Consequential Comms

In the near decade since we began the work of structuring and deploying communications strategy for accomplished people, the same truth has continually revealed itself. When they decide they're ready to be perceived, people of distinction don’t want to be loud and disruptive. They want to be consequential.

That desire repeats across industry and institutional size — from the founder finding their rhythm on a crowded algorithm to the CEO of a billion-dollar fund taking on the world's most pressing issues. What they share is the desire for influence that makes them matter in what they care about — beyond the limits of influencer politics, and often regardless of how much power their institution already holds.

So we set out to learn how to collapse the walk from anonymous to consequential. Over the last two years, 1,760 people joined the experiment—first by de-risking their relationship with the press, then by using the agency they already command to shape perception and public opinion.

We found that a profound amount of power is available to anyone willing to commit to public discourse. In the people who accomplished the influence they joined us to find, five truths about their communication habits surfaced. These habits are unbelievably simple, enough to adopt for yourself in an afternoon and compound over time with striking impact. Here’s what they proved:

Consequential people play to the public, not the audience.

We've all seen it. The internet coaches and thought leaders who catfish their way through a content strategy just to move willing netizens toward the $20 template and the never-ending relay of sales emails, promises, and promotions. They land the podcast episodes, build their own media empires and accomplish some commercial success as their followings rise and their impressions climb — because, after all, business is a numbers game.

But an audience is who you sell to. They're who trust you to solve their problems at the scale to which you promise and often, they are loyal until you can't offer them anything anymore. You can count on them to like your posts, listen to your podcast, attend what you host, and then they Google you five years from now asking, “I wonder what they’re doing now?" If you dont engage them, audiences can leave you frozen in a moment in time.

Consequential leaders don't play to an audience. They play to a very strategic set of publics. The healthcare founder understands this well — first appealing to a small sample of researchers, or people affected by the problem they’re determined to solve, before seeking credibility from the medical community for approvals, and from institutional investors along the way to make their dream possible. Each of these is a distinct public with its own rules of engagement. Approaching them all at once is a suicide mission.

You market to an audience. You communicate with a public. The latter earns consequence.

Consequential people discuss consequential things.

This is a positioning decision. Consequential people understand what is truly consequential to what they're building and who they built it for.

Too often — especially in startup and philanthropic work — we see leaders build hyper-local, because that's who's applauding. I've always held one line that has transformed trajectories and comms strategies: go where you're relevant, not where you're celebrated. It's easy to stay where the spotlight is already on you and the room is familiar. It's braver, and far more impactful, to go where your voice carries weight — to address the issues and realities that actually carry consequence.

Be a real person, especially online. But if you want consequence, address what concerns your public, at a regular cadence. The tone you choose, the platform, and the cadence at which you deliver are themselves a message about how serious you are about reaching the people who will make you — and your cause — consequential.

Consequential people understand the power of timing.

More often than speaking too early, leaders speak too late — building their record of consequence long after the public and the press have already selected whose voices to prioritize on an issue.

There is always a way in. But to be consequential, you need to be clear and deliberate, and more than anything, well-timed — with relationships already in place and a perspective that has been evolving, so that holding a position feels practiced and easy, not forced and performative. The right message from the right messenger delivered in a timely manner where people can hear it? That’s a recipe for the attention that matters.

Consequential people understand the value of proximity.

Proximity now matters almost more than any other news value. You could be the CEO of a publicly traded company that moves trillions of dollars a year, and your words will still be weighed differently if you don't have proximity, standing, and stake in what you address. This is why you’ll notice leaders who rise to the top often address very little outside of the market performance they control.

As I write this, we’re living in a time when media has fragmented into so many micro-audiences, proximity can earn the one thing we're all after — momentum — faster than a press release published to a wire or the most meticulously crafted statement on something that materially isn't relevant to you or the people you’re building for. Reach is a direct result of proximity, and of the value you bring to the situations that are consequential to the narrative you're driving.

Consequential people know a record is being written every day.

They've correctly identified that the record continues with or without them — that they are either part of the history being written or they are not.

Consequential people don't all show up publicly every day. Some seasons demand quiet rooms and internal comms more than turning up the volume on a position. But they show up when the moment demands their expertise, their action, and their perspective — and then they report out. They communicate before the moment is "right." They call in the experts to give them the strongest read on the information available. And they write the record.

The record takes years to earn but the position doesn't have to. Bring your battle-tested excellence, and it can be made unmistakable — with precision, not simply publicity.

Communicate for consequence — or be just another option. The difference is in how you choose to communicate.

LAUREL is the agency of record for institutions that move capital — and the leaders and ventures they back. More in [From the Lab].