Timothy's Recent LinkedIn Posts

"Timo, I have 2000 people who work for me and about 300 of them don't want to use AI." I got this from a CEO of a massive fintech company this week and it is a problem I am hearing in almost every boardroom I walk into right now. I have seen this play out twice now in companies close to me. In one case the CEO sent resources, ran workshops, and hoped people would come around. Twelve months later the resistant 20% had quietly infected the culture and the AI-forward employees had started leaving because they felt like they were being held back. The other CEO did something different. Here is what he did and what I would do if I were in your position right now. He made AI a company-wide objective, not a suggestion. He put AI usage into the team OKRs so it became a company mandate rather than a preference. When it sits in the OKRs, people stop waiting to be convinced and start figuring out how to get on board. He then got his AI-forward employees to demo what they were building at a departmental level every two weeks. The biggest blocker for most people is simply not knowing where to start, and watching a colleague do something real removes that barrier faster than any workshop ever could. He also said explicitly and publicly that this was not about replacing anyone. So many people resist AI because they feel like they are training their own replacement. Getting ahead of that fear directly and honestly changes the energy in the room completely. And then he made a decision that felt harsh but was actually the kindest thing he could have done for the rest of the team. The people who still refused to engage after all of that were managed out. Not because they were bad people, but because one person's resistance was being allowed to set the pace for two thousand others. We are entering into the craziest period of change, if you let a weak culture control your company, you’re going to be irrelevant real quick.

If you're a parent and you're scared of A.I, read this. When I speak at conferences about AI, parents ask “How do I stop my kids using it badly?” I tell them to learn from my mum. When I was younger, my mum used to pay me £61 to do book reports. Because of this I fell in love with books. That eventually led to me writing a Sunday Times #1 Bestseller. She made books a thing which I saw as a positive tool get get her approval. I think about that a lot now when I speak to parents about AI. They want to police what their kids are doing with it & limit their access. I get it, but I think it’s exactly the wrong move. AI is the most transformational thing since the internet.  And robbing your child of the chance to experiment and play with it is setting them up to spend their adult life on the back foot. So here’s what I’d do if I were a parent right now. I’d make it a game. Every Sunday, I’d run a “Show Me What You Built” session. The kids spend the week playing with Claude/ ChatGPT / whatever and on Sunday they show you what they made. You applaud them & ask what they’ll build next week. What you’re doing is exactly what my mum did with books.   You’re making AI the thing they do to get your approval. Do that consistently for 12 months and you won’t just have a kid who knows how to use AI. You’ll have a kid who thinks like a builder, who sees technology as a creative tool, and who is genuinely ahead of 95% of their peers before they’ve even left school. AI isn’t something to fear. Used right, it can be the catalyst for one of the most powerful and rewarding dynamics you build with your children. My mum figured that out with books. Imagine how much more with AI.

If clients ghost you after one project, I feel your pain! At my agency FanBytes we lost a £60,000 client and didn’t even know it had happened until someone mentioned it at an industry event two months later. They were a good account and they’d been spending consistently with us for about eighteen months, and then things just quietly went cold and we assumed it was a budget thing on their end and left it alone, which turned out to be the mistake 🙈 Turns out after the first big campaign we’d handed them to a more junior contact and the relationship lost its energy, the work was still good but nobody had just picked up the phone and asked how things were going from their side, and by the time we found out they’d already mentally moved on. That one realisation changed how we ran every client relationship after it, and we built a simple habit where every quarter someone was calling every active client and asking one question: are we giving you everything you need right now? The accounts that came back from those conversations were some of the most valuable revenue we ever unlocked, and none of it required a single new sales call or a new client pitch. This is just one of the moves we used to systematically grow revenue from existing clients rather than constantly chasing new ones. If you want the full playbook I put together a free PDF with 8 moves for getting your existing clients to spend more with you, which you can grab here to get it >> https://lnkd.in/epvs96fU

Your first business is the most transformational! The biggest mindset shift I ever had came at 14 years old, and it had nothing to do with selling Fanbytes or hitting my first million. It happened when a kid handed me £5 for tutoring help. I'd built a little operation at school where I found the best student in each subject, connected them to the kids who were struggling, and sat in the middle taking a cut. It grew to 60 students before it collapsed, because people figured out they didn't need me to make the introduction anymore. But that failure isn't the point. The point is that moment when someone paid me for something I'd created, even though I hadn't invented anything or worked a single shift. That one moment rewired how I saw the world, because you don't have to be the smartest person in the room or do all the work yourself. You just have to create value, whether that's building something from scratch or connecting people to something they genuinely need. I've grown companies worth tens of millions since then, but honestly nothing hit different than that first £5, because that's when I knew the game was on.

Rachel came to pitch me her new business Thrift! An online market place available as an app/website where you can sell pre loved outfits. It's a solid idea, but it's a massively competitive industry which is extremely hard to break into. So... did I invest or did I hit next? What would you have done?

Most founders chase new clients when the money is already sitting in their existing ones. Here are 8 moves to turn your current clients into repeat revenue: 1. Stop the silent exits Reach out within 7 days of a quiet period. One genuine question: "How are we doing?" goes a long way. 2. Wake up dormant clients Pick 5 inactive clients (6-12 months). Send one piece of relevant sector intel, not a pitch. 3. Forecast revenue you already own Open a spreadsheet. List your top 10 clients, last year's revenue, this year's target, and one proactive idea each. 4. Earn more from every account Spot recurring needs after projects end. Price a 3-month retainer proposal before the work wraps up. 5. Make re-buying effortless Schedule a 30-day relationship check-in and a 90-day strategic review tied to their planning cycles. 6. Understand what each client actually wants Categorize clients by core value (e.g. 'Fame', 'Relationship'). Match your service to that and they'll feel it. 7. Convert projects to retainers Use the ascension model: strategic observation, then a workshop, then a retained engagement. 8. Turn happy clients into referrals Ask your best client directly for two warm introductions. Specific ask, specific result. If you want the the full blueprint to the 8 “Client Expansion Moves” that turn one-off projects into recurring £100k+ client accounts, click the link in the comments 👇🏿

Most founders think selling a company is something you figure out when you're ready to exit. It's not! You engineer it from the inside, years before a buyer ever shows up. Get it wrong and you either can't sell at all, or you leave millions on the table. So I just dropped a full video breakdown of the 8 exact moves I used to turn my startup, Fanbytes, into a premium acquisition target. A few things I get into: - Why selling at 70% of your potential actually increases your price - Why skipping venture capital was one of my best financial decisions - The single shift that moves you from a services multiple to a tech multiple These aren't frameworks or principles - they're the specific things I did, in the specific order I did them. And they work whether you're planning to sell in two years or you just want to build something that could command a real price if the right buyer ever calls. Link to the full video is here: https://lnkd.in/eCBirvxR

Controversial take. There is no such thing as a boring business. Last week I spoke to a partner at a big accountancy firm who was complaining that Gen Z applications had halved... I have hired 260+ Gen Z employees across my companies, so I asked him to show me their marketing content. I almost fell asleep reading it. "Come build a career. Join our graduate programme. Be part of something big." Meh. The mistake every boring industry makes is trying to NOT LOOK boring. You are an accountancy firm. Everyone already thinks you are nerdy, so when you put out attempts at being cool and exciting, it just comes across as cringe. Here is what I tell every company in this position. Own your nerd. Find the accountant who loves Excel shortcuts. The one excited about tax law. The guy with slightly-too-high trousers. Make them the face of your brand, mic them up, and post it on TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Gen Z grew up watching people build audiences from weird obsessions. Anime. Keyboard builds. Rap videos. They respect it and they are drawn to it. You are not saying "we are exciting, let us convince you." You are saying "we are exactly who you think we are, and if you are also a nerd, come find us." This works for insurance, law firms, consulting, and accountancy. Own your nerd. P.S. I am going to start doing marketing deep dives for specific industries. Which one should I do next?

Happy Mother's Day to the greatest mum ❤️ Thanks for the spelling tests at the kitchen table and bribing strangers at the airport to smuggle books back for me as a kid. Thanks for the excessive Bible scriptures and the long sermons on how to avoid gold diggers (still relevant, by the way). Thanks for showing unconditional love even when it was something you had to actively learn yourself. That kind of love takes courage. Thanks for the quotes you'd drop so casually that I'd carry them with me for years without even realising it. You didn't just raise me. You equipped me. Thank you ❤️

Excited to be headlining Atomicon 2026! This is the number 1 sales & marketing conference for small business owners. If you haven't got your ticket yet, grab yours here: https://lnkd.in/eBzkGpcy