Sam Page

From pitching, through AI tools, to stumbling across a Japanese BBQ with one of our first clients. The Friday Takeaway 🥡 is served…

📈 Pitching

We had a big pitch this week. Whilst it’s a lot of work, it’s one of my favourite things to do. I still get stressed and nervous every-time, which I know is a good sign. Most of all though, I love meeting new people, digging deep into what a company does, and working out how we can solve their challenges. And the buzz it creates amongst the team is priceless.

Takeaway: The hardest things, are the things most worth doing.

🍖 Stumbling across a Japanese BBQ restaurant

I met up with one of our very first clients, Nicholas yesterday. He put a lot of faith in us when we were a start-up, commissioning us to help David Nieper Limited, Alfreton build a new e-commerce ecosystem. We’ve stayed in touch and worked together a number of times over the past 16 years, and as a result, we’ve built a strong relationship which blends professional and personal. We set out without a venue in mind, and stumbled across a wonderful Japanese BBQ called Hachi. Pleasure to see you as always Nick.

https://hachibbq.co.uk/

Takeaway: Business is about solving peoples problems, and building genuine relationships. You never know where they will end up (very full in this case).

🤖 AI tools

Another week of trying out new AI tools. To the extent I sent our operations team a note saying “keep me honest”. The rate of progress means there is a constant need to dive into the latest tools, but just as quickly, it’s easy to stop using them. And once you find the ones that solve your problems best, you need to deploy them with a people first approach.

Takeaway tools:

Flora AI for image and video generation (highly recommend): https://www.florafauna.ai/

Taplio for LinkedIn post drafting and posting (recommend): https://taplio.com/

Claude Cowork – acts an AI companion with access to file on your desktop (more to follow): https://lnkd.in/e3Ni2Xq7

🪓 Quote about chopping down a tree
I don’t know where I heard this, but I’ve somehow managed to repeat it about 10 times this week to different people:

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Abraham Lincoln.

Takeaway: The world we have created often demands us to feel like we need to dive straight in. Using the analogy, too start chopping at the tree before we’ve sharpened the axe. However, so much of the value comes from the work before the task begins.

Have a great weekend everyone.