The other day I mentioned that I was going to give an example of someone combining “horses need to run” with “break the pattern.” Here we go…

A few years ago I was working with a client, an architect who specialized in the building of water parks. One of the photos he showed me was of a light pole. He wanted to take it out of the presentation, because, in his eyes, it was peripheral to the project, but I urged him to keep it.

Why?

Because that one photo gave him the opportunity to talk about the various ways a pole can be attached to the ground, and why you would choose one method over another.

Turns out poles can either be glued to the surface, or they can be anchored with bolts, or they can be both glued and bolted. And how you go about making that decision is fascinating.

Who would be his audience? Investors who had never built a water park before. They were not hiring him because they were experts and needed another one. They were hiring him because they didn’t want to become experts. They had other things they needed to do.

In other words, they needed someone who thought deeply about how to attach poles to the ground, so they could do other stuff.

So he talked about poles, and in the process got to run, and in the running got to show off his expertise. Plus, he broke the pattern, a pattern in which no other presentations were digging that deep into anything.

He didn’t need to make his entire 20-minute presentation about poles. 30 seconds was all it took. But that 30 seconds gave him an opportunity to show off the depth of his knowledge, and it gave the investors something to remember (he would forever stick out in their minds as “the pole guy” even if they forgot his real name).

So the next time you’re asking yourself whether you should go deep or not, err on the side of going deep. Horses need to run.