There are 12 things that I wish I’d known, and had done well from the start, to avoid the feast, famine, pain and anguish...

Why the consulting businesses that win in the next decade will look nothing like the ones that won in the last

Why the most underrated skill in sales is knowing when to stop trying to convince anyone of anything

No "content strategy" can build a successful firm on its own and no "personal brand" can replace the work of actually getting in front of people who might buy from you.

Almost every founder and consultant I speak to eventually brings up scale, usually in the same breath as ambition, as though the two are inseparable. Build something big. Grow the headcount. Open another office. The assumption underneath it is that scale is the natural expression of a successful business, the thing you're working toward once the fundamentals are in place.

None of these tactics scale cleanly, which is precisely why they cut through. The modern buyer is conditioned to filter anything that looks automated. The moment something feels genuinely human, the pattern breaks.