Forrester’s legacy; burgeoning audiobooks; Boundless greed: Newsletter 4 June 2025
Newsletter 97: Two decades of persistent value from my long analyst gig. Plus, in defense of a dash, hallucinatory “formatting issues,” three people to follow and three books to read.
How 20 years at Forrester changed my life
I spent 20 years at one company: Forrester. It’s been 10 years since I left. When I look back, the true value I reaped isn’t at all what it appeared to be as I was experiencing my work there.
If you’re in a position to have a long tenure at one company, it’s worth attempting to imagine yourself looking back after a long run and figuring out what you would be getting out of it.
To be clear, I almost didn’t take the Forrester job in 1995. I was in an unpaid cofounder role at a startup at the time, but that startup never actually got off the ground; it took Forrester and me four interviews over three months to decide we liked each other. I was certain when I took the job that it would soon be a good gateway to getting hired at my next company, but in 20 years there never was a next company.
In order of importance, here are the most important and valued things I got from Forrester over 20 years:
- A sterling network. Forrester is a hive of extremely smart people working with extremely smart executive clients. During my tenure I developed close relationships with some incredible folks and less intense relationships with hundreds of business people across many countries and industries. That network is my most valuable asset; most of my successful post-Forrester business helping writers and corporate leaders arises from that network. Many of the senior people I connected with are now reaching retirement age, but lots of the younger people have become leaders in their own right.
- Learning how to think. Forrester only publishes new, well-supported, battle-tested ideas that impact whole industries. That is not easy to do. My managers taught me the best ways to do that kind of thinking, partly by looking at my weaker and less-supported ideas and saying, “That’s not good enough.” I learned from those senior managers; I learned from watching how clients and press reacted to those ideas; then I learned by teaching those thought principles to others. I also learned to do financial modeling and to conduct and interpret surveys, skills that remain valuable.
- Learning how to write. I was a very good writer when I got to Forrester. It’s arguable that I was the most talented writer they ever hired. But what I knew how to write was not up to their standards, where clients pay an awful lot for pithy, well-argued writing that’s free of platitudes. I learned quickly to internalize their logical, front-loaded, active-voice, brief, lively, bulleted style. It’s time to admit the truth: Most of my book Writing Without Bullshit is based on what I learned there. Now that I make my living as a writer, editor, and idea shepherd, that skill is priceless.
- Learning how to speak. I was a barely acceptable public speaker when I joined the company. They trained me up (thanks Dr. Dennis Becker ). By the end I was getting high marks for speeches in front of big audiences, and doing quite well in small groups of important people. (A talk in a private dining room at Condé Nast to David Remnick, Anna Wintour, and Tom Florio comes to mind.)
- A reputation. Forrester made me a name. I was the top technology analyst covering the TV industry; everybody in that space knew me. I coauthored a book on social media and became a bestselling author. To this day, 17 years after that book, Groundswell, was published, people tell me it had a big impact on them and show me their copies. (And thanks as well to my coauthor Charlene Li who taught me about social media, which I then leveraged to boost that reputation.) Respect starts with reputation; Forrester gave me a platform to create one.
- Financial security. Even though I’d worked in startups before Forrester, none of them has generated enough of a payoff to change my financial condition. Forrester did. Twenty years of stock grants, a solid salary, and bonuses, combined with my natural inclination to spend and invest conservatively, gave me a financial cushion. I own my house, paid for my kids’ college tuition, and have a solid set of investments for my retirement. I’m not buy-whatever-you-want rich, but I’m secure, and that gives you the ability make choices and take risks.
This isn’t just about my gratitude to Forrester. It’s for you, too. Think a moment. Have you found the place you’ll spend the next decade or so? If you did spend a few decades at one company, what would you take away from that? How would it change you into what you hoped you could be?
If you’re not at that place yet, look for it. If you are, remember that every report you write, every connection you make, every skill you develop are foundational to your next incarnation. Doing the work well isn’t just about doing well for your bosses, it’s about creating a career that matters.
News for writers and others who think
Benjamin Dreyer, the ultimate authority on grammar and writing, weighs in on the overblown controversy about AI-generated em-dashes. “It irks me no end, I must note, that well-intentioned and presumably honest students (and others) should have to spend an iota of an atom of a second second-guessing their writing for fear that someone who might as well be brandishing a divining rod or a planchette is going to indict them for cheating over the wielding of a piece of punctuation so utterly commonplace that, as I joked with dead seriousness a few years ago, ‘you don’t need much advice from me on how to use em dashes, because you all seem to use an awful lot of them.’ ” Dashes are fine, just don’t overdo it.
The AUDIO PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION issued a research report that states that audiobook sales grew 13%, to an astounding $2.2 billion. By comparison, the whole US publishing industry is $14 billion. Are you listening yet?
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt referred to multiple citations to nonexistent papers in the Health & Human Services Department’s “Make America Healthy Again” report as “some formatting issues.” (Truth is not a formatting issue.)
File under scoundrels: The crowdfunding publisher “Unbound” goes bankrupt. The CEO Archna Sharma starts a new company called “Boundless” and buys its assets. Then he sends a letter saying he can’t pay authors whose rights he now owns any of their back royalties. (Didn’t we see almost this same scenario with Scribe?) Authors, if you’re working with a non-traditional publisher, it really pays to check their financial standing.
Three people to follow
David M. Ewalt , former Gizmodo editor, now editor of Scientific American
Mark Schaefer , audacious marketing author
Jennifer Benz , survey and statistics guru at NORC
Three books to read
Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr (St. Martin’s, 2021). Strategies from inside Amazon’s incredible business decision machine.
Deliberately Different: Fifty Years. Two Generations. Leading in a Changing World. by Judith M. von Seldeneck and Aileen Alexander (Amplify, 2025). Amazing story of the feminist icon who built an executive search behemoth — and the military veteran who’s now taking it into the 21st century.
The Social Fact: News and Knowledge in a Networked World by John Wihbey (MIT Press, 2019). Cogent analysis of a big question: is journalism incompatible with social media?