Secret Tradecraft of Elite Advisors: Covert Techniques for a Remarkable Practice

You are selling knowledge, which comes from focus. You can’t just observe and speak to what you see. From there, after that accurate diagnosis, there has to be a prescription. This is like bringing the right tool to the job. Your strength comes from having seen this before and knowing how to fix it. And of course this would never be possible if you

The more insight you publish for free, the less you need to invest in the sale.

There’s something else you could be selling, too, and that’s coaching, or ongoing assistance where you get down in the mud and help them implement things. That’s always a viable option and it might fit your personality well, but there are some innate problems with it. First, it’s hard to be that present in a client relationship and retain your obje

The second kind of day (Contribution), which will only be one or two days per week, is when you get real work done. These are the days when you are changing your world. You write your marketing plan or you invent a new service offering or you shape some original research for a talk you’re going to give. It’s uninterrupted time because you’ve cleare

Second, clients will not pay a premium for ongoing presence, long term. They will only pay a premium for episodic presence.

There are many viable definitions for that word, but I’m referring to a very specific person here: An expert is someone whose thinking is regularly sought and paid for. That’s different from your father-in-law who opines about everything, without invitation, as if he has a prepared speech, and every pause in what has been to that point a conversati

Start by listing all your clients in a spreadsheet, from largest to smallest in descending order, along with actual or projected revenue for each one. After you have that basic data in front of you, there are three simple things to look for.

they buy. The format doesn’t matter too much, though I am drawn to the physical format and not just a digital one because it feels more substantial.

In the real world, a new client chooses to work with you based on your reputation and their best prediction of what it will be like to work with you. All the positioning stuff is just table stakes: It won’t close the gap, but it gets you in the game.

It’s also very important to manage your “not-to-do” list, and I like to decide what I’m going to quit doing any time I decide to start something new.