The problem is almost never where you think it is.

A woman texted me at 11:00 AM on a Tuesday.

“My mother crochets bags. Can this become a business?”

I reread the message three times. Not because it was complicated, but because it was the wrong question, and that’s much more interesting.

The right question was different: under what conditions does it make sense to build something around the work of a single artisan, 10–15 hours a week, without consuming the only thing that makes it possible?

When the question changed, everything changed. The main constraint—one person, little time, no possibility of industrial scale—became the main differentiator. Scarcity wasn’t the problem. It was the answer.

This almost always happens. Not because people aren’t intelligent, but because those inside a system can’t see its structure as clearly as those inside. It’s not a flaw. It’s geometry.

I understood how systems work by studying ecosystems. Not as a metaphor, but as a real structure. A forest doesn’t optimize. Find balance. When a balance no longer holds, the system reshapes itself—slowly, or all at once, depending on how long it waited.

Organizations work exactly like this.

The first conversation I have with someone lasts 45 minutes. Usually, in the first ten, the real question emerges—the one that was underneath the one they brought to me.

From there, we start. Sometimes it’s enough. Sometimes it’s the beginning of something longer. In both cases, in the end, you learn something you didn’t know before.