Notes
A working library, drawn from the Weekly Guidance emails and published in full. No client details and no case studies — just the operating arguments, organised by what they are about.
Strategy & numbers
What the figures are actually telling you, and what they hide.
The margin you think you have
Quoted margin and realised margin are different numbers. Most firms only ever look at the first one.
Which customers are actually paying you
Revenue tells you who buys the most. It does not tell you who is worth serving.
Cash is not profit, and the gap is where firms die
Profitable businesses run out of money regularly. It is almost always a timing problem, not an earnings one.
The floor price you will not go below
A margin floor that bends under pressure is not a floor. It is a preference, and the client can hear the difference.
Seasonality is a plan, not a surprise
Every business has a rhythm. Most discover theirs by being overwhelmed, then idle, then overwhelmed again.
Commercial
Winning the work, and keeping the clients worth keeping.
The first reply is most of the sale
Not because speed impresses. Because by the time you answer, the buyer has usually already chosen.
The account portal: where the margin actually is
A public catalogue wins buyers. The private one keeps them — and turns your most predictable revenue into a self-serve transaction.
Your catalogue is a channel, not a document
Every time a PDF catalogue works, it creates manual work. That is a strange thing to call a sales asset.
Why you lose, and why nobody writes it down
Every lost deal contains information you paid for. Almost all of it gets thrown away.
The quiet client is not a happy client
Nobody sends a resignation letter to a supplier. They just stop ordering, and it takes months to notice.
Automation & AI
Where a machine helps, where it does not, and how to tell.
Give the machine your context, not your hopes
A general tool gives generic output. The same tool, given your material, gives your output. The difference is not the model.
Draft, do not decide
The useful line is not between tasks a machine can do and tasks it cannot. It is between drafting and judgement.
Demo or habit: what makes it stick
Most experiments die not because the tool failed, but because it never became something anyone would miss.
Three questions before you adopt anything
The cost of a new tool is almost never the price. It is the attention it takes from you every week afterwards.
What to do when the answer is confidently wrong
The dangerous output is not the one that fails. It is the one that is plausible, specific, and mistaken.
Operations
The unglamorous half: what runs, what costs, what breaks quietly.
Self-service is only as good as the number behind it
Automation does not create pricing problems. It removes the last person who was quietly absorbing them.
Measure the routine before you improve it
The obvious candidate for improvement is usually the one you notice, not the one that costs you.
What your automation costs to run
Automated things fail quietly, and metered things grow quietly. Both are invisible until someone counts.
The handover you have not written
If you were unreachable for three weeks, what would stop? That list is your real operating risk.
These notes come out of the Weekly Guidance emails. Level 1 is €499 a month: one strategy email a week, a monthly AI opportunity scan and a consolidated monthly report.
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