September 15, 2025

Hello, Peripheral Thinkers!

Welcome to the September 2025 monthly newsletter.

September is a strange month. Not quite summer. Not quite fall.

Most people push through it. Peripheral Thinkers™ pause. Because the in-between is where breakthroughs hide.

This month's newsletter → a $23M client story, why discomfort is a compass, and a 5-minute exercise for your own hidden season.

Ready to drive into the peripheral "In Between?"

The Hidden Season of Innovation

It's a weird time of year, isn't it?

In the Northern Hemisphere, it's not quite summer. Not quite fall. The mornings flirt with crisp air, the afternoons still beg for sunscreen, and your calendar can't decide if it wants to speed up or slow down.

It's a shoulder season — in nature and in business.

And most people? They try to power through it. Push harder. Hustle more. Rush to the next "thing."

But Peripheral Thinkers™? We don't just move through the shoulder seasons.

We look there.

We listen there.

We create there.

Because the in-between is where breakthroughs hide. Where innovation breathes. Where perspective gets sharper, and the noise finally fades.

The Perils of Pushing

In business, especially this time of year, the push is real.

💪🏽 Push to close Q3.

📈 Push for Q4 revenue.

📅 Push to wrap up strategic plans.

💡 Push to launch "one more" idea before year-end.

And what's the result?

More of the same ideas, rushed out the door.

Teams sprinting into burnout by the holidays.

A "fresh start" in January that feels more like a

Blank sheet of paper, not a launchpad.

When you push through everything, you see nothing.

You miss the whispers of opportunity. The quiet signals of disruption. The gaps that don't shout, but can shape the future of your business.

Peripheral Thinkers™ know that real momentum doesn't come from frantic output. It comes from well-placed insight. The kind that only shows up when you pause long enough to notice.

The Spaces Between

Several years ago, a client asked me to suggest some innovative products for their roadmap.

They wanted the usual buzzwords: bold, disruptive, sticky.

But the truth was, they were already swimming in ideas.

When I arrived, the conference room looked like a Post-it parade.

Sticky notes covered every surface.

The whiteboard? A war zone of diagrams and keywords.

Their Slack threads? A digital avalanche of "genius."

Still… nothing was landing.

After 45 minutes of listening to their reasoning for one solution after another, I called a break.

We walked to the park across the street. No laptops. No notebooks. Before I gave them their assignments, I asked for their cellphones.

You would've thought I asked them to sever a limb. "Don't worry," I said. "If something urgent happens, I'll get you."

Then I gave them the briefest of instructions:

"Spread out. Find a quiet place. Take some deep breaths. Just sit… and notice."

That's it.

🧠 I'm no meditation expert. I'm not teaching breathing techniques. I just knew their brains needed a break in the periphery to make mental space for what would come next.

Fifteen minutes later, we walked back in.

"Now," I said, "Look at the list again. What's on it? What's missing? And what's been so close for so long that you stopped seeing it?"

This time, the conversation was different.

And then, it surfaced; not a bold idea, not a wild invention… but a service gap right there, nestled between two of their core offerings.

Something subtle.

Easy to miss.

Quietly powerful.

Not sexy. Not disruptive. But innovative.

💰 Worth $23 million in new revenue over the following three years.

All from a moment to reset perspective. To explore the in-between.

🧠 Why the In-Between Feels Uncomfortable — and Why That's a Good Thing

Humans crave clarity. We want beginnings and endings, A-to-B paths, clean lines. But the in-between? That gray zone? It's deeply uncomfortable.

That discomfort is why most people avoid the shoulder season, in business and in life.

It feels like standing still. Like indecision. Like uncertainty.

But here's the Peripheral Thinking™ truth:

Discomfort is often the compass pointing to insight.

When things feel unfinished, undefined, or not quite right — that's not failure. That's the signal that you're standing somewhere new. Somewhere different. Somewhere with potential.

Breakthroughs happen when you stop trying to escape the fog… and instead choose to look around inside it.

Peripheral Thinkers™ don't resist ambiguity. We study it. We learn from it. And we often find the answers everyone else missed because they were in too big a hurry to get to "next."

🔍 Exploring

Exploring isn't just about chasing shiny objects or wandering off into the unknown. It's not aimless. It's not indulgent. It's not about more ideas, though that can happen.

It's about getting curious, especially when nothing or everything seems urgent.

Peripheral Thinkers™ use the skills of Studying, Surveying, and Investigating to uncover what others miss.

Let's break them down:

Studying

What it is: Intentionally exploring unfamiliar subjects to gain new insights and perspectives.

Why it matters: Peripheral Thinkers™ proactively seek new experiences to remove conventional thinking's foothold. We don't just collect knowledge. We collect perspectives. We study new industries, people, and cultures not because it's trendy… but because it adds dots to connect later.

Studying is how we upgrade our reference points so we can later innovate with clarity.

Surveying

What it is: Searching beyond a situation to gain a strategic view of what else is there and what matters most.

Why it matters: Observing what others ignore, including early signals, hidden assumptions, and the broader landscape, expands your innovative options. Think of this as environmental curiosity.

Surveying is the skill of catching what's off to the side, not just what's center stage.

Investigating

What It Is: Asking layered, penetrating questions to uncover the cause, pattern, and root truth of a specific topic or issue.

Why It Matters: Peripheral Thinkers investigate until surface-level answers collapse and more profound clarity emerges. This is the deep dig.

Investigating means asking "Why?" three more times than feels polite. It's pulling on threads that others leave hanging. It's being okay with not knowing, long enough to find something nobody else saw.

When you combine these, you're not just "being curious" — You're practicing a structured, intentional approach to noticing what's just beyond conventional view.

That's how Peripheral Thinkers™ move before the market. Before the competition. Before the status quo even realizes it's been disrupted.

❗ Peripheral Proof: Innovation Found in the Margins

In 1928, Alexander Fleming returned from vacation to a cluttered lab. One of his Petri dishes, left out by mistake, had grown mold. That mold killed the surrounding bacteria.

Most scientists would've tossed it. Contamination, after all. But Fleming paused. Observed. Explored.

And that pause? It led to penicillin. The world's first true antibiotic.

Penicillin — Found by Accident. Harnessed by Curiosity.

Breakthroughs often show up when you're not chasing them. They're hiding in the periphery, between failed experiments, forgotten notes, or your own "shoulder seasons."

📌 This Month, Consider This:

What idea, project, relationship, or conversation in your world feels stuck between stages?

What would happen if you didn't try to push it forward or pull it back? What would happen if you simply stood in the in-between… and listened?

That's the zone where Peripheral Thinkers™ operate best. It's where momentum is built quietly, like groundwater rising beneath your feet.

And it's likely where your next great innovation is already forming.

🎯 Try This (2–5 Min Exercise)

Take 5 quiet minutes this week to do the following:

Pick one area where you feel stuck (business, creative, personal).
Write down what you know. Just a few bullets. What you've tried. What you're waiting for.
Then, write what's unclear. Don't force answers. Just name the unknowns.
Now step back. Reread the list with a single question in mind:

What's just outside this list?

Give it a day. Watch what shows up.

🌀 Peripheral Thinking™ often begins with Peripheral Noticing.

Until next time... I'll be looking for you in the periphery.

Paul

One more thing(s):

Have an upcoming event? Scheduling your end-of-year planning retreat? Organizing your Annual Sales Kickoff and President's Club event? Click here and let's talk about how I can deliver a transformational keynote or workshop to make your event the best ever.
Remember, I'm on sabbatical from posting daily on LinkedIn while I finish my book.

Image Credit: Image Creator

September 2025 Peripheral Thinkers™ Newsletter