A phenomenon that I find curious is that there are often sideways effects to our choices. We do something with the intent of causing a specific outcome, but unintentional effects come along for the ride.

As an example, this week I attended PDX Mindshare, a group started by Kent Lewis. Kent’s intent was to connect smart people he knew who didn’t know each other. This created a lot of value for everyone involved, but some of the unanticipated effects were:

  • It swelled into a hiring fair with job seekers and businesses trying to match (he reined this in after the meetup started to overfill the venue.)
  • Kent developed a huge local email list of professionals.
  • Seth Godin wrote about it. And specifically the unintentional benefit it would create for Kent’s company ( https://seths.blog/2007/08/no-business-mod/ )

Similarly, this week I also spoke with Scott Woods of West Arete Software about his experience of marketing into higher education. He told me that at one point they were doing content marketing, but it wasn’t working because they didn’t have anything interesting to say. So he started attending higher ed conferences with the goal of understanding their challenges.

At one of these conferences, he stumbled across a workshop where the presenter asked his target clients, “What are your higher ed problems?” In a few hours, he learned exactly how higher ed thought and what they cared about. This not only transformed West Arete’s content, but also their messaging and approach. Additionally, the strategy of showing up to learn created connections and opened doors for sales conversations.

The closest thing I’ve come to business “secrets” are these indirect effects. They’re not random, but they’re subtle and not well known. No one is trumpeting the benefits of connecting from a place of altruism or really trying to understand a market. But magic often occurs when you make choices from the stance of service, rather than applying the latest transactional strategy.

Featured image is Apollo and the Muses on Mount Helicon (1680) by Claude Lorrain. Used under public domain.