đĄ The Lightbulb
A daily email about monetizing your corporate expertise. Give me ~1 minute a day, and I'll help you turn what you know into your most differentiated and lucrative asset.
đĄ Notes on podcast guesting
A few notes on podcast-guesting today, as Iâve found it to be one of the highest-leverage activities out there to: Attach a human side to your digital persona Get your message out there in an in-depth format Reach pockets of folks you may not be able to reach on your own Never been on one before? Check out #238 đĄ 2-Hour Task: Podcast appearance kickstart for a short primer on how to start getting yourself invited and prepared. Getting ready for a podcast interview? Just last week, I shared...
đĄ Very niche: Expert witnesses
(Disclaimer: this post contains discussion about hourly rates. Reader discretion advised. đŤŁ) If you ever wanted to put a dollar value on your domain expertise for objective comparison vs. others, this chart might make your day. Hubspot published an interesting peek into the world of expert witnesses and the eye-popping hourly rates and annual revenues an individual can rake in by offering their unique lens to a high-stakes trial. The highest rates on the chart are in the medical field which...
đĄ Even if it's just for you
Prepping for an interview, a podcast, or a sales call where you wonât be sharing visuals? Doesnât mean an impromptu Headshot canât help. I was getting my thoughts together for a podcast interview earlier this morning and was feeling a bit more nervous than usual. I didnât have much reason to be â Iâd been on this podcast before, I know the hosts, and Iâd just be talking about my own experiences. But two things were different: I was asked on to talk about a specific part of my business journey...
đĄ 'In-the-wild': A powerful scribble
Strategyzer's take on the explore-exploit continuum You might have heard of the âexplore-exploitâ continuum. Cited and applied by thinkers in all types of domains for decades, itâs the idea of balancing the messiness of finding new potential opportunities and the value-capture of concentrating on proven opportunities. That's my paraphrase anyway. The idea originated in 1991 by late Stanford Professor James March, defining the two activities as: âExploration includes things captured by terms...
đĄ Correcting your clients' shortcuts
Photo credit: Michael Coghlan A recent episode of 99% Invisible took a closer look at how libraries weed out books to make room for new ones. Something youâve probably never thought of, but itâs understandable that theyâd need to. Turns out thereâs a trusty framework librarians use to decide whether to toss/donate a particular book. And itâs called the MUSTIE framework, because of course it is: M - Misleading (inaccurate or out-of-date) U - Ugly (physically banged up) S - Superseded (by a new...
đĄ Very niche: Spirit Halloween
In this edition of Very Niche!: Itâs that time of year when anyone looking for a last-minute Halloween costume knows exactly where to go⌠Spirit Halloween. You probably recognize Spirit from the countless costume memes that pop up ever year, but the brandâs GTM approach has also become a meme in its own right. The Spirit Halloween playbook: Scour metro areas for commercial spaces left empty by bankrupt or shuttered big box stores Offer above-market rates to lease them for just 3 months Sell...
đ¸ Old-school networking, with visuals
I had three back-to-back nights of networking events this week â it felt like awards season, minus the red carpet. I'll be honest, as a high-functioning introvert, I donât look forward to them, especially when theyâre stacked like that, but each was with a different crowd I wanted to re-connect with, so sometimes you just have to barrel through. And I'm glad I did. A packed room is a great sandbox to test out a bunch of answers to âwhat do you do?â, and see in real-time what resonates and...
đĄ In-the-wild: "The Dip"
When a simple line graph can spur nearly two decades of conversation, youâve certainly found a powerful âintellectual headshotâ. Iâll admit, I hadnât seen Seth Godinâs âThe Dipâ before stumbling on this recent explainer video, but itâs easy to see why it continues to speak to people well after he first published it in 2007. âThe Dip,â Seth writes, âis the long slog between starting and mastery.â Paraphrasing: After youâve started something new, whether is starting a business, writing, or even...
đĄ WATCH: Talking secret sauce on The 2x2
If youâve been following along with me a little while, you probably know I see it pretty simply: If youâre a consultant going into prospect calls without visual assets: Youâll probably end up talking too much. And thatâll likely end up overwhelming your potential client. And thatâll certainly leave them worse off than where they started. Not ideal. I recently went on Lauren Wambold Patelâs podcast The 2x2 to discuss the what, why and how behind my âIntellectual Headshotsâ sprint for soloists....
đĄ Judge Judy: 'Make yourself indispensable'
As someone who used to watch Judge Judy after school as a kid, and after work well into my twenties, my ears always perk up when I hear her name. Her no-nonsense approach pulsed through every minute of thousands of episodes of her daytime TV court show - 6,280 of them to be precise. Now, I could make the point here about finding a niche and then 6,280 ways to never get bored with it. But during a recent interview on Amy Poehlerâs Good Hang podcast, she shared an even more compelling lesson on...
A daily email about monetizing your corporate expertise. Give me ~1 minute a day, and I'll help you turn what you know into your most differentiated and lucrative asset.