The ABI Approach

Here are three ideas I call system 52, the psyche pendulum and the ABI approach. These can help you run a commercially successful, consciously-led practice as an expert.

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I met this morning with a great Thought Leader, let’s call her Julia. She is smart. One sentence into the answer to the question, ‘Describe your work?’ it was clear she knew what she was talking about. She was able to hold big ideas and do work that mattered. Throughout the conversation, she also shared moments of self-doubt and a tendency to let the ‘big later’ get in the way of the ‘small now’. 

I have seen this repeated in great Thought Leaders who seem to be held back commercially. Here are three ideas I call system 52, the psyche pendulum and the ABI approach. These can help you run a commercially successful, consciously-led practice as an expert.

System 52
Often, big thinkers are systems thinkers— able to see all the moving parts and, as such, sometimes overwhelmed by where to start or what small element of the work could be pushed forward as an angle. If this is you, the answer will lie in your existing body of work. 

You don’t need to find something new outside of you; you may find the angle you seek in your existing body of work. See your body of work as a system of 52 interconnected ideas, pick one and play it as a conversational starter. This one idea is a card in a deck of cards. Lead with an ACE if you like. Don’t lead with your whole process to fix a system. If you have thoughts on the future of work, maybe you start with how to make meetings work. If you help develop leaders, maybe start with how they run performance reviews.

Psyche Pendulum
Almost always, in great thinkers, there is a sense of self-doubt at play. Am I good enough? Or am I too much? Both questions exist on different ends of a continuum, a pendulum of sorts that our psyche swings between. ‘I am not enough’ and ‘I am too much’ playing out like background music in our minds. This is the mind's way of keeping us safe and in the harbour, but boats, of course, are not made to sit in the harbour. It helps to reduce the risk and lower the stakes around your work. Ship something. 

Start with a newsletter you send out to 250 people who know you, and you know. Start there. Social media is fine; its job is to keep you in front of mind, introduce your work to strangers, and be a place where you publish content iteratively. The goal, though, is to build a community of commitment around your ideas. Be a thinker worth following. Put good ideas out into the world to people who care about them.

The ABI Approach
Finally, you want to ‘always be inviting’ people to engage with you somehow.  Every month and quarter, be up to something and put invitations to engage in front of people. To always be inviting might mean; you put messages below the fold of your newsletter banner, suggest a download, subscribe, follow or connect in your PS. Always be inviting; you can’t sell a secret, and you have no idea who might be tracking or when we might be ready to buy. Your job is not to sell so much as to keep putting explicit invitations out to people so that when they are ready, they know you are, too.

With love,

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