Mike Millett and Elevate or Vanish
The business transformation thesis. Trust creates momentum.
Elevate or Vanish is Mike's business transformation thesis and a free book. Its argument is that markets rarely announce the moment a business becomes outdated. Perception shifts first, expectations change, competitors become easier to understand, and technology changes how businesses are found and evaluated. A business can adapt deliberately, or wait until the market forces the decision.
Trust creates momentum.
Customers move toward brands they trust.
Elevate or Vanish
Why he wrote it
Two experiences sit underneath it, and they point the same way. He watched somebody at the absolute top of a trade get ended by a technology shift he chose not to cross. Being the best at it did not save him. Then, years later, he led the StratusClean repositioning and saw the same shape from the other side: a business the market had stopped categorising correctly, and what it took to fix that.
The StratusClean transformation is the foundational example in the book.