Dan Murray-Serter 🧠

Co-Founder of Heights I Angel Investor | Over 100 Startups I Follow For Daily Posts on Health, Business & Personal growth from UK’s #1 ranked health creator (apparently)

Serial entrepreneur and Angel investor in 100+ startups with over 10 years experience starting, scaling and failing multiple startups.

Co Founder of Heights - Europe's leading brain and gut health company.

I also started and help run Foundrs - A not for profit community of the best, most ambitious and compassionate founders in UK.

I recently stepped away from Leaders Media - A media company making the top business podcasts in Europe, Secret Leaders - at the top of the charts, to focus on much more important things with my time - being a dad to 2 awesome daughters.

Angel/Advisor

Beam (www.beam.org)
ATAI Life Sciences (https://www.atai.life)
Allplants (www.allplants.com)
Humanity (https://humanity.health)
BYP (www.byp-network.com)
Goss (https://www.goss.media)
Tribe VR (www.tribevr.io)
Thrift (www.wearethrift.com)
THIS (www.this.co)
The Sports Edit (www.thesportsedit.com)
Faction (www.factionskis.com)
Runway East (http://runwayea.st/)
London Union/Dinerama (http://londonunion.com/)
Neardesk (https://www2.neardesk.com/)


Tailored.to (https://tailored.to/)
Motivii (http://motivii.com/)
Earlybird (https://earlybird.fm/)
Upshot (http://www.upshotapp.co/)
Togethera (www.togethera.com)
Repairly (www.repairly.co.uk)
Zaboo (www.zabooapp.com)
Lissom (www.lissom.com)
Bloom (www.hellobloom.io)

Dan Murray

Too many leaders still fear being “outshined” by smarter people on their teams.

That’s backwards.

The best leaders don’t aim to be the smartest person in the room. They aim to build the smartest room possible.

Here’s the reality:

- A team full of people who only know what you know will never surpass you
- Hiring people smarter than you creates leverage, not competition
- Growth comes from surrounding yourself with people who stretch your thinking, challenge your assumptions, and bring ideas you’d never imagine

It takes humility to admit you don’t have all the answers. But humility isn’t weakness-it’s the foundation of strength.

I’ve learned the leaders who fear smarter colleagues usually struggle with ego. The leaders who thrive? They welcome it. Because they know:

- Smarter teammates = faster progress
- Different perspectives = fewer blind spots
- Bigger talent = bigger results

Stop guarding your title. Start curating your circle.

True leadership isn’t about being the brightest mind. It’s about creating the conditions where the brightest minds can do their best work-together.

If you want to grow, stop fearing smarter people. Start hiring them.

Question for you:
Do you intentionally surround yourself with people who outshine you in certain areas-or do you default to comfort?

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Follow me Dan Murray for more on habits and leadership.

♻️ Repost this if you think it can help someone in your network!

🖐️ P.S Join my newsletter The Science Of Success where I break down stories and studies of success to teach you how to turn it from probability to predictability here: https://lnkd.in/d9TnkzdH

One thing I’ve learned after building multiple teams: the most valuable people are rarely the loudest.

They’re the ones who quietly upskill when no one’s watching.

You can’t teach that level of internal drive.
You can’t force someone to care about their growth more than the company requires.

That has to come from within.

And from a neuroscience perspective, people who self-educate build something incredibly powerful:
a plastic brain.

Every new skill, every book, every online course, it all strengthens their neural pathways for adaptability, problem - solving, and creative thinking.

Those traits compound.

They become faster learners.
Better decision-makers.
More resourceful under pressure.
And over time, they outgrow people who rely only on formal training.

When I hire, I look for curiosity.
Not credentials.
Not polished answers.
Curiosity.

Because someone who reads, experiments, builds, tinkers, or studies on their own time will eventually outpace almost everyone else.
They don’t wait to be told what to learn.
They choose it.

And that choice is what makes them dangerous, in the best way possible.

If you’re that person, keep going.
Even if no one notices right now.
Your effort is compounding quietly.
You’ll feel the gap before anyone else sees it.

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Follow me Dan Murray for more on habits and leadership.

♻️ Repost this if you think it can help someone in your network!

🖐️ P.S Join my newsletter The Science Of Success where I break down stories and studies of success to teach you how to turn it from probability to predictability here: https://lnkd.in/d9TnkzdH

100-year-old productivity hack. Still works. Still simple.

1918. Charles Schwab runs Bethlehem Steel. Hires productivity consultant Ivy Lee. Lee's offer: give me 15 minutes with each executive, pay me what it's worth in 3 months. 3 months later, Schwab writes a cheque for $25,000, equivalent to $400,000 today. The method was that effective.

The Ivy Lee Method. Five steps. At the end of each workday, write down the 6 most important tasks for tomorrow. Not 7, not 10, six. Rank them in order of true importance. Tomorrow morning, start with task 1, work until complete. Move to task 2, then 3, one at a time in order. Unfinished tasks move to tomorrow's list. Repeat daily.

Why 6 tasks? Forces prioritisation. With unlimited tasks, everything feels important, nothing gets done. Six is manageable, ambitious but achievable.

Why rank them? Most people work on whatever feels urgent or easy. Ranking forces you to confront true importance. Task 1 should be the thing that, if completed alone, makes tomorrow successful.

Why one task at a time? Multitasking is a myth. Task switching reduces productivity by 40%. Takes 23 minutes to regain focus after interruption. Doing one thing until complete equals deep work.

Why plan the night before? Decision fatigue compounds throughout the day. By 4pm, decision-making quality is 40% worse than 9am. Planning tonight means decisions made when not depleted. Wake up, no decision required, just execute task 1.

Six tasks, ranked, one at a time. Decide tonight, execute tomorrow.

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Follow me Dan Murray for more on habits and leadership.

P.S. If you want 2026 to feel different, don’t start with goals.
Start with clarity.

Most people don’t need more discipline.
They need to understand what’s been draining them and what deserves their energy.

I’ve spent years refining a simple process to help you with exactly that.

Download my short PDF guide https://lnkd.in/eniDNptW

I'll see you there.

The Ivy Lee Method 100-Year-Old Productivity Hack 

Opportunities rarely arrive directly.
They move through conversations you’re not in.
Decisions made without you present.
Rooms you never see.

That’s why who you build relationships with matters more than how loudly you promote yourself.

The people who open doors are the ones who trust you enough to bring your name up when it counts. Not because you asked. But because your character, consistency, and competence made it easy for them to do so.

This isn’t about networking harder.
It’s about being reliable.
Doing good work quietly.
Treating people well when there’s nothing to gain.

Reputation travels faster than resumes.
And long before opportunity finds you, it finds your name.

Choose your people carefully.
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Follow me Dan Murray for more on habits and leadership.

P.S. If you want 2026 to feel different, don’t start with goals.
Start with clarity.

Most people don’t need more discipline.
They need to understand what’s been draining them and what deserves their energy.

I’ve spent years refining a simple process to help you with exactly that.

Download my short PDF guide https://lnkd.in/eniDNptW

I'll see you there.

I help execs and founders build and keep team momentum through 1-on-1 and team coaching, workshops, and leadership or full company offsites.

Expertise in:
➝ C-suite coaching
➝ Exec team coaching
➝ OKRs and goal setting
➝ Feedback training
➝ Manager training
➝ Integrating values
➝ The science of happiness workshop
➝ ACC accredited

I am an entrepreneur, exited CEO of Pollen8 (acquired by PwC), workshop facilitator, and executive and team coach. I ran Pollen8 as CEO for 5 years before selling the company to PwC. I have designed innovation programs and run workshops for the C-suite of some of the world's biggest corporations (Oracle, Vodafone, Grant Thornton, the Red Cross) and have worked with more than 100 founders and 60 management teams. I'm passionate about surfing and climate change, so we can leave this world better for future generations.

Testimonials:
•⁠  ⁠Tamara Lohan, Mr & Mrs Smith CEO:
"Sam brought absolutely what our team needed to our offsite: empathy, insight and the tools to get us all working better together. It makes such a difference being coached by someone who has been in business themselves. Highly recommended!"

• Joachim Horn, SamLabs CEO (Series A):
"The ROI has been huge. Since June - something very special entered SAM Labs. Sam Knight started coaching our leadership team."

• Saasha, OLIO COO (Series B), on the company retreat: 
"Honestly it was brilliant, we’ll work with Sam & Maya again, and if it sounds too good to be true - well, it’s not!"

• Tessa, OLIO CEO (Series B): 
MASSIVE MASSIVE congrats to the organizing team for pulling off a one in a million event that will be remembered forever. Perfection from start to finish. You ROCK :)”

• Product Lead at Contact (Series A): 
"Working with Sam has been absolutely brilliant... helping transform not only our leadership team, but the whole company."

• Jonny Day, Learnerbly COO (Series A): 
"Honestly has changed my life and perspective. The impact it has had on the leadership team has huge." 

• Frederick Martini, Tailify CMO (Series A): 
"Sam has had a huge impact on the founders, the leadership team, the company and my own mindset."

• Michael Pallett, Medispot (Series A):
"Sam is a phenomenal coach.  Sam has changed my life and I'm confident that he will continue to do so."

• Claudia, Tailify Head of People (Series A):
"Sam has had a positive impact on every single one at Tailify. Yes, all 80 of us! The feedback training and workshops have been incredible."

• Segerby, Tailify Co-founder: 
"I cannot overstate the impact Sam has had on our organisation and leadership team."

Samuel Knight

How do you get the most powerful information from other people?

Two steps:

1️⃣ Use statements instead of questions.
2️⃣ Express disbelief.

Chase Hughes explains this brilliantly.

He gives this example:

You hop into an Uber and say, “I recently read that Uber drivers have the highest job satisfaction in the world.”

The driver responds and says something like, “What? Where did you see this?,” proceeding to tell you how badly they treat staff.

You follow with disbelief, “No way. There’s no way that company would treat you like that…”

Now you’ve got them talking. 

And you’ve got them talking in friend mode, without asking them any questions yet.

They’ll tell you everything, what they love, what’s broken, what they wish someone at HQ actually understood.

You didn’t ask a single question, you just created space for the other person to be honest.

This is the bit most people miss.

In business, we talk a lot about empathy and active listening, which is great.

But high performers go straight into it, they make statements instead of asking polite questions. 

They make people tell you a real answer instead of the ‘right answer’.

The same applies to your team. If you want to know how things are actually going, make a statement instead of asking questions.

Try saying, “Sounds like everyone’s happy with how this project’s going.”

If it’s not true, someone will jump in to correct you, and now you’ve got an honest conversation instead of a performance review.

➡️ Next time you’re in a 1:1, throw out one confident statement you’re not entirely sure about.
➡️ Then shut up.
➡️  Watch how quickly people fill the silence with the truth.

High performers use tension and honesty to push forward, instead of avoiding it.

What’s one conversation where someone surprised you by opening up more than you expected?

♻️ Share if you’d rather have honest conversations than polite ones.
➕ Follow Samuel Knight for grounded takes on leadership, people, and culture.

Exec Team Coach | High-Performing Teams | Leadership & full company Offsites | Management, OKRs & Strategic Alignment Expert | Exited Founder (Pollen8 → PwC)

Sometimes the opposite of a good idea is another good idea.

It’s one of those sayings that makes more sense the longer you’ve been building things.

Jeff Bezos once had enough ideas to destroy Amazon. 

Early on, he realised through the help of mentors that the challenge wasn’t coming up with ideas.

➡️ It was releasing them at a rate the organisation could actually absorb.

This was an important lesson for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it teaches you to prioritise ideas better. 

Also, he learned to create a company that could build more than one thing at a time, and still stay operationally sharp.

It turns out, two seemingly opposite ideas can both be right:

➡️ Focus vs. explore.

➡️ Consistency vs. change.

➡️ Plan vs. wander.

It’s not about choosing one. 

It’s about knowing when to switch between them.

Here’s a quick exercise I’ve been trying lately:

👉 The “opposite lens” check

 Next time you’re stuck or excited about an idea, ask:

“What’s the opposite of this good idea. And what might be good about that too?”

For example:

▹ If your idea is to make meetings more structured → the opposite might be to remove structure completely for one week and see what happens.

▹ If your idea is to scale a process → the opposite might be to make it more personal instead.

Some of our best ideas live in the tension between these two sides.

📊 Research from Wharton found that ambidextrous organisations, those that balance exploration and execution, outperform their peers by 10–15% in long-term growth.

So maybe next time a “bad” idea shows up, it’s just the opposite side of a good one.

What’s an example where you’ve seen two opposite ideas both work?

♻️ Repost if you know someone who needs to hear this today
➕ Follow Samuel Knight for more thoughts on leadership, ideas and culture

Do you love all versions of yourself?

Or do you look back with regret? 

This poem got me.

It’s about sitting at a table with every age you’ve ever been.

The confident one, the awkward one, the one who tried to hard, the one who didn’t try enough.

Reflecting back on the different versions of yourself, and loving all of them.

How often do we look back and reflect?

How much have you changed from last year? And from ten years ago? 

Most leaders never really think about this.

But those versions show up whether you invite them or not.

That history shapes how you lead far more than any framework does.

➝ It affects whether you avoid hard conversations.
➝ Whether you rush decisions to prove competence.
➝ Whether you overwork because rest feels like risk.
➝ Whether you hold onto control because trust feels unsafe.

This is why two leaders can face the same situation and respond completely differently.

It isn’t because one reads better books.

It’s because one understands their own patterns.

A lot of times, we ignore this part of our development entirely.

The past versions of ourselves give us frameworks, models and processes.

But if an old pattern is running underneath, the framework won't hold under pressure.

The ten-year-old version of you will take the wheel before you even notice.

Here’s a simple exercise I often give leaders before a big decision or conversation:

Take one minute and ask:

• What am I feeling right now, beneath the surface?
• When have I felt this before in my life or career?
• Is this reaction coming from the present, or from an older version of me?
• What would the most grounded version of me do next?

That last question is where clarity usually appears.

Being a good leader is about recognising who’s already at the table, and choosing who gets the final say.

When the pressure hits, do you tend to lead from experience or from old patterns?

♻️ Share this poem with your network.
➕ Follow for grounded leadership ideas that actually change how you show up.

Video credit: Josuaspoetry on Instagram

The software company with the largest impact on carbon emissions ever…

Just finished another offsite with the team at CarbonRE, and I’m leaving seriously inspired.

This is a company that could become the software company with the largest impact on carbon emissions ever.

Yes. Bigger than Tesla or any other software company you can think of.

Let that sink in.

What they’re doing is fucking mind-blowing.

They’re tackling one of the hardest problems in the world: 

→ Decarbonising cement production, one of the most carbon-intensive industries on the planet.

And using AI to help the world’s largest producers dramatically reduce emissions.

This is impact.
This is ambition.

But what inspires me just as much as the mission is the culture they are building.

Carbon Re is constantly pushing itself to evolve – adapting how they work, how they communicate, and how they execute to meet the demands of AI, their clients, and the scale of the problem they’re solving.

During the offsite we went deep into the things that actually unlock performance:

•⁠ ⁠Radical candour and feedback systems that increase speed and execution

•⁠ ⁠A deep dive into OKRs using my Exhibition OKR framework (which I genuinely love using with teams like this)

•⁠ Hard conversations about customers, product roadmap, and what really matters next

And this is the kind of message that makes the work worth it:

“This offsite was transformational. Thank you Sam.
It feels like the start of a new high-performance chapter.

We’re excited and scared about the task ahead – but we feel more like one united, motivated team than we ever have.”

That’s the real goal of these sessions.

Not just alignment.

Momentum.

Personally, experiences like this push me to keep raising the bar with leaders. 

When you work with companies trying to solve problems this big, incremental thinking just doesn’t cut it.

You need teams that can evolve as fast as the challenge.

Huge respect to the Carbon Re team for the honesty, ambition, and courage it takes to build something like this.

The future needs more companies like this.

Thank you Josh Vernon, Noah Miller, Daniel Summerbell, Buffy Price Kenneth W. Bob G. and the whole team Carbon Re

Image credit: www.samhector.com / @samhctr on insta.

The wall between you and your team's trust isn't performance. 

It's the thing you decided to keep to yourself.

I’ve worked with hundreds of founders.

Almost all of them suffer from the same thing Dara Khosrowshahi says here.

Uber’s CEO sat down on the Diary of a CEO podcast recently and spoke about losing his father. 

About growing up in a family where feelings stayed inside. 

Where expressing frustration simply wasn't something that was done.

And then he said this:

"I suffer from over-stoicism and then breaking down every once in a while."

This sentence describes almost every founder I have ever worked with.

Including me at some point.

There’s something about vulnerability that those in the leadership space don’t talk about enough:

It isn't something you either have or don't have.

It's a leadership skill. And one of the highest-leverage ones you can develop.

Most founders are actively bad at it.

Because they were taught that carrying it alone was what strength looked like.

We’ve learned how to keep it together, to stay composed.

But what really happens inside a team when the person at the top carries everything and shares nothing:

The team senses something is off but can't figure it out. 

So they fill the silence with their own stories. And those stories are almost always worse than the truth.

Trust erodes over time.

People stop bringing their real problems forward because the culture says that real problems stay inside.

And the CEO ends up surrounded by people who are hiding their problems and disengaging.

Want to be a high-performer?

Start being a human first.

Start expressing vulnerability to your team.

This doesn’t have to mean sharing everything. Just sharing enough so that your team knows you’re a real person!

One sentence can do all of that:

"I'm carrying something personally right now. I wanted you to know so you're not reading it as something about you or the business."

That's it. No details required. 

Leaders, before your next 1:1 with a direct report, check in with yourself first.

What's your honest number today, 1-10?

Then at the start of the conversation, before the agenda, say it out loud.

"I'm at a 6 today, got some things going on outside work. Wanted to mention it so you're not reading anything into me."

Watch what it does to the quality of the conversation that follows. 

The leaders who do this consistently tell me the same thing: 

They stopped being surprised by their team because their team stopped hiding from them.

Model it first!

That's the real work.

What are you carrying right now that your team deserves the context on?

♻️ Repost for the founder who's been strong for too long in silence 
➕ Follow Samuel Knight for leadership thinking that goes where most people won't

Video credit: The Diary Of A CEO

A founder I work with nearly fired his CPO last year.

He was exhausted. 

Hadn't slept properly in weeks. 

The business felt stuck, the relationship felt broken, and letting him go felt like the obvious move.

I asked him to wait two weeks before doing anything.

He hated that.

Two weeks later he came back and said he couldn't remember why it had felt so urgent. 

Nothing had changed in the business. He just slept and recovered. 

The story his brain had been building at 30% capacity fell apart completely when he came back at 80.

That's what exhaustion actually does.

It just starts making decisions for you. 

And it does it wearing the costume of clarity.

The pivot suddenly makes sense, the VP is clearly wrong, the strategy needs a full rethink. 

Everything feels urgent, obvious and real.

Until you sleep. And look again.

I've watched this pattern wreck good companies.

The restructure that felt necessary after a brutal board meeting and looked completely avoidable after a weekend away.

The co-founder conversation that felt career-ending on a Wednesday and totally resolvable by Saturday.

The pivot that made perfect sense at 11pm and looked like madness by Thursday morning.

None of those were strategy problems.

They were a founder making permanent decisions from a temporary state.

The slow degradation of the person making the calls is the most underrated risk in any fast-growth company.

Nobody talks about it because there's no deck for it. 

No framework that looks good at a conference. 

But it's what I see breaking leadership teams from the inside more than almost anything else

Your brain is the most important asset in your business. Not your product, your team, or your investors.

You. Thinking clearly on the problems that actually matter.

Everything else is downstream of that.

The Clarity Stack is four daily practices that keep your sharpest thinking landing on your most important problems.

Swipe through and try applying it to your everyday life.

See if makes a difference for you.

It’s really not complicated and that's the point.

Have you ever made a bad decision from a place of exhaustion? 

♻️ Repost for the founder who's about to make a decision they just need to sleep on.
➕ Follow Samuel Knight for insights on high-performing teams.

The Clarity Stack every founder needs

AD | The most expensive problem in tech isn’t absence.

It’s people being at work… but not really there.

As a CEO and now as an executive coach, I see this constantly.

Founders tell me: “My team is working hard, but something feels off.”

Energy is low.

Decisions take longer.

Small problems become big ones.

That’s not laziness.

That’s presenteeism – people showing up exhausted, burnt out, or unwell.

And the data is brutal:

→ Tech SMEs lose 44 working days per employee every year to presenteeism
→ 69% of employees delay seeking care because of workload pressure
→ 41% experience burnout monthly
 (Bupa x YuLife Tech’s Hidden Health Cost Report, 2026)

Here’s what’s interesting.

When I run offsites and we build in outdoor activity – walks, hikes, movement – I see motivation, honesty and energy go up 10x.

Movement regulates the nervous system.

Nature reduces cortisol.

Blood flow improves cognition.

This is why I like what Bupa UK and YuLife are building together:
 
→ Preventative habits baked into the workday
 → Daily engagement (not dusty policies)
 → Fast access to physio, mental health support, Digital GP
 → All in one simple app

It makes the right thing the easy thing.

Leaders:

Before you book another strategy session… ask yourself:

When was the last time your team breathed fresh air together?

👉 Worth checking out the Bupa UK x YuLife partnership if you’re serious about performance, not just output: https://bit.ly/sam_knight6

Brand partnership • Exec Team Coach | High-Performing Teams | Leadership & full company Offsites | Management, OKRs & Strategic Alignment Expert | Exited Founder (Pollen8 → PwC)

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