Thoughts
The same shapes turn up again and again.
Twenty years in, you stop seeing problems and start seeing patterns. A working library of the ones that repeat across high-growth consumer brands, on eCommerce, on AI, and on leadership.
Every brand believes its situation is unique.
Most of the time it’s a familiar shape wearing a new logo. The replatform that solves the wrong layer. The board that mistakes activity for progress. The agency relationship nobody can honestly grade. Naming the pattern is the first half of fixing it.
Thoughts on eCommerce
Platforms, budgets, vendors and the trading decisions underneath them. Why expensive gets confused with important, and why the brief is rarely the problem.
Why your £50k a month agency retainer feels like it’s doing nothing
Most agencies aren’t dishonest. But they are human. How to audit the relationship and know whether to stay, renegotiate or leave.
Why replatforming projects drift, and how governance fixes it
Replatforming projects don’t fail because of bad technology. They fail because nobody says no to scope creep.
Why wholesale brands struggle going direct
Same product, same presentation, new Shopify store. Same ingredients, different dish.
Why discovery phases fail scale-ups
Six figures for a discovery phase that tells you what you already know. This is the Learning Tax.
Thoughts on AI
Most brands aren’t behind on AI. They’re behind on knowing what they’d use it for. The tool is the last decision, not the first. New pieces publish on LinkedIn first and file here as they earn their place.
Thoughts on Leadership
The distance between what a board is shown and what it can pressure-test. Alignment, kill discipline, and the five decisions that actually matter this year.
Why your portfolio brand’s digital operation is stuck
Growth stalled post-acquisition? It’s usually infrastructure, not strategy. The three hidden risks in PE portfolio brands.
Your agency doesn’t work for you. They work for your brief.
The quality of agency output is capped by the quality of your brief, and most brands have nobody whose job it is to question it.
The library is curated slowly, on purpose. Not every thought earns archiving; the silence is part of the brand.
A diagnosis you’ve seen before is a diagnosis you can make faster. The library is the method getting sharper.
Where it’s heading
Every pattern here is a page of the book.
This library is Look Again being written in public, one shape at a time. Follow along here, or join the launch list and get the finished method, first chapter ahead of everyone.