Client Spotlight: Katie Burkhart is an essentialist thinker, discerning writer, and founder of Point:Value, a company that redesigns the way we work and run our businesses so we can thrive in the value economy. An Authority Accelerator client, she wrote “Trying to Do Everything Is Slowly Killing Your Business” for Entrepreneur.

Good morning, !

What has brought you delight this week?

I read The Book of Delights by Ross Gay several years ago. Inspired by his endeavor to write about delight every day for a year, I decided to write about delight every day for the 50 days leading up to my 50th birthday (delight!) on December 23.

What started as a way for me to mark a milestone has become a daily meditation on delight. I get the most delight from small things:

• The Cooper's Hawk I saw in my small urban yard.
• The way the winter light streams in through the windows in the morning.
• Over-the-top Christmas lights — multi-colored, bright white, running, blinking, and even projected lights — and oversized inflatables.

It has also served as a beautiful reminder that I value time to think, reflect, and connect, both with myself and with those around me. And so I continue to practice being intentional with my time. And though it isn't always easy, I've gotten much better at dedicating and protecting my deep work and creative time.

As a part of that process, I take time every year to declutter my digital world. I delete downloads, resources, and tools that I no longer need. I cancel subscriptions and memberships that no longer serve me. I unsubscribe from email newsletters I don't read.

I invite you to join me.

If this newsletter doesn't serve you, protect your inbox and unsubscribe. (You know where to find me if you change your mind.)

But if you are committed to writing more, and becoming a better writer and a deeper thinker, or you'd like to learn how to write articles for publication and use those articles to help you achieve real business goals, stick around. And if you'd like support for either of these endeavors, check out my writing community, which gathers multiple times a month, and Pathway to Publication, which gets underway on January 28.

May you find time in the last few weeks of this year to rest so you can start the new year rejuvenated. Here's to a happy and healthy 2025!

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How to Exponentially Increase Your Impact

If you want to increase your impact, expand your community, narrow your focus, and equip others with the tools they need to do the work you are uniquely suited to do in a way that is uniquely suited to them.

Many consultants work on specific projects within specific industries. They may work on one project for months or even years. If that’s true for you, it may be hard to see the extent of the impact of your work. While you can see the difference your work makes to that client, you might not see much impact outside of that sphere.

Some consultants are content to work with a handful of clients for their entire careers. They get to know those clients well and see projects through from beginning to end. They are part of a team, and for many folks, being part of a team is immensely satisfying. It can also feel safe and familiar.

But if you limit yourself to working with a handful of clients, and don’t take the opportunity to share your wisdom and insights with a larger audience, you are limiting the scope of your impact.

Create a vision for the future.

You got into this business to make a difference in your corner of the world. But you cannot create what you cannot see.

If you cannot see a vision for the future or how your work helps bring that vision to fruition, it’s almost impossible to create that future and incredibly easy to get mired in the day-to-day work of consulting.

Yes, you have bills to pay, invoices to send, networking groups to attend, and clients to serve. But you also have important work to do — work that makes a difference. And if you are focused on the minutia, it’s hard to see what you are working towards or why it really matters.

Take some time to envision the transformation you seek to make in the world, especially as it relates to the work you do with your clients. What would you like your clients to know? What would you like them to do differently? What skills and resources do they need to operate that way? What gets in the way and keeps them from making the necessary changes? What have they tried before? Why hasn’t that worked?

By answering these questions, you will more clearly define your BIG idea — the bold, insightful, and galvanizing idea that serves as the foundation of your business and your reputation. Your BIG idea is a guiding principle for your business; it will define the services you offer, the topics you talk about, and the subjects you write about. The more intentionally you focus your work around that one overarching idea, the easier it will be for you to build your reputation around and to become known for that idea.

Build a community with a shared vision.

If your professional inner circle is currently smaller than you would like it to be, that’s okay. Even a small inner circle can provide you with a strong foundation. As you share your vision for the future with the people in your inner circle, including your clients, colleagues, and partners, start to build a community around that vision.

A strong inner circle is a great place to stress test and refine your vision for the future. The members of your inner circle who are most engaged with your vision can add to it, point out areas of weakness, and help you refine and strengthen it. The stronger your vision for the future, the easier it will be to share it with a larger audience.

As you start to expand your community, think about who else might share your vision and who you will need to collaborate with to make your vision a reality. Is your vision focused on a specific industry or people who serve in a specific role? What do those who share your vision have in common?

Remember that you don’t need to share your vision with everyone. Think of your community as a series of concentric circles centered on a shared vision. As you share your vision with your inner circle, your reach expands along with the size of your community. 

One of the best ways to share your vision with people you don’t yet know, but who would be interested, is to write for high-visibility publications. When you write for the right publication, you are able to share your vision with a well-established, targeted audience.

But that’s not all. Writing for high-visibility publications also allows you to enjoy the imprimatur of the publication — their editorial team vetted you, and by publishing your work, they are signaling to their audience that you are an authority in your field. You are effectively borrowing the publication’s reputation and relationship with its audience and using that social proof to build your own reputation and relationships.

As you build a community around this shared vision, others will add their perspectives and experiences to it — they will start taking ownership of the vision and actively work toward implementing it. That may sound frightening, but it’s the only way your vision will ever be realized.

While it may have started with you, a shared vision isn’t actually yours — nor was it ever meant to be. But you still have a crucial role to play in realizing that vision.

Define how your work contributes to the shared vision.

How does your work contribute to this shared vision? Which part of that shared vision are you uniquely suited to address? Which part energizes and inspires you?

Everything we do has ripple effects. But it’s hard to see the effect those ripples have on others, and easy to believe that the impact we have is smaller than it is. When we can’t see the impact we’re making, it can be tempting to expand your focus. But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Expanding your focus and taking on even more work — especially work that isn’t particularly interesting — is a sure-fire way to spread yourself too thin and burn out.

Not all of the work that needs to be done to realize a shared vision is yours to do.

So, what work is yours to do? What is your greatest gift to give? What work belongs to someone else (even if you aren’t sure who that someone else is)?

Knowing what work is yours, and what work belongs to someone else, will help you focus on where you can make the biggest impact. It is possible to scale your impact even as you narrow your focus. Writing for high-visibility publications and speaking to other people’s audiences will help you accomplish this goal. More sophisticated tactics include developing a signature method so you can serve more people at once and licensing your expertise to enable others to do the work you do.

Creating change is hard, and you cannot do it alone. You need others working alongside you doing the same work and spreading the same message. And you need them to be able to bring their full selves to that work. Not everyone who needs your help will want that help from you. It is impossible for you to serve everyone who needs your help, and the truth is, you won’t want to serve everyone who needs your help.

If you really want to make a difference, you must share your perspective with others. You must build your community around a shared vision for the future, and you must allow, and even celebrate, others doing the same work you do.

Once you are clear about the change you want to see and the work that is yours to do, use it as a guide for everything you do. Your focused efforts will have a profound ripple effect.   

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"You are not here merely to prepare to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand."

~ Woodrow Wilson, Address delivered to Swarthmore College (1913)

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Upcoming Events

Pitched to Published™ 

Interested in learning how to write, pitch, and publish articles for high-visibility publications? Join me Wednesday, January 8, at 11:55 AM Eastern, for a mini-training on authority-building tactics and the benefits of writing for high-visibility publications, followed by a Q+A. This is a free, public event. Register here.

Master Class: How to Write for High-Visibility Publications

In this free 60-minute master class, I will share the SILVA Method™ and walk you step-by-step through the process I use to help my clients secure bylines in publications like Harvard Business Review, Inc., and TD Magazine. I host these events every other month. Join me for the next master class on February 12, at 2 PM Eastern. Register here.

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Drop me an email or book a call if you'd like to explore working together. I'd love to learn more about you and your business and how I might be of service.

Take good care,