it’s easy to get featured in. The career path that’s super simple and straightforward. All have so little to offer compared to the ones that just req...

What we hold onto is probably what holds us back. Believing that you have to keep all those sentimental possessions is holding you back from downsizing your house or travelling. Believing that you have to go to that same hairdresser might be holding you back from having great hair by a new one. Believing that you have to fulfil all the...

There is something magical about being completely unavailable. It makes you feel lighter – freer – that no one can reach you no matter what happens. The possibilities for your time are endless because only you can decide how you spend it. I believe the world would be a better place if we spent at least 50% of our waking hours on airpla...

You and I, we didn’t succeed because of schooling. We succeeded in spite of schooling. School didn’t teach us how to question, how to be resourceful, how to think for ourselves. We learned that somewhere else. School actually taught us conformity. It taught us comparison. It taught us how to stand in line and follow a syllabus to a mar...

Predicting your future is easy. Look at what you do every single day and project that forward over a year, then five, then ten. If you argue with your partner every day, where will your relationship be in a year? If you overeat, if you don’t get enough sleep, if you skip the gym, if you leave the work that matters until last. It’s obvi...

If you’re trying to do anything exceptional, anything cool, anything of note, people will be watching. So you might as well get used to it and you might as well enjoy it. Because what’s the alternative? That you operate so far within your comfort zone that you never do anything remarkable? And no one ever stares because you’re… unremar...

When you start a business it’s great: designing your brand, creating your products or defining your service; planning how you’ll approach customers and securing those first few projects. Fun, focus and learning new things every day. You love telling people about your venture, and every new connection or sale you make is exciting. The h...

Football matches have twenty two people on the pitch and maybe fifty thousand people in the stands. This kind of ratio holds for artists and critics. Hardly anyone creates, hardly anyone makes great work and puts it out there but thousands watch and thousands criticise. And what’s worse is that just the existence of critics is what mea...

The fastest way to change your trajectory is to change your geography. Sure, you can put in place new habits, a new exercise routine, you can read new books and listen to new podcasts and meditate every morning. But the thing that will change your trajectory and life in the biggest way possible is changing where you physically are. Bei...

Letting yourself become distracted with other people’s business before you’ve done anything that actually matters is the biggest recipe for disaster there is. There is nothing happening in the world that you need to know about before you have worked on your own business or career or life. Nothing. It’s crazy to let your success be hija...

Here's my hypothesis. Entrepreneurs who set up their company and exited within ten years, achieving financial freedom within that time, followed a specific route through the four distinct stages of the Ten Year Career framework: 1. Execute 2. Systemize 3. Scrutinize 4. Exit Entrepreneurs who don’t follow this plan are inhibited along t...

This way of producing is a gamechanger. What so many people do is they think about their target audience and what content they might want to read or watch. But it’s often wildly inaccurate. Aside from quizzing your audience like crazy the best way to create content that resonates is to imagine you are speaking to a former version of yo...

Ticking off tasks all day long does not make for happy people or exceptional results. Even if most roles can be reduced to tick boxes it doesn’t mean they should. Instead, give people responsibilities, then guide and train them in fulfilling their responsibilities. It’s someone being in charge of operational excellence or client satisf...

So many business owners don’t ever achieve what they are capable of because they can’t let go of those tasks and projects that they believe only they can do. And the belief is not true. They could train someone else up to do it just as well, if not better, and they could keep growing and progressing themselves. When entrepreneurs are t...

One day they will tell everyone how they met you and used to know you. One day that will happen. I don’t believe in doing anything just to prove someone wrong but I do believe that we have probably all been underestimated at some point and it makes for quite funny stories. It also serves as a reminder that you are more than other peopl...

Reading business books does not improve your business. Reading business books gives you all the information, but that information is no use at all if you do nothing with it. And that’s the problem, that the knowledge requires execution – it requires taking it and applying it to your situation. But here’s another problem: the business b...

I’m super excited to tell you about my new book, Ten Year Career. It’s designed to help entrepreneurs fast track to freedom by identifying where they are in their business journey and taking exactly the right action to progress. The foreword is written by Derek Sivers, one of my favourite thinkers, and the book is available to pre-orde...

There are two types of people, settlers and explorers. Settlers like to progress towards stability, so they look to secure that perfect job, dream house, amazing partner. They sign contracts and make long term decisions and enjoy security. Most marketing is aimed at settlers. It’s those adverts with the perfect family or the perfect ho...

...doesn’t mean you have to do it. This is a huge factor in businesses that stay small and owners who don’t progress. They mistakenly think that because they are good at something, they should keep doing it. So instead of rising up in their role, hiring people, delegating, outsourcing, finding bigger and bigger problems to solve, they ...