For years, I have said that a brilliant answer to the wrong question is still worthless. That was true long before AI. It matters even more now because AI can produce an answer so quickly, confidently, and professionally that we may never stop to ask whether it solved the right problem. A weak prompt can produce a meaningless answer. A poorly defined business problem can produce something more dangerous: a polished skill that repeatedly solves the wrong thing. The Question...

This week’s Raising the Barr is intentionally different. In the spirit of Rosh Hashanah, I am sharing one article without the usual carousel or video, leaving more room for reflection. For most of my life, reflection was a private meeting between me and myself. I never questioned the obvious conflict of interest. I was the person under examination, but I also controlled the questions. I presented the evidence, explained the circumstances, defended my decisions, and delivered the verdict. That arrangement...

Last week I did something in a live AI Insider Lab session that I could not rehearse, could not edit, and could not rescue if it went badly. I put a real business on the screen in front of a room of experienced consultants and let AI take its marketing plan apart. Patrick and Barbara Lyons volunteered: Barbara Lyons Mulvey Interiors. Barbara has spent twelve years in interior design. She is a color expert, and she can walk into a...

Last week I told you I would settle one question live, in front of a room, and report back today. The question was whether the AI Insider Lab is the umbrella over everything I do or one of the pieces underneath it. I named a second question behind it, about pricing and what a client actually thinks they are buying. The first question did not get settled during the live session. The second one broke wide open instead. I went...

This issue does not end with an answer. That is deliberate. For more than thirteen years I have arrived in your inbox with a position. Something I had already worked out, tested, and was prepared to defend. This week I am arriving with a decision that is wide open, and tomorrow afternoon I am going to work it in front of a room of people with AI arguing against me the entire way. Start with what I told you last...

AI will agree with you. Ask it for feedback, a second opinion, a pressure test on your best idea, and the first thing back is some version of yes. Good thinking. Strong point. You are on the right track. That is not the AI being honest. It is the AI being built. Standard models learn from human feedback, and human feedback rewards the answer that pleases. Agreement scores well. Disagreement feels like friction, so training optimizes it out. There is...

Two members of the AI Insider Lab came in from different backgrounds, different skill levels, different expertise. They ran the same process and walked out with results that had almost nothing in common. One left with a metaphor that changed how he thinks about leverage. The other left claiming a tenfold jump in impact against effort. Neither outcome was promised. Neither was an accident. Together they prove something most people miss when they judge whether an AI program works. The...

In recent AI Insider Lab sessions, the same realization has surfaced from completely different directions, in completely different industries. One member named four decades of accumulated knowledge that had never been written down. Another named an entire career of pricing intellectual property that lived only in their head. A third described years of thinking scattered across notebooks and folders with no structure connecting any of it. A fourth named a career spent distilling judgment that only they could access. Different...

I started creating content. Then I hit a wall I didn’t see coming. Last week I wrote about my commitment to raise my visibility. I shared that commitment publicly, with full agreement from the toughest critic I know: myself. I then built my content rhythm calendar to hold me to it. There was no more hiding behind busy weeks, many client projects, or even better timing. The pressure was real. The September 4 launch of the second AI Insider Lab...

The Fourteen-Year Blind Spot Fourteen years. That’s how long I’ve been publishing remarkable thinking into inboxes every Wednesday without fail. Clients knew me. My network knew me. But the market, the consultants, advisors, and thought leaders actually struggling with invisibility, had no idea I existed. Here is what makes this worse. For years, I’ve helped my clients do exactly what I’m describing: create vast amounts of remarkable content, publish across platforms, build digital presence that compounds. I built the system....