đź’ˇ 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.
📸 Stuck in the shallow
You finally got that prospect on the calendar. You want to make a good impression. But you don’t want to come on too strong. Or worse, seem desperate for the work. So you back off heading into the call. I’ll just lean into building a personal rapport. Keep it casual. See what’s on their mind. The opportunity to help will reveal itself if it’s there. 30 minutes later, you might have waltzed by a few interesting nuggets. But then time’s up. It ends with the dreaded: “Thank you for your time.”...
đź’ˇ Filling seats
Nestled between my neighborhood light rail stop and my apartment building there’s a tiny restaurant called Ltd Edition. I’ve never been in, but you can see through the windows it’s an 8-seat omakase-style sushi restaurant. Assuming you walk by during their, ahem…limited…business hours (Monday-Friday 5:30-9:30pm), you’ll notice every seat is always taken. In fact, on several occasions I’ve noticed people running from the station or rushing out of an Uber to grab their seat at their allotted...
đź’ˇ Calm is magnetic
Last week, I tuned into a talk from a former Finance professor of mine - Sergio Rebelo. He does these virtual events from time to time for alumni, usually with an unassuming title — this time: Understanding Current Trends in the World Economy — and I immediately RSVP and block my calendar. Why? Well, for one, the talks are not recorded. Tune in live, or miss out. But also, he’s proven to be one of my most reliable sources of clarity on the state of the economy, which let’s face it, is always...
📸 Show your colors
Your clients have likely already tried something else to solve their problem. You could take time to explain how you're different. Or you can make it instantly clear. đź’ˇ -Wes P.S. 1:1 "Headshots" sprints are open for September. Details here.
đź’ˇ Nothing beats writing
I had a former client reach out this morning asking how to politely deal with a business partner who lacks concision when sharing their signature perspectives. In other words: how to help someone who talks too much get their POV into a more efficient IP format (e.g. a framework, visual, Headshot, etc.) There are certainly tools available these days to get the process started — probably the easiest is to record a meeting and ask ChatGPT to synthesize it for you. But I still think there’s no...
đź’ˇ The wrong screwdriver
A longtime reader wrote in yesterday with an epiphany after a coaching arrangement went south. She mentions she had hired a business coach who may have been too generalist for her needs, and in turn she saw first-hand the benefit of specialization not just as a consultant, but as a client as well. She also closed with a brilliant metaphor for niching I’d never heard before… Lightly edited for brevity, shared anonymously with permission. [Reader first describes that the coach had cancelled her...
đź’ˇ 30th Street Station
When I was a college student in Philadelphia, I used to love going to 30th Street Station — the main transit and commuter hub in the city. Still new to living in the Northeast, it was so exciting to see how easy it was to hop a train a couple hours to New York, or a couple hours to DC. And delivering all that real-time info was one of those giant, analog, clickety-clackety information boards that updated the train departure status and rail assignment. You might know how mesmerizing those can...
đź’ˇ Free tire repair
Driving around over the weekend, I finally heard it. The first “da-DUNK da-DUNK da-DUNK” in my six-month-old car. I turn off the radio. The noise persisted. I turn onto a different road. The noise persisted. Once home, I take a look at the tires, nothing was noticeably off. Maybe it’s nothing. 🤞 No such luck. The next day, the tire pressure light goes off on my way to a haircut. Well there goes my afternoon. I happened to mention it to my barber who immediately said: “Just go to Les Schwab....
📸 Hacking vs. building
đź’ˇ -Wes
đź’ˇ Inducing the inflection point
We’ve all heard of the hockey stick graph when starting a business. The story of that loooong stretch of slow progress, then all of the sudden, an explosion of sustained growth. That inflection point though, where your stall turns into a soar, is elusive. Kinda like a jack-in-the-box, you don’t know quite when it will hit. You keep at it, though. Trusting that it will. But there’s temptation along the way. The tool that will write your website. The agent that will pack your calendar with...
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.