Four months from now the book is out. I have been writing this newsletter since April, testing the arguments, watching them land. Some of you have been here from the start. If so, you know what is coming. If not, the back catalogue starts with “It was fine last time” and works forward.
This post is not about the argument. You have had the argument. This one is about the cost of writing it down.
Two years. That is what the book took. Not two years of full-time writing. Two years of running Orca, co-running Enterprise Skills, advising clients, chairing a committee at the Worshipful Company of Entrepreneurs, and writing a book in the gaps. Weekends. Evenings. The hour between the last client call and dinner. Early mornings when the house was quiet and the argument was loud.
Vicky read every draft. She did not tell me it was good. She told me when it was not clear. That is more useful and harder to hear.
The Next Rung is a book on how AI is quietly dismantling the middle of knowledge work, and what you can do about it before the market decides for you: pre-order it before it publishes in January.
The thing I did not expect: writing the book changed what I saw in the business. I could not build Orca without seeing Sarah. I could not advise agency owners without seeing the quiet squeeze. The book made the contradiction louder, not quieter. Every client conversation became a data point. Every product improvement became evidence.
I could have kept quiet. Orca is a decent product. The clients are happy. The business works. Nobody asked me to write a book explaining that the technology I sell is going to displace millions of knowledge workers. That is not a natural marketing strategy.
But the honesty is the position. It is the only position I could find that did not require me to pretend I did not see what I was seeing. I am building the loom. I know it. The book is what happens when you decide to say that out loud instead of hoping nobody notices.
Here is what it taught me.
The Next Rung is a book on how AI is quietly dismantling the middle of knowledge work, and what you can do about it before the market decides for you: pre-order it before it publishes in January.
The people who are going to be fine are not the ones with the best skills. They are the ones with the most runway. A partner in a different sector. Some savings. A trade. A network that is not just LinkedIn connections. What separates the five from the one, in Chapter 11, is not talent or effort. It is what was standing near each of them when the floor gave way.
That is the hardest thing in the book. Not the economics. Not the data. The fact that outcomes depend more on circumstance than on individual action. The book gives you the honest audit and the positioning tracks because those are the things you can control. But it does not pretend that everyone starts from the same place. Ryan did not.
Writing about Ryan was the worst part. Not because his story is dramatic. Because it is quiet. Three platform jobs. £18,000 a year. Rent at 63 per cent. £400 in savings. No way out that does not require resources he does not have. The book includes him because leaving him out would have been dishonest. He is the one in six.
Four months. The pre-order is live.
If you have been reading since April, you know what is in this book. The absorption mechanism breaking. The mortgage problem. The trades inversion. The honest audit. The builder’s dilemma. The question of who captures the surplus.
If you have not been reading since April, start with “It was fine last time” and work forward. The argument builds. It was designed to.
The career ladder is dissolving. The book maps what comes next. I wrote it because I could not not write it, which is the only honest reason to write anything.