š” The Lightbulb
A daily email about monetizing and visualizing 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.
šø House of cards
Your clients are feeling the squeeze. Does your expertise draw admiration? Or relief? š” -Wes
š” Teardown: "The Double Squeeze"
You see a lot of visuals on LinkedIn. Most are forgettable. Some are cheap scroll-stoppers. And a rare few are actually great. On Thursdays, I share a visual, or āIntellectual Headshotā as I call them, that caught my eye in the wild, and break down why it works. Letās dig in. View full post on LinkedIn Luk Smeyers is an advisor to consulting firms -- not a client of mine, never met him -- and this is his visual depiction of āThe AI Double Squeezeā. As we all know, the rapid acceleration of AI...
š” The walls of your ability
Ethan Hawke in 'Blue Moon' So yesterday was about triangulating your genius zone to inform your offering (and if you havenāt already, I really suggest you try the prompt ā itās like a practical palm reading.) But then what? If crafting your business and core offering around your genius zone is an effort to keep you in flow state, are we just looking for the path to Easy Street? Not quite. There are two levels at play hereā¦ Identifying your genius zone and applying it to a proven, painful...
š” Your annual 'genius zone' tune-up
If you were around this time last year, I was writing a lot about triangulating your āgenius zoneā. Itās not a term I came up with, itās from Gay Hendricksā book The Big Leap. (Visualization above by Nancy Choi) The idea is there are four zones: Zone of incompetence Zone of competence Zone of excellence Zone of genius Hendricksā view is to spend as much time as possible in your zone of genius ā doing activities that leverage your natural gifts and strengths. In corporate roles, maximizing...
š” Elusive pop tarts
Thereās a bakery in my neighborhood that Iāve been a quiet fan of ever since I stumbled upon it once during a Covid walk back in 2020. Itās a one-woman shop, and at the time, she operated in a converted old house in a residential area. I wondered how she kept up demand with the unassuming storefront, but continued on with my day. (Her cookies were delicious, by the way.) A couple years later, I felt excited (and parasocially proud?) when I read that she was moving her bakery to a prime...
šø Docked
š” -Wes
š” Teardown: "The Boredom Trap"
On Thursdays, I showcase an interesting visual or āIntellectual Headshotā that caught my eye throughout the week, and offer some comments on why it works (or sometimes, why it doesnāt). c/o Nick Broekema via LinkedIn This week's visual teardown comes from Nick Broekema ā this one is a little meta, since by trade Nick is a freelance LinkedIn content designer. But who better to learn from? I think this visual works quite well on several levels. Let's jump in: Visual objective: Primary: to share...
š” I stopped blaming the system
One of my former employers had a big round of layoffs on Monday. 20% of their product team. That couldāve been me or my friends if we all hadnāt been laid off years before. Then this morning, my neighbor down the street, Amazon, cut 14,000. 10% of their corporate force. The friends Iāve checked in on are fine, but some of the impacted are starting to identify themselves. Layoffs are nothing new. I mean, I myself used to help companies execute the 'delayering playbook' as a management...
š” Using a digital crutch
You know that moment when youāre listening to someone give a moving speech. Then you notice theyāre reading from a teleprompter and it breaks the weight of the moment. Or youāre listening to a podcaster tell a personal story. Then you realize itās a script for an ad and tune it out. These are buzzkill moments. They had you, then they lost you. This happens in our world too, when you see a post or pretty infographic in your feed. And then get that āwhiffā that it was auto-genād out of ChatGPT,...
š” The map through the fog
When I started working with my book midwife, Fen, they sent me a copy of their book all about the process of writing a book. (Yes, very meta indeed.) In Fenās book was this simple POV about the creative process: It wasnāt included as a scare tactic. Just a peek down the path from someone whoās been through the book-writing process many times. A warning that, with near certainty, there will be a part of this process where you question it all. But, that the path does curve back. Now, when I see...
A daily email about monetizing and visualizing 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.