AI · Web guide
The Brick-and-Mortar AI Audit
Twenty questions to figure out where AI actually belongs in a physical-economy business — and where the vendors are selling theatre.
Read
18 min
For
Non-tech ops
Pillar
AI for the physical economy
Resources
Playbooks,
guides,
articles.
Written for operators who actually have to ship. Grab a free playbook — drop your details and the file lands in your inbox — or read the articles below, filed by practice.
Agency · Web guide
The AI Agency Playbook
How non-tech agencies adopt AI without losing margin. Pricing, hiring, the new stack, the client conversations.
Read
22 min
For
Agency founders
Pillar
AI-native agency
GTM · Diagnostic + worksheets
GTM for the Physical Economy
A founder's diagnostic. Channel-by-channel assessment with worksheets for logistics, retail, services and manufacturing.
Read
16 min
For
Founders, GTM leads
Pillar
GTM
AI · Stack + prompt templates
The Operator's AI Stack
Tools, prompts and workflows we run at Rope — the architecture, the prompt templates, and the weekly review loop that makes them compound.
Read
17 min
For
Builders, marketers
Pillar
AI
Visa · Apply + move guide
Digital Nomad's Malaysia Visa Guide
Malaysia's DE Rantau Nomad Pass, end to end — the application that gets approved, then choosing an apartment (even from abroad), the lease, and settling into Kuala Lumpur. Cross-promotion for NomadsVisa.
Read
22 min
For
Anyone applying, worldwide
Pillar
Cross-audience
Articles · by practice
AI
What 'AI transformation' actually means for a business that doesn't ship software
Pillar — the AI-native agency thesis, applied to logistics, retail, manufacturing, hospitality and field services. Where the deployments actually pay back.
2026-05-1818 min →
GTM
Why most founder GTM problems are actually distribution problems
Pillar — founder go-to-market is almost never a brand problem or a positioning problem. It's a distribution problem dressed up in marketing language.
2026-05-1516 min →
SEO
The case for product-led SEO in 2026
If your search strategy still ends at "publish more content", you're already losing share to teams treating SEO as a product surface.
2026-05-127 min →
Business Strategy
What an AI-native agency looks like in 2026 — and why your current agency isn't one
Pillar — the agency model is changing. Most agencies bolting AI onto a 2018 service menu are about to be eaten. Here's what a real AI-native shop actually looks like.
2026-05-1020 min →
GTM
ICP is a verb, not a slide
The mistake most early teams make: writing the ICP, framing it, never touching it again. Here's the cadence that actually moves the funnel.
2026-05-029 min →
AI
The agent stack I actually run my consulting on
Less theatre, more receipts. The exact tools, prompts and review loops behind the practice.
2026-04-2811 min →
Personal Finance
The operator's tax stack, demystified
Pensions, ISAs, EIS, dividends. What founders quietly use to keep more of what they make. UK-specific, no jargon.
2026-04-148 min →
VC
What I look for as a scout (and what I ignore)
The signals that actually predict survival at pre-seed — and the ones every deck still leans on for no reason.
2026-04-026 min →
Business Strategy
Two questions that make most strategy decks redundant
If you can't answer them in a sentence each, you don't have a strategy — you have a wishlist with bullet points.
2026-03-205 min →
Workshops
How I run a GTM teardown in 90 minutes
The exact format, the questions, the artifacts the team leaves with. Steal it.
2026-03-1110 min →
SEO
Topical authority, after AI overviews
Coverage still wins — but the unit of coverage changed. A practical framework for clustering in the answer era.
2026-02-2812 min →
Personal Finance
Equity is not money (yet)
How to size your cash position when 60% of your "net worth" is on a cap table that hasn't cleared a liquidity event.
2026-02-147 min →
Why I gate these
These take real time to write. The email gate keeps me writing more of them, and you get me in your inbox every other Tuesday with one piece worth reading. No newsletter sequence on autopilot; no “5 ways to” lists. Unsubscribe whenever you stop finding it useful — I check the rate, it tells me whether the work’s landing.