Author

My role today is often helping leaders uncover that message.

Writing taught me something unexpected.

Everyone has a message.

My first book was self-published in 2009. A few months later it became a bestseller. My first royalty check was more than $37,000.

I thought I had discovered the book business.

Then the next check arrived.

About $2,000.

The next was roughly $1,000.

That declining trend line taught me a very expensive lesson.

I wasn't in the book business.

I was in the message business.

The book wasn't the destination.

It was the invitation.

That realization led to speaking, media, and broader communication. Eventually, more than 30,000 copies of my books were sold, but the real value wasn't the number of books.

It was the conversations they created.

That lesson applies directly to business.

Companies often become so obsessed with selling what they make that they forget to communicate why it matters.

Customers don't simply buy products.

They buy solutions, possibilities, identity, and meaning.

One of the things I help leaders do today is uncover the message hiding underneath all the corporate language.

Because your greatest competitive advantage is sometimes the thing you've stopped noticing because you've lived with it for so long.