Katelyn Bourgoin 🧠

If you want to get rich, you should think in public Why? Because people need to buy into your thinking before they'll buy from you

Old game: Good work attracts clients New game: Good thinking attracts clients

@RohanShips nailed it

@KateBour Look at Tim Ferriss. His idea of lifestyle design through The 4-Hour Workweek attracted millions of people. The idea created the audience.

Being known for a specific idea beats just choosing a specific audience to target. You don’t need to narrow who you serve—you need to own what you stand for. Your ownable idea is your niche.

@akibvisuals It’s meta. ‘Ownable ideas’

@KateBour what's the thing you want people to think of when they hear your name?

@SarahLevinger Bahaha. Needed this today

Noone: . . . Literally nobody: . . . Twitter: "AI just made bananas, Kleenex, philosophy, tax codes, window shades, bumpers, and your cousin's dog obsolete. Comment WTF and I'll send you the playbook."

@poisondart14 very cool!

@KateBour I'm leaning into chaos (my personality) plus NASA physicist (my edge). No-one in the email / Klaviyo space owns anything like this. I know the tension between the two ideas is gold. Just gotta translate it into an 'ownable idea.'

@sapienstrategy For sure. And any marketer worth their salt starts with positioning and messaging, right?

@KateBour marketers turning skills into giants because distribution is the new moat. But for many on that list (HubSpot, Basecamp), the edge was solid positioning architecture underneath - owning "inbound" or "calm company" as filters that attract without endless chasing.

The (lazy) narrative: "agencies are dead" The reality: good marketers will get VERY rich — Building a product used to require a ton of capital, years of engineering or R&D, and a team you probably couldn't afford. (Trust me. I built a VC-backed tech startup without a technical co-founder way back in 2014. It was haaaaaaard.) But now that everyone can vibe code, the bottleneck shifted. Overnight. What's hard now? ↳ Distribution ↳ Making people care ↳ Crafting a story that spreads These aren't product problems. They're marketing problems. That means budgets shift—less spent to build. WAY MORE spent on building demand. Which gives us a distinct advantage. Marketers are already the founders behind some of your favorite brands. Canva. Olipop. Webflow. Hubspot. Shopify. Glossier. Liquid Death. The entrepreneurs who founded these iconic companies all ran agencies or consultancies first. Sometimes they built solutions to scratch an itch for themselves and their clients. Sometimes they saw an opportunity no one else did. "Soda" that's good for your gut-health? Canned water with a name like "LiquidDeath"? Only a marketer could dream those up. — And the best agencies and marketers are about to get dramatically more leveraged. I see two winning paths: Path 1: Productize your expertise—building high-margin service businesses that run like software. Think niche, highly scalable agencies that build internal tools that blend their team's proprietary approach and craftsmanship with AI-efficiency. I call these "brainware" agencies. And that's what I'm building. Path 2; Build that crazy product the world wants, but doesn't know it yet. Because unlike the non-marketers, you actually know *how* to build demand. The speed of change will be insane. But us marketers have always navigated rapid change while focusing on what doesn't change fast: people. — The people betting against agencies are dead wrong. Sure, some won't make it. But others—the smart ones—will win bigger than they ever imagined. And us marketers already think big, right? — P.S. did I miss another marketer-led giant on this slide? Drop the name below

Them: “Courses are dead” Me: *getting testimonials like this on my courses daily*

@torreydawley Yup. Better thinking is a crazy undervalued second order consequence of content creation

@KateBour Totally. And, at the very least, you’re using content to practice your main concepts and narratives that frequently arise in conversations. I’m increasingly guiding my people to use content primarily for that purpose. And, if that leads to conversations here, bonus.

You just wrote something good Then deleted it because it felt "too obvious" That's The Expert's Paradox in real time What feels like common sense to you is genuinely rare insight to someone two steps behind The idea you almost didn't post? Probably your best one Post it

@SmurfySteve Narrative nerds unite!

@KateBour An expert Narrative Strategist here! I believe in Ownable ideas so much. And I'm still learning from you!

Your buyer already knows what they want. They’re waiting for someone to show them why everything they’ve tried falls short. That’s why an ownable idea is so powerful. When you find the right one, you stop chasing clients and start attracting them. But not with a catchy tagline or a polarizing take. What you need is an argument that meets your buyer’s existing goals and exposes the gap in how the market currently serves them. An example? Justin Welsh built a $10M business on his ownable idea. He didn’t invent solopreneurship. The word already existed—but before Justin, nobody wanted to claim it. Calling yourself a “solopreneur” felt like admitting your business was small. Like your ambitions weren’t serious enough to build a 'real' company. Justin reframed its meaning entirely. He argued that choosing to work solo was an act of rebellion. It was the smart path to ditch "the rat race" (Justin's words) and live on your own terms. Being a solopreneur became a statement. You valued freedom over fancy titles or unicorn exits. Justin didn’t change what people wanted. He told a story that changed what it meant to want it and gave them a new identity to proudly step into. You can see how powerful that is, right? Here's where people go wrong: You won't find your ownable idea by guessing at a clever phrase. You have to understand your buyer’s world first—what they want, and why everything they’ve tried has failed to deliver it. That gap is where your argument lives. The graphic above breaks down the method we use with clients to find, shape and share their first ownable idea. In Excavate, we surface your thinking and map it against your buyer’s world (their goals, desires, and where existing solutions are falling short). In Distill, we find the argument that’s genuinely ownable and fits where your buyer already is. Stage 3 is Claim. The idea gets locked. Not invented. Chosen. In Shape and Activate, we build the full language system and strategic narrative around your idea and help you put it into the world. This is how you stake your claim on an idea that sells…. like Justin did. Justin’s idea didn’t spread because he just chose the right words. It spread because he named something people already wanted to claim as their own. That’s what the right ownable idea does: it doesn’t just attract clients. It creates believers. — P.S. Are you becoming a believer in the power of ownable ideas?

When everything becomes clone-able, double-down on what's OWN-able ~ unique IP / perspectives (@KateBour) ~ email lists (@beehiiv) ~ IRL (generalist world)

@MillyTamati @beehiiv Yasss! This rhyme is amazing btw 🙌

@thesamparr Tell me you have a great culture without telling me

Discovered on my desk.

Buyers don’t hire the most qualified expert. They hire the one who makes them feel understood and makes them think. Your POV is your pitch.