The other day I was listening to the Acquired podcast. I’ve mentioned that one before, I’ve been an Acquired fanboy for about two years or so.

I listen to a lot of the episodes two times, with the second listening usually being a few months after initial release. Since the podcasts are usually 3-4 hours each, that means I listen to a lot of Acquired.

The particular episode I was listening to the other day was the one on Epic, a health care software system used by a lot of hospitals in the US. They were describing the loss of a particular government contract, and how a lot of people at Epic were very glad that Epic had lost that bid, that Epic had dodged a bullet. The company that won the contract has since been bought and is no longer in existence — it was absorbed by its buyer.

This brings me to one of my favorite themes of the podcast: The penalty for deviation (from one’s strategy) is death. They never say that explicitly — these are my words, not theirs.

I have my own experience with this. In 2022, 2023, and 2024, I deviated greatly from my strategy. The result was that 2024 and 2025 were a couple of the worst years of my life. In fact, on 18 November, 2025, I thought I was within 24 hours of packing it in and giving up, after 20 years of self-employment.

My point here for you and your presentations and communications is that there are, most likely, some red lines that you absolutely will not cross. In fact, Alper and I discussed pretty much this same thing on a recent episode of the podcast. Whatever those red lines are for you, know what they are and do not cross them, no matter how difficult the circumstances become sometimes.

As they say, “the penalty for deviation is death.”