AI took the effort. Watch what goes with it.
Effort used to be the filter that told you what mattered. AI removes it — and it’s easy to hand over the judgment that was your real value too.
Field NotesObservations from active work
Field Notes
Short pieces written from the middle of engagements. Each one is a way of seeing a business that is hard to un-see. Together they are the method. Most come with a one-page framework you can keep.
- Note 133 min
- Note 123 min
Trade up your problems
The goal was never to have no problems. It’s to trade up to better ones. The same problem twice means you patched a symptom.
- Note 113 min
How to see around corners
The people who seem to know what’s coming aren’t psychic. It’s four skills, and the hardest one isn’t the seeing.
- Note 104 min
You can stay in your seat too long
The seat that got the company here isn’t always the one the next stage needs. Stay in it too long and the decision gets made for you.
- Note 095 min
You can’t see the thing you’re inside
You can read every business but your own. The blind spot isn’t missing information. It’s your position, and at $10–30M that position gets expensive.
- Note 084 min
The research was never the hard part
AI made the looking-things-up free. Judgment, accountability, and an outside eye never got cheaper, and they’re the whole game.
- Note 074 min
Why hiring more salespeople can make stalled growth worse
Adding quota to a funnel that leaks after the close multiplies the leak. The first hire should be a diagnosis, not a rep.
- Note 066 min
The hidden tax inside a $10M company
Somewhere between $5M and $15M, coordination cost starts compounding faster than revenue. Most P&Ls don’t have a line for it.
- Note 053 min
Your funnel may not be the problem
Top-of-funnel is the easiest place to look and the most expensive place to fix. Three questions to ask before you touch it.
- Note 045 min
Where CEOs usually look first — and where I look instead
Marketing, then sales, then the market. I start with the customers you already closed and what happened to them next.
- Note 034 min
Revenue follows decision speed, not effort
Two companies at $5M are not the same company. One reaches $10M in two years. The other takes seven. The difference is almost never the strategy.
The frameworks
Two documents, everything behind these notes.
After twenty years and hundreds of businesses, the same patterns repeat. Everything I use is in two downloads: the field guide for finding where revenue is leaking, and the workbook for fixing what it finds.
- The Revenue Forensics Field Guide — the lenses for finding where revenue is leaking.
- The Repair Manual Workbook — the working document for closing the leaks the field guide finds.
Curious which one is costing you the most?
That’s the conversation. Take the diagnostic, or tell me where your business is and what you’re chasing.