In this segment of the "Having Clarity to Set Priorities" video, Peter Winick and Speaker B discuss how clarity—understanding one’s goals, impact audience, and desired outcomes—enables effective prioritization, especially for thought‑leaders and speakers. They break down the decision‑making process for speaking engagements, weighing strategic fit against fee, and stress the importance of making choices from a place of awareness rather than being swayed by high‑profile corporate allure. The conversation highlights the need to align daily actions with both granular tasks and the broader mission, and offers practical guidance on resisting seductive opportunities that may derail long‑term plans.
Where does that discipline come from to say, that may not be the right fit, that may not be the right approach or opportunity for me?
It's actually, it doesn't, so it comes from having clarity. And when you have clarity, you can prioritize effectively.
Clarity about where I'm going, clarity about what's important to me?
Clarity around who your work has the most impact for, clarity around what your focus is, clarity around what you're trying to achieve at the granular level, as well as the big picture level, and clarity around what's gonna get you there, right? So if you're a speaker, there's lots of reasons to speak, right? One is for your fee, another is cuz it's a strategic fit. So if that group called you and you said, it really doesn't fit into my bigger plan, but the fee is high enough that that offsets the cost of a day, sure, it makes sense. But do that from a place of awareness versus if your goal is to only speak in front of clients that bring you other things, that wouldn't be an opportunity for you.
How do you keep clients from getting seduced by the perception of an opportunity? I just got a call from GE. Rick brought up GE, right? You know, I'm going to go drop everything else and bend over backwards to go chase that versus let me build the channels to extend myself beyond me.
Well, one is the— everybody wants to work with the best companies and the best and the brightest, whatever. And I think that you have to understand sort of a couple of pieces about that. I've seen people go broke trying to sell into the Fortune 1000s and the Fortune 50s, because by the way, the sales cycle is pretty damn long, right? And by the way, the contracting phase, I did a deal with Accenture, it took us a year to get the contract right, because they wanted to own all the IP. And I said, I can't have my guy go there and do X for a day, And you own his life. This is just— we won't sign this contract. And they've got the big guns on staff to just drill you down, drill you down, and drill you down. And say, oh, but it's just in the contract, but we won't actually ever do that. Well, OK. So I think it's having— when I develop plans, I look at short-term, midterm, and long-term. And being in the corporate arena, the big corporate arena, is where I spend a lot of time. But you have to have enough fuel in the tank to get you there, right? So what are the things that you're going to do short-term and long-term, which might not be ideal from a strategic perspective, but they're ideal from this perspective of you like to eat 3 times a day, right? So what are you doing to sort of keep the engine moving?
