There's a line people in the field repeat: you can take the man out of intelligence, but you can't take intelligence out of the man. I used to think it was a cliché. Now I know it's just true.
It isn't a job you do and then stop. It's a mindset you spend years building — first you're obsessed with it, then you read everything you can get your hands on, learning the craft from the handful of people good enough, and disciplined enough, to publish it. Once it's in, it doesn't leave.
There's a lot about that work I won't get into here. But the part that followed me everywhere is simple: you stop trusting data.
Doubt as a default
The core of the job is doubting every single piece of information that crosses your desk. Is it real? Is it current? Who does it serve? And the one that matters most: does it actually change anything, or does it just feel like it does?
You learn that because in that world, being wrong about a signal isn't a missed quarter. It can be someone's life. That stake never fully leaves you — it rewires your sense of proportion. To this day, when someone tells me a deal is "urgent," I have a small internal laugh I keep to myself. Not because I don't take it seriously; I do. But I've held urgent in my hands, and a slipping close date isn't it. The training makes you take the step back, always, before you react.
That step back is the whole edge. Most of go-to-market is people reacting at full speed to data they never questioned.
Why, what, and where
I was also a journalist and an investigator, so I've lived in two obsessions, and GTM is a third.
Journalism is obsessed with why. Why did this happen, who benefits, what's underneath it — you dig backwards until it makes sense. It's relentless, and it keeps you honest about your sources.
Intelligence is obsessed with what — specifically, what's coming. The point isn't to explain an event after it lands; it's to see it forming and act before it does. The best outcome in intelligence is the thing that doesn't happen because someone caught it early. Anticipation, not autopsy.
Go-to-market is obsessed with where and how. You already know the buyers exist. The whole problem is finding them, and reaching them, before anyone else does.
I run all three now. GTM is where I hunt. Intelligence is the anticipation underneath it — catching the account while the signal is still forming, not after they've bought from someone else. And journalism is the why that stops me trusting a number just because it's sitting on a dashboard.
MICE, for buyers
Intelligence has an old framework for why a human source cooperates: MICE — Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego. Textbook stuff. What surprised me is how cleanly it maps onto why a buyer engages.
Money. The offer, the incentive, the commercial case. Real, but the weakest lever on its own.
Ideology. Alignment — with where the business is going, with how they already see the world. People move when your thing fits the story they're already telling themselves.
Coercion. Doesn't apply. And shouldn't. The second a buyer feels pressured, you've lost — that's the line where it stops being intelligence and becomes spam. Cross it off.
Ego. The strongest one, and the hardest to do well. You make the person the hero of the decision: the win, the credit, the impact on their team, the quiet promotion that comes from being the one who found you. The whole reframe is this — they aren't doing you a favour by replying. You're doing them one. Land that without ever saying it out loud, and you barely have to sell.
Three of the four travel intact. The one you drop — coercion — is exactly what separates a good operator from a desperate one.
The discipline never leaves
That's the honest version. Not tradecraft, not war stories — a mindset that doesn't switch off. Doubt the data. Watch for what's forming. Make the other person the hero. Take the step back before you react.
Same mind, different target. I just point it at revenue now — and these days, nobody's life depends on me reading the signal right. Most days, that's a relief.