hi, properly this time ↓
I'm Ash.
Mostly curious for a living.
hi, it's me
I didn't set out to do any of this.
I've spent about fifteen years quietly in the background of other people's businesses. More than 500 of them, if I'm counting: scrappy startups, hundred-million-dollar companies, four languages, a handful of continents. Brand, strategy, customer acquisition, retention, the whole unglamorous middle.
I mention it mostly so it's clear I didn't wake up an expert last Tuesday. The rest of this page should make more sense now!
Somewhere across all those businesses, I kept noticing the same thing. The ones I admired were rarely the loudest... they were the ones with a strange, specific point of view, and a handful of people who'd randomly recommend them at dinner.
The more I followed that thread, the more obvious it got: the internet wasn't actually rewarding the biggest accounts anymore. It was rewarding the most trusted ones. Those two things used to overlap. Now, less and less.
"huh. that's interesting." (me, probably four hundred times)
Eventually I needed a way to talk about it that didn't sound like a LinkedIn post, so I started calling it the Recommendation Economy. The name stuck, mostly because it neatly encompasses the opportunities anyone can reach out and grab.
So this site exists for a slightly unglamorous reason: I'm working it out, in public, alongside whoever else finds it interesting enough to explore.
If you've been noticing the same thing, welcome. The kettle's on.
on my actual desk, right now ↓
If any of this sounds like the kind of person you'd want to grab a coffee with...
Want to know what I'm currently obsessed with?
Every few weeks I stumble across an idea, a study, a small marketing experiment, or a random observation that subtly changes how I see business.
When that happens, I write about it. There's no set schedule or content calendar. Just interesting things, when there's something actually worth saying.
No tracking pixels following you around the internet.