Essays

Longer pieces on go-to-market, revenue, and how businesses actually behave. Things that are worth writing down and don't belong on any of the other properties.

August 24, 2026
If They Really Understood It, They Wouldn't Need Me

Expertise makes things feel obvious, obvious feels worthless, and then an argument closes the exit: if they understood the value they would do it themselves. That argument is wrong in one specific place.
August 24, 2026
The Incentive to Fish Goes Up

AI removes the revenue that came from customers not knowing things. The number still has to be hit, so the pressure moves to the adjacent sale, and the businesses with the most room to do that have the least to lose by doing it.
August 24, 2026
Don't Design It in Front of the Person Who Has to Run It

Building the process with the person who has to run it in the room looks like a virtue. Two authorities take damage at once, and a team watching every uncertainty resolved does not read it as honesty.
August 23, 2026
AI Is a Comprehension Transfer

A door in my house needed a $2 shim. I'd priced the replacement at $1,000. The model didn't fix it, it explained it, and that distinction decides which of your revenue survives.
August 23, 2026
Don't Document The Process Until Somebody Has Done The Work

Standard advice says get it out of people's heads and write it down. That's right about the destination and wrong about the timing, and the wrong timing freezes the improvised version with authority.
August 23, 2026
The Discount You're Not Allowed To Take

Charging full margin on the first deal forces you to sell something you've delivered twice as though you've delivered it two hundred times. The discount you skip early still gets paid, later, in delivery.
August 23, 2026
What Survives Is the Sequence

You didn't pay me for the three minutes, you paid me for the 25 years that told me where to point. That's true, and the 25 years doesn't store the answer. It stores the order.
August 19, 2026
The Charts Lose to the Cheerleaders

The best-informed person in the room loses to the one who gets looked at. That isn't a defect in other people. It's how attention works, and treating it as an injustice is what keeps good arguments from ever being heard.
August 9, 2026
Cold Leads Take More Work. That's the Source, Not the Quality.

Every closed deal requires the same work. Someone has to find the right person, catch the right timing, and build enough trust to buy. That work always happens. The only question is who does it, and when.