A successful author told Peter Winick his strategy was doing what feels good. Winick argues that's not strategy. Neglecting go-to-market planning, sales, and pricing creates hidden costs that compound over time. Feeling good and strategic work aren't opposites.
Hi there, it's Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage. And today I wanted to share with you a rather interesting definition that I got the other day on strategy. So I was talking to someone who's incredibly successful, published author, world-renowned expert in his space, in his field, like second to none. And in getting to know him a little bit, we've been talking for a while, I said, so give Give me a sense of what's the strategy. It looks like you're doing some things right. There's clearly room for improvement, et cetera. And without even pausing, he said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's easy. My strategy is if it feels good, I do more of it. And I was like, okay, that's interesting. From my recollection, that sounds more like the definition of hedonism. And we can get into that at another time. But I wound up thinking about that quite a lot over the last couple days, and I think— There's some truth to that, that for a lot of authors, for a lot of thought leaders, for a lot of speakers, keynoters, academics, etc., you do more of what feels good, you do more of what you're good at, you do more of what gives you joy or intrinsic rewards, and occasionally financially— financial rewards as well. However, that's not strategy, and by continuing to neglect things that you might not be as good as, as you could be, such as strategy, go-to-market, sales, marketing, pricing, distribution, there's a cost that you pay for that. It might not be visible this week, this month, this quarter, but compound that over time and there's clearly a cost. So anyway, there's a time and place to do things that feels good, and there's a time and place to be strategic, and I don't believe they're mutually exclusive. Thanks so much.
