Yesterday, I shared an essay by Brian Balfour about the AI race, and more broadly the cycle of platform growth, monopolization, and monetization.

If you missed it, I called particular attention to it for exploring LinkedIn’s monetization approach that's shifting as we speak.

This is a move that will most likely impact you if, like most B2B solo consultants, you use LinkedIn as a home base for your marketing.

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I wanted to call out one more part of Brian’s essay though.

If you made it to the end, you know he predicts that OpenAI will win the AI race.

But he goes one step further by including an Appendix calling out “How this prediction could be wrong.”

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From a substance perspective, it allows him to include some other theories for the AI endgame.

But from a presentation perspective, it’s a clever device to humbly position himself as an objective authority in the space, rather than some omniscient, infallible prognosticator.

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I mention this because as solo consultants selling our expertise, we often feel the pressure to establish a firm position or ‘spiky’ point-of-view in our domain and defend it to the death.

To plant our stake in the ground, and preach it from the proverbial rooftops.

We think the more resolute we sound, the more attractive we’ll be to our clients.

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But, the extra step of presenting counterpoints can actually be beneficial:

• Proactively calling out edge cases that might "break" your framework
• Presenting competing strategies or alternatives to our own solutions
• Calling attention to variable conditions that might affect your solution's ROI

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Rather than weakening our message, these can actually add credibility.

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Why? Because they shift how we’re received.

From:

“This consultant is trying to force their view or solution down my throat.”

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To:

“They are demonstrating how they think about a thorny problem.”

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That shift is how you become seen as a partner, not just a vendor.

Which would you rather hire when you're in a tough situation yourself?

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💡

-Wes