3 Questions to Power Map Your Industry & Un-Stall Growth Now 🚀

Is your growth chart looking flatter than a conversation at a corporate retreat? Are you doing all the "right" things—hustling, grinding, sprinkling "synergy" on everything—but the needle just won't move?

Here’s the brutal truth the startup gurus won't tell you: the problem isn't your product. It’s not your pitch deck. It's that you don't understand where the real power resides in your industry.

You're trying to win a game without knowing how it's scored.

Let me paint you a picture. Imagine a founder, let's call her Jane. Jane builds a project management tool that’s objectively better than Asana or Monday. It’s slicker, faster, cheaper. She spends a year pitching to project managers, the logical buyers. The result? A chorus of ‘This is nice, but we’re fine.’ Her growth chart is a flatline.

Frustrated, she stops building and starts listening. She discovers that project managers, her supposed 'ideal customers,' have zero power to buy new software. The real gatekeeper? The CFO, who couldn't care less about Gantt charts but is pathologically obsessed with one thing: billable efficiency. The company’s big, unquestioned belief is that ‘good project management’ is about features. The lie. The real driver is profitability.

Jane pivots. She stops selling a ‘project management tool’ and starts pitching a ‘profitability engine for services firms.’ She shows CFOs how her tool minimizes non-billable hours. Suddenly, she’s not just getting meetings; she's closing deals. Same product, different power map. She didn't change her code; she changed her understanding of who holds the keys.

That's the game. And it starts by asking a few dangerously simple questions.

Question 1: What’s the Credibility Code?

What kinds of credentials and experiences automatically garner respect in your industry?

Before you even open your mouth, prospects, investors, and partners are sizing you up based on a set of unwritten codes. Who gets instant credibility? Is it the person with a PhD from a fancy university? The founder who logged five years at a FAANG company?

This isn’t just about resumes; it’s about decoding the secret handshake. Sometimes it’s about the language you use—the specific, insider jargon that signals you’re one of them. Understanding this code is the first step. It’s how you get people to listen to you in the first place.

Question 2: Who Are the Real Gatekeepers?

Whose opinions actually matter?

These aren't always the people with the biggest titles. The real gatekeepers are the individuals or organizations whose words move the market. When they take the stage at a conference, everyone shuts up and listens. When they write an article, the entire industry dissects it.

It could be an influential journalist, a niche blogger with a cult following, or a specific VP at a key company. Your job is to identify these people. They are the gatekeepers whose validation acts as a powerful signal and can change the trajectory of your business.

Question 3: What’s the Big Lie?

This one is the most critical. What is the one assumption or belief in your industry that everyone takes for granted but might be completely, utterly wrong?

Every industry has one. A "best practice" that’s actually outdated. A "truth" that no one has bothered to question in years.

This is your crack in the ceiling.

This is the point of leverage you can use to kick the door down. When you build your point of view around challenging this sacred cow, you stop being just another vendor. You become a thought leader. You create a counterintuitive argument that makes people lean in, sparks debate, and establishes your credibility on a whole new level.

Okay, But How Do I Actually Power Map?

Glad you asked. This isn't about sending out a SurveyMonkey poll. This is about real anthropological fieldwork. Here's your simple, 3-step field guide:

• Go Full Anthropologist at an Industry Conference. Listen to speakers share their challenges, products, and solutions, and take notes. But don't just sit in the main keynote. Go to the smaller breakout sessions, the lunch table, the hotel bar where the real talk happens. You're a spy now, and your mission is to decode the native tongue.

• Listen for the Industry Gospel. Tune your ears to the repeated "truths" and assumptions that everyone nods along to like they're in a cult. It's the stuff that gets said so often it has ceased to be questioned: "You can't scale without X," "The only way to grow is Y," "Customers always want Z." This is the invisible script your entire industry is reading from.

• Find the Belief That Smells Funny. As you listen, one of these "truths" will make your gut clench. It'll feel off, limiting, or just plain wrong. That's it. That's your crack in the ceiling. That's the assumption you need to challenge. It's the starting point for the counter-intuitive POV that will make you stand out from every other lemming running toward the same cliff.

Finding this crack is how you get into the right rooms, in front of the right people, at the right time. It's the foundation of the entire "Invisible Rules" methodology I cover in my upcoming book. It’s not about fighting the system; it’s about understanding the game so you can outsmart it.

So stop polishing your pitch deck. Start power mapping.

Provocative Question For You:

What’s one belief in your industry that everyone treats as gospel, but you suspect is complete BS? Hit reply and tell me—I’m dying to hear the heresies.

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