The Business of Expertise: How Entrepreneurial Experts Convert Insight to Impact + Wealth

vertical positioning, which is defined as an industry:

If you’re open to the exercise of pattern matching, always start with yourself. Where have you consistently failed or thrived? What inputs led to better decisions?

But as much as you are learning, you’re taking two steps back for every three steps forward because much of what you learn with each new engagement is just the bare necessity in order to even be relevant.

There are literally hundreds of demographic or behavioral commonalities that might unite your prospects. If that common trait is significant, someone will have a list.

The most powerful positioning combines both these ways of thinking in something like the crosshairs in a reticle on a rifle sight, although you always lead with a horizontal or a vertical focus and the second element complements the first.

Regardless of how much implementation you still do, though, make a distinction between it and strategy to help prospects and clients compartmentalize your firm appropriately.

When you really need an expert, they tell you how it’s going to be at every step of the way and you’re along for the ride, whether it’s an attorney with high stakes litigation or a surgeon saving your life. You have all the permission power but they have all the process power.

“An organization’s ability to learn and translate that learning into action rapidly is the ultimate competitive advantage,”

There are times when you should hire an outsider to do that work for you. They’ll bring broader experience, yes, but primarily they’ll bring objectivity. They won’t carry the attachments to certain positioning options that you might. You might have a key employee fighting for a certain positioning, or a significant client who fits well within a cer