Perspective is worth 80 IQ points

Here’s a test.

Pull up your last three client emails.

Count the times you offered options.

Count the times you offered a recommendation.

I already know the answer.

I’ve been banging the drum on perspective for years. Everyone nods. Perspective. Point of view. Having something to say. Yes, yes, yes.

But every once in a while, I’m sitting across from a filmmaker. Dinner after a summit. Drinks after a shoot. Coffee with somebody I just met. And the performance drops.

What they actually say sounds like this:

“Honestly? I don’t really know what my perspective is. I have taste. I have preferences. But if a client sat me down right now and asked me to defend my point of view on their project, I’d freeze.”

Or:

“I’m scared that if I commit to a point of view, half my potential clients walk away.”

That’s the quiet part.

It’s not “I don’t believe in perspective.” It’s “I don’t actually know what mine is, or what it would even look like if I had one.”

So let’s fix that today.

Let’s define it. Let’s show what it actually sounds like. And let’s build a filter you can run your next email through before you hit send.

What perspective actually means in business.

Perspective in business is knowing what to create, how to create it, and how to bring it to market to achieve your client’s desired outcome.

Read that again.

It’s not taste. It’s not style. It’s not “I gravitate toward human stories.”

It’s a point of view on your client’s business outcome, backed by a recommendation on what to make, how to make it, and how to deploy it so the work actually moves the needle.

That’s the thing AI can’t do.

AI doesn’t have skin in the game on the outcome. AI doesn’t know your client’s category, their competitors, or why their last campaign underperformed. AI generates options. It doesn’t prescribe.

You do.

Let me show you what it sounds like.

Picture this. I’m sitting across from the CMO of Ponzi Vineyards here in Portland. Beautiful winery. Rich family history. Decades of story waiting to be told.

We’ve just spent two weeks doing Storyfinding. Interviewed the founders. Walked the vineyards. Talked to long-time customers. Read the press. Studied three of their Oregon competitors and identified what Ponzi was doing differently.

She has a brief. She also has a ChatGPT tab open with a hundred concepts, a Midjourney board full of moody winery visuals, and an AI editor that costs her $97 a month.

She doesn’t need another idea. She doesn’t need another quote.

She needs judgment.

The vendor walks in with “tell me what you want, I’ll quote it by the day.” That guy just got eaten.

The strategic partner walks in with this:

“Here’s what we found. Your moat isn’t the wine. It’s the handoff. Dick and Nancy built 40 years of craft into this place, and Max, your new winemaker, is carrying it into the next generation. That generational tension IS your authenticity story. Nobody else in the region has that specific story to tell, and that’s where we should plant the flag.

Here’s what I’d do. Cinematic short film anchored on Max as the heart. He’s how we earn the next generation of wine drinkers. Dick and Nancy come in as helpers, the bedrock, the past speaking to the present. The first ten seconds of the film have to cement you as a top-tier Oregon winery. Treat it like a brand trailer, not a testimonial. That signal is what tells your audience in under a second whether you’re premium or casual.

Then we cut two versions. A short film for your homepage to win first impressions. A longer cut gated inside the wine club as an exclusive member benefit, which gives people a reason to join and raises brand equity the moment they do. We also arm your sales team with both cuts to use in enterprise conversations.

Here’s what I think it unlocks in year one. And here’s what I’d avoid doing if I were in your chair.”

THAT is perspective.

Look at what’s inside it. A point of view on where their moat actually lives. A recommendation on who’s in the film and why. An approach to visuals that tells a positioning story before a single word is spoken. A deployment strategy. A prediction. And a warning.

Same raw filmmaking skill as the vendor. Radically different value.

Now put yourself in the CMO’s shoes.

Same week. Two meetings. One filmmaker hands you a quote. The other hands you a plan, a point of view, and a prediction about what it’ll do for your business.

Wouldn’t you pay 5x for the second one?

Of course you would.

So would she. So does every CMO I’ve ever sat across from.

The question isn’t whether perspective is worth more. The question is whether you’re the one bringing it.

Here’s the part nobody teaches.

Where does that point of view come from?

It isn’t a personality trait. It isn’t confidence. It isn’t twenty years of experience.

It’s preparation.

Before that meeting, the partner-tier filmmaker did four things the vendor skipped:

• Studied Ponzi’s last three videos and identified the gap.

• Read the about page, press coverage, and founder interviews.

• Watched two or three competitors in the same tier of Oregon wine and identified what Ponzi was doing differently.

• Formed a point of view on who the next wine-club member actually is, and worked backward from that audience to the creative.

Less than an hour with practice. Two or three when you’re starting out.

And you’re not just preparing for one meeting. You’re training a muscle. Every time you run this cycle, your perspective-muscle gets stronger. Eventually you walk into a discovery call and the point of view shows up in real time, because you’ve built the habit of seeing this way. You stop having to find a perspective. You start having one automatically.

That’s the gym. Show up for it.

The Perspective Filter.

Okay. So how do you actually know if you’re showing up with a point of view on any given email, pitch, or proposal, or just performing one?

Four questions. Run every meaningful outgoing communication through this before you hit send.

• What would I do?

• What wouldn’t I do?

• Why?

• What do I expect it to unlock?

*The fourth one is the whole game.*

A real point of view has risk in it. A prediction. A stake. “I expect this to unlock X” is what separates a polite consultant from a strategic partner. One of them is making a bet. The other is writing a report.

Clients pay for the bet.

This isn’t theoretical. We use it internally at Muse. If one of our creatives sends me a storyboard, a rough cut, or a paper edit without answering those four questions, I reject it on sight.

Don’t read it. It goes back.

Not because I’m being difficult. Because sending the work without the point of view is letting you and them down. “Here’s the thing, you decide.” That’s the opposite of why I hired you.

Start with your internal communications. Then upgrade to client-facing work.

Within two weeks, two things happen.

Your messages get shorter. (Most vendor-speak is padding and options.)

And people start treating you differently. Because a prescription delivered with a prediction behind it is almost impossible to argue with.

Before and after. Proof on the page.

Same filmmaker. Same client. Same project brief. Two emails.

The vendor version:

“Hey Sarah, thanks for the call yesterday. I’ve been thinking about the project and I’d love to get your thoughts on a few directions. We could go more documentary-style with interviews, or more cinematic with b-roll-driven storytelling. I could also do a hybrid. Let me know which direction feels right and I’ll put together a quote. Either way, excited to partner with you.”

The partner version:

“Hey Sarah, thanks for the call yesterday. Here’s what we found in Storyfinding.

Your moat is the handoff.

Dick and Nancy built 40 years of craft, and Max is carrying it into the next generation. That generational tension IS your authenticity story. Here’s what I’d do. Cinematic short film anchored on Max as the heart, with Dick and Nancy as the bedrock. First ten seconds have to cement you as top-tier Oregon, not casual.

Short cut for the homepage, longer cut gated inside the wine club as a member benefit. I’d avoid a pure b-roll piece; it flattens everything that makes you different.

I expect this positions you as the premium Oregon story brand within 18 months and gives your sales team a real enterprise tool. Full proposal Thursday.”

Same writer. Same sixty seconds to type.

One is a vendor asking to be told. The other is a partner being paid to see.

Here’s the last quiet part out loud.

It’s tempting to have less to say.

If you never stand for anything, nobody can disagree with you. If you never prescribe, you can’t be wrong. If you keep your point of view soft, you get a slightly bigger pool of potential clients.

For about another eighteen months.

Then the pool shrinks to zero. Because having no point of view in the age of AI is the same as having no value.

Pick a wall. Believe something. Be willing to respectfully and intentionally defend how you see the world.

Until next week, keep moving, keep questioning, keep choosing who you’re becoming.

• Patrick

ps - open your last client email. find the moment you offered options instead of a recommendation. rewrite that one paragraph with the filter. that’s the whole exercise. do it before you do anything else today.