💡 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.
💡 Very niche: Jimmy Buffett retirement living
In this edition of Very Niche!, check out The New York Times’s recent roundup of niche retirement communities popping up all over the US. (← Free gift article) It’s not just bingo and shuffleboard anymore. From horse lovers to arts enthusiasts to Jimmy Buffett stans, there seems to be a place for everyone as communities seek to attract the massive (and wealthy!) Boomer generation with open arms. Georgetown professor Andrew Carle points to a “Baskin Robbins” effect — suggesting that in every...
💡 In-the-wild: A prolific framework publisher
If you think I make a lot of frameworks, check out Paul Byrne. Paul’s a leadership coach based in The Netherlands and he’s grown quite a library of gorgeous visuals on the topic. The first visual of his I saw was a spiralized take on a Leader’s journey through life (above). But that was just the beginning. Scroll, scroll, scroll through his content and you’ll see dozens of them: timelines, 2x2’s, Venn diagrams, bubble charts. A sea of beautiful frameworks can be a paradise for a visual...
💡 The Mooch's 'cocktail party test'
You might know Anthony Scaramucci from his infamous 11-day stint as the White House Press Secretary in 2017. A big personality turned into a punchline overnight. But “The Mooch” also has a pretty interesting entrepreneurial origin story, starting his own paper route as a kid, all the way to building SkyBridge Capital from scratch. He shared about his journey in detail with Ed Elson on First Time Founders this week. He touches on themes I think we can all relate to as soloists: Moving past the...
💡 Saves are the new Likes
This is not a LinkedIn optimization newsletter, but one of their new engagement tracking features caught my eye. As of a few weeks ago (I think), you can now see Saves & Sends of your posts. The numbers will inherently be much (MUCH) lower than vanity metrics like Impressions and Likes... But they’re also much (MUCH) more indicative of whether you’ve created something relevant to your audience. And from what I can tell, a few early Saves are actually a trigger for more algo reach, far beyond...
💡 Very niche: Seattle Ring Hunter
In this edition of “Very Niche!”, meet Josh Morgan aka the Seattle Ring Hunter. Any idea what he does? 😉 Profiled in yesterday's Seattle Times, Josh is simply the go-to guy when you lose something valuable in one of the many bodies of water in the region. He’s scuba-certified, admittedly a “bit of a gear nerd”, and will happily pop over to literally dive in on what you might consider an impossible task. Once down, he applies a meticulous search process he’s honed over time leveraging both his...
📸 They're hungry for cake
Your experiences are only part of the equation. 💡 -Wes P.S. Headshot sprints are still available for late October Two weeks. One-on-one. Get your unique approach and value prop articulated visually in 5 simple frames. Details and dates here. Have a great weekend.
💡 The MS Paint aesthetic
This week’s ‘in-the-wild’ comes from an unlikely player: the Washington State Department of Transportation. They’ve created a sort of cult following with a unique approach to getting the word out about road closures and traffic incidents. I’ll call it the Microsoft Paint aesthetic. Essentially, they’re overlaying digital free-hand doodles on maps to make timely announcements. It’s hilarious, and it’s…working? Axios Seattle covered their recent viral posts and their ability to bring attention...
💡 Cool stories, bro
In statistics, the general rule of thumb is that the more data in your set, the stronger the conclusions or trends you can draw out your analysis. (Assuming your data is “good”, of course.) A scatterplot of n=5 won’t weed out the noise in the way a sample of n=100 would. Get to n=1000 and the picture comes even more into focus. Now extrapolate that out to the millions of micro-experiences you’ve had in your domain. Every day at a corporate job. Every meeting you’ve led. Every industry article...
💡 How many licks?
I flipped through graphic designer Ellen Lupton’s book, Design is Storytelling, at a gift shop and came across this gorgeous Intellectual Headshot. Not only a strikingly effective visual metaphor (illustration by Jennifer Tobias), but the concept is super relevant to us as solo consultants. Ellen writes that "many contemporary products combine aspects of services, experiences, goods, and commodities." She gives a smartphone as an example (from the raw materials that make the phone to the...
💡 As simple as pet portraits
Ever think we’re overthinking it all? Let’s get back to basics. Case-in-point: this soloist’s flyer I saw at a park this weekend. (Yes, this one was really in the wild.) Don’t let the simple business fool you. It’s from the simple examples that we can learn how to really strip things down. GTM / channel: Posted at a popular, dog-friendly trailhead Show the product: A sample pet portrait. Benefits first: “Elevate the aesthetic of your home” (implies you have a problem in that department 🤭)...
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.