Dear Decision Maker Intelligence-Driven Business Development Your competitors are making million-dollar decisions based on incomplete information. You don't have to. Most business development follows the same playbook: Market research Competitive analysis Sales pipelines Cold outreach It's systematic. It's measurable. It's completely blind to what's actually happening on the ground. Here's what that costs you: You enter markets 6 months after the real opportunity window closed. You target...
11 days ago • 2 min read
Dear Decision Makers Most intelligence companies make incremental changes. We’re rebuilding from the ground up. After running Grey Dynamics for almost 10 years, I’ve learned something critical: junior analysts produce good work. But clients don’t need good. They need ground truth from people who’ve spent decades in the arena. Here’s what’s changing in 2025. Publications: From Good to Elite We’re winding down our junior analyst program. Starting next month, our reports come from seasoned...
18 days ago • 2 min read
Dear Decision Maker, The intelligence industry is stuck in a 1980s mindset. Massive teams. Endless reports. Six-month assessments. Bureaucratic approval chains. It's not working anymore. Last month, a client showed me their internal intelligence division. Forty-three analysts. Annual budget north of $8M. Impressive org chart. State-of-the-art OSINT tools. They asked us to evaluate their Africa strategy. Their team spent 6 weeks producing a 180-page assessment. Every data point verified. Every...
25 days ago • 2 min read
Dear Decision Maker, Thank you. To everyone who put their faith in us this year. Subscribers, clients, students. It means more than I can say. We broke records. Revenue we've never seen. But the numbers don't tell the whole story... The Hard Lessons Last year (2024). I started an AI venture with people I believed in. We pitched investors, got warm responses, thought we were on our way. This all happened while launching the Intelligence School and while our son—my first baby—was being born....
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Dear Decision Maker, You're spending millions on intelligence. And still making decisions blind. I've audited intelligence operations for Fortune 500 companies, private equity firms, and defense contractors. The pattern is always the same. They think they have intelligence. What they actually have is expensive confirmation bias. Here's the hard truth: Most corporate intelligence functions exist to validate decisions executives already made, not to inform them. That's not intelligence. That's...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Dear Decision Maker, Intelligence networks aren't built on contracts. They're built on trust. And trust isn't something you buy. It's something you earn. I've spent almost 20 years building intelligence networks across 20+ countries. The sources who've given me the most valuable intelligence never started by asking about money. They asked: "Will you protect me?" Because trust in intelligence means something different than trust in business. It means: Your source's safety depends on your...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Dear Decision Maker, Western intelligence has a blind spot problem. And it's costing companies millions. I've spent almost 2 decades in intelligence, moving from government to private sector work. The most valuable lesson I learned? The best intelligence doesn't come from the most credentials. It comes from the most perspectives. Last year, a European energy company asked us to assess political risk for a major infrastructure project in East Africa. They'd already paid a top-tier Western...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Decision Maker, Everyone’s watching the same indicators. Market reports. Quarterly earnings. Regulatory filings. Stock movements. By the time these signals appear, the opportunity is gone Real intelligence doesn’t come from what’s published. It comes from what’s changing before anyone publishes it. Three months ago, a client asked us to assess a West African market they’d been tracking for years. Every conventional indicator said “wait.” GDP growth flat. Currency unstable. Political...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Decision Maker, Most companies treat intelligence as an expense. A necessary cost. A risk mitigation tool. Something you budget for and hope you never really need. They're looking at it backwards. A private equity firm came to us last year evaluating a $50M acquisition in Sub-Saharan Africa. Their standard due diligence said everything checked out. Financial statements clean. Legal compliance confirmed. Market position validated. They were ready to close. We charged them $120,000 for...
3 months ago • 1 min read