I grew up in what I guess we can now call ‘old school consulting’.

Days at the client were spent meeting, greeting, aligning, strategizing.

Evenings at the hotel were spent data cleaning, Excel modeling, and of course, deck building.

Tedious, pain-staking, ‘don’t get the font-size or brand colors wrong’ deck building.

We had a few templates and PowerPoint plug-ins, but this was still hours and hours of very manual apprentice-level work to get things client-ready.

And even then, we still sent things to our stellar Production team for a final zhuzh.

In retrospect, the emphasis on polish makes sense - we were in high-end professional services, after all, and slides were our currency.

And I’m grateful for the training - decades later, after all the airline status and hotel points ran out, I was still left with a deep instinct for compelling story structure and a keen eye for visual defects.

But today, when polish can be automated, it’s no longer impressive.

Sure, your clients won’t decline a glossy deck. Aesthetics no doubt still signal conviction and boost shareability.

But remember, your clients are under extreme pressure these days. They likely took a risk even bringing you in.

Beyond surface-level sleek, they’re looking for contextual depth, human-earned insights, and practical tools they can implement immediately to deaden their urgent pain now.

So, fellow solos, as you build content/assets/frameworks/tools for your audience/clients/prospects, give it a sniff test…

• Is this more flashy, or functional?
• Is this shiny, or share-me?
• Is this nice-to-have, or can’t-live-without?

I’m not saying messy work wins the day.

But practical will get you further than pretty.

💡

-Wes

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