GOOD MORNING, Reader! It's been a couple of weeks! But I am back. I can't say I'm raring to go. That would be a lie and I'd never lie to you. I'm more...in tabletop position to go. Like a horse would be if it wasn't raring. I've been in South Africa for two weeks and it's been absolutely wonderful - but also pretty full-on with family and friends and commitments and dinners and mini-breaks to the bush. Now, I'm back in London, the Fawlty Towers tour has kicked off in Bromley, and I'm planning...
11 days ago • 2 min read
You can listen to this email here: We Must Have Art Apartheid.mp3 I don't have a specific piece of art for you today, Reader. I'm sorry. Rather, I have some musings on why it's so important that we HAVE art. So, I'm going to try and share that with you coherently, on a day, and at a time when I don't feel very coherent at all. I feel quite sad and overwhelmed and helpless. Here we go... I grew up during Apartheid in South Africa. It was a very dark time, the '80s. We really were on the brink...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
👂👂👂 You can listen to this email here: We Must Have Art Jack Nicholson.mp3 --- There are three major moments in film history that I LOVE. They are POWER. The first is Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring. He turns to face the Balrog on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm in Moria. And he commands, from deep within his soul..."You shall not pass!" It's probably the most iconic moment from all three of the films. The second is a simple, polysyllabic utterance from Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, but...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
I'm the adult child of an alcoholic. I posted about this on LinkedIn this morning, because something interesting is happening on that platform which I find a little worrying and bizarre. It seems everyone is a coach now - everyone can coach you out of burnout, to be more confident, to stop being a perfectionist, etc, etc. I'm seeing it a lot, and I'm kind of confounded by it. As an adult child of an alcoholic, this is what I've had to work through: Fear Anxiety Abandonment issues Compulsive...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
(TL;DR - Listen to this email here: We Must Have Art Madonna.mp3) Last Friday I sent out an email with the exact same subject line as today's: We must have art. That email got the highest open rate of all my emails this year. So, that's information for me. That's data. And, as a business owner, I love data. Data is power. So, today, you get the same subject line - because I want to see if this is something that resonates with people - this idea of art. And the notion that we MUST have it....
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
I hosted a confidence workshop online recently. And I was nervous. I always am when I have to host training sessions online. The nerves don't make me break out in a sweat. My voice doesn't shake. I don't get butterflies in my stomach. Instead, I get a deep sense of dread. It usually starts the day before the workshop. After lunch, the DREAD starts rearing its head. This is typically how it develops over 24 hours: 'Urgh, I don't feel good. Urgh, why don't I feel good? Urgh, I don't want to do...
2 months ago • 2 min read
When I was a kid, I would become OBSESSED with certain performances. And I'd watch them on repeat. Some of these were: Michael Jackson's music videos (I had all of them on VHS) Shirley MacLaine's rendition of I'm Still Here in Postcards From the Edge (still one of my all-time favourite films) And all of Shirley MacLaine and Jack Nicholson's scenes in Terms of Endearments (my favourite film of all time) I realised as I entered my teenage years that I wanted to be a performer. I didn't want to...
2 months ago • 3 min read
In nineteen hundred and ninety-five, Patti LaBelle sang for Frank Sinatra. It was part of a tribute show that was put together for him. Sinatra was eighty and the show included performances by people like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Eydie Gorme and Paula Abdul. All talented, and brilliant in their own way. And then Patti LaBelle arrived onstage. She transformed that room into something that can only be described as divine. She was divine. She was lcked into something bigger than everything...
2 months ago • 1 min read
I just spoke to a woman who said that she did some presentation training once (as a participant), and when the training was over, she was worse in front of an audience than she had been when she started. So she hasn't presented again. In 27 YEARS. Then last week, she got up in front of a group of women (including me), and she spoke about her life, delivered her message, and got back on the audience-facing horse. She did this, because she doesn't work in corporate anymore where audience-facing...
3 months ago • 3 min read