A rock, a guitar, and a patio

THE PROSPEROUS CONSULTANT

Turn your decades of expertise into a premium consulting practice built around the life you want.

Issue #40

I'm writing this from Athens, our last night in Greece before we fly home... and the thing I can't stop thinking about is a rock.

Our hotel suite on Mykonos had a patio, and right in the middle of it was a big, beautiful piece of granite that was there long before the hotel. Nobody hauled it in to look rustic. Best I can tell, the builders hit it, looked it over, and made a decision: we're not moving that. Then they built the patio right up to its edges, painted everything around it white, and let it be.

So the rock stayed. Before we left the island, I sat on it with my guitar. More on that in a minute.

Now leave Greece for a second and picture the thing in your own business you've been chipping away at for years. The one that hasn't budged.

In this issue:

• The one decision the builders got right that many consultants get wrong
• A simple test for sorting what's immovable from what's just hard
• How the thing you can't move can start earning its keep

Maybe your rock is your age. Maybe it's a market that keeps consolidating, or the thirty years of skill you walked out of corporate with and nobody out there who's heard your name. Whatever yours is, you've been chipping at it. New tactic, new tool, another program, another year.

And the chips aren't free. Every season you spend on a thing that won't move comes out of the same account: your time, your money, and your confidence. Because when the rock doesn't move, you don't blame the rock. You blame yourself. The 2 a.m. questions start. Is it too late? Am I the problem?

But look at what those builders did. Nobody who built that patio got beaten by the rock. Somebody priced the move, decided it was a fool's errand, and built something that worked with the rock instead of against it.

You don't move granite. You design around it.

And once I noticed that choice, I saw it all over the island. From what I could tell, most of Mykonos is granite... and it's also the favorite building material. Walls. Foundations. Whole buildings. The thing nobody could move is the thing everything is made from.

Which brings me to the test. When something has been blocking you for more than a season, run it through three questions. I call it the Rock Test.

First: is it granite, or is it a stump? A stump is hard to pull, but it comes out if you keep at it. Your messaging is a stump. Your offer is a stump. Your pricing, your outreach, the way you answer "what do you do?"... stumps, every one of them. Granite is different. Your age is granite. The direction your industry is headed is granite. What the big firms decide to do next is granite. A lot of the frustration I see in experienced consultants comes from getting the list backwards: chipping at granite and tiptoeing around stumps.

Second: price the move. Before you give that rock another season, write down what moving it would take. All of it. Then write down what the chipping has already cost you. Count the years. Years are a price too, and they're the one thing you can't earn back. When the honest number comes back bigger than anything the move could pay you, you get to stop. Put down the chisel with a clear conscience.

Third: design around it, and put it to work. Now comes the good part. Your gray hair stops being something you apologize for and becomes the reason a CEO trusts you with a hard call. Thirty years in one unglamorous industry stops being "too narrow" and becomes the reason you're the obvious choice in it. The thing you quit fighting can turn into the sharpest part of your positioning.

Don't picture a sofa, though. That rock is a terrible seat. Hard, rough, and it didn't care one bit that I was on vacation. But it earns its keep. It's the best photo spot on the property... which is how you ended up looking at a picture of me and a guitar on a boulder.

That's what designing around looks like. The practice ends up shaped like you instead of shaped like a fight. The seasons you were spending on the chisel go into the things that will move: the message, the offer, the conversations that fill next quarter's pipeline. The rock stays. It was always going to stay. You quit paying for the demolition.

P.S. The guitar made the trip. I'm chasing a streak, 365 straight days of practice, and I wasn't about to let a passport break it... so the Yamaha flew to Greece with us. I even paid extra for non-standard baggage. Regular readers know how I feel about missing twice. Some things you design around. Some things you pay the baggage fee to keep.

P.P.S. Tell me about your rock. Hit reply with the one thing in your business that hasn't budged no matter what you've thrown at it. Just that one thing... I read every reply myself.

Want to dive deeper? Check out these related articles:

👉 The Prosperous Consultant | Issue #39
👉 The Prosperous Consultant | Issue #38

You might also find these interesting:

🔎 What was under the blanket
🔎 The "Strategic Ascension Designer" Prompt

P.S.: When you're ready, here are more ways I can help you...