The $60,000 Lesson That Built a Billion-Dollar Business
He called me because his second-in-command had seen my work at her previous employer. He was a founder. Early days of what was then a promising startup — the kind of business that has energy and momentum but not yet the systems to match. He was also furious. Sixty thousand dollars had gone into a […]
Where can I sign?
I was five minutes into the presentation when she stopped me. I had adapted an existing solution for her business — a system I’d built before, reworked so she could see her own numbers in it, her own workflows, her own team’s reality reflected back at her. Five minutes in, she held up her hand. […]
What’s stopping you from getting the results you want?
I’ve asked that question in one form or another across more than 400 projects over four decades. The businesses are different. The industries are different. The people are different. The answers are always a variation of the same three things. Every operational problem I’ve ever seen comes back to errors, time, or the absence of […]
The Shower Principle
A client asked me recently: “Where do you get your ideas?” We had just finished a session where I’d proposed a solution to a problem that had been sitting on his desk, unsolved, for the better part of a year. He’d brought in two other consultants before me. Neither had cracked it. I told him […]
My Nephew Could Build That In A Weekend
I understand the instinct completely. You’ve been shown a solution. It looks like a spreadsheet. Maybe it has some formulas, a few dropdown menus, a button or two. And somewhere in the back of your mind, a thought forms: “My nephew could build that in a weekend.” I don’t take offence at that thought. I’ve […]
The Key Person You Cannot Afford To Lose
I was sitting in a client’s office not long ago. He was walking me through his monthly process — the manual steps, the spreadsheets, the workarounds he’d built over the years to keep things running. It was exactly why I was there. We were going to automate it. Halfway through the conversation, I stopped him. […]
Your Quote Template Is Costing You Clients
Let me tell you about a conversation I had with a sales professional not long ago. He was one of two salespeople in his business. Each quote he worked on was worth between $500,000 and $1 million to the company. He was personally responsible for roughly $10 million in annual turnover. I asked him how […]
The Cost Nobody Is Calculating
Imagine you are buying a new car. Different brand, different make to your last one. Every knob feels wrong. Every display seems to be in the wrong place. The indicators are where the wipers used to be. But you love the car. It drives like heaven. And within a few weeks, you’ve adapted. The muscle […]
A Postcard From The Edge Of The Universe
By the time you read this, I am somewhere in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. At 2,400 metres above sea level. No humidity. No light pollution. Just the clearest night sky on the planet — and more telescopes per square kilometre than anywhere else on Earth. The reason the world’s best observatories are here […]
The Almost Tax — and what it’s quietly costing you
There is a word in German engineering that has no direct English translation: ‘Passgenauigkeit.’ It means the quality of something fitting exactly as it was designed to fit. Not approximately. Not close enough. Exactly. In a German factory, a part either fits or it doesn’t. There is no “almost.” There is no “we’ll be right, […]