Insights

I Will Tell You What I Think. Including the Parts I Got Wrong.

This is not a blog and there is no publishing schedule. It is where I put the positions I will actually defend, the things I used to believe and no longer do, and what I am reading. If you want to know how somebody thinks before you hire them, this page is more use than a case study.

The positions What I am reading
  • No posting schedule
  • Positions with reasons attached
  • Reversals included

Why this exists

Most opinion pages exist to prove somebody is thinking. This one exists so you can disagree with me early.

There is a version of this page that posts twice a week, says nothing falsifiable, and is really just a signal that the author is still active. I am not going to run that. Anything here is something I would say out loud in a room with somebody who disagreed, and if I cannot put a reason underneath it then it does not belong here.

The useful consequence is that you can rule me out cheaply. If you read the positions below and think I am wrong about the things that matter to your business, you have saved both of us a call. That is a better outcome than a polite conversation that goes nowhere.

Nothing on this page is a prediction, and none of it is advice about your situation.

Things I will defend

Six positions, and where I argue each one properly.

None of these are new here. Every one of them is already load bearing somewhere on this site, which is the only real test of whether somebody believes a thing: whether they built on it.

On promises

Anybody quoting you a number is guessing or selling

Scores, rankings, review counts, lead volume, close rates. The people who can actually move these refuse to promise them, and the people who promise them are describing somebody else's result. The moment a number is guaranteed, the incentive shifts from doing the work to defending the number.

Argued in full on the credit page

On speed

The hour after an enquiry arrives decides the sale

Most businesses think they have a lead generation problem. Very few of them do. They have a response problem, and it is cheaper and faster to fix. More traffic poured into a business that answers enquiries the next afternoon mostly produces more wasted traffic.

Argued in full on the insurance page

On proof

A logo wall is not evidence

Anybody can put a logo on a page. What is checkable is a live site you can open, a named person who will stand behind what they said, and a public review with a date on it. If a claim cannot be verified by the person reading it, it is decoration.

Argued in full on the portfolio

On terms

Publish the terms before you ask for a yes

If the agreement only appears once somebody is emotionally committed, the terms are doing work that the offer should have done. Everything that governs the programs on this site is public before anybody applies, including the parts that count against them. It costs some applicants. The ones it costs were going to be a problem.

Argued in full on the careers page

On saying no

Turning work away is the cheapest quality control there is

A bad fit costs more than the revenue it brings, and it costs it slowly, in support load and reputation rather than on the invoice. Every business says it is selective. The test is whether anyone can name the last time they said no to money, and whether the people selling for them are allowed to.

Argued in full on the work with me page

On automation

If the owner is the bottleneck, more software will not help

Most systems fail because they move work rather than remove it. The business ends up with the same decisions, now spread across four tools and a notification badge. The question worth asking first is not what to automate, it is what should stop happening at all.

Argued in full on the I Ninja LLC page

Things I got wrong

What I have changed my mind about.

Thirty years in technology buys you one thing reliably, which is a long list of positions you held confidently and were wrong about. I would rather publish those than pretend the current set is final.

A person who has never changed their mind in public has either not been paying attention or is not telling you about it. Neither is a reason to trust their judgment.

I used to think a missed message could end me

A profile I did not fill in. A call I did not take. A text, an email, an opportunity I turned down. I believed each one was a door closing permanently, and that saying no made me smaller and reduced whatever impact I was going to have.

A few masterminds in, I understood it the other way round. The power is in the no. Every yes you give to something that does not move you forward is a no you have given to something that would have. Being available is not a virtue. If you are reachable by everybody at all times, you are not building anything, you are responding to other people's priorities all day and calling it work.

That is why this site answers the obvious objections before you ever speak to me, and why both of the programs here publish their terms before anybody applies. I would rather lose the people it costs me than spend half a day on a conversation neither of us needed. If you spent the morning answering everyone and moved nothing forward, what exactly did you do?

Related position: turning work away is the cheapest quality control there is.

I used to think nobody would want to hear me

Not speak, not advise, not stand in front of a room and tell anybody how to execute. I had reasons that sounded practical at the time, but the honest version is simpler: I did not value myself. I grew up somewhere everybody agreed I was never going to make anything of myself and that trying was a waste of time. You can carry that a long way past the point where it stops being true.

What changed it was studying people who teach this for a living. Tony Robbins. Dean Graziosi. Dan Lok. Plenty of others. Different material, different styles, and one theme underneath all of it: the first thing you have to beat is your fear of yourself. Everything else is downstream of that.

The second half of it took longer to accept. Not everybody is meant to be your people. If what you are saying and how you are saying it does not land with somebody, that is not a verdict on you and it is not a problem to solve by becoming more agreeable. It simply is not for them. Once that stopped stinging, speaking got a great deal easier.

Where that went: speaking and media.

Input

One hundred and eleven titles, catalogued so far.

The target is two hundred in the year. That is not a discipline I am recommending to anybody and it is not a personality trait, it is just what replaced the hours I used to spend on things that were not working.

Reading at that pace changes what you get from it. You stop looking for the one book that fixes something and start noticing which ideas keep turning up independently in unrelated places, written by people who would disagree with each other about almost everything else. Those are usually the ones worth acting on. Most books are one good chapter and a lot of supporting material, and reading quickly makes that obvious rather than disappointing.

111Titles listed below
200The target for the year
Jan 2025When the count started

The list below is the part I have catalogued, not everything I have read. I am still working back through what came before I started keeping track, so this gets longer rather than shorter.

The six that actually changed something

One hundred and eleven titles tells you what I read. It does not tell you what landed, and those are not the same list. A handful of these changed how I actually operate, and a few of the most famous ones did not.

Coming soon

The six that changed something, and what each one changed. Writing that properly is worth more than publishing it quickly.

The full list

Grouped by subject rather than by date, because the shape of it is more interesting than the order. Counts are shown so you can see where the weight actually sits.

Reading something is not endorsing it. There are books on this list whose claims I would argue with, including one or two in the money section making promises I have spent years telling people to be suspicious of. I read those precisely because people repeat them. Knowing the argument is how you answer it, and you cannot answer an argument you have only heard secondhand.

Treat this as a guide, not a syllabus. What is in a book is one option: the one that worked for the author, in the author's situation, with the author's resources. That is not a criticism, it is just what a book is. They are handing you a shortcut through a problem they already solved, and the shortcut is shaped like their business rather than yours.

So the question is almost never whether the advice is good. It is whether the advice is available to you. A book tells you to departmentalize. You have four people. You cannot departmentalize four people, and running that chapter literally would just be theatre. What you can do is take what sits underneath it, which is that boundaries were unclear and too much was landing on one person, and solve that with better delegation instead. The technique was not for you. The problem it was solving absolutely was.

Other times you get a few chapters in and realize you already had all of it. That is not a wasted afternoon either. That is confirmation, and confirmation is worth more than people admit when you are making every decision yourself.

Nothing is wasted, including the bad ones. Some books are there to teach you what not to do, and they teach it faster than experience does and at a considerably better price. What none of them contain is a magic button. Running your own business takes discipline before it takes tactics, and if the fundamentals are not handled you have nothing to stand on later when the clever part finally shows up. Skip them and you end up with a business you cannot step away from, which is not the goal either.

AI, technology and automation (13)

  • The Road Ahead Bill Gates
  • Architects of Intelligence Martin Ford
  • AI Ethics Mark Coeckelbergh
  • ChatGPT for Leaders and Content Creators Dr. Gleb Tsipursky
  • How to Make Passive Income with Faceless TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram Pieter Davis
  • Prompt Publish Profit Carla White
  • AI Prompt Engineering Nicki Lynne
  • The Ultimate ChatGPT and DALL-E Side Hustle Bible Future Front
  • SORA 2: A Premium Guide to Advanced AI Video Generation MarTar Media
  • Veo 3 Chronicles: Episode 1: The $375 Gamble Phil Johncock
  • OpenClaw AI Assistant on a Budget Jake Morrison
  • OpenClaw: The Money-Making Guide to AI Agents J Cook
  • OpenClaw: Your First AI Employee J Cook

Offers, funnels and customer acquisition (20)

  • 77 Ways to Get More Customers Chris Cardell
  • Expert Secrets Russell Brunson
  • DotCom Secrets Russell Brunson
  • Traffic Secrets Russell Brunson
  • Software Secrets Garrett Pierson and Scott Brandley
  • Choose Ryan Levesque
  • Outrageous Multi-Step Marketing Campaigns Bill Glazer
  • Pulling Profits Out of a Hat Brad Sugars and Monte Wyatt
  • $100M Offers Alex Hormozi
  • $100M Offers Summary and Workbook Alex Hormozi
  • $100M Leads Alex Hormozi
  • $100M Leads Summary and Workbook Alex Hormozi
  • $100M Money Models Alex Hormozi
  • The 10X Mentor Grant Cardone
  • Business Made Simple Donald Miller
  • The Content Marketing Handbook Robert W. Bly
  • Likeable Social Media Dave Kerpen
  • Free Website Traffic Ming Jong Tey
  • Fiverr Funnel Profits Brian Graves
  • Your Path to Freelance Success on Fiverr Benjamin Stone

Sales, prospecting and persuasion (16)

  • Sell or Be Sold Grant Cardone
  • The Closer's Survival Guide Grant Cardone
  • The Secrets of Closing the Sale Zig Ziglar
  • How to Sell Your Way Through Life Napoleon Hill
  • Sell! The Way Your Customers Want to Buy Dale Carnegie & Associates
  • DISCOVER Questions Get You Connected Deb Calvert
  • The Go-Giver Bob Burg and John David Mann
  • Go-Givers Sell More Bob Burg and John David Mann
  • The Go-Giver Leader Bob Burg and John David Mann
  • The Go-Giver Influencer Bob Burg and John David Mann
  • The Go-Getter Peter B. Kyne
  • Endless Referrals Bob Burg
  • Networking Like a Pro Ivan Misner and Brian Hilliard
  • LinkedIn Lead Generation for Business Coaches & Consultants John Nemo
  • LinkedIn the Sandler Way Sandler Training and LinkedIn Sales Solutions
  • The LinkedIn Book for Sales and Marketing Scott Aaron

Speaking, writing and authority (12)

  • Public Speaking to Win Dale Carnegie
  • Million Dollar Speaking Alan Weiss
  • The 7 Principles of Public Speaking Richard Zeoli
  • The Art of Speeches and Presentations Philip Collins
  • How to Be Heard Julian Treasure
  • 50 Ways to Master Public Speaking in 50 Minutes Riley Stevens
  • Copywriting Secrets Jim Edwards
  • The Adweek Copywriting Handbook Joseph Sugarman
  • The Copywriter's Handbook Robert W. Bly
  • The Content Writer's Handbook Julia McCoy, Owen Hemsath and Jeff J Hunter
  • Publish. Promote. Profit. Rob Kosberg
  • How to Write a Book This Weekend Vic Johnson

Leadership, communication and influence (8)

  • How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie
  • Everyone Communicates, Few Connect John C. Maxwell
  • The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership John C. Maxwell
  • The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Book Summary Raybendra Singh
  • Powerful Listening Kwame Christian
  • The Energy Bus Jon Gordon
  • The Ultimate Dale Carnegie Library Dale Carnegie Training
  • How to Get Ahead in the World Today Dale Carnegie

Mindset, discipline and performance (19)

  • The Slight Edge Jeff Olson
  • The ONE Thing Gary Keller and Jay Papasan
  • High Performance Habits Brendon Burchard
  • The 6 Habits of Growth Brendon Burchard
  • Millionaire Success Habits Dean Graziosi
  • The Underdog Advantage Dean Graziosi
  • Unlock It Dan Lok
  • Nine Figure Mindset Brandon Dawson
  • Rhinoceros Success Scott Alexander
  • Do Epic Shit Ankur Warikoo
  • Overcoming Imposter Syndrome Kelly Vincent
  • The Science of Being Great Wallace D. Wattles
  • The Strangest Secret Challenge Earl Nightingale
  • The Common Denominator of Success Bob Proctor
  • The Ultimate Bob Proctor Library Bob Proctor
  • Inspired: The Secrets of Bob Proctor Linda Proctor
  • Napoleon Hill's Master Course Napoleon Hill
  • Napoleon Hill's Golden Rules Napoleon Hill
  • The Lost Secret Monica Main

Money, economics and investing (14)

  • Economics in One Lesson Henry Hazlitt
  • Money Mischief Milton Friedman
  • Liar's Poker Michael Lewis
  • Poor Economics Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo
  • Conscious Capitalism John Mackey and Raj Sisodia
  • The Gospel of Wealth Andrew Carnegie
  • Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist Roger Lowenstein
  • The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer and Michael LeBoeuf
  • The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need Andrew Tobias
  • Guide to Investing in Gold & Silver Michael Maloney
  • Rich Dad's Rich Kid Smart Kid Robert T. Kiyosaki
  • The Only Living Trusts Book You'll Ever Need Garrett Monroe
  • Ultimate Guide to Business Credit Using EIN Only Gerald Lacey
  • The Blueprint to Financial Freedom Jerry Fetta

Philosophy and strategy (9)

  • The Art of War for the New Millennium Dan Lok and Sun Tzu
  • The Book of Five Rings Miyamoto Musashi
  • The Tao of Wu The RZA
  • The Way of the Superior Man David Deida
  • Life Changing Secrets from the 3 Masters Joseph Murphy, Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill
  • Meditations & Affirmations Joseph Murphy
  • The Kybalion Three Initiates
  • The 369 Method Bible D. Kobayashi
  • The Paradigm Jonathan Cahn

Why I read this much

I learn something from everything, but that is the easy half. The harder half is that quite often the thing I have to learn first is that I was wrong about something I was certain of, and the unlearning is the expensive part. Not the reading. The reading is cheap.

Saying I am wrong to yourself is the hardest sentence most people never say. It is also the only one that reliably changes anything, which is why there is a section further up this page devoted to the times I have had to say it.

If you disagree

Tell me where I am wrong.

That is a more interesting conversation than agreement, and it is the one most likely to be worth both our time. If one of the positions above is wrong in your industry, I would rather hear it than keep publishing it.

Argue with me How I got here