Reading Time: < 1 minuteNobody talks about this part, so here it is. Three messages. Then you stop. Not four with a nudge. Not the “just floating this to the top of your inbox” message, which floats nothing anywhere but your reputation downward. If there is no reply after the third, you move that person to a different track. […]
Torkild Smith
Helping women-led businesses adopt AI on their own terms — strategically, and without the burnout — is the whole reason I do this work. If that's where you are right now, get in touch.
One process, not a transformation
Reading Time: < 1 minuteThe pitch, when you finally get to it, should be smaller than you think. Here is the mistake almost everyone makes. They offer a transformation. Rethink your whole operation. Become AI-enabled. Redesign how you work. To a coach with a full diary and a consultant mid-delivery, that is not an offer. It is another project, […]
The clients you should have said No to
Reading Time: 3 minutesA coach I know took a call last spring and knew within ten minutes the woman on the other end wasn’t right for her. Wrong stage of business, wrong expectations, and a tone that suggested nothing would ever quite be enough. She said yes anyway. Four months later, she was dreading Thursdays. When I asked […]
Another tutorial is not a strategy
Reading Time: 3 minutesA founder told me she had spent the August bank holiday weekend watching AI tutorials. Eleven hours across three days. She had pages of notes and a list of forty tools. By the following Friday, she had implemented none of it. She was not lazy, and she was certainly not slow. She was a capable […]
The message that makes replying feel good
Reading Time: < 1 minuteThree days after they accept, most people send a pitch. Which is why most people never hear back. Send something else. Send a question only they can answer. Not a survey question. Not “what is your biggest challenge with marketing at the moment”, which is a form dressed as curiosity. A question that draws on […]
The connection request that does not pitch
Reading Time: < 1 minuteYou get 300 characters. It has one job, and selling is not it. The only job is to earn acceptance. Three parts, in this order. One specific detail from their profile that took effort to find. Not their headline. One line on why you are connecting, framed around them rather than you. Permission to do […]
Your list is the problem, not your copy
Reading Time: < 1 minute Most people who tell me outreach does not work have rewritten their opening line nine times and never once questioned who they sent it to. Before you write a word, score the person out of three. Do they have the problem you solve? Not: could they benefit? Is there evidence, in their own words […]
A client transformation story
Reading Time: 3 minutesIt was quarter to midnight, and she was answering customer emails from her kitchen table again. Emma had built a beloved skincare brand from that same kitchen three years earlier, and it had grown faster than she ever thought it would. But every order, every enquiry, every “where is my parcel” message was landing on […]
The hook is never in the headline
Reading Time: < 1 minuteEverybody reads the top third of a profile. Which is exactly why nothing in the top third builds any rapport. The thing that makes someone stop and reply is almost always three-quarters of the way down the page. The role from 2004 that has nothing to do with what they do now. The organisation they […]
One business development task a day
Reading Time: 4 minutesA client showed me her saved folder last year. Ninety-something screenshots. A five-o’clock morning routine, a cold email script somebody swore had made them six figures, a posting schedule, a spreadsheet with eleven tabs. She had saved all of it and done none of it. She apologised to me. That was the part that bothered […]
