Blu Dot surpasses 2,000% ROAS with self-serve CTV ads

Home furniture brand Blu Dot blew up on CTV with help from Roku Ads Manager. Here’s how:

After a test campaign reached 211,000 households and achieved 1,010% ROAS, the brand went all in to promote its annual sales event. It removed age and income constraints to expand reach and shifted budget to custom audiences and retargeting, where intent was strongest.

The results speak for themselves. As Blu Dot increased their investment by 10x, ROAS jumped to 2,308% and more page-view conversions surpassed 50,000.

“For CTV campaigns, Roku has been a top performer,” said Claire Folkestad, Paid Media Strategist, Blu Dot. “Comping to our other platforms, we have seen really strong ROAS… and highly efficient CPMs, lower than any other CTV partner we've worked with.”

Using Roku Ads Manager, the campaign moved from a pilot to a permanent performance engine for the brand.

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Guest post covering:

• Being good at your job isn't enough

• Get visible before the opportunity appears

• Turn rejection into a roadmap

• Build relationships with decision-makers

• Make your capability impossible to overlook

By Alex Mann

5:47pm, Tuesday. The office is emptying. I'm still at my desk, screen glare in my eyes, closing the same kind of ticket I closed yesterday, and the day before that. The coffee beside me went cold an hour ago. I drink it anyway, out of habit, and grimace when it hits my tongue.

I'm good at this job. Everyone says so. Lately, "good at this job" feels less like a compliment and more like a sentence.

Then, out of nowhere: a leadership position opens up. My stomach drops the way it does at the top of a rollercoaster - half excitement, half dread.

Can I actually do this? Would anyone even listen to me?

Imposter syndrome, running the show in my head. But one line won't leave me alone: you don't ask, you don't get.

So I go for it. Suit on, shoes polished, palms a little too warm. I walk in and give it everything. I answer well. I even surprise myself.

A week later, I'm called into the director's office. I remember the carpet. The closed blinds. The particular silence of a room where you already know the news before it's said.

"You didn't get the job."

It went to my best mate. The one who didn't even want it.

He looks at me across the desk, already braced for what happens next, because it's what happens every time. Nod. Say "no worries", "congrats" to my mate. Walk out. Then, in the corridor, in the group chat, at the pub: grumble. Mutter about favouritism. Let the resentment simmer for months.

Instead, I look the director dead in the eye and ask one question:

"What can I do to be ready for next time?"

He blinks. Genuinely thrown. Like no one has ever asked him that in this room before.

I didn't have the language for it then, but what happened next is something I'd later recognise from Carla Harris's Expect to Win: I'd just started building a sponsor.

Here's the part that stings if you let it: the decision had already been made in the director's head, weeks before that interview ever happened. Fair? No. Reality? Absolutely. And here's the only question that actually matters once you accept that:

How do you get into that person's head before the decision gets made?

You stop waiting for the job description and start asking the person who'll actually make the decision what success in the role looks like, months out, not in the interview. You ask them to mentor you.

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So that's what I did. I set up weekly catch-ups with the director and asked him to mentor me: what to pick up, what to fix, what a leader in that seat actually does. He started testing it, too, giving me real opportunities to prove it. When my manager was away, he had me run the team.

A year passes.

Another opportunity comes up.

This time, there's no drop in my stomach. No dread. Because this time, I'm already in the director's head. There's no contest. No corridor gossip. No "must be favouritism."

I get the job.

If any part of that Tuesday-desk feeling is familiar, capable, doing good work, watching someone less prepared get the nod while you wonder what you're doing wrong, I want to be direct with you: it is almost NEVER a skills problem. It's a visibility problem. No one has taught you how to get into the right head, at the right time, before the decision is already made.

That's the actual work I do now. I help tech, support and operations professionals turn quiet, unnoticed competence into evidence a decision-maker can't ignore, in their CV, in interviews, and in the conversations that happen long before any job is ever advertised.

The question I asked in that office was one small habit. It's the same habit I now teach, step by step, to people who are done being overlooked.

Stop being overlooked. Start getting seen.

Want to learn more about me?

• Book a 30-minute Get Seen coaching session. 

• Or email me directly: alexmanncoach@gmail.com

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Covering today

• Why strong performance can hide damaging behaviour

• When “difficult” is actually valuable

• The behaviour vs results conversation

• How much freedom high performers should get

• When talent stops being worth the cost

You know the person.

They're brilliant at what they do.

Customers love them.

They solve problems nobody else can.

Their numbers are excellent.

But…

They challenge everything.

Ignore processes they disagree with.

Frustrate colleagues.

Push boundaries.

And occasionally make you wonder whether their performance is worth the headache.

The temptation is to choose one of two extremes:

“They're brilliant. Leave them alone.”

Or:

“They're difficult. They need to change.”

Both miss the point.

The real question is:

Is their difficulty making the team better, or making everyone else's job harder?

“Surprise. You're underperforming.”

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DON'T CONFUSE DIFFICULT WITH DAMAGING

Some of your best people should be difficult sometimes.

They challenge bad decisions.

Question inefficient processes.

Refuse to accept “that's how we've always done it.”

Push standards higher.

Tell you things other people won't.

You don't want to manage that out of them.

The problem isn't challenge.

It's how that challenge shows up.

There's a difference between:

“I disagree. Here's why.”

and:

“This is ridiculous. I'm not doing it.”

Between questioning a process and ignoring it.

Between high standards and making colleagues feel inadequate.

Protect the challenge. Address the behaviour.

RESULTS DON'T BUY IMMUNITY

This is where managers get into trouble.

Someone delivers 150% of target, so behaviours that wouldn't be tolerated from anyone else quietly get ignored.

But performance isn't just:

WHAT they deliver.

It's also:

HOW they deliver it.

If one person's exceptional output consistently creates conflict, rework, disengagement or extra management for everyone around them, their real contribution may be lower than it appears.

Your team notices what you tolerate.

And eventually they learn:

“If you perform well enough, the rules don't apply.”

That's a dangerous cultural message.

HAVE THE CONVERSATION

Don't attack their personality.

“You're difficult to work with.”

That's vague and personal.

Talk about observable behaviour and impact.

Try:

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Better product decisions in the AI era.

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Welcome to this week's House of Leadership Book Club, where we take one book and distil it down to what actually matters, something to build your knowledge, shape your mindset, nurture your relationships, and help you lead more effectively.

Summary

Some leaders walk into a room and everyone gets quieter.

Others walk in and somehow everyone gets smarter.

That's the idea at the heart of Liz Wiseman's Multipliers.

Wiseman describes two types of leaders.

Diminishers become the centre of everything. They have the ideas, make the decisions, solve the problems and expect everyone else to execute.

Multipliers do something different.

They find talented people, create space for them to think, challenge them with meaningful problems and give them genuine ownership.

Importantly, Diminishers aren't necessarily bad bosses. Many are intelligent, ambitious leaders genuinely trying to help.

But their need to contribute can unintentionally suppress the capability around them.

The question this book leaves every leader with is uncomfortable but important:

Do people become better thinkers when you're in the room?

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10 KEY IDEAS

1. Be a Multiplier, not a Diminisher

Multipliers amplify the intelligence and capability around them. Diminishers unintentionally drain it.

Leadership isn't about demonstrating how capable you are.

It's about increasing the capability of everyone around you.

2. Don't be the smartest person in the room

Your expertise probably helped you become a manager.

But constantly proving that expertise can stop others contributing.

If you always have the answer, eventually people stop bringing theirs.

3. Look for people's genius

Everyone has something they do exceptionally well.

Multipliers actively look for it.

Instead of asking “Is this person talented?” ask:

“Where is this person at their best?”

Then create opportunities for them to use that capability.

4. Create intensity without fear

High standards and psychological safety aren't opposites.

Great leaders create environments where people are expected to perform, challenge themselves and take responsibility — while still feeling safe enough to disagree, experiment and make mistakes.

5. Ask questions that make people think

Instead of arriving with answers, bring questions.

“What are we missing?”

“What would you do?”

“What assumptions are we making?”

A good leadership question doesn't demonstrate your intelligence.

It activates someone else's.

6. Give people challenges slightly beyond them

Multipliers don't protect talented people from difficult work.

They stretch them.

Give someone a problem that's slightly bigger than their current capability, provide support and let them work out how to solve it.

That's where development happens.

7. Debate before deciding

Strong leaders don't surround themselves with agreement.

They encourage people to challenge ideas, test assumptions and explore alternatives before an important decision is made.

Healthy debate improves both decisions and commitment.

8. Give ownership, not just tasks

Delegating a task isn't the same as delegating responsibility.

If you're still controlling every decision, you've simply created another pair of hands.

Be clear about the outcome, boundaries and decision rights — then let people own how they get there.

9. Watch for Accidental Diminisher behaviours

This is perhaps the most useful lesson in the book.

You can be supportive, energetic and well-intentioned and still diminish people.

The Idea Guy overwhelms everyone with suggestions.

The Rescuer repeatedly saves people.

The Always-On Leader dominates the room.

The Optimist underestimates how difficult things really are.

Good intentions don't automatically create good leadership.

10. Measure yourself by what others can do

The ultimate test of leadership isn't what your team achieves because you're there.

It's what they're capable of because you've been there.

If your people become more confident, capable and independent over time, you're multiplying.

If everything still depends on you, something needs to change.

ONE ACTION THIS WEEK

Give away one decision.

How Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie brand grew sales 40% with CTV ads

For its first CTV campaign, Jennifer Aniston’s DTC haircare brand LolaVie had a few non-negotiables. The campaign had to be simple. It had to demonstrate measurable impact. And it had to be full-funnel.

LolaVie used Roku Ads Manager to test and optimize creatives — reaching millions of potential customers at all stages of their purchase journeys. Roku Ads Manager helped the brand convey LolaVie’s playful voice while helping drive omnichannel sales across both ecommerce and retail touchpoints.

The campaign included an Action Ad overlay that let viewers shop directly from their TVs by clicking OK on their Roku remote. This guided them to the website to buy LolaVie products.

Discover how Roku Ads Manager helped LolaVie drive big sales and customer growth with self-serve TV ads.

The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Aniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.

Learn more.

---

The Launch

We just launched something new

This week I opened up the House of Leadership community. It's built around the weekly live call we've been running quietly for a while now, except now it has a proper home, real structure, and room for more of you in it.

Community access is free to subscribers of this newsletter, ask questions and share your perspective.

If you want access to 1:1 coaching with a leadership coach, monthly training, and other events, there's a paid membership too, starting with a 5-part series over the next month on performance management, walking through a step-by-step process for handling the conversations most managers put off until they can't anymore.

I'd love to see you in there. If you've already joined, say hello in the community, I want to know who's in the room. If not —»

Summary

Most managers are trying to be helpful.

Someone brings them a problem. They listen for thirty seconds, recognise what's happening and jump straight into:

“Here's what I think you should do…”

It feels like leadership.

But Michael Bungay Stanier's The Coaching Habit argues that constantly providing answers creates a problem: your team becomes dependent on you to solve things.

Instead, great managers develop the habit of asking better questions.

The book introduces seven simple questions designed to make coaching part of everyday management — not something reserved for formal 1:1s or performance reviews.

The goal isn't to become a professional coach.

It's to stay curious a little longer and rush to advice a little slower.

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10 KEY IDEAS

1. Ask before you tell

When someone brings you a problem, resist the instinct to immediately solve it. Ask questions first. You may discover that the real problem is completely different from the one initially presented.

2. Start with: “What's on your mind?”

Stanier calls this the Kickstart Question. It's deliberately broad. Instead of controlling the conversation with your agenda, it gives the other person space to identify what matters most.

3. Ask: “And what else?”

Possibly the simplest and most powerful question in the book.

The first answer is rarely the whole answer. Asking “And what else?” encourages people to think deeper before you start solving.

4. Find the real challenge

People often arrive with symptoms rather than problems.

Ask:

“What's the real challenge here for you?”

The for you matters. It shifts the conversation away from everything happening around them and towards what they can actually influence.

5. Understand what they really want

Ask:

“What do you want?”

It's surprising how often people can explain everything that's wrong but struggle to articulate what a good outcome would actually look like.

Clarity changes the conversation.

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Jira Product Discovery gives teams one place to capture customer feedback, prioritize ideas with consistent frameworks, and build living roadmaps everyone can align on. And when it’s time to build, those decisions connect directly to delivery in Jira, so everyone can see how the roadmap turns into real work.

Try Jira Product Discovery

Covering today

• Our new community has launched - join for free

• When a PIP is actually appropriate

• What needs to happen before you get there

• The conversation most managers get wrong

• How to build a fair and useful improvement plan

• What support really looks like

• The mistakes that destroy trust

• How to know when improvement isn't happening

Few management conversations are harder than telling someone:

“Your performance isn't where it needs to be, and we're moving to a formal improvement plan.”

For the employee, it can feel frightening. For the manager, uncomfortable.

And in some organisations, PIP has become shorthand for “we've decided you're leaving.”

That's not what it should be.

A Performance Improvement Plan should have one purpose:

Give someone a fair, clear and supported opportunity to succeed.

Sometimes they will. Sometimes they won't.

But the opportunity needs to be genuine.

A PIP SHOULD NEVER BE A SURPRISE

If someone first discovers there's a serious performance problem when they're placed on a PIP, something has gone wrong.

Before getting there, they should usually have received:

Clear expectations. Specific feedback. Coaching. Support. Time to improve.

A PIP should be:

“We've discussed this, but the improvement hasn't been consistent enough. We now need a more structured approach.”

Not:

“Surprise. You're underperforming.”

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BEFORE YOU START

Ask yourself four questions:

1. Were expectations clear?
Could they explain what good performance actually looks like?

2. What's causing the gap?
Capability? Knowledge? Motivation? Unclear priorities? Diagnose before acting.

3. Have I been specific?
"Improve communication" is vague. "Customers need an update within 24 hours" is actionable.

4. Have I supported them?
Coaching, training, examples, feedback and removing genuine blockers all matter.

High accountability should come with high support.

HAVE THE CONVERSATION CLEARLY

Managers often become too harsh because they want the message to land, or too vague because they don't want to upset someone.

You need both clarity and humanity.

Try:

Then stop.

Let them respond.

Listen.

Being compassionate doesn't require you to dilute the message.

BUILD A PIP THEY CAN ACTUALLY PASS

Avoid vague objectives like:

Show more ownership. Be proactive. Improve communication.

Instead, every objective should define:

THE GAP — What's falling short?

THE EXPECTATION — What does good look like?

Want to become a better leader without figuring everything out alone?

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Practical advice, useful tools and ongoing support to help you lead with greater confidence.

If you want to lead with greater confidence, handle difficult situations calmly and become the manager your team deserves, I’d love you to join us.

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David
House of Leadership

Being promoted into management is exciting.

Then reality hits.

You’re expected to lead difficult conversations, motivate different personalities, manage underperformance and earn your team’s respect, often without any meaningful training.

You’re no longer completely new. But after one to three years in management, there are probably still situations that leave you wondering:

“Am I handling this properly?”

That’s why I’ve created the New Managers Community.

It’s a practical community for managers who want to become more confident, capable leaders, without having to figure everything out alone.

Inside, you’ll get:

✅ Practical training you can immediately use with your team
✅ Live sessions tackling real management challenges
✅ AI tools and prompts designed specifically for managers
✅ Templates for 1:1s, feedback and difficult conversations
✅ Support from other managers facing the same challenges
✅ A safe place to ask the questions you can’t always ask at work

This isn’t another library of management theory you’ll never finish.

It’s somewhere to bring the challenge you’re facing this week—and leave knowing what to do next.

If you want to lead with more confidence, handle difficult situations calmly and become the manager your team deserves, I’d love you to join us.

“I’ve already completed management training.”
This isn’t another theoretical course. It helps you turn what you know into confident action.

“I don’t have enough time.”
You don’t need hours every week. Use the community when you need help with a real situation.

“Will this actually help me?”
Try it for 14 days completely risk-free. If it isn’t right for you, cancel and receive your money back.

You don’t have to work everything out on your own.

David
House of Leadership

How Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie brand grew sales 40% with CTV ads

For its first CTV campaign, Jennifer Aniston’s DTC haircare brand LolaVie had a few non-negotiables. The campaign had to be simple. It had to demonstrate measurable impact. And it had to be full-funnel.

LolaVie used Roku Ads Manager to test and optimize creatives — reaching millions of potential customers at all stages of their purchase journeys. Roku Ads Manager helped the brand convey LolaVie’s playful voice while helping drive omnichannel sales across both ecommerce and retail touchpoints.

The campaign included an Action Ad overlay that let viewers shop directly from their TVs by clicking OK on their Roku remote. This guided them to the website to buy LolaVie products.

Discover how Roku Ads Manager helped LolaVie drive big sales and customer growth with self-serve TV ads.

The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Aniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.

Learn more.

Welcome to this week's House of Leadership Book Club, where we take one book and distil it down to what actually matters, something to build your knowledge, shape your mindset, nurture your relationships, and help you lead more effectively.

Summary

You can have brilliant people and still have a dysfunctional team.

That's the central idea behind Patrick Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

Through a fictional leadership team, Lencioni shows that most team problems aren't really about intelligence, strategy or capability. They're about how people behave with each other.

He identifies five interconnected dysfunctions: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results.

And importantly, they build on each other.

Without trust, people avoid conflict. Without healthy conflict, genuine commitment is difficult. Without commitment, accountability disappears. And without accountability, individual priorities start beating collective results.

The lesson for leaders is simple:

High-performing teams aren't built by avoiding tension. They're built by learning how to handle it.

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10 KEY IDEAS

1. Trust is the foundation

Great teams start with vulnerability-based trust. People need to feel comfortable saying “I made a mistake,” “I need help,” or “I don't know.” Without that safety, people protect themselves instead of contributing fully.

2. Leaders have to go first

You can't demand vulnerability while pretending you have everything figured out. Leaders set the tone by admitting mistakes, asking for help and showing that being imperfect isn't something to hide.

3. Healthy conflict is essential

Strong teams don't always agree. They challenge assumptions, debate ideas and disagree openly. The goal isn't harmony. It's creating enough trust that disagreement can happen without becoming personal.

4. Artificial harmony is dangerous

A meeting where everyone politely agrees isn't necessarily a healthy meeting. When people don't say what they're really thinking, disagreements simply move into corridors, private messages and conversations after the meeting.

5. People need to feel heard before they commit

Consensus isn't always possible. But people are much more likely to support a decision when they've had the opportunity to challenge it, contribute and understand why it was made.

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A PM can summarize research, draft a PRD, and mock up a prototype before lunch. The hard part starts when the team has to decide what actually gets built.

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And because it’s connected to Jira, the context behind every decision stays with the work—so developers and their agents know not just what to build, but why.

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Covering today

• Why underperformance rarely fixes itself

• Why good managers delay difficult conversations

• How to separate facts from assumptions

• Seven steps for addressing performance fairly

• How to balance support with accountability

• When improvement is no longer the likely outcome

The Performance Conversation You’re Avoiding

Most managers don’t ignore underperformance because they don’t care.

They ignore it because they do.

They don’t want to knock someone’s confidence.

They know the person is dealing with challenges outside work.

They’re worried about damaging the relationship.

So they wait.

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They give another chance without saying that another chance is being given. They quietly compensate for the gap. They redistribute work, lower expectations or hope the person eventually works it out.

But underperformance rarely improves through silence.

The employee remains unaware of the seriousness of the problem.

Their colleagues become frustrated.

The manager becomes resentful.

And a conversation that could have been constructive becomes increasingly difficult.

Addressing underperformance early isn’t unkind.

Leaving someone unaware that they’re falling short is.

The problem Alex hoped would disappear

Alex managed an experienced team of seven.

One member of the team had started missing deadlines. The quality of their work had become inconsistent and colleagues were regularly stepping in to finish tasks.

Alex noticed it.

But he also knew the employee was going through a difficult period personally.

So he waited.

He offered encouragement, moved a few deadlines and took some of the work himself. He believed he was being supportive.

Three months later, nothing had improved.

When Alex finally raised the issue, the employee was shocked.

They had interpreted his support as evidence that everything was broadly fine.

Alex thought he had been giving them time.

The employee thought they had been meeting expectations.

That gap existed because the manager had never clearly named it.

1. Name the gap

Underperformance is not a personality judgement.

It’s a gap between what is expected and what is currently happening.

Before speaking to someone, get specific:

• What result or behaviour is expected?

• What have you observed instead?

• What impact is this having?

• What evidence supports your view?

Avoid vague statements such as:

Explain what proactive would look like:

The clearer the gap, the easier it becomes to discuss fairly.

2. Diagnose the cause

Not every performance problem has the same cause.

Someone may be struggling because they:

• Don’t understand what is expected

• Haven’t been properly trained

• Lack the time, tools or authority required

• Are overwhelmed by competing priorities

• Have lost confidence

• Are choosing not to meet the standard

Those situations require different responses.

Start with curiosity:

Listen before deciding what the problem is.

Curiosity helps you diagnose the gap.

It shouldn’t prevent you from acknowledging that the gap exists.

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3. Agree the recovery plan

A performance conversation should create clarity about what happens next.

Agree:

• What needs to change

• Which actions the employee will take

• What support you will provide

• How improvement will be measured

• When progress will be reviewed

“Do better” isn’t a plan.

“Submit the weekly report by 3pm every Friday for the next four weeks” is.

Finish by asking:

That question reveals whether the expectation is genuinely clear.

4. Provide the right support

Accountability without support can become abandonment.

Support without accountability can become avoidance.

How Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie brand grew sales 40% with CTV ads

For its first CTV campaign, Jennifer Aniston’s DTC haircare brand LolaVie had a few non-negotiables. The campaign had to be simple. It had to demonstrate measurable impact. And it had to be full-funnel.

LolaVie used Roku Ads Manager to test and optimize creatives — reaching millions of potential customers at all stages of their purchase journeys. Roku Ads Manager helped the brand convey LolaVie’s playful voice while helping drive omnichannel sales across both ecommerce and retail touchpoints.

The campaign included an Action Ad overlay that let viewers shop directly from their TVs by clicking OK on their Roku remote. This guided them to the website to buy LolaVie products.

Discover how Roku Ads Manager helped LolaVie drive big sales and customer growth with self-serve TV ads.

The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Aniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.

Learn more.

We’re running a 2-week intense new manager training boot camp in September.

Welcome to this week's House of Leadership Book Club, where we take one book and distil it down to what actually matters, something to build your knowledge, shape your mindset, nurture your relationships, and help you lead more effectively.

Summary

Most organisations are built around a simple assumption: the leader thinks, and everyone else follows.

Turn the Ship Around! challenges that completely.

When L. David Marquet took command of the USS Santa Fe, one of the poorest-performing submarines in the U.S. Navy, he realised that giving better orders wasn't going to solve the problem.

Instead, he stopped trying to create better followers and started creating more leaders.

Marquet replaced the traditional leader-follower model with a leader-leader approach, pushing authority towards the people closest to the work while building the competence and clarity they needed to make good decisions.

The result wasn't less leadership.

It was leadership everywhere.

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10 KEY IDEAS

1. Stop creating followers

When every decision has to go through the manager, people learn to wait rather than think. Great leaders don't want teams that simply follow instructions. They develop people capable of making good decisions without them.

2. Move authority to where the information is

The person closest to the problem often understands it better than the person with the biggest job title. Instead of pushing every decision upwards, push decision-making authority downwards.

3. Replace permission with intent

One of Marquet's most powerful changes was replacing “Request permission to…” with “I intend to…”

It sounds small, but it completely changes ownership. People must think through what they're about to do rather than simply wait for approval.

Holiday Creator Calendars Are Filling Up. Q4 Panic Is Optional.

Creators lock in their holiday content calendars 90 days out, before most ecommerce brands finalize their commission strategy and way before Black Friday and October deal events.

Get ahead of the seasonal rush with The 90-Day Holiday Sprint, a practical guide for brands that want creators driving holiday demand while competitors are still recruiting:

• Structure commissions by lifetime value, not just first-order margin

• Lead with the right products so creators promote with confidence

• Recruit and onboard creators with a day-by-day plan for the first 30 days

• Read performance early and pull program levers by Day 60

• Brief creators with a holiday checklist before calendars fill up

Your 90-day countdown starts now.

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Covering today

• Why AI should support your leadership, not replace it

• The tasks managers should stop doing manually

• 10 practical AI use cases you can try immediately

• Where human judgement still matters most

• How to avoid generic, robotic outputs

• One action to take this week

Your New Management Assistant

Most managers aren't short of ability.

They're short of time.

Their days disappear into meetings, messages, reports, performance conversations, planning and problems that nobody else seems able to solve.

Then, at the end of the day, the work that matters most is still waiting.

Preparing properly for a 1:1.

Thinking through a difficult conversation.

Developing someone with potential.

Stepping back to understand why performance is slipping.

This is where AI can make a meaningful difference.

Not by managing people for you.

But by helping you arrive at the human parts of management better prepared.

The manager who gained back an hour

Sarah managed a team of nine.

Every Friday, she spent more than an hour pulling together updates for her director. She copied information from different documents, reviewed performance figures and tried to remember what had happened during the week.

The report wasn't especially valuable.

But it had to be done.

Sarah started using ChatGPT to organise her notes, identify the most important themes and draft the update in her preferred format.

The task dropped from 60 minutes to 15.

The biggest benefit wasn't the report.

It was what she did with the time she recovered.

She prepared for the following week's 1:1s.

That is the opportunity AI creates.

Not simply doing the same amount of work faster.

But creating more time for the leadership only you can provide.

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10 ways managers can use AI

1. Prepare for a difficult conversation

Tell AI what happened, what impact it had and what outcome you need.

Ask it to help you structure a clear, fair conversation using a framework such as Situation–Behaviour–Impact.

Try:

AI can help you find the words.

You still need to say them.

2. Plan better 1:1s

Share your notes from previous conversations and ask AI to suggest thoughtful follow-up questions.

It can identify commitments, repeated concerns and topics you may have overlooked.

This helps the conversation continue from where you left it, rather than becoming another weekly catch-up.

Never upload sensitive information unless your organisation has approved the tool and how it is being used.

3. Turn messy notes into clear actions

Managers collect fragments of information everywhere.

Meeting notes. Messages. Voice notes. Half-finished to-do lists.

AI can turn those fragments into:

• Decisions made

• Actions agreed

• Owners

• Deadlines

• Questions still unresolved

You spend less time organising the work and more time moving it forward.

4. Coach instead of immediately solving

When someone brings you a problem, ask AI to generate coaching questions that will help them think it through.

For example:

Holiday Creator Calendars Are Filling Up. Q4 Panic Is Optional.

Creators lock in their holiday content calendars 90 days out, before most ecommerce brands finalize their commission strategy and way before Black Friday and October deal events.

Get ahead of the seasonal rush with The 90-Day Holiday Sprint, a practical guide for brands that want creators driving holiday demand while competitors are still recruiting:

• Structure commissions by lifetime value, not just first-order margin

• Lead with the right products so creators promote with confidence

• Recruit and onboard creators with a day-by-day plan for the first 30 days

• Read performance early and pull program levers by Day 60

• Brief creators with a holiday checklist before calendars fill up

Your 90-day countdown starts now.

Get the Free Guide

We’re running a 2-week intense new manager training boot camp in September.

Welcome to this week's House of Leadership Book Club, where we take one book and distil it down to what actually matters, something to build your knowledge, shape your mindset, nurture your relationships, and help you lead more effectively.

Summary

Leadership is often associated with confidence, certainty and having the answers. Dare to Lead challenges that idea.

Brené Brown argues that the best leaders aren't those who avoid vulnerability. They're the ones willing to step into uncertainty, have difficult conversations, admit when they don't know and create environments where other people feel safe enough to do the same.

At its heart, this is a book about courageous leadership, and the behaviours that make it possible.

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10 KEY IDEAS

1. Vulnerability is a leadership strength
Vulnerability isn't weakness. Saying “I don't know,” “I got that wrong,” or asking for help builds credibility when it's genuine.

2. Courage can be learned
Courage isn't something you're born with. Like any leadership capability, it develops through practice — particularly when situations feel uncomfortable.

3. Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.
Avoiding difficult feedback might feel kinder in the moment, but ambiguity creates frustration. Great leaders communicate expectations clearly and address problems early.

4. Have the difficult conversation
Problems rarely disappear because we avoid them. Strong leaders are willing to step into uncomfortable conversations with curiosity rather than judgement.

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Covering today

• Why assertiveness is about clarity, not volume

• Why good managers often struggle to speak up

• A simple framework for saying what you think

• How to handle pushback without retreating

• Why confidence comes after action

• A quick diagnostic to use this week

The Confidence to Say What You Mean

Ask most managers what being assertive means and you'll often get the wrong answer.

Being forceful. Speaking with authority. Holding your ground.

But assertiveness isn't about being louder.

It's being able to express what you think, need or expect clearly and respectfully, even when someone might disagree.

Leadership constantly puts you in situations where saying what you really think comes with a social cost.

Challenging someone more senior. Telling a high performer their behaviour isn't acceptable. Saying no when your team is stretched. Giving feedback you know won't land easily.

And in those moments, it's remarkably easy to soften the message, over-explain yourself or say nothing at all.

Often, not because you don't know what to say.

Because you want to be liked.

James and the opinion he never gave

James was a strong manager. His team trusted him, his results were good and his colleagues liked working with him.

But there was a pattern he'd never noticed.

He rarely challenged people.

In leadership meetings, he'd have an opinion but wait to hear what everyone else thought first. If his director proposed something he disagreed with, he'd say, "Yeah, I can see that," then raise his concerns privately afterwards.

When giving feedback, he'd wrap the important message in so much context that people sometimes left without understanding what actually needed to change.

James didn't lack confidence in his ability.

He lacked confidence in his right to disagree.

So he started practicing one simple habit:

Say the thing you're thinking, earlier.

Not aggressively. Not dramatically.

Just clearly.

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Get clear before you speak

One reason we struggle with assertiveness is that we haven't worked out what we actually want to say.

We feel uncomfortable, so we start talking.

We explain. Add caveats. Apologise. Give more context. Then explain again.

Eventually, the important message disappears.

Before a difficult conversation, ask yourself:

What do I actually think?

What do I actually want?

What am I afraid will happen if I say it?

That final question usually reveals the real problem.

They'll think I'm difficult.

They'll be disappointed.

They might disagree.

Assertiveness isn't believing nobody will react badly.

It's accepting that they might — and communicating clearly anyway.

A simple framework

When you need to be more assertive, try:

I think X, because Y, and I'd like us to do Z.

For example:

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Welcome to this week's House of Leadership Book Club, where we take one book and distil it down to what actually matters, something to build your knowledge, shape your mindset, nurture your relationships, and help you lead more effectively.

Summary

James Clear’s Atomic Habits is built around a deceptively simple idea: remarkable results come from small behaviours repeated consistently over time.

For leaders, this matters because leadership isn't defined by the occasional big decision or inspirational speech. It is shaped by the behaviours you repeat every day, how you communicate, make decisions, give feedback, handle pressure and develop others.

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Here are 10 ideas worth taking into your leadership.

Small improvements compound - Getting 1% better doesn't feel significant today. But repeated over months and years, small improvements create a huge difference. The same applies to leadership. Improving one conversation, one decision or one team ritual at a time can fundamentally change your effectiveness.

Systems matter more than goals - Goals tell you where you want to go. Systems determine whether you get there. A leader might have a goal of developing their team, but without regular 1:1s, coaching conversations and feedback, the goal remains an aspiration.

Your identity shapes your behaviour - Instead of asking, “What do I want to achieve?”, ask, “What kind of leader do I want to become?” When you see yourself as a leader who develops people, challenges thinking and creates ownership, your decisions start reflecting that identity.

Make good behaviours obvious - Habits need cues. If you want to become better at recognising your team's contributions, build recognition into your routine. Put it on your agenda. Create the reminder. Don't rely on remembering when you're busy.

Make good behaviours attractive - We repeat behaviours that feel rewarding. Leaders can apply this by making development, collaboration and learning enjoyable rather than treating them as additional tasks. People are more likely to embrace behaviours they see value in.

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Covering today

• Why most 1:1s underperform their potential

• What a great 1:1 is actually for

• A simple framework that transforms the conversation

• The mindset shift most managers miss

• A quick diagnostic before your next one

• The mistakes that turn 1:1s into a chore

The Meeting That Changes Everything

Ask most managers what their 1:1s are for, and you'll get a version of the same answer. Catch-up. Status update. See how they're doing.

None of that is wrong. All of it is a waste of the most powerful thirty minutes in your week.

A great 1:1 isn't a meeting where you find out what someone is working on. That's what your project tools are for. A great 1:1 is where you build the person, not just the update. It's where trust deepens, blockers surface early, and standards get set in a way that no group meeting can match.

Done well, it's the single highest-leverage recurring conversation you have. Done badly, it's a slot in the calendar that both of you quietly dread.

Cara and the 1:1s nobody used

Cara managed a team of eight. She ran weekly 1:1s with each of them, thirty minutes, agenda-free, on the same day every week.

They looked healthy from the outside. She never cancelled. She always showed up. She asked how people were doing.

But the conversations had settled into a rhythm. Small talk for five minutes. A round-up of what the person had been working on for twenty. A "let me know if you need anything" for the last five. Rinse and repeat, week after week.

When one of her best team members handed in his notice, he told her, gently, in the exit conversation, that he'd never actually felt she knew what he was struggling with. Not because she didn't care. Because their 1:1s had never made room for it.

Cara had been running meetings. She hadn't been running 1:1s. And the difference had cost her someone she never wanted to lose.

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Jonathan and the year nobody asked

Jonathan ran a regional sales division through what he later described as the hardest eighteen months of his career. Restructuring, a departing co-founder, a target that kept moving upward. He didn't take a proper break in that entire stretch. He told himself the team needed him too much for him to step back.

What actually happened was quieter. He stopped asking questions in one-to-ones because he didn't have the bandwidth left to hold someone else's problem alongside his own. He started making snap calls on hires and structure that he'd normally have slept on, because sleeping on things felt like a luxury he couldn't afford. His best account manager left, citing in her exit conversation that Jonathan had become "hard to bring things to."

He hadn't clocked any of it happening. From where he stood, he was still delivering. The numbers were still there. It wasn't until a colleague, not his manager, someone at his level who'd known him for a decade, said plainly, "You don't seem like yourself," that he actually stopped and looked at it.

He hadn't collapsed. He'd just slowly stopped being the version of himself his team needed, one small erosion at a time, without ever admitting there was anything to address.

Three questions that change the conversation

Great 1:1s are grounded in a framework, not improvised week by week. The one most managers benefit from is deceptively simple: three questions, in order.

What's going well? Starts the conversation on solid ground and surfaces wins that often go unspoken.

What's getting in the way? Blockers rarely announce themselves. This question invites them into the room.

What do you need from me? Shifts the dynamic from status update to support. It also signals that your job is to serve their work, not oversee it.

These three questions won't cover everything. But they'll do more in twenty minutes than most 1:1s manage in thirty.

Whose meeting is this, really?

The most important shift isn't in the structure. It's in who the meeting is for.

Holiday Creator Calendars Are Filling Up. Q4 Panic Is Optional.

Creators lock in their holiday content calendars 90 days out, before most ecommerce brands finalize their commission strategy and way before Black Friday and October deal events.

Get ahead of the seasonal rush with The 90-Day Holiday Sprint, a practical guide for brands that want creators driving holiday demand while competitors are still recruiting:

• Structure commissions by lifetime value, not just first-order margin

• Lead with the right products so creators promote with confidence

• Recruit and onboard creators with a day-by-day plan for the first 30 days

• Read performance early and pull program levers by Day 60

• Brief creators with a holiday checklist before calendars fill up

Your 90-day countdown starts now.

Get the Free Guide

Covering today

• Why leaders are often the last to notice their own burnout

• What it actually costs the people around you

• The story leaders tell themselves instead of the truth

• A different way to think about admitting it

• What to do once you've admitted it

Burnt Out and Still Performing

Burnout in leaders doesn't usually look like collapse. It looks like competence.

You still hit the deadlines. You still run the meetings. You still show up sharp enough that nobody around you clocks anything is wrong. That's exactly what makes it dangerous. Leaders are often the best in the building at masking depletion, because masking it is part of the job.

The trouble is what's happening underneath the performance. Patience wears thinner. Decisions get made faster and worse. Small irritations start landing harder than they should. None of this looks like burnout from the outside. It looks like someone having an off week, then an off month, then just being a bit different to work for.

By the time it's visible to other people, it's usually been true for a while.

What it actually costs the people around you

Leaders often assume burnout is a personal problem with personal consequences. It isn't. Your state leaks into every decision you make and every interaction you have.

Depleted leaders give shorter, sharper feedback, because patience is one of the first things to go. They avoid difficult conversations, because those take energy they don't have, so problems get deferred instead of solved. They make faster calls with less real thought behind them, because faster feels like relief.

None of this shows up as "burnout" on the team's radar. It shows up as a leader who's become harder to read, harder to please, and slightly less fair than they used to be. The team adjusts to this as if it's just who you are now. It isn't. It's what depletion looks like from the outside.

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Jonathan and the year nobody asked

Jonathan ran a regional sales division through what he later described as the hardest eighteen months of his career. Restructuring, a departing co-founder, a target that kept moving upward. He didn't take a proper break in that entire stretch. He told himself the team needed him too much for him to step back.

What actually happened was quieter. He stopped asking questions in one-to-ones because he didn't have the bandwidth left to hold someone else's problem alongside his own. He started making snap calls on hires and structure that he'd normally have slept on, because sleeping on things felt like a luxury he couldn't afford. His best account manager left, citing in her exit conversation that Jonathan had become "hard to bring things to."

He hadn't clocked any of it happening. From where he stood, he was still delivering. The numbers were still there. It wasn't until a colleague, not his manager, someone at his level who'd known him for a decade, said plainly, "You don't seem like yourself," that he actually stopped and looked at it.

He hadn't collapsed. He'd just slowly stopped being the version of himself his team needed, one small erosion at a time, without ever admitting there was anything to address.

A different way to think about admitting it

Most leaders treat admitting burnout as a confession. Something that reflects badly on them, a sign they couldn't handle what was asked of them.

That framing is the whole problem. Admitting it isn't a confession. It's a data point, the same as any other operational signal you'd act on immediately if it showed up somewhere else in the business.

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Welcome to this week's House of Leadership Book Club, where we take one book and distil it down to what actually matters, something to build your knowledge, shape your mindset, nurture your relationships, and help you lead more effectively.

Summary

Most leaders think about legacy at the end of their career. The best leaders think about it every single day.

That's the premise behind Legacy by James Kerr, built around fifteen years embedded with the All Blacks, the most successful sports team in history. Kerr's argument isn't really about rugby. It's about what happens when a group of people decide that leaving the shirt in a better place matters more than any individual moment of glory.

The All Blacks have a phrase for it: sweep the sheds. After every match, win or lose, the players clean their own changing room. No staff do it for them. Nobody's watching. It's not about tidiness. It's about humility, and about understanding that the jersey belongs to everyone who's worn it before you and everyone who'll wear it after.

Most leaders build for the next quarter. Kerr's argument is that the ones who build something lasting are building for people they'll never meet.

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Most Excel users waste hours on tasks that take experts minutes. The difference is not talent. It is knowing the right shortcuts.

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The people who are fast in Excel are not smarter. They just stopped fighting the tool.

Get 50 Excel Hacks free when you subscribe to Marketing Against the Grain today.

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Five ideas that define the culture

1. Sweep the Sheds

Leave the place better than you found it. No task is beneath anyone, including the most senior person in the room. Humility isn't a soft trait here. It's a discipline.

2. Better People Make Better All Blacks

Character comes before capability. The All Blacks recruit for humility, work ethic and selflessness first, and talent second. Skill without character doesn't hold under pressure.

3. Pass the Ball

No individual is bigger than the team. Even the best players in the world are taught that their job is to make the person next to them better, not to be the story.

4. Ask Who Are We, Not Just What We Do

Culture isn't a poster on the wall. It's a shared identity that shapes how decisions get made when nobody senior is in the room to make the call.

5. Champions Do Extra