It's embarrassing that I'm coming to the full realization of the fact after 30 goddamn years in this world. And here it is: it's all templates and templates, all the way down. Let me explain!
A business, does certain things, whatever they may be. But on the day-to-day basis, fundamentally what decides their actions? Templates! There's a clear template for any employee to do or say or react to certain way, that they're made aware of, and they execute it. You're not figuring things out every day, all the time, for everybody. No, it's stable, it's easy, yadda-yadda.
A business proposal, or a funding proposal, what is it really? You get a template that's worked with funding partners before. Then you plugin new text. You know the template works because the words you've put in it are the same words they want to hear, and heard in the past for you. In the end, you get so good at expanding out on the templates, you make it into your business, for a good chunk of money. You tell people, hey I'll write your funding proposal, and give me money for that. What they DON'T realize is that you're just filling out the template that you have optimized for your target, and it's not that much work.
Business consulting is much of that. You've got your methodologies, you've got your frameworks, you've got your formulae. And for many industries you've got your variables. You plug them all in, and boom, you've got a templated response that looks excessively impressive to somebody who's not seen them before, because they don't know how the sausage is made. And if you don't have the variables, the hardest part of the whole situation is figuring out the variables and their saliency. Not easy by any stretch, but not as impressive as starting everything from scratch.
And so on and so forth.
Point is, I need to learn how to write my proposals, my consulting proposals!
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