Make this your #1 task – always be attracting opportunities.
You deserve to have options and live a more fulfilling life.
If you don’t know how to help people, you’ll struggle to find purpose.
Purpose is a combination of fueling personal growth and making a contribution to the life of people around you.
I’m eternally on the quest for it.
In very few moments, I get a glimpse of insight.
The latest one happened on a call with a colleague, who’s also a business owner. He said: “I noticed you post a lot on LinkedIn.”
We had a few minutes left to finish our call but he stayed on as I described my process.
When I finished, he responded: “That’s a great process and structure. I admire it and I don’t know if I can follow it. That’s where I’ll get an assistant to help but I want to post more.”
It occured to me that I had seen this before. People pay rapt attention when I describe how I write and create consistently.
The say:
“System.”
“Structure.”
“Discipline.”
It’s why I created a publishing course, a writing community, and what I help founders with.
But it finally dawned that it was all connected.
People want to learn to build, package, and share their expertise to consistently attract opportunities.
Knowing that, I’m going to try to distill it into this series of letters to be as helpful as possible.
The cost of being the best-kept secret:
You’ve done the work.
You’ve built the expertise.
But you’re still getting overlooked.
This is the story of a lot of people.
Great work hidden under noise.
What’s the result?
Lack of motivation.
Just costing in life.
Feeling like a victim.
This is the real cost of being the best-kept secret in your sphere of the world.
While the mediocre just coast on by.
Over time, you lose your agency to act. You ask: “What is the point anyway?”
You fall into a vicious cycle, where you don’t act, you forgo growth, you keep coasting, and wonder why you keep getting overlooked with no options out.
I’ve found that there are one of three reasons this happens.
Option #1:
You don’t see the value in being noticed. You are totally fine with doing the work, getting overlooked, and having limited options. So when you build, you don’t show your work.
Option #2:
You see the value in getting noticed for your hard work. You want to continue building your expertise and package it to attract more opportunities (more business, job promotion, career switch). However, you are limited by something. Some say: “I don’t want to self-promote.” “I don’t want to be too salesy.”The reality is that you are limited by perfection, mainly because you are caged by your high-level of expertise. You are such an expert that you think your expertise has to be perfect before you talk about it, or that people will just notice it.. Perfection is a symptom of resistance. Other symptoms include overthinking, falling for distractions. So you never start.
Option #3:
You see the value in getting noticed for your hard work. You’ve overcome the resistance a few times but you can’t find the focus to do it consistently.
I’ve experienced all three phases over the last twelve years. I want to save you twelve years of mistakes in 12 minutes of reading.
This is applicable to people that are in Option#2 and #3.
If you are in option #1, this will not be helpful. You can stop reading if you’d like. You are better off spending time asking why you don’t want to get acknowledged for your work to create options to do more significant work. However, if you are purely content with life, without fear of losing your current options – well that’s the ultimate goal, ain’t it? I want to learn from you.
For options #2 and #3.
Please read on:
The reality is that options don’t just appear.
They are available, but beyond a veil of resistance.
You need to understand what resistance looks like, then chip away at it to reveal options and opportunities.
This requires consistent action.
Consistent action requires a system.
All you need is a full system that helps you focus to consistently overcome resistance, get clarity, and attract opportunities. You can achieve this with only 15 minutes a day.
7-step stack to consistently attract opportunities and create abundant options.
I remember early in my career, I got a call from my manager as I was about to leave the office on a Friday afternoon.
He said: “Hey Nifemi. One of your colleagues will not be able to make a client trip, so you have to go down to Saskatchewan, Canada, next week. Please buy your ticket.”
“Damn.” I whispered to myself.
“Sure.” I said out loud, with a smile on my face.
I bought my ticket. On Monday, I was walking off a freezing tarmac, heading down into a potassium chloride mine, one mile underground.
Didn’t say a single word.
Had no choice.
Had to go.
As an engineer, I did my work, heads down.
I was told what to do.
No options.
Zero opinions.
No autonomy.
I later quit that job and went on my entrepreneurial journey. It’s not so rosy on the entrepreneurial side either. There was no manager to keep me accountable and offer me a steady flow of work. I had to learn to manage myself and hunt down new work. Through the process, I learned the importance of building, packaging, and sharing your ideas and expertise to attract the right audience and opportunities.
I have developed a system for it.
When you learn how to overcome resistance and build a system that supports your goals, you’ll show up to build authority and the right audience will always be at your doorstep, giving you the options to architect the life you want.
Here are the 7 steps to begin today.
Step 1: Clarify Your Authority Signal
Don’t try to be better.
Just be different.
Prep for calls.
I was once on an intro call with a mentor, telling her my journey leading up to a career pivot that I needed advice on. At the end of my introduction, she said: “As an engineer, who grew up in Nigeria…” I was surprised.
“That’s all she picked up in my lengthy 10-minute monologue.” I thought to myself.
When I asked why she focused on that, she said: “Well, you told your journey linearly and I anchored to the first thing you said.”
I learned an important lesson that day. It might be tempting to tell people your entire story, leading to where you are now.
Stop. Reverse it.
Refine your Signal:
Start with where you are and then tell your story.
And where you are now is the tip of the iceberg, supported by a stack of skills, unique experiences, and one-of-a-kind story.
A lot of businesses are solving similar problems – helping people save money, make money, save time, be more productive, feel safe, gain nutrients, get healthy, have energy, feel connected, be creative, find purpose.
You just have to define how the way you solve it is unique.
Identify the overlap between your expertise, your market’s pain, and what makes your perspective unique.
Spend some time refining this but don’t overthink it.
Positioning is what sets you apart. This can be your unique story, expertise, or philosophy. Most people struggle at this stage, yet it’s the most powerful place to set yourself apart.
What I’ve found that works for me is what I call a “skill stack.”
List 3-4 things you’ve a skill in or that you’ve experienced and stack them up. That’s your positioning. Your experience stack gives you a unique perspective and a differentiated place to stand on.
You will improve it through feedback when you start talking to your audience.
Start somewhere.
Always be refining.
Use Signal to Prep for calls:
Most of the opportunities that have come my way have been finalized on a phone call or in-person. I’ve closed business deals on zoom calls, accepted job offers on phone calls, accepted board positions on calls.
If you are going to solve problems for people, you are going to have to talk to them to understand how you can help. But it’s hard to get on calls with people that don’t know you, except you get a referral.
So you have to create a system that attracts people to get on an introductory call with you.
You do this with a content attraction funnel.
I’ll share the remaining 6 steps that make up this funnel with you in my next letter.
- Step 1: Clarify your “authority signal” {you’re here}
Step 2: Turn discovery into opportunities - Step 3 & 4: Build a conversation starters: with narrative banks and structure
- Step 5: Stack Content Like a System
- Step 6: Design a Lead Magnet That Works
- Step 7: Build Your Inbound Engine
- Bonus: Warm Up Outbound with Content
Yours truly,
Nifemi
P.S. to make the next two letters more effective for you, what challenges are you currently having in attracting opportunities and what step would you like me to focus on?
