💡 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.
💡 Specialize 'as broadly as practical'
Built with napkin.ai (beta) If you’re still feeling like going too narrow on your niche feels risky, or even just uninteresting, you might find this 2020 episode of 2 Bobs helpful. In a lively 30 minute conversation, David C. Baker and Blair Enns broke down the common objections to specialization. Paraphrased they are: I don’t want to be pigeonholed Other successful people aren’t specialized Large consulting firms aren’t specialized I’ll get bored What if there’s a downturn in that niche?...
💡 The "risk" of niching
On face value, choosing a niche seems like a high-risk route. You’re intentionally deprioritizing large swaths of the market who technically are perfectly servable. It seems even more risky if you’re new, running against a short cash runway, and growing desperate for revenue quickly. In financial markets, an investor or lender needs to be compensated for assuming risk — so, assuming that holds... What’s the payoff for the ‘risk’ of niching down? It’s a few things: Concentrated pipeline As you...
💡 The road to originality
Open up LinkedIn on any given day and you’ll be swimming in folks pushing things: Shameless plugs of their services - actually not a terrible place for those Humble-brags of recent successes - some not so humble Networking updates - new jobs, lost jobs, posted jobs Fish through all that, and you’ll get to the actual exchange of ideas. The brave souls willing to put out a POV and brace for reaction and engagement. Sometimes the lack thereof. Now, LinkedIn engagement is a murky algo-driven...
💡 A business recipe
I often equate a consultant’s ’signature point-of-view’ to a favorite recipe. Say you opened a cookie shop based on an old family recipe… You’d be able to bake cookies from it quite naturally… You’d have stories to tell about the origin and evolution of the recipe… You’d have instant differentiation vs. other shops… In short order, the unique cookies become your calling card. And they rarely disappoint. A signature POV is no different. It’s just a framework, process or mental model that sums...
💡 About that big fight...
Netflix had quite a night on Saturday. Perhaps one they'd rather forget. After months of hyping a massively anticipated live boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson, the first live event of its kind on their platform… …the servers gave out, with buffering messages and stall-outs causing intense frustration and catty name-calling from all over the globe. I won't take the bait here and pile on about the importance of trial runs, contingency plans, and expectation setting… I'll even resist...
💡 What you know vs. what you see
Your prospect will listen to you about what you know. Perhaps they'll trust you based on what you’ve done. But they'll become a client based on what you see: The core problem. The moving parts. The avoidable traps. The path to solution. Do you have a crisp articulation of how you see your ideal client’s painful problem? Resumes and stray insights are great. But it’s your signature POV… Immediately applicable to a client’s context... That will motivate them into action, with you. 💡 -Wes...
💡 You're their emotional guide too
Earlier this week, I attended a global town hall for alumni of my old consulting firm. (It’s been over 15 years since I worked for them, and I still try not to miss these - a pretty brilliant engagement strategy on their part.) The prepared remarks were centered around the firm’s POV on the macroeconomic implications of last week’s US election. Rather than the alarmist nature we get in the media, the tone of the meeting was calm and objective, grounded in a straightforward analysis of: What’s...
💡 Now, next, or new?
But what to do with all these 'shiny objects' with respect to your service design? Where to put these piping hot lightbulbs and their ‘a-ha!’ energy? Surely they can’t all be traps, right? You’re right: here are two steps to collect and process them: One mental and one tactical. Step 1 - Mental: Remind yourself each idea is a hypothesis, not a solution Even just this subtle shift can pump the brakes on an otherwise capricious decision to change course. When you frame new ideas as something...
💡 Eureka moment or shiny object?
One of the symptoms of a soloist’s echo chamber is what you may have heard of as ‘bright shiny object syndrome.’ We spend days, weeks, months even, moving through spikes and valleys of creativity trying to crack the case on how to leverage our expertise to help others, and make a living doing so. So, when a novel idea comes to you in the middle of the night… Or a podcast episode triggers you to rethink your niche or ideal client profile (ICP)… Or someone comes to you with an almost...
💡 An echo chamber of one
We often talk about ‘echo chambers’ as the idea of being surrounded only by others who agree with you. Teeming with confirmation bias, teams can go full steam ahead with an idea they’ve convinced themselves is brilliant. Then, even after months of collaboration and development, they find they’ve overlooked a critical piece of the puzzle. One so glaring in hindsight they wonder how they all had the exact same blindspot. This doesn’t only happen in teams though. In fact, an echo chamber gets...
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.