6-Minute Smarts – serie

The essential 6-minute hack for better work and life.If you’re in business, you probably do quite a bit of writing. You write emails, sales copy, reports, executive summaries, blog posts, operations documents, memos and more. And each time you write, you’re seeking to inform and/or influence your reader. You are, in effect, performing.Publisher and exploratory writing coach Alison Jones wants to get you thinking about writing in a completely different way. Rather than a stage, she wants you to see the blank page as uncharted terrain, as an opportunity for you to explore what you DON’T know, rather than simply expressing what you DO. Discover simple techniques that will supercharge your creativity, problem-solving skills and resourcefulness, in just 6 minutes!

Most people spend on average just 2 days per week doing what they think they’re supposed to be doing at work. Which means you’re almost certainly spending days each week wasting time: in meetings you shouldn’t be in, on some process that doesn’t work, battling your inbox. This isn’t what you hoped work would be when you started out. Are you condemned to a life of ongoing job misery and frustration? NO!There are so many ways you can rebuild your career mojo. Michael Brown reveals 10 simple road-tested tools and techniques you can use immediately which will transform the way you feel about your job, in just 6 minutes!

Been promoted to manager? Congratulations! Now read this…People are full of potential and passion - they want to be engaged in what they’re doing, and valued for doing it well. Discover how to tap into this passion and potential to become the leader your team want to follow. Master the skills and strategies essential to success in your new role, with quick wins that can be put into practice immediately and deeper mindset shifts, in just 6 minutes!

**Business Book Awards 2025 Finalist**Most managers who’ve tried to deliver business change have felt frustrated and disempowered by the experience. If you want to stand up and make a difference igniting and inspiring successful change but don’t know where to start, this book is for you.Discover why change so often fails, and how to overcome those problems and make change stick. Chartered psychologist and change expert Lucinda Carney will help you change the way you do Change, in just 6 minutes!

You won’t get far in your career if you can’t present effectively. And there’s one factor above all others that makes the difference between a yawnfest and a clear, compelling, change-making, reputation-building presentation: presence.Presence works at three levels - what you say, how you use your body, and your mindset. Discover the secret to becoming a consistently outstanding communicator, in just 6 minutes!

Become your own best publicist with these 10 top industry secrets from a PR professional. Packed with insider advice on how to get your business featured in the media, with zero fluff, it’s your essential toolkit for standing out from the crowd.Lucy Werner founded her own PR & branding consultancy and training hub for startups, entrepreneurs and independent brands, and is on a mission to help YOUR business succeed. And it just takes 6 minutes!

Great teams are highly collaborative, creative and productive, but that doesn’t happen by magic. Discover the small actions that lead to big results in performance and productivity by creating the right culture, because when team members are happier they are more creative and more engaged.Team culture coach Alison Coward shows you how to take your team from meh to magnificent, in just 6 minutes!Alison Coward is the founder of Bracket, a consultancy that partners with forward-thinking organisations to help them build high-performing teams. She is a facilitator, coach, trainer and keynote speaker with 20 years’ experience of working in, leading and facilitating creative teams.

Getting media coverage helps you stand out as a business. But how come it always seems to be your competitor, not you, who gets the headlines?Former BBC journalist Felicity Cowie has the insider secrets you need to build great relationships with the media so that you become the go-to authority in your field. Discover how to set your business apart and secure outstanding coverage, consistently, in just 6 minutes!Felicity Cowie is a media relations coach who has helped some of the world’s leading organisations gain extensive news coverage. Having been pitched at least 100,000 story ideas as a journalist, she has an insider’s view on what breaks through and why.

Ready for a change? Want to integrate your personal and professional life in a more satisfying way? Whether you’re considering going it alone or you just want more fulfilment at work, Ollie Henderson can help. He’s reimagined his own career, and he’s interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs, leaders and experts to find out their secrets, too.Discover 10 principles that will help you take control of your future and generate new opportunities, so you can reimagine your career for good.Experienced founder and CEO Ollie Henderson believes work/life balance is a myth. Rather than seeing career and personal life as two opposing forces, he argues that the secret is to design an integrated approach that allows them to work in harmony. Ollie pivoted his own career while raising a young family, and he can help you make the changes you’re dreaming of too!

You might think you’re not a natural salesperson, but if you don’t get comfortable promoting your business, you’re not going to HAVE a business for much longer. Luckily, Sara Nasser Dalrymple is here to help.Discover 10 simple principles that you can apply to your business immediately to attract customers with ease. No ickiness, no gimmicks, and all in just 6 minutes!Sara Dalrymple is a sales trainer and mentor for online business owners and the go-to sales expert for creative small businesses. She has over 18 years of sales experience spanning a corporate career in investment banking and as a small business owner, and has helped hundreds of business owners bring in consistent sales through confident, sleaze-free self-promotion.

If you run a small business, you probably wish you had access to the sophisticated market research techniques that big businesses have at their disposal. Imagine being able to really understand your customers!Well, now you can. Katie Tucker reveals 10 simple road-tested tools and techniques that big businesses use and which YOU can use immediately to transform your market knowledge, in just 6 minutes!Katie Tucker is an inspirational product leader with over 12 years’ corporate experience leading teams and delivering stand-out products and services. She’s the founder of Product Jungle, helping small businesses understand customers better. She is also a writer, speaker and author of the Jungle Juice newsletter.

When you think about communications, you might immediately think about speaking. But listening well is the foundation of leading well; it’s essential if you want people to listen to you. And most leaders have little idea how to go about it.Janie van Hool has been helping leaders understand the simple but powerful principles of listening conversations to build trust and engagement for more than 20 years. Now she’s showing you how to supercharge your own communication, in just 6 minutes!Janie van Hool is an award-winning professional actor and communications expert. RADA-trained, she began her career as a professional actor in the theatre and on TV. Her academic research in Performance Psychology together with her experience as a performer has given her a unique perspective on how to articulate messages with confidence and skill, and informed her work as a coach, advisor and skills teacher to business leaders.

Does your confidence lag behind your capability? Trying to compensate for self-doubt and overthinking can be exhausting, and you might find yourself holding back from opportunities that could be transformational. But in a complex, uncertain world, you know you can’t afford to be over-confident either.Julie Smith has spent decades coaching some of the world’s top leaders in the fine art of humble confidence. Now she’s bringing her easy-to-use, confidence-building tools to help YOU find YOUR confidence – in just 6 minutes!

Being good at your job is a great way to start your career. But to fulfil your potential and get more senior roles, you need more than technical expertise.Joanna Gaudoin has helped thousands of bright, capable professionals master the essential skills that will take them to the next level of their careers. From making a good impression to dealing with difficult people, from building external relations to acing your online presence, here are all the skills you need to get that promotion - in just 6 minutes!

You know you need to collaborate to achieve complex goals. You also know collaboration is a slog. Why is it so hard? Because none of us are ever taught this fundamental business skill.Deb Mashek is here to change all that. Discover how to apply relationship science to make every workplace collaboration less painful and more productive - in just 6 minutes!

Even if you’re used to managing small teams, you’ll find the dynamics of a big team very different. As projects scale up in size and complexity, the skills you need to manage effectively change. It’s less about the technical aspects of project delivery, more about integrating different sub teams into a cohesive whole.Luckily, team specialist and major projects advisor Tony Llewellyn is here to provide the practical guidance you need to set up and run an effective team of teams – in just 6 minutes!

Endlessly distracted? Rob Hatch gets it. And he’s here to show you how to reclaim your time and attention in a world of technology that’s trying to take them away from you.Improve your creativity, happiness, and success, in just 6 minutes!

When your customers succeed, your business succeeds. Customer Success is all about generating revenue growth through customer relationships, outcomes, trust, loyalty, retention and referrals – and Kellie Lucas is a pioneer in the discipline.Discover how to maximise customer retention, recurring revenue and growth, build a productive and balanced team and excel as a Customer Success professional - in just 6 minutes!

Burnout – physical, mental and emotional exhaustion – is on the rise across all industries. But it isn’t inevitable. Rachel Philpotts has developed a simple 4-step solution to improve your mood and your energy naturally, including evidence-based nutrition and lifestyle tips to tackle fatigue and emotional overwhelm.This book is designed to help you beat burnout and feel revitalized, reenergized and restored – in just 6 minutes!

There’s never been a better time to run a product business. With accessible selling technology and billions of people shopping online, reaching your ideal customer is easier than ever before. But making it work financially? That’s not so easy.Making sales isn’t enough: you need to be making profits. Big retailers have spent decades developing ways to monitor profit margins, forecast and grow sales and manage stock to maximize their bottom line. And in this little book, small-business retail expert Catherine Erdly shows you how to apply those big business tools to YOUR business – in just 6 minutes!

If Sunday evenings make you feel sick, it’s a sure sign you’ve fallen out of love with your job. But guess what? You – and only you – can change things! Whether you’re feeling stuck in your career, frustrated with your boss or just a bit meh, Beth Stallwood is here to help you rediscover your work mojo.Life’s too short to be miserable at work, and only you can fix this. Discover how to upgrade your working day, in just 6 minutes!

You want EVERYONE to feel included in your organization, because you know that when all employees, no matter their identities and backgrounds, are valued for what they uniquely offer, magic happens.But talking about Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) is surprisingly hard. It strikes at our core values and beliefs, and people get uncomfortable, which is why so many organizations get stuck. This insightful model will help you lead beyond the discomfort and develop a truly inclusive mindset. It’s a lifetime’s work, but it starts in just 6 minutes!

Who’s got time for emotional intelligence when there’s work to be done? Well, you, actually, if you want to get the best out of your team. Because business is basically about people, so developing your soft skills will help you get better results, faster.Anne Taylor sets out a practical, no-nonsense approach to building better relationships and more effective communication for anyone who’s not a natural ‘people person’, but understands that getting more emotionally intelligent as a leader is the smart thing to do. And you can make a difference in just 6 minutes!

What would it look like for you to live fully, with intention, integrity and purpose? How might you redesign your life to achieve that?Eloise Skinner - author, existential therapist, teacher, dancer, model and entrepreneur – is on a mission to help people discover their purpose and live more fulfilled, satisfying lives. This is not a one-time job, it’s a way of life that will evolve over time – but it can start right now, in just 6 minutes…

Love promoting your small business? No, and you’re not alone. You know it’s got to be done, but where to start? And who’s got time for this? Stop stressing and start smashing your digital marketing with this short, readable, actionable guide. Simple tasks that you can do regularly, and which will let you spend more time on what you REALLY love about your business. Get yourself out there, brilliantly, in just 6 minutes!

If you want to turn your sales team into top performers, the secret is not to tell them what to do but to coach them so that they can think for themselves. Discover how to get the best from your people so that they – and you – succeed faster, in just 6 minutes!

If your heart sinks at the thought of another meeting, especially if YOU’re responsible for running it, you need this book. Discover how to run meetings that get people on board and get results, both in the room or online. Engagement, clarity, commitment and even fun are all possible – and all you need is just 6 minutes!

Stress has a way of taking over your life, and busy people don’t have time for complicated relaxation strategies. Luckily you don’t need to go on a month-long retreat to overcome your overwhelm: discover simple strategies to help you find breathing space in your busyness and turn your self-sabotage into self-care. Get your life, your mind and your mojo back, in just 6 minutes!

If you want to get things done, you need to be able to communicate effectively. And the most powerful way of communicating is through authentic connection. But finding that connection isn’t always easy, especially if we’re scared of being rejected, or lack confidence, or we’re worried about having a difficult conversation. Discover thoughtful, practical ways to become a better communicator, and find more meaningful relationships along the way – in just 6 minutes!