If you’re reading this, I’ve almost certainly been pestering you with slightly odd questions and too many voice notes over the last couple of months, (years). Sorry!

What’s been happening in those chats has been surprisingly powerful. We’ve been swapping ideas, advice, quick questions, half-baked thoughts. Not as meetings, not as favours, just as proper conversations.

Every time I do it I’m reminded how rare it is to be able to ask someone with your knowledge and wisdom and get a thoughtful, honest answer back without a calendar invite, a deck, or a whole song and dance.

It's also struck how a few minutes in voice chat can either validate or avoid hours of ChatGPT, online research or YouTube.

The other thing that’s become obvious is that loads of you would be incredibly useful to each other and now I wonder who you have in your 'top friends' who could be helpful to me?

So this idea is me being a bit more intentional about something that’s already happening. Extending those one-to-one exchanges and gently opening them up so other people can tap into that same energy. And, selfishly, connecting friends and collaborators who probably should already be in each other’s orbit.

This isn’t about selling to each other. For the most part, we’re all probably too expensive for our own projects anyway. That’s not the point. The value is in the bite-size wisdom. The gut reactions. The “I wouldn’t overthink this” moments. The stuff you’d say if someone caught you at the right moment and asked honestly.

That’s kind of the rule of it. These chats are meant to be instinctive. Say the thing. Don’t hold anything back. No polishing, no positioning, no softening because you think it might turn into a pitch. There’s no expectation of hiring each other and no awkward subtext.

That said, I do imagine, and hope, that it will naturally lead to collaborations, intros, or those moments of “can you just do this for me?” when it genuinely makes sense. But that’s a side effect, not the goal.

So what is it?

It's a small, invite-only members club with the brilliant people we both trust.

It’s primarily async and very low-pressure. No calendars. No Zooms. No “quick call?” - if you loath that. If you hate voice chat. DM's, text or email are fine. You reply when it suits you, in your own voice, and ignore things when it doesn’t. It’s designed to sit quietly alongside your life and work rather than become yet another thing to manage.

No pressure to engage or respond to anyone.

You also get paid for your time. Properly. Explicitly. Listening counts. Thinking counts. Talking counts. For now, the model is simple. £1 a minute - but I'm open to ideas and honestly you can charge what you want.

The chats likely will live in Telegram - a chat app identical to WhatsApp. No new platforms to login into or UI to learn. No daily updates, forums or additional clutter for your inbox.

I’m building a little automation bot that handles all the boring bits. Timing, calculations, payment links, admin. There’s basically zero effort on your side. You just have conversations. The bot does the rest. Some of you have already seen a beta version working in practice.

There’ll probably be a small annual fee, around £120, mainly to cover managing the app, hosting, curation, and to keep this feeling intentional rather than noisy. 100% of the money inside the app goes to you.

Important! I’m not monetising friendships! I’m just putting a bit of structure around something that’s already happening, and connecting good people to other good people.

You’ve already helped shape this just by chatting with me and I would genuinely love you to be part of it and see where this goes.

Steve

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