There is only one of you

The most important meeting I run is not a strategy session. It is a two-to-three-hour conversation where I ask you about your life and we shoot the shit. Clients occasionally side-eye this. It sounds like a lot of billable friendliness.

Here is what actually gets locked in before we hang up: the services you need, the brand and style you want, and your spice level. Blunt or gentle. Profane or clean enough for five o'clock Sunday mass. Your style does not have to be my style; mine is mine, yours is yours.

Also competitors: do we name them or not? Most people say no, and honestly, I recommend no. Me? I'm clearly built different. High-level spice. You've seen my homepage.

And here is the corny thing that happens to be the entire strategy. There is only one of you. The poster in the guidance counselor's office turned out to be a market analysis.

Everything a machine makes is drawn from an average, and an average is everywhere and belongs to no one. Your competitors can copy your prices, your services, even your website layout, by Tuesday. What they cannot copy is the specific person who answers the phone, the story of how the shop started, the joke only your industry gets, and the thing you refuse to do on principle. You are the one input that cannot be commoditized, and by extension, neither can your business.

That is why the interview runs long. The machine can type. It cannot be you. Two hours of your life is the cheapest moat you will ever buy.