Notes from the highway.
I spent twenty nine years on the highway, building the systems and waving people up onto them. These are the notes from that side of the median: what the record keeps, what it throws away, and what changes now that it can write itself. One at a time, as they come. No list, no sequence.
The one that explains the name.
I was the highway guy.
Christopher O'Donnell at Day wrote half an hour on life after CRM and closed by telling you to send it to whoever runs yours. For twenty nine years that was me. This is the same argument from the road: the road and the highway, one real call and what the record kept of it, and the on-ramp between them.
Every note since starts from the same two pictures. The highway is the forecast, the pipeline and the dashboard. The road is the customer, the call and the Friday. For most of my career the only thing that crossed the median was a person who stopped driving to type. These are notes about what happens now that the record can read the driving.
Newest first.
- Nov 2026Day put a guy on the ramp.
Day's new Super plan, read from the road: a person from Day on the ramp, lookalikes that need a likeness first, and why it comes last in the order.
- Sep 2026The middle changed jobs.
The old flywheel put a database in the middle. The new shape puts something that has read every conversation there, and every motion around it changes.
- Sep 2026How to build your own YouSpot.
A second brain out of your own mail, calendar and contacts, in an afternoon. Four steps, and the three things no assembly fixes.
- Sep 2026I was the highway guy.
Life after CRM, from the road. Twenty nine years of asking the road to type, one real call and what the record kept of it, and the on-ramp.
- Sep 2026Can you prove where your pipeline numbers came from?
Being right and showing your work are two different problems. The four link chain behind any figure, and what it costs the year somebody asks properly.
- Sep 2026The only person who understands your CRM is leaving.
Code can be read. What a record means cannot. What leaves with the person who built it, and what a two week notice buys.
- Sep 2026Should you build your own CRM?
Build the tools, never the record. Where the line sits, four signs you crossed it, and what a homemade record costs every year after the build.
Every note carries the date it went up. If a vendor's page is quoted, the note says the day it was read, because those pages move.
Send it to whoever runs your CRM.
That is the only distribution these have. There is no list to join and nothing automated behind the page. If somebody sent you one of these, they think the person who runs the record is you, and I have been you. Thirty minutes, on the phone or on a video call, whichever you hate less.