Writing.

Essays, frameworks, and field notes from nearly four decades of building, backing, and selling businesses.

More writing

  1. Leadership

    Hire Anyone. Import Nothing.

    The four kinds of business owner, why three of them were manufactured at national scale, and the four-minute test that tells you which one you actually are.

  2. Hospitality

    The Gap Between Promise and Delivery

    Nothing is catastrophic. Everything is slightly off, and it compounds across a service until the guest leaves unconvinced. Destabilisation is not the absence of effort, it is the absence of architecture.

  3. Hospitality

    You Can Feel It When You Walk In

    You know within thirty seconds. The host is present but not attentive, the greeting is functional, and the room is flat. Demoralisation is the first thing a guest experiences and the last thing most operators address.

  4. Leadership

    No Neutral Ground

    There are only two playbooks and you are running one of them right now. Not the one in the strategy document. The one your people actually experience.

  5. Leadership

    The Quiet Capitulation

    The most dangerous sentence in any organisation is seven words long. It is never shouted, it is never challenged, and it feels like stability.