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I founded Inovara because I kept seeing the same problem: organisations curious about AI,…
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Inovara and Apptor Announce Strategic Partnership to Accelerate AI Adoption Across the Direct Selling Industry
Inovara and Apptor Announce Strategic Partnership to Accelerate AI Adoption Across the Direct Selling Industry
Inovara, the AI innovation studio working exclusively in Direct Selling and Apptor, the predictive AI execution layer…
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ChatGPT Projects vs. Custom GPTs: What’s the Difference?
ChatGPT Projects vs. Custom GPTs: What’s the Difference?
Ever found yourself staring at a shiny new feature in a platform you love and wondering, "What exactly is this for?"…
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Riding the AI Wave: How We Built a £1M Content Startup in 365 Days
Riding the AI Wave: How We Built a £1M Content Startup in 365 Days
Today marks a year since we opened the doors at Conturae, and it's been a wild ride. I want to share the highs and…
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Dan Debnam شارك ذلكMy friend Wes Linden, best-selling author and Hall of Fame speaker, has quoted me in his new book. Page 67, there I am 🥹 He wanted an example of someone in this profession making the optimistic case for AI and the line he used is a theme I echo throughout all of my talks from stage: "Every company is about to get faster and cheaper with AI. Very few will get more human." Wes's argument in that chapter is the one I keep making. Machines will do the work, humans will own the trust. Direct selling was built on people trusting people. AI doesn't change that, it makes it rarer and more valuable. The part I'm less sure about is how many people reading page 67 will do anything differently. Most will nod and still get ChatGPT to write their next Facebook post without editing a word. A few will rethink how AI helps them - and where their humanity shines through. Congrats Wes! Go grab his new book "Getting promoted", it's already a best-seller
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Dan Debnam شارك ذلكSusie Ma judged founders on the BBC's Dragons' Den this year. Then she put £17,000 of prize money behind the same format inside her own business, Tropic Skincare. On Dragon's Den, she sat alongside Peter Jones, Steven Bartlett and Deborah Meaden (Shark Tank, for my American friends). At Tropic Skincare she ran her own version of it, Tropic's Den, and this time the pitches came from her own people. 19 submissions came back. All answering one question: what would you fix in your own department using AI? Last week I was on site for the final. Our part was everything before the pitches. We coached people through their ideas and ran weekly hackathons to get them from a decent thought to something that actually worked, and not only for the five who reached the final. Plenty of people who never made the stage walked away with a working tool. Likhith in Supply Chain, a non-technical person by his own admission, took first place... winning £10k from the prize fund. His fully AI-built solution lifted thousands of hours of repetitive admin off his team. He was closely followed by Dan, Mark, Divya and Dora, who each had built incredible solutions to real business problems. None of these people were from IT or technical functions in the business. Not one. The prize money turned out to be the best investment Susie could have made. What's already live has returned hundreds of thousands of pounds to the business already. Not a bad return on investment. Tropic is now funding a batch of the other submissions to get them finished properly, and no surprise here, Susie's already planning the next "Tropic's Den" with us. Not one of those ideas came out of a strategy session. They came from people already fed up doing the boring bit by hand, who joined a hackathon session to see what was possible with AI. Most AI programmes stall because they get designed for people instead of with them. Tropic did the opposite. If you're a CEO wondering where to start with AI, ask your team what they'd fix first. You'll get answers you didn't expect. We're doing this with companies across the globe and the results are profound. If you're looking for ROI with AI, this is a huge clue where to start. Let's chat.
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Dan Debnam شارك ذلكWe ran our AI proficiency scorecard on 147 direct selling corporate leaders at an event earlier this year. The average score in the room was 17 out of 100. Not great. Compare that to the average outside direct selling, which sits closer to 30 and you can see where our industry stands. Nobody scored zero, which is something. But nobody had crossed into "expert" either and we're nearly four years into this AI boom now. Almost everyone in that room would probably tell you they're using AI often. Almost none of them could show me something they'd actually handed off to AI to own. That's the whole conversation I had on the Selling in Europe podcast recently, where we got into why businesses under $150 million in revenue are moving faster than the $600 million-plus ones (hint: it's not about budget), what a CEO should actually do in their first 30 days with AI and why trust, empathy and connection are becoming the currencies that matter most in our industry. Machines will do the work. Humans will own the trust. Go listen. Link's in the comments 🎧
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Dan Debnam شارك ذلكOver 100 people in Sydney took a live AI proficiency test with me last week and I read some of their scores back to them on the spot. It was... revealing! That was Direct Selling Australia. Huge thanks to Geoff Mulham for the invite and to a room of buzzing Aussie's that made the jet lag well worth it. Some came up in the breaks already planning their first hackathon. Others admitted they'd only been scratching the surface. Most left with one line ringing in their ears: good intentions and no action is exactly what keeps you falling behind. The lesson from 20+ direct selling businesses is that the ones pulling ahead don't have the biggest budgets or the biggest teams. They just have every single person treating AI as their own responsibility, not something to wait for the right training or best tool. The real blocker isn't the technology. It's governance stuck on "don't touch that" instead of "go and explore this." If that sounds like your business, let's talk. We can help.
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Dan Debnam شارك ذلكReally loved spending time with Direct Selling Australia and making some great connections. Even if they did make me dress up and perform my best Aussie slang... All topped off by some sightseeing in Sydney and Melbourne, a delicious lunch and quality time with Geoff and Chris in Manly, and brunch with David and Erin in Bondi. You made me feel very welcome and I can't wait to pop back.Dan Debnam شارك ذلكFuel Your Growth 2026 is done! Two days at the Sydney Masonic Centre with the best of Australian direct selling. Dan Debnam of Inovara, our Platinum Sponsor, framed the whole conversation on AI across both days. His message cut through the noise: AI is a tool. Trust is the goal. In a category built on relationships, that's the line that matters. Rob Sperry and Aspen Emery from BravenlyGlobal reminded us that momentum isn't luck. It's built - through leadership, retention and doing the unglamorous work that lasts. We shared new national research. The data was clear on where growth is actually winnable, and it put trust, people and our field at the centre . Not as a nice idea, but as our real advantage. We also looked hard at the future of wellness, and where our category fits as the way people buy health and wellbeing keeps shifting. The opportunity is real, if we're honest about what's changing. And we celebrated it. The awards recognised local initiatives and programs built right here. Proof that this industry does its best work close to the ground. Here's the thing about Australia. We're a smaller market with some of the toughest regulations in the world. Growth is hard-won. But our leaders are bold, strategic and they thrive on being challenged. We punch well above our weight, and we do it inside constraints most markets never have to think about. That's not a disadvantage. It's the reason our best thinking converts. Thank you to every speaker, sponsor, partner and delegate who made it what it was. The work starts today!
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Dan Debnam أعاد نشر ذلكDan Debnam أعاد نشر ذلكDSU Fall 2026 is just two months away, but that's not stopping us from looking ahead. In Fall 2027, we're taking DSU global! GLOBAL DSU 2027 will bring the direct selling industry together September 20-22, 2027 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki, Hawaii. Mark your calendar now. This is one event you won't want to miss! The conversation will span the Americas, APAC, Europe and beyond, covering the market shifts, product and opportunity innovation, competitive pressures and an exploration of the role social commerce will play in shaping the next era of direct selling worldwide. https://lnkd.in/ghw2bQQb We're building the most amazing speaker lineup, with 21 already confirmed, including: Stuart Johnson | Magnus Brännström | John Addison Leadership Group | Blake Erickson | Heather Chastain | Graeme Clegg | Dan Debnam | Mauricio Domenzain | Aspen Emry | Peter Griscom | Danny Lee | Stuart A MacMillan | Wayne Moorehead | Armand Puyolt | Ben Riley | Joni Rogers-Kante | Andrew Schmidt| Susannah Schofield OBE | Rob Sperry | David Vanderveen | John Wadsworth, Jr.
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Dan Debnam شارك ذلكLast month, we ran an "AI hackathon" for a client, with one simple rule: don't build something for work. That threw people off. Most turned up ready to solve a business problem. Instead we asked them to build something fun, because the second you remove the pressure to get it right, people actually start to engage. When we ran a similar hackathon in our own team earlier this year, I used the time to build an online business that turns uploaded photos of people or pets into comical cartoon greeting cards. Connected it to a fulfilment company. We then placed a real order as a team. The card that turned up wasn't perfect, I had misjudged the sizing! But that was never the point. It's always the morning after where it actually matters. People came back looking at their own jobs differently. The repetitive tasks they'd normally shrug off started looking like problems worth solving themselves. And they actually enjoyed solving them. You don't need a strategy document to start with AI. You need a spare hour and permission to experiment. And if you're worried about data access or company policy - do what we did with this client, just make it personal. Non-work related. Remove all the barriers and instead focus on the ability to actually just get stuck in. If you want to see what your team can create, we've written a free guide on how to run and facilitate your own hackathon. Drop me a DM if you want a link (LinkedIn doesn't like links on posts) Now... if you were to actually do this - yes - not think about it, actually DO IT. What problem would you try to solve that either doesn't have a solution today or burns way too much time and energy in your week. Start there.
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Dan Debnam شارك ذلكSixteen years ago I landed in Sydney and started my travels up the Gold Coast. I vowed to come back one day because I loved it. That trip is where I learned to scuba dive, where a mate and I lived out of a camper van for weeks, riding out Australia's heat and its torrential downpours in equal measure, surviving on cheerios, dollar pizza slices and beer. Somehow it also became the one place I never made it back to. Until now 😉 Geoff Mulham floated the idea of me speaking at the Direct Selling Australia conference and by pure chance I was already going to be in Indonesia around the same time. Hopping across made perfect sense. So as well as scratching that nostalgic itch, I get to meet some brilliant member companies at DSA Australia next month in August. Talk prep starts next week. I'm putting together something that gives everyone in the room a practical takeaway for their business and for the people who rely on them to make things simple. See you there!
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Dan Debnam شارك ذلكWe've been quietly growing the team over the last couple of months and it gave me a chance to completely reimagine how recruiting talent is done in the AI era. Two of our hires were sourced and screened by an AI agent, trained on exactly what we were looking for, crawling X, Substack, Reddit and other sources. It took a few thousand profiles down to a few hundred, then to a top 10. We made the final calls ourselves, founders to candidate, human to human. The other two came through a more 'traditional' process but thanks to some heavy-lifting by AI, we were able to cut a 4-6 week process into under a week. The result is four new teammates, each exceptional in their field. Vlad, Abhi and Tanbir joined engineering. Lili joined the AI consulting side. Those are the roles you CAN see. We've also been hiring the ones you can't... Digital employees aka AI agents. Each person on the team will be responsible for several of them and over time what it means to "report to" someone is going to change. We already have our first agents working with oversight across the team. Not managing in the old sense, more augmenting how I lead and freeing the rest of us to do our best work. That will keep spreading across the business. Building a company in 2026 looks very different to even a year ago. We want to stay a product of our product, so it starts with us. And we're working on some exciting partnerships to bring more of this to our clients, the ones we already work with and new ones too. But today is mostly about four brilliant people saying yes to us. A belated LinkedIn welcome to Vlad, Abhi, Tanbir and Lili 👋🏻 And we're not done. We're in an active recruitment cycle right now with a few more roles to fill. If you want in, they're all on our website.
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Dan Debnam أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكOne of the things we seem to forget when we're building tech for direct selling is that the person we're building it for isn't thinking about tech at all. She's thinking about... Her day job. Errands. Bills. The school run. Dinner. And that she only has about 20 minutes to work on the business she just started. This is the person I want us thinking about. Not the top leader who already knows what to do next and probably has her own system already. The person who is still figuring it out and needs her business to feel simple, not overwhelming. Our new Abby video follows what should matter most: one seller's ordinary day. The moments when a little guidance about what to do next can make a big difference. Because I'm convinced of this: If we're investing in technology to drive field growth, something has to change in the behavior of the person actually using it. And that change happens in the small moments, long before it ever shows up on a report. This is the part of Abby I'm super excited about. What we're building is highly effective Field Tech, built around the person actually using it.Dan Debnam أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكMeet Mary. Wife, mum, part-time hair stylist, and as of last month, a business owner. If you run a direct selling company you already know how her story usually ends. Most new sellers never make it past the first month. Not because they don't care. Because nobody built the training around their day, and nobody is there at 6:30am to say "do this one thing next". So we made a film about her Tuesday. Abby takes what the company already has, its training, products, compliance and comp plan, and turns it into a learning journey that fits between the school run and the first client. Four small tasks a day. And underneath it, Abby Intelligence reads what is actually happening in Mary's business and suggests the next task, instead of handing her a to-do list she never wrote. Mary isn't a real person. Her day is. We hear a version of it from the field every week. Build the next chapter with us.
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Dan Debnam أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكDan Debnam أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكThe WhatsApp groups are pinging all over the place with people making their way to airports to start their own journeys, and a few who arrived early are already out enjoying a tour or lunch in town. And then I had it…. That moment! I think anyone who has been involved in an event knows the moment I mean. It's when you realise it's happening no matter what. The preparation is done, the doors are only hours or days from opening and what will be, will be. For the first little while I've always tried to hold on and somehow stop time moving. Then you realise it's a bit like trying to hold two handfuls of sand and clap at the same time without losing a single grain... So you let go. And that's when you reach a much calmer place. You know there's a brilliant team behind the scenes quietly keeping everything running smoothly, world class speakers who have travelled from all over the world to be at Mastermind and an audience who have come with real energy and a genuine desire to learn. Honestly, that's when you know it's going to be a great weekend.
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Dan Debnam أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكDan Debnam أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكMeet Mary. Wife, mum, part-time hair stylist, and as of last month, a business owner. If you run a direct selling company you already know how her story usually ends. Most new sellers never make it past the first month. Not because they don't care. Because nobody built the training around their day, and nobody is there at 6:30am to say "do this one thing next". So we made a film about her Tuesday. Abby takes what the company already has, its training, products, compliance and comp plan, and turns it into a learning journey that fits between the school run and the first client. Four small tasks a day. And underneath it, Abby Intelligence reads what is actually happening in Mary's business and suggests the next task, instead of handing her a to-do list she never wrote. Mary isn't a real person. Her day is. We hear a version of it from the field every week. Build the next chapter with us.
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Dan Debnam تفاعل مع ذلكDan Debnam تفاعل مع ذلكOn October 6–8, direct selling executives will gather at the Westin Galleria in Dallas for DSU Fall 2026 — and this year's lineup is one of our strongest yet. From keynote presentations and panel discussions to four interactive workshops and a dedicated Artificial Intelligence Deep Dive Event, the conversations taking place at this event will SHAPE THE FUTURE OF DIRECT SELLING! Register at: https://lnkd.in/g-vhwDba October 6–8 | The Westin Galleria | Dallas, TX Registration is free and exclusively for active corporate direct selling executives. Sponsored by: Apptor-AI | Avalara | ByDesign Technologies | Connected Events | Exigo | FieldWatch | Fluid | InfoTrax Systems | KATAPULT Events | nowsite | QuickBox Fulfillment | Treel | Worldpay #DSU2026 #DirectSelling #DirectSellingNews
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Dan Debnam أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكDan Debnam أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكThere is a question we need to ask when we evaluate tech in direct selling: What will a seller actually do differently day to day when they use this? Not just what the platform can do. Not just how many features it has or what it integrates with. What changes in an ordinary week of a person who probably isn't thinking about tech at all? If we're investing in technology to drive growth, at some point something has to change in the behavior of the person using it. So I'd probably ask more questions while we're at it: Who are we actually trying to help, and what do we want to make easier for them? What are they doing right now, and why is that easier? What are we hoping happens more often? What's the actual action we want them to do more of? The actual specific action. We have to challenge ourselves to do the hard thing first: Get really clear about what we want to change for the human on the other end of all this tech. When we build the roadmap to get THERE, the day to day looks very different because of it.
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Dan Debnam أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكWhat stands out the most in this brief post is Dan Debnam's statement: "Most AI programmes stall because they get designed for people instead of with them. Tropic did the opposite." A smaller company leapfrogging larger competitors! One of the many ways Inovara is making direct selling organizations "AI-capable."
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Dan Debnam أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكDan Debnam أضاف إعجابًا إلى ذلكI once drove an hour to a Little Chef, to meet someone who was interested in our business. I got there, sat down, ordered a drink, and waited, in this old-fashioned, unglamorous roadside cafe that anyone over 30 will remember from their UK motorway travels. She never turned up. This was before we had mobiles so I couldn’t even call or text to see if she was coming. I was already fed up by the time I walked back to the car and found I had a flat tyre. What should have been an hour home took the best part of three, by the time the AA had been and gone. I got back to a freezing flat. My boiler had picked that exact day to break. No heating, no hot water. I remember sitting in one of my two inflatable armchairs, eating a yellow-stickered Tesco vegetable hotpot, thinking about how the day had gone. I told that story on stage at Amplify on Saturday, because I think people assume it's building to a glamorous twist where everything was okay in the end. It isn't. She never joined. The boiler stayed broken for a while longer. It was just a genuinely bad day, and back then I had plenty of them. It’s what I remember as a ‘Little Chef’ day - and for a long time I think I saw days like that as proof something was wrong. Proof the business wasn't working, or that I wasn't cut out for it. But I've come to see it differently. A Little Chef day like that isn't evidence the business doesn't work. It's evidence you're trying. Wanting to succeed without ever getting frustrated is a bit like wanting to swim without getting wet. So if nobody's cancelled on you this week, and nobody's gone quiet on you, I'd actually be asking whether you're having enough conversations in the first place. And next time you have a day where things seem to be conspiring against you, remember, that’s a Little Chef day, and it’s evidence you’re in the race.
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Chris Fernando
PR is evolving — and so is leadership in the age of AI. In this interview, Lara Geadah, Founder of Cameo Comms, reflects on a decade of growing a business in Dubai, the shift to performance-based PR, and the real-world impact of technology on leadership expectations. From resilience and credibility to mentorship and breaking barriers for women in business, this is a thoughtful look at how modern PR and leadership are adapting in a fast-moving world. Read the full interview: https://lnkd.in/dvsikXH6 #PR #Leadership #AI #Entrepreneurship #WomenInBusiness #BusinessReviewME
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Build Dubai
What a great way to kick off Build Dubai after a two-month break. This month brought us back together for conversations around how we connect, communicate and share ideas across the industry. Alan George, Architect and Founder & Host of The aForm Show, encouraged designers and brands to rethink podcasting, from understanding its real benefits to simply taking the first step. Our Build Dubai member, Firas Alsahin, Co-founder & Design Director at 4SPACE design, looked at the challenges of business outreach across multiple channels and introduced Foyer, a platform created to bring business requests into one place and make it easier for the right connections to happen. Two different conversations, one shared idea: finding better ways to connect across the industry. Watch the highlights from this month’s Build Dubai meeting. This video is produced by Intelier.