MY THINKING

The Capable to Chosen Method

Being highly capable at what you do doesn't automatically make your consultancy easy to choose.

When you leave a senior corporate role, the experience, judgement and credibility are still there. What's changed is that you now have to make that value visible, through the position you take, what you sell, how you communicate it and how you take it to market.

The Capable to Chosen Method is my thinking on what needs to happen in between.

Jump to the four stages

The Four Stages

DiscoverDefine the business you want to build
DefineEstablish your position
ShapeShape your expertise into offers that are easier to buy
ExpressTurn your strategy into a marketing direction

THE CAPABILITY GAP

Why capable consultants get overlooked

You can be exceptionally good at what you do and still find it difficult to build a consultancy that reflects it.

I see this particularly with people who have left senior corporate roles. They arrive with years of experience, judgement and credibility, but suddenly find themselves having to explain, package and market expertise that was previously understood in context. They've also gone from working in businesses with marketing teams behind them to having to work out how to market their own expertise themselves.

The challenge is making that capability easier for the market to recognise, by building the foundations that help the right clients understand your value, trust your expertise and know how to buy from you.

That's the thinking behind Capable to Chosen.

WHEN YOU BECOME INDEPENDENT

You're already capable

“How do I explain what I do without sounding like everyone else?”

“How do I turn everything I could do into something people can easily buy?”

“Why isn't my marketing translating into enough of the right enquiries?”

You've spent years, perhaps decades, building expertise inside organisations. You've solved difficult problems. Led teams. Made strategic decisions. Built credibility through the work you've done and the responsibility you've carried.

In corporate life, much of that context came with you. Your role told people something. The organisation you worked for told them something. Your reputation, track record, colleagues and internal network all helped people understand where you fitted and what you could be trusted with. And there was a marketing team responsible for how the business showed up in the market.

Then you become independent.

Suddenly, all of that communication falls to you. You have to decide how to describe what you do, who it's for, what to sell, what to charge, what makes you different and how to market it.

That's a very different skill from being excellent at the work itself.

A COMMERCIALLY GROUNDED APPROACH

Before the marketing, get clear on what you're building

I believe good marketing starts with understanding the business it's there to support.

Before deciding what the words should be, which channels to focus on or what to post on LinkedIn, we need to understand where you're trying to go.

Who are you best placed to help? What do you want to become known for? What are you asking people to buy?

That's what I mean by a commercially grounded approach to marketing.

The marketing has a job to do. It should help move the consultancy in the direction you're trying to take it.

Translating your expertise

Your expertise has to work differently when its your your business

When you're independent, expertise alone has a harder job to do.

It has to become a position in the market. It has to translate into offers someone can understand and buy. It needs language that communicates the value without requiring a twenty-minute explanation. And it needs a route that helps someone move from knowing you exist to wanting to work with you.

You wonder whether you need to post more consistently. Rewrite the website. Improve LinkedIn. Get clearer on your niche. Create a new service. Try a different lead magnet. Use AI to produce more content.

Any of those things might help. But their effectiveness depends on the decisions underneath them.

What kind of consultancy do you want? Who are you best placed to help? What do you want to become known for? What are you asking people to buy?

Until those decisions start to take shape, marketing has very little solid ground to stand on.

the thread

Why capable consultants often miss what makes them distinctive

I once worked with a consultant who mentioned almost in passing that she'd spent years in investment banking before moving into sustainability.

To her, it was old career history. To me, it changed how I understood her value.

She didn't approach sustainability only through the sustainability lens. She understood it through commercial reality too. She could speak the language of business leaders, balance purpose with commercial pressure and help organisations make decisions that had to work on both levels.

We hadn't invented something new. We'd recognised something that had been there all along.

The things that make you valuable are often the things you're least likely to recognise as unusual.

An experience that shaped how you think. A perspective you've developed over years. Something clients repeatedly thank you for. A pattern you spot more quickly than other people. A way of approaching the work that feels so natural you've never thought to explain it.

When you've lived with those things for years, they don't feel distinctive. They just feel like you.

That's why part of my work feels like detective work. I'm listening for the experiences you've stopped noticing, the patterns you've overlooked and the strengths you've started taking for granted.

Somewhere in there is often a thread connecting your experience, perspective, strengths and ambitions.

We don't invent that thread to manufacture differentiation. We uncover it, make sense of it and work out how it can strengthen the consultancy you're building.

from capable to chosen

Being capable and being easy to choose are different things

Gradually, the gap between what you're capable of and what the market can recognise and buy from you starts to close.

Being chosen isn't simply a reflection of how experienced you are.

A prospective client has to recognise that your experience is relevant to them. They need to understand the problem you help solve, see themselves in the work you do, understand what they can buy and have enough confidence in your expertise to take the next step.

That's why I look beyond messaging.

The work starts with the business you're trying to build and moves through your position, offers, client journey and messaging before we decide how to take all of that into your marketing.

Each decision makes the next one stronger.

4 stages

The Capable to Chosen Method

The Capable to Chosen Method brings my thinking together in four stages, starting with the business you want to build and working through how you position, shape, communicate and market it.

It isn't a formula or a funnel. It's a strategic framework for giving the thinking structure, with each stage giving the next one firmer ground.

Throughout, we keep uncovering and strengthening the thread that connects your experience, perspective, strengths and ambitions, so the decisions we make build on what is genuinely distinctive about you.

01Discover

Define the business you want to build

Before we decide how to position or market the consultancy, I want to understand what we're actually building and what we're building it from.

We look forward at your ambitions, commercial goals and the kind of consultancy you want to create, and backwards across your career, experience and strengths to understand what has shaped the way you work and where you've consistently added value.

This is also where we start looking for the thread connecting your experience, perspective, strengths and ambitions, which we'll keep testing and strengthening as the consultancy takes shape.

What we work through

What do you want your business to become?
What does commercial success look like for you?
What kind of work do you want more, and less, of?
What experiences have shaped your career and the way you work?
Where have you consistently added value, and what strengths or patterns might you be overlooking?

key decisions: Vision, goals and foundations

02Define

Establish your position

Once we understand the business we're building, we can decide where it should sit in the market.

We look at who you're best placed to help, the problems you're particularly equipped to solve, the competitive context and the perspective or advantage that gives someone a reason to choose you.

This isn't about forcing yourself into an artificially narrow niche. It's about making deliberate choices about where you want to be known and valuable.

What we work through

Who are you best placed to help?
Which problems are you particularly well equipped to solve?
What do you want to be known for?
Where does your experience give you an advantage?
Where do you fit in the market?
Why you? Why now?

Key decisions: Positioning, differentiation and ideal clients.

03Shape

Turn your expertise into offers that are easier to buy

Expertise can be broad and nuanced. Your offers need to make it easier for clients to understand how they can work with you and where to start.

Here we work out how your expertise can be packaged, how your offers fit together and the role each one plays in the client journey. We look at the progression between them, from an accessible first step through to deeper engagements, and work through the considerations that should inform how your offers are structured and priced.

We also map the journey someone takes from becoming interested in your work to making an enquiry and deciding to buy.

What we work through

How could your expertise be packaged into clearer offers?
How should your offers fit together?
Is there a clear and accessible way for the right client to start working with you?
What role does each offer play in your offer ladder?
What should inform how you price and structure your offers?
How does someone move from interest to enquiry and sale?

Key decisions: Offer architecture, pricing and client journey.

04Express

Turn your strategy into a marketing direction

By this point, we've decided what you're building, where you fit and what you're selling. Express turns those strategic decisions into a clear plan for how you communicate and market the consultancy.

We develop the messaging architecture around your position and offers, including the language you use, the messages that need to come through consistently and the proof that gives them credibility.

We also work out how those messages need to adapt for different clients, offers and stages of the client journey, then shape the content themes, channels and priorities that will carry the strategy into your marketing.

The result is a clear direction for what you need to communicate, where you need to communicate it and what your marketing needs to focus on.

What we work through

What language makes your value easier to grasp?
Which messages need to come through consistently?
How should those messages shift for different clients, offers or entry points?
What does someone need to hear at different stages of the client journey?
What proof and evidence make those messages more credible?
Which content themes, channels and priorities will carry those messages into your marketing?

KEY DECISIONS: Messaging architecture, content direction and marketing priorities

Each stage builds on the last, making your consultancy easier to understand, trust and buy from.

Explore Capable to Chosen

Ready to build a consultancy that reflects what you're capable of?

The Messaging Review is the simplest place to start. For £300, I'll review your positioning, offers, messaging and marketing, then we'll spend an hour exploring the context behind what I've seen. Afterwards, I'll bring everything together into clear priorities and recommendations.

Explore the Messaging Review

Ready to build the strategic foundations around your expertise?Explore Capable to Chosen