Three ways strategy needs to change.
Last week, I shared my breakthrough. I realised there are these dynamite principles every founder should know… but they’ve been locked away—hidden in academia and billion-dollar consulting firms. These are the principles of business strategy. The ones almost every business breaks because they don’t know any better. My goal? Change that. I want to: Show […]
How I Went from Getting Fired by Big Corporations to Charging Them $20,000 an Hour
When you think “high paid strategy expert”, my story is not what comes to mind. I have no qualifications I have no MBA I have no PHD I didn’t go to a fancy school I didn’t do a relevant degree I never worked for slick consulting firm Technically I did work for two glamorous blue-chip […]
Recognise this? Signs you have a serious strategy problem
Imagine if you could solve 80% of your business problems in one hit. Well you can, if you get your strategy right. You see lack of strategy normally manifests in multiple downstream ways which founders are always stressing over, but which are often impossible to fix because their root is at a higher level. Sales […]
The differentiation trap: please stop making this mistake
The other week, I wrote about two of my favourite business words: “really” and “actually”. But now I want to rail against one of my most hated words: “Just”. As in, “isn’t this just…?”, or “aren’t you just talking about …?”. This is quite personal because I get this quite a lot when sharing strategy […]
How I find market-bending strategies (without even trying)
This is the most powerful strategic technique that exists. So powerful in fact, that it isn’t only responsible for the development of the world’s best businesses —— it actually undergirds the development of every living thing on the planet. Oh, and what’s even better: it’s so easy that you barely have to lift a finger. […]
The 5 strategic mistakes (that don’t look like mistakes)
One of the things that makes strategy tricky, is that it’s war against yourself. It’s not really a knowledge-based discipline, like engineering or medicine, where you just have to know stuff. It’s more of a discipline of consistently and relentlessly going against your instincts, and what seems sensible at that moment in time. It’s sort […]
Sharing my vision: The Starbucks of Strategy
You know how they say “don’t talk about yourself, talk about your customer”? Yeah well just for today I’m going to ignore that, and talk about me me me – what I’m trying to do here, my vision for Basic Arts, and OK perhaps a little bit about what that might mean for you. Why […]
The only 3 ways to grow
Believe it or not, strategy is meant to make things easy. And the key to making things easy always boils down to this: Transforming an ambition into an act This applies to anything really. “Losing weight” (an ambition) is hard, because you might not know where to begin. But “stop eating sugar” (an act) is […]
Forget failure, here’s how to learn from success
Most of us are pretty good at blaming outside factors for our failures. The economy sucked My business partner screwed me Our team stinks Etc. Now I’m not going to tell you to stop making such excuses, and to start taking responsibility for yourself (even though you should). No, for the purposes of this piece […]
Literally everything I know about business in 3 bullet points
OK, I have a confession to make: I don’t really know what the word “marketing” means. I don’t know what the word “proposition” means. I don’t know what the word “positioning” means. I don’t really know precisely what any technical business word means, even “strategy” (or at least what other people mean when they say […]