Someone asked for my 1-pager in the middle of a networking call. Totally normal ask. And I said I'd send it after.
When I opened the file, I realized something. I just stared at it, it was too much.
The headline had a middling headline — who doesn’t want a strong and clear team? — and the subhed said, "Product strategy & design, workshop facilitation, team development & coaching." Three (3) big buckets of things, all equally weighted. No point of view.
I've been on the other side of the table for clients and customers, saying not to do this exact thing — if you're trying to talk to everyone, you're talking to no one, better to lead with one thing — and here it was. My mess, I did it. I just missed it.
AND I'd already found the one thing over a year ago. Feb 2025, Friday morning in Durham at Ali Heijmen's office in the old North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance building. Waiting for my turn, I asked myself, So what? Why does any of this matter? Really.
I thought to myself, Well, only humans buy anything. Dogs can't. Kids shouldn't. AI can't, not really. And forget about personas. If a product can solve one problem well for one kind of person, you've got something. Go talk to them, find out.
I said it out loud and the room responded. 20 people came up to me after.
But I didn't write it down. Not anywhere that counted. Yes, it lived in client conversations, in mentor sessions, in pitches for months. But I thought it was too obvious. Like something everyone already knew.
That's the thing about your own best idea. It seeps in through repetition — through saying it, hearing it land, seeing the reaction. Through 11 clients running the same sprint. Through the same question asked countless different ways.
You don't decide it's true. You just stop being able to say it any other way.
The lag between knowing something and trusting it on paper is real, and it can cost you. I was giving away the clearest version of my work in every conversation while my one-pager sat there collecting dust, still trying to cover all the bases, just in case. Without realizing it, I'd made an echo chamber that I was sending out after the meeting. Which was serving no one.
So I updated the cover. "Only humans buy anything — are you building for the right ones?" A single question with two offerings under one specific area of work.
Took less than 10 minutes once I realized it.
The new cover — a single question, two offerings, what it looks like when it catches up
Open tabs in my browser right now
Pushing the new Sony digital service paradigm on what used to be one of my favorite ways to watch a movie: https://www.indiewire.com/features/commentary/alamo-drafthouse-sucks-now-1235188253/
AI might be good with many tasks, but less good with the time-intensive human work of building relationships, "arm-twisting,” and those hated meetings: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/business/ai-jobs-human-work.html
Artist corporations (A-Corp) bill being considered in Colorado, could be live by 1 Jul 2027: https://www.artistcorporations.com/
A how-finding session at Dave Gray’s School of the Possible around member use cases for Claude — members only
Meanwhile, elsewhere…
Omit needless words.
The Elements of Style is the writing style guide for American English. Because less isn't a style but a standard.
There's probably something you've been mentally rehearsing for weeks — maybe months. It’s the thing you say to someone else lands, but hasn't made it onto paper yet.
Worth writing it down somewhere you'll actually see it. Say it enough times until it stops being a choice. Or it doesn't. But at least you'll know.
Skipper Chong Warson
Only humans buy anything, stop building for the wrong customer
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If what you say in your best conversations isn’t how you’re talking to your customers yet — that's exactly what we figure out together. Book an intro call at: howthisworks.co/start