Twelve questions
Twelve questions I ask before anything else.
These are the questions that decide whether good work gets the acknowledgment it deserves. Most people can answer a few of these and have never been asked the rest.
They run in order: who you are to your audience, then what you’re saying, then how it travels. Each group lines up with one phase of an engagement. Answer them honestly on your own. If several give you pause, that’s the work.
(These are optional. You don’t need to answer any of them to book a call.)
01. Qualification
Would you buy a book on this subject by you?
Credentials, relevant experience, and a record of having done what you tell others to do. If the answer is no, that’s the first thing to fix.
Would you even bother to write it?
02. Motive
Why do you actually want this?
“Impact” is always the first answer. The real ones (credibility, a bigger business, a promise to yourself) decide what the plan should be.
03. Audience
Who already wants to hear from you on this?
Your first audience buys anything you make on your subject; your second audience follows their recommendation. Neither follows you to a new subject.
04. Findability
What does someone find when they look you up?
A search, an editor, and an AI assistant all check before they invite you anywhere. Nobody tells you when the answer comes back thin.
05. Noticing
What do you see that others in your field miss?
Start with what you can’t help noticing. What’s obvious to you is often exactly what someone else wishes they could see.
06. Surprise
Where does your idea break an expectation?
Readers call something original when it’s unexpected against a tradition they know. Novelty for its own sake reads as noise.
07. Proof
What have you tested yourself?
Thirty books aren’t a book. Direct observation, your own experiments, and trying to prove yourself wrong carry more weight than citations.
08. Language
What will people repeat?
Signature terms, a title that does what it says, the phrases that mark you as one of the people who know.
09. Candor
What did it cost you to learn this?
Advice without vulnerability doesn’t land. Readers trust the person who tells them about the failures too.
10. Presence
Will you show up?
To publish is to make yourself known: talks, panels, interviews, for years. People who expect the work to travel on its own are disappointed.
11. Packaging
Does it work at a glance?
Title, opening line, the version someone reads on a phone between meetings. Surface choices change how the substance is judged.
12. Real reach
Who is actually listening?
Potential reach is a map on the wall. The people who open, reply, and show up are the only reach that counts.
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