The Reid Sterling Blog
Savage, data-dense dispatches on AI disruption, the consulting industry cartel, and how neurodivergent entrepreneurs are the only people laughing right now. No filler. No corporate theater.
The confusion in the boardroom isn't a side effect of consulting. It's the product. MIT analyzed 10 million words of legal contracts and proved the incomprehensibility is engineered. This is the 700-year history of a racket that still runs — and the off switch they don't want you to find.
Nobody sent a memo. Entry-level job postings dropped 45% in one quarter. Not moved overseas. Gone. The Goldman Sachs 300M number unpacked, AIRD explained, and the three-sentence way through.
The DRD4 7R Nomad Gene. The Ariaal tribe study. The Hunter/Farmer framework. The science finally caught up with what every ADHD entrepreneur already knew: same gene, two environments, completely opposite outcomes.
Decoding the anatomy of consulting theater — the four-quadrant matrix, the "Strategic Maturation Pathway," and the deliberate exploitation of complexity bias. Your confusion is not a bug. It's the business model.
Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, the IMF, and Dario Amodei all said it in different words. What 300 million looks like in human terms, why conservative institutions still understate it, and why the optimistic framing is the most dangerous lie in circulation.
The PINCH Ignition System. Novelty injection, deadline architecture, stakes manufacturing. How to engineer the environmental triggers that fire the Hunter engine — and why a 38-hour market launch beats a six-month product roadmap.
If MIT proved that legalese is deliberately bad writing, then AI that strips it to plain English is the actual solution. The Solo Operator's Legal Stack, the Retainer Autopsy, and the Firing Script framework.
The machine's catastrophic structural weakness: it can build anything, and it has no idea what to build. The Architect vs. The Analyst. Why domain expertise is the only truly non-automatable asset, and how to price it accordingly.
60-80% operating margins. Zero headcount overhead. No approval chains. The tactical how-to of the Solo Operator model — the Consultant Killer Stack, AI agents at scale, and the 90-Day Escape Plan.
The people who did everything right. The debt, the sacrifice, the delayed gratification. The market that changed while they were complying. Acknowledge the betrayal fully — then turn. This is the three-act structure of survival.