Watershed

Ad Strength Hole-in-the-Ship Diagnostic

Use Google's brand vs non-brand ad-strength report to find the one fix that lifts the whole account

Capacity-Red Headcount Justification

Add headcount only when a days-committed-vs-days-in-quarter calculator stays red after cutting low-value work

Productivity4 steps

Chop-It-Up AI Collaboration Loop

Don't hand AI one giant spec — specify a little, review a little, repeat in tight loops.

Innovation4 steps

Complement-the-Frontier Model Strategy

Don't rebuild foundation models — train small specialty models that attack their weaknesses in speed, cost, and niche tasks.

Innovation4 steps

Customer Research as a Documentarian

Observe like a non-judgmental documentarian, find the pattern, then validate the truth with data

Design the Job to Fit the Person

Stop hunting unicorns against made-up job descriptions; reshape roles around the good people you find

Entrepreneurship4 steps

Dogfood-Driven Realism

Be the end user, use your product intensely daily, and never ship anything that isn't useful to you.

Self-Mastery5 steps

Energy Drivers and Energy Drains Audit

Mine your past for moments that energized or drained you, then turn them into job design requirements

Self-Mastery4 steps

Fall-On-Your-Face Taste Calibration

Deliberately push AI past its limits in a safe environment to build a gut feel for what it can do.

Strategy4 steps

High-Ceiling Market Test

Attack markets with a high ceiling and easy switching; incumbents win only where there's little left to build.

Incrementality via Conversion Lift & Geo Tests

Prove paid actually caused growth by withholding ads from a control group and measuring the lift

Self-Mastery4 steps

Job Prototyping via Informational Interviews

Treat yourself as a product: prototype many roles wide, interview people who hold them, then narrow

Strategy4 steps

Knowledge-Work End-State Idea Generation

Pick an area of knowledge work and reason forward to its end state as AI matures — then build for that.

Marketing5 steps

Paid Channel Sequencing Ladder

The order to adopt paid platforms: user-driven search first, disruptive media next, expensive targeting last

Leadership3 steps

Pioneer, Town Settler, City Planner PM Matching

Match the PM archetype you hire to the product's stage of maturity

Self-Mastery3 steps

Pushes and Pulls Compass

You only truly change jobs when a set of pushes builds enough energy and pulls point the direction

Marketing3 steps

Signal vs Noise Metric Selection

Let the campaign's single goal decide which metric is signal — everything else is noise

Standing Up a Product Discipline From Scratch

Turn an implicit PM function into a real one by writing the ladder first, then wiring hiring to it

The Career S-Curve for Attracting Talent

Map where a candidate sits on the ambiguity-vs-scale S-curve, then sell them their next step

Self-Mastery5 steps

The Four Career Quests

Diagnose which of four job-change 'quests' you're on so you optimize the move correctly

The Ops Cadence Spreadsheet

A rocks-and-pebbles spreadsheet that assigns every account task a defined weekly/biweekly/monthly rhythm

Communication3 steps

The Pixar Career Story Template

Distill your career into a seven-line Pixar-style story that intrigues interviewers and clarifies your direction

Innovation5 steps

The Seedling Model for Going Multi-Product

Incubate new product lines as separate 'seed companies' with dedicated teams and adjacency-based selection

The Signs of Life Test

Spend a tiny budget on a new platform to detect a positive signal before committing to a full campaign

Leadership3 steps

The Three-Hire Performance Team Sequence

Build a paid team in order: data-driven generalist, then creative, then a dedicated data scientist

Marketing3 steps

The True Competition Metric

Use auction-insights math to tell a genuine competitive threat from a harmless close-variant accident

Two-Day Work-Test Hire

Bring finalists on-site for two days to do a real end-to-end project — it screens skill and fit at once.

When to Hire Your First PM

Stay founder-as-PM until bottlenecks, hijacked eng/design, or new customer segments force the hire