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Profitable Pricing for Consultants, Who is Burning Trust, and Spatial Computing
Ian Crafford
February 25, 2024
Just a quick note this week about…
Leverage.
The Pareto Principle (80/20) applies to all things AND it is fractal.
So what? If you don’t have a deep understanding of both of those concepts and how they are related, study up. Pondering that is the most valuable thing you can do for your business—by far.
See if you can spot the leverage in this week’s links.
— Ian
Founder, The Pro Solo
Leverage
Matthew Ball wrote a fun essay earlier this month entitled On Spatial Computing, Metaverse, the Terms Left Behind and Ideas Renewed. The Metaverse is a vast and interconnected network of real-time 3D experiences. For passthrough or optical MR to scale, though, a “3D Internet” is required.
The best ideas are often complex and require persistence, and you may only succeed on the fifth try. Data won’t tell you what to do, exploration with a clear goal and taking small steps as you learn may just do. If a company loses $10 million on fraud but only $100,000 on faulty chargebacks, it’s 100x more impactful to solve the former.
Business strategy
Some apps are used very intermittently for a one-off purpose, like ordering food. Others are used all the time, but as a cure for boredom and a substitute for not knowing what to do. And then there are apps for power users, where the typical user is constantly engaged with the product.
Bill Wilson shares his insights to unlock the secrets of a profitable pricing business. He also talks about the common pitfalls during sales calls and how you dodge them.
Understanding your own goals and values
According to HBR, 44.6% of business and financial operations occupations, 39.9% of management occupations, and 33.2% of sales occupations will be impacted by AI. There’s no doubt that some aspects of what a consultant does today will no longer be as valuable or required by the client.
Technological progress means making things do more of what we want. As the world becomes more addictive, the two senses in which one can live a normal life will be driven ever further apart. Unless we want to be canaries in the coal mine of new addiction, we'll have to figure out for ourselves what to avoid. (This was written in 2010. It’s so much worse now.)
Earth.fm: Using academic and official sources, we reviewed noise levels in cities across the US, UK, and mainland Europe. We identified which parks and nature spots are considered quiet by those who visit them. In total, we assigned a Quiet Score to over 3,000 parks and nature spots across 245 cities.
Trust
The Brookings Institution did a fascinating survey series over the last five years. Many companies, particularly tech ones, are deliberately trading trust for short-term profits. Once you burn some trust, it’s almost impossible to earn it back. It took Harvard 400 years to become Harvard, Google about twenty to earn its position.
Anonymity is a double-edged sword. It enables people to speak without fear of social and legal discrimination. But this is also what makes it dangerous. This study looked at the deliberative quality of comments on online news articles under a range of different identity rules.