It’s strangely funny how inspiration strikes — and more often interesting what causes it. I don’t know what sparked me to write this book, but I will say a couple things fell into place. At Benmore, as I write this on February 4th, 2026, we are at a crossroads. We just crossed the ten-person headcount. All young people, all in Chicago, all trying to grow our business into the new standard of software consulting. We’ve learned a lot, but most pressing is the need to formalize our ethos, our company values, and our processes.

There’s also been something troubling me for a while. Recently, an article on X (which won the million-dollar award for best article) outlined the catastrophic cancer that modern consulting giants have become. The article, Deloitte, a $74 Billion Cancer Metastasized Across America [20], outlines the pricing model these consulting firms have evolved into. They say yes to everything. Projects go over budget. They demand more money — many times from the American taxpayer — process a change order, and after demanding a couple more million, cancel the project. They make their billions, and the world goes on.

Now I think about that in the lens of Benmore and what we’re trying to do here. I’ve been challenged. In our many projects there is a very common recurring thought: “Damn, if we just said yes to everything and let these projects go to zero, would that make more money for us?” But it can’t, and it’s not good business. So, in light of us needing to outline our ethos anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to write it all down.

I’m going to lay out Benmore’s ethos, methodology, and observations as we grow into a new age of services, a new age of building software, and hopefully a more efficient system for implementing technology as a whole.

Note: You could make an argument that the software landscape is shifting faster than it ever has. Transparently, I have no idea what the space will look like in a month. This is meant to be an observation of what I’m seeing happen right now — an attempt to aggregate trends. Readers, be aware.