Priestley's observation is that opportunity in any industry clusters around a small number of visible people, and that this visibility is usually built deliberately rather than earned by being best at the craft.
The prescription is to build the assets that make someone findable and credible — a clear pitch, something published, a product ecosystem, a network — rather than waiting to be noticed.
It is a strategy about being known, which sits uncomfortably with people who would rather be judged on the work. Worth reading precisely because that discomfort is the thing costing them business.
If you cannot say what you do and who it is for in a sentence somebody could repeat accurately to a third person, your referrals will not work — because referral depends on someone else describing you when you are not there.
A book, a guide, a tool: something that keeps making the case while you sleep. For a small firm the point is less the sales it makes directly and more that it ends the question of whether you know your subject.
Something free, something small and paid, something substantial. It lets people buy their way up as trust grows instead of facing one large yes-or-no decision.
These links go to their own work. We summarise and point — we do not republish it.
Consultants, advisers, agencies and any business where people buy the person as much as the service.
If your growth is genuinely constrained by operations or capital rather than by demand, this will not fix it — and it can be an expensive distraction from the real bottleneck.
