This is Johanna Rothman’s November 2025 Create an Adaptable Life Newsletter. The unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email.
As a consultant, I use the value I offer to choose how to price my products and services. That’s how I know if a specific service or book will offer value to a client or reader. Until recently, I had not given enough thought about the value I receive from my offerings, such as workshops. But I’ve been thinking about my future to decide what to continue, what to change, and what to drop. (Yes, this is exactly the same thinking as project portfolio management.)
Each of us needs to consider the value we offer vs. the value we receive to make those decisions for the future. That’s a relatively easy idea for consultants because consultants have a limited number of business models:
- Consultants who align themselves with a well-known framework or methodology expect to be able to attract legions of clients. Until the market decides the framework has little value. That’s when the consultant needs to redesign their future.
- Consultants who might be famous can often create more fame by doing more of the “same” or very similar work. (Their fame creates their market.)
- Consultants who do not fit into “normal” constraints. For example, I’m often contrarian. I write and consult “up” and “down” the organization because I focus on effectiveness.
Successful consultants clarify both the value they offer and the value they receive.
But I spent last week at a writer’s conference. Writers create their own futures, based on the value they offer, too.
Different Careers Offer Different Value
While both writers and consultants tend to be entrepreneurial businesses, those businesses don’t look the same. Most of these writers were fiction writers, which means they have options for their businesses:
- Some writers make beautiful hardcover books and sell them to their legions of fans. (They built those legions slowly, over time.)
- Other writers write long series that appeal to a small but loyal group of fans. (This small and loyal fanbase often grows slowly over time, too. Sometimes, that writer “breaks through” to the legions based on a specific book.)
- Still other writers genre-hop. They hope their fans follow them to read that author’s voice.
I am clearly into the third category. With the exception of horror, I write all genres. (I can’t read horror, so I don’t write it.)
There is no standard playbook for writers, consultants, or small businesses. We each create our own approach to our unique business. (Nonfiction writers look a lot more like consultants than they do fiction writers.)
Here’s what’s common to these unique businesses: the more we focus on the value we offer and the value we receive, the more likely we can design our best future.
Consider the Value You Receive to Design Your Future
At the writing conference last week, one of my fiction writer colleagues asked me this question:
“What value do you receive if you offer those workshops?”
An excellent question.
If we don’t consider the value we receive, not just the value we offer, we can get stuck in a rut of only offering the same things in the same ways. Instead, I want to use value-based thinking to design my best future. I know how to offer value to others. Now, I need to receive enough value so I continue to feel energized by my consulting and writing.
That’s why I will stop offering interactive workshops after the January 2026 Writing Workshop 1: Free Your Inner Writer & Sell Your Nonfiction Ideas. I’m excited about using the value I receive, not just the value I offer, to design my best future.
How can you use the value you receive, not just offer, to design your best future?
Announcements…
I am still organizing my Kickstarter for Effective Public Speaking: How to Use Content Marketing With Stories to Show Your Value. When I have the link for that Kickstarter, I’ll let you know. (I might send you a quick email between these monthly emails.)
If you are part of the agile community, consider checking out The Agile Network. Also, don’t miss out on discounted membership options. Use Discount Code: ROTHMANPMC33 to get 33% OFF all memberships.
Read More of Create an Adaptable Life
New to the newsletter? See previous issues. (I post these newsletters to my YouTube Channel a few days after I send them.)
Here are other links you might find useful:
- Create an Adaptable Life Blog to see the weekly question of the week.
- My Books. You can buy my independently published books on my store.
- My Workshops
- Managing Product Development Blog
- Johanna’s Fiction
- Tip Jar. (My newsletters will remain free. And I do want to offer you an option for you to show how much you value my work.)
Till next time,
Johanna
© 2025 Johanna Rothman