Have you ever found an old shirt or hoodie in your closet that you forgot you had?

You come across it in some sort of rush, and say ‘that’ll work.’ then find yourself wearing it over and over again?

(If you’ve had a call with me recently, yes, I’m talking about the grey zip-up fleece vest.)

Sometimes we forget we have gold hiding in plain sight.

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Back in January, I was taking an intentional look at my own positioning and service portfolio -- it’s a constant game of tweak and triangulation.

I’d received some good advice to go capture some fresh pain points in the market and was just about to muster up the energy for a mini-listening tour, when I remembered…

Just like that fleece vest in my closet, I already had a trove of insights in my 'closet' -- dozens and dozens of transcripts from intro calls and consults from the last 12 months and beyond.

I use Otter.ai as a notetaker to help me stay in the moment on live calls, and to keep details straight across multiple clients, but I’d never considered it as an insight aggregator.

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A few queries, exports, and pivots later, I had my answer to ‘Why were prospects coming to me in 2024?’ - two reasons:

• “I’m struggling to niche down.”
• “I don’t know my unique angle.”

Importantly, this is not what I thought brought them to me — instead, it's what they themselves kept saying, en masse.

And that has unlocked my service evolution ever since.

Hence, NicheFinder + IP Builder.*

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If you’ve been looking for clarity on how people see you, and have a similar transcript bank, tap into it!

If not, there are plenty of other places insights tend to build up in plain sight:

• Old emails or DMs - what prompted the most unprompted messages?
• Testimonials or reviews - what words or themes keep showing up?
• Referrals & intro emails - why and how do friendlies send people your way?
• Comments on your social content - what drives people to reply or ask to talk?
• Your calendar - who’s been booking time with you? what trends do you see?

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As soloists, deep market research is typically out of reach.

But that’s ok -- it’s not really necessary.

We're passively gathering insights every day.

And when you get creative about rifling through your digital closet, you just might find what you’re looking for.

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💡

-Wes

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*P.S. What if your ideas had a 'headshot'?

Are you struggling to attract new client conversations? Or getting tongue-tied trying to articulate your unique expertise in sales calls?

What if you had a crisp set of magnetic, lightbulb-inducing visual assets that could speak for you and offload some of that pressure?

The IP Builder Sprint is a 2-week 1:1 done-with-you program to build out 'intellectual headshots' that telegraph your unique POV and approach.

The sold-out pilot is underway, and I'm opening limited Q2 capacity and intro pricing to the early access list tomorrow (April 17).

​Get on the list to learn more. No commitment.