
Enough with the Picks & Shovels
The lure of overnight success, a boom, a bust. Deconstructing the dynamic that exacerbated one of America’s most-significant boom-bust events to highlight how that dynamic has infused itself into almost every industry during the so-called Information Age.

Practicing Versus Promoting
Outlining the difference between practitioners and promoters and how the boom-bust cycle gets perpetuated by the natural asymmetries within the dynamic between them.

No, Seriously, What Do You Really Do?
A review of the practitioners and promoters in an industry currently crumbling—writing.

Writing as a Product Versus Writing as a Service (Part One)
Deconstructing the fundamental shift that takes place when you shift from producing a product to performing a service.

How “The War of Art” Became a Symbol of the War on Art
The unstated goal of a self-help author is to convince readers they’re not ready to get started until they’ve purchased a book that won’t help them get started.

Apparently, Everything Sounds Better in Front of a Leased Lamborghini
I mean, it can’t hurt, right?

The Drift into Branding & the Strange Financial Upside of “Retirement”
If nothing else, the eight years I’ve spent muddling along in that industry have provided a better understanding of what’s happening to our discourse on a macro level.

The Drawbacks of Shifting from Practitioner to Promoter
Deconstructing the various long-term effects when people are incentivized to “retire” their services.

Gurus Racing Toward the Black Hole of Abstraction
What this brand of scammer realizes is that only amateurs pick a specific topic.

The Mythologizing of Mastery and the Devaluation of Skill
Deconstructing a popular genre we’ll call Master-baiting.


The Mythologizing of Picasso’s Napkin
Although it helped many LinkedIn prophets hit their daily quota of posts, some stories don’t need repeating.

The Mythologizing of Experience & the Death Spiral of “Good Enough”
An attempt to empathize with executives, revealing my kind of empathy is a little judgy.

Skills Versus Scale
The answer to the question “How will this scale?” often involves some version of “Remove the dependency on people.”