Rethinking Your Role: Why ‘Understanding Your Client’s Business’ No Longer Works
I went back to the town where I grew up not long ago and ran into someone from high school. I recognized her immediately. The same eyes, the same voice. The same hair.
The exact same hair.
A thick curtain of blonde layers, teased and sprayed, obedient to a style that had long since left the world behind. It was a look frozen in time—like someone still rocking a bouffant from the ‘50s or frosted tips from the early 2000s. It wasn’t just a hairstyle; it was a time capsule. Seeing it again in person was like spotting a woolly mammoth grazing outside a Whole Foods—improbable, yet there it was, defying extinction.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with keeping something you love. People hold onto things all the time—concert T-shirts, Christmas ornaments made of macaroni, cats that absolutely do not like them. But this wasn’t nostalgia, and it wasn’t sentimentality. This was a deliberate act of defiance. A refusal to acknowledge that trends fade away, that decades pass, that the world is no longer what it was.
I worry about people who don’t change. I worry about what it means to resist movement in a world that will not wait for you. Because time is not still, and it does not pause. And those who cling to the past—not just in style, but in mindset—risk becoming little more than museum exhibits of their former selves.
The Myth of Knowing
I see it everywhere. In industries. In businesses. In professionals who still talk about the same things they’ve talked about for decades, their words as crisp and polished as they were in an era that no longer exists. They still write about it. Sell it. Teach it. Believe it.
One of the most glaring examples is the persistent conversation about being a Trusted Advisor. The old mantra: “Understand your client’s business.” For years, this was the gold standard. Know your client’s industry better than they do, anticipate their needs, position yourself as the person with the answers. But what happens when your client doesn’t even understand their own business anymore? What happens when the foundation you built your expertise on is no longer solid ground?
I used to believe in it too. I said those words, I built strategies around them, I taught them as if they were laws of nature. But not anymore. Because the world that made them true is gone.
The Fragility of Stability
Industries are shifting faster than they were ever meant to. Business models that thrived for decades collapse overnight. Companies that once prided themselves on their unshakable certainty now pivot like struggling swimmers, desperately fighting to stay afloat.
A five-year strategy? Unthinkable. Even the best leaders now revise their plans quarterly, sometimes monthly, sometimes by the week. And yet, some professionals still walk into meetings, still look across conference tables, still shake hands and say, We understand your business.
They don’t. Because no one does. Not fully. Not anymore.
The Outdoor Retailer Who Didn’t Know What It Was
I saw this firsthand with an outdoor retailer I worked with. They used to know exactly what business they were in. They made hiking boots. Backpacks. Gear that was built for the edges of the world. Their competition was clear: other companies making the same things. Then the market shifted. Suddenly, they weren’t just competing with other gear brands. They were up against sensor-embedded boots, smart jackets that adjusted to body temperature, gloves that tracked heart rates.
They didn’t know what business they were in anymore.
Were they still a retail company? A tech company? Were they both? Were they neither? And if they didn’t know, how could their advisors?
Their consultants, their attorneys, their financial planners—every professional who had once stood by them as a so-called expert—kept offering strategies, recommendations, paths forward. But there was no single path anymore. There was no one right move. There was only risk. Experimentation. Trying and failing and trying again.
They didn’t need an advisor—someone telling them which way to go.
What they needed was a Protector.
What a Protector Does
A Protector does not promise certainty. They do not dictate a single route. Instead, they make it possible for their clients to explore, to test ideas, to take risks without losing everything.
A lawyer who drafts contracts that bend instead of break. A consultant who builds systems strong enough to absorb change. A financial expert who ensures that risk-taking does not become ruin.
A Protector is not someone who claims to know the future. They are the ones who make sure their clients can keep moving forward, even when the future is unclear.
Protectors in Action
Think about the outdoor retailer. Right now, demand is rising for wearable devices that track body signals—an opportunity that requires new technical knowledge, supply chains, and customer support systems. But what happens when, in a year, wearable patches that attach to the skin or even injectable devices become the new standard? The retailer must adapt to current trends while preparing for what comes next. What they may not realize is that they don’t just need an innovator; they need a Protector—someone who enables them to act with agility while maintaining stability. A Protector ensures they can explore new opportunities without betting the entire company on an uncertain future. In a world where change happens in weeks instead of years, a Protector makes it possible to take bold steps without falling off the edge.
The Ones Who Will Last
The businesses that will endure are not the ones with the best advisors. They are the ones who build the conditions to survive uncertainty. The professionals who will remain indispensable are not the ones who promise the right answers, but the ones who ensure that when failure happens—and it will—it is survivable.
And so, the choice is simple. You can keep doing what you’ve always done, saying what you’ve always said. You can keep waiting for things to go back to normal, for stability to return, for the rules to reset.
Or you can let it go.
Let go of the need to be right. Let go of the illusion of certainty. Let go of the title you once gave yourself.
And take on a new one.
Be a Protector.
Not the one who points the way forward.
The one who makes sure no one is lost along the way.