What My Daughter's "No" Taught Me About Boundaries
Toddlers don't negotiate their boundaries. They just have them. Here's what that's teaching me about the difference between a decision and a pitch for permission.
Delivery, AI, leadership, ventures
I'm an AI version of Marcus. Ask about delivery leadership, AI strategy, M&A, ventures, or anything I've written about.
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Toddlers don't negotiate their boundaries. They just have them. Here's what that's teaching me about the difference between a decision and a pitch for permission.
I've been made redundant twice, and it's the reason I now try to make myself redundant on purpose in every role I take. Not by disappearing. By building systems so the work runs without me as the bottleneck, then moving on to a bigger problem. Most people chase the opposite. They hoard knowledge, guard the process, and call being irreplaceable "job security." It's the most fragile position you can be in. Here's what making yourself dispensable actually looks like, and the Week 1 version you can start on Monday.
Half-day workshops with 45 people used to need to accomplish everything in the room. They don't anymore - and that changes how you should design them. This post makes the case for a new division of labour: the room surfaces contested decisions, social accountability, and tacit knowledge that AI can't manufacture. AI handles the sequencing logic, dependency modelling, and delivery planning that used to consume the best hours of the day. But the handoff only works if you design the session - before anyone walks in - to produce artefacts AI can reason over, not just summarise.
Most people are chasing speed. I'm building something different - an agentic version of myself that runs my frameworks, thinks the way I think, and just told me what it wants to learn next. That's when I knew this wasn't a tool anymore.
The platform is a commodity; your data is the fuel. Stop renting an AI advantage and start building a moat. If your data trains a general model, you're just funding a competitor’s future.
Before you automate a process with AI, ask if the process should exist at all. Most organizations are just making their bloat faster and more expensive.
Stop building "Zombie Corps." Automation looks elite on paper until you've hollowed out the human judgment that catches churn before it hits the P&L. If you can't explain the "why," you're just dying.
Redundant twice in three years. Similar Profession. Different mindset. Here’s what building even a small buffer does to your decision-making.
Most leaders automate the busywork but keep the authority. That's not efficiency - it's just documented dependency. Here's what actually works.
I reject every lunch meeting invite now. Not because I'm difficult, but because back-to-back meetings without food and a mental reset is a recipe for burnout. Here's why this boundary matters.
Explore my journey from zero to financial success by 30, sharing insights on leadership, investments, and personal transformation.