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Gosh, is that a question for me or is that a question for the audience? I can answer it. I guess if it’s a question for me, positioning is the art of saying who you work with, your target market. What you do, the expensive problem you solve, and the skills you use to solve that problem for that target market, your discipline. And the three of these act in balance with each other. You can’t be too. Philip Morgan and Jonathan Stark referred to it as the triumvirate of positioning. And I have an article coming out soon on that same title, on the same topic. How, when it comes to positioning, you’re refining who you’re speaking to to better reach them. So we can contrast two different, you know, thought experiments. Websites here. One is like, hello, I help make websites that improve business. And another is, I will make you more money by A-B testing your software as a service application. And when we look at these two different websites, the second example speaks directly to who you’re going to work for. What you’re going to do and the outcome you’re going to help them achieve. The first one is basically a bunch of words that we strung together. I will improve your business with websites. It doesn’t speak, it speaks to what you do, but it doesn’t speak to who you help or how you help them. And there’s a weird paradoxical effect here that Philip Morgan, I think, has referred to as the positioning paradoxy and the fear, where people think if I niche down, if I refine who I’m speaking to. Down to this narrow subset of my overall audience. We could think of software as a service business owners versus people who develop Shopify apps. Well, It’s a smaller population out there of people who develop Shopify apps, but people aren’t speaking directly to them. So if you go out there and say, like, hey, my ideal customer is somebody who owns a Shopify app and is looking to increase installs and get more positive reviews, well, People are going to respond to that. People in your target market are going to respond to that because you’re speaking directly to them. If you don’t speak directly to them, if you try to speak to everyone, You dilute your message down and it’s less effective. We’re both mentors in Brennan Dunn’s W Freelancing clients this season, and we’ve had a number of students, or I at least have had a number of students who Have worked through positioning exercises to refine down their business and said, ah, it’s scary. I can’t do it. I can’t do it. And finally, I’m like, look, listen, it’s easy. This is all we’re going to do. We’re going to change the headline on your website, one line of text. We’re just going to change the headline to say who you work best with and the problem you solve for them, and maybe optional. We don’t even have to include this if we don’t want to, if it’s already too scary. What you’re going to do, how you do it, your discipline. And I have one student in mine in particular who went through this exercise and modified the headline on his site. And we get on a call two weeks later and he’s like, So, uh, Kai, I’ve gotten six leads in the last two weeks. And I’m like, Tell me more. And he’s like, Well, they’re exactly who I advertise wanting to work with on my website. And I’m like, Go on. And people keep referring people to me. And I’m like, why is that? Well, because now that I’m saying exactly who I work for or want to work for. And how I could help them, people know who to refer to me because my positioning is that exact and refined. And I’m like, bingo. That’s the power of positioning. That’s what positioning is. It’s saying who you could help and how you could help them in such a way that even if you aren’t talking to your ideal customer, they could say, oh, I know somebody you should talk with. Connecting to our last episode where we talked about you doubling down on A-B testing and me doubling down on podcasting. I was speaking to a mutual friend of ours and saying, Oh, yeah, I’m refining my positioning. I’m further, I’m further going down the rabbit hole of podcasting for positioning. And he was like, Oh, I could think of two people you should talk with. And then 30 minutes later, he pings me on Slack and he says, Wait, holy shit, this was a perfect example of positioning. Like, you told me you refined positioning, and I immediately thought of people you should connect with. So, that I think is what positioning is. and why positioning is important. Anything I left out?

I want to work with that company.

But it’s true! It was a disaster.

Why? I think it’s because it forces us to choose a path when. It’s easier to remain a generalist. I mean, it’s easier, it’s easiest to hang out a shingle and say, like, I do stuff. And if people show up, you’re able to be like, oh, yeah, I do that thing. Let me learn how to do that thing. I’ll do that thing for you. But by forcing yourself to choose a positioning, you suddenly acknowledge the fact that there are people out there who are not your ideal client, who are not your best buyers, who are vampires who will drain you of all your energy and You know, put you on three-month runarounds and then not end up being your ideal client. And by acknowledging that positioning is a thing. you have to acknowledge, like, well, if I take a position A, I’m excluding people who aren’t part of that position. And oh God, that means I’m going to say no to clients. How can I say no to clients, Nick? I need clients. I’m a consultant. Don’t I want to take everybody on as a client?

One of the most common things I see with people when they start to struggle with positioning is or start with positioning is a tendency to define themselves by the tools they use rather than by the problems they solve for their clients. And the canonical example I use here is, let’s imagine an architect and a home builder. And it’s one agency that does both of these. They do the design and then the building of your house. And you show up and you’re like, hello, I would like one house, please. And they’re like, that’s wonderful. We’re so excited to work with you. Let me tell you about the hammers we use. And you’re like, no, wait, but I want a house. And they’re like, that’s great. We have, you know, the Hammer 5000. It hits nails like nothing else. And you’re like, no, but. Don’t you want to know about the type of house like I, as a client, want to pay you money for? And they’re like, that’s great, but let’s tell you about the nails we’re going to use. It’s confusing. The skills we use as practitioners with an understanding of the business problems we’re solving for our clients. And I think it all comes down to like A client intake process and focusing on asking questions and understanding the fundamental problem the client is experiencing, because it’s at that point you’re able to determine if they’re right for your positioning. If you’re positioning yourself as, you know, I do A-B testing for SaaS companies and help make it make the web suck less, well, if somebody comes to you and they’re like, Well, we aren’t a SaaS company and we don’t need A-B testing. You’re like, Red Buzzer, you are not a good fit for me. Your positioning lets you weed those people out early on, and even more so. That person shows up to your website and they’re like, oh, that you don’t serve people like me. Great. I don’t have to waste my time as a prospect, and you won’t have your time wasted as a consultant because your positioning is signaling ahead of time. Who you work best with and how you will work best with them. And then, if they move down the funnel, they’re implicitly or explicitly acknowledging Okay, these are the table sticks. This is how it’s going to be. These are the solutions that they provide. I had a prospect email me recently and they were like Well, hey, I saw your website. I love what you do. Can you do X? And I’m like, I don’t do X. My website says I do A, B, and C. This is how A, B, and C could help you solve your problem because they very kindly explained. What their problem was, and it looks like it’ll actually turn into a good engagement. But they came to me saying, like, well, we want this other thing. And I was able to reference and cite my positioning and say, listen, I best work with companies who are like this type of company. I best solve this type of problem. It sounds like you’re experiencing that type of problem, but the solution you’re looking for, the hammer you’re looking to buy, well, you don’t actually need a hammer, you need something else. So let’s back up three steps and talk more about the problem you’re experiencing. And then talk about what a solution for that might be. And by having that positioning, by being able to reference that positioning, and by being confident enough to say, like, listen, The way you’re describing this problem, I’m not the right person for it. I’m positioning my business in a different way to help different people. They actually responded back and said, Wow, our clients love when, like, When they work with consultants who are strongly opinionated and know what’s right and what’s not right, we like that you have that same attitude and mental approach. And you, dear listener, only get there when you’re confident in your positioning, when you’re able to say, like, this is what I do, this is how I help people. And Acknowledge that that means there are people out there who you will not be able to help, who you are intentionally excluding from your business.

Yep. Yep. Not entirely.

No, no, no, no, no, you, you, you.

Yeah, and it comes down to that. And I think it comes down to then having to make that hard choice. Like coming out of the mastermind retreat we both took part in a couple weeks ago Like we referenced on the previous episode, we both are doubling down in specific areas of our business. And flying back on my flight to Oregon. I got emails from two prospects who were like, oh, I’d love it to work on a project like this. And it’s outside of the new positioning. And I’m faced with that choice of: do I dilute my positioning by having service offerings that people want to pay money for, but that Distract from my core offerings? Or do I want to make it abundantly clear, big blazing neon sign like, I will get you on podcasts, I will do outreach for you, I will help you form partnerships. And Well, which is going to be more valuable in the long term? One seems like a short, quick fix of money that, sure, money’s great. Who doesn’t like money? But Suddenly, it’s not, oh, Kai is the podcast outreach guy. It’s, oh, but we worked on an SEO project and you did that trip campaign. And, well, what exactly is it you do? And so you’re right. You have to curb that impulse to Say yes to everything or say yes to every idea. There’s, I can’t remember the source of this quote, but there’s a fabulous quote that says: the transition from being a freelancer to a consultant or to a business owner is realizing that In a year, you are going to have so many exciting opportunities placed in front of you that could make you money. And you level up when you realize you could only really say yes to three or five of them. And you have to be ruthless at saying no. Like it could be a great idea. Sure, it’s a great idea. Stick it in an Evernote file. Stick it in a text file. Name it goodideas. Text and save it to your desktop. I have one of those. Yeah, and every time you have an idea where it’s like, oh, this doesn’t quite fit my business, cool, save it. And like, I have that same thing in an Evernote file. And once a year, I come back and I’m like, which of these are actually good ideas? Which of these were me just having a stupid idea that I thought was good and decided to sit on? And most of the time, I delete three-quarters of the ideas, but the ones that are left. Those are the ones that I’m able to say, well, like, okay, so let’s think about 2017 now. I get to do three things maybe in 2017. I’m a big proponent of the idea that we really only get to do like Three to four big things in a year. That’s all we have mental capacity for and bandwidth for. Well, what three or four things do I want to do? And what on the list makes the cut? And what doesn’t make the cut? And how do we be intentional about that? And how does it connect to positioning? And maybe refining positioning is one of those things, one of those big four things you could do. In a year for your business. And if so, good, that’s a good thing to focus on. But it also happens at the exclusion of other things. You cannot do all of the things. You could do a very small fraction of the things very well. And if you want to grow a business, it’s about doing that small fraction of things very, very well.

You have to have a strategy.

Yep. Yep. No, you’re absolutely right. And you’re right. Positioning is a shield. It’s not only a shield against clients, but it’s also a shield against ideas. It gives you that go-no-go point for everything you do with your business. Does this fit my positioning? If not, well, is this something I keep getting asked for that I want to grow? And should my positioning evolve? Am I able to say, like, oh, you know what? This doesn’t fit my positioning. I’m not going to do it. If I walk into my favorite restaurant in town, a Greek place, and I’m like, I would like some pizza, that could be like We make Greek food. F off, Kai. Like, would you like a chicken pita? We can make chicken pitas. You get chicken pitas every day. We’re not going to make you a pizza. But if a thousand people walk in and they’re like, we really like some pizza, well, maybe that’s an argument to change the positioning. But I mean, I think the restaurant example really makes sense, and maybe it’s an easy way for people to parse positioning when they have trouble understanding it. If you walk into your favorite restaurant and you ask for something that’s off the menu, they’re going to be like, no, we don’t make that here. What do you want that we have? Like, read on the sign, we’re a Greek restaurant. That suddenly makes sense, I think, in a different way, where people are able to say, like, oh, yeah, positioning lets you tell people what you do well. We make Greek food. And what you don’t do, we don’t make anything that’s not Greek food. And like, when you literally have a menu of services on your website as a consultant or in your restaurant, well, this is what we can make you. Like, yeah, maybe we might be able to do something custom, but Only for our best customers and the people we really like, and not that often. So, order off the menu, dumbass. What else do you want? So there’s a.

But yeah, and when I look at my business right now, I mean, I’ve spent the last two years repositioning myself. I used to be SEO for e-commerce, and I still have SEO offerings that are brought on occasion. Does it do me more harm or more good to have those search engine optimization offerings available? When somebody shows up, is it better for my business to be like I do outreach. Here are the four outreach things I do. Here are the two books I’ve written on outreach. Would you like help getting on podcasts through outreach? That is exactly what I do. Here’s the service that does that. Can you not afford my service? Here is the book that explains exactly what I do. And if I have these SEO things in the mix, well, are people going to be like, what exactly does he do here? Does he do other things or not? And I think like this is an argument for cutting services and being ruthless about it. Just because you’ve done something in the past doesn’t mean you always need to continue doing it. And well, Well, like you said, you had just removed a number of services from your website. If a client shows up and is like, I want to throw a lot of money at you for this one-off thing, well, you stole that sales page to show them. I’ll steal that sales page to show them. I’m just making sure the public-facing positioning of my business. Matches what I want to be doing and who I want to be doing it for.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Right. And one last point that I’d love to touch on. People always, one fear I see with people is that they feel their positioning needs to be an all-or-nothing thing that they do immediately. When it really is a slow, iterative transition process. Like I went from W e-commerce to W audience and switching from an audience of e-commerce store owners on Shopify to consultants and product creators. And I didn’t do that overnight. It was like, I’m going to put these websites up in parallel. I’m going to stop advertising W your e-commerce. I’m going to stop going on podcasts talking about e-commerce. I’m going to ramp up my advertising and podcasting. About growing your audience and talking to consultants and product creators. And it took 19 months really for me to make that full transition. I still get leads for e-commerce projects, and like I put them through a very, very fine mesh filter to figure out if I want to work with them. And at the end of the day, I’m able to make that decision of yes or no. But it was a long, drawn-out process for the benefit. Like there was no, oh, shut it all down, start over, burn it down. It was. Let me carefully and slowly do these positioning changes. And now that my positioning is more firmly established on W your Audience and without reach well, now I can be more aggressive about cutting out services or adding new services. Because I have my sort of boundary box defined and I know the space I’m playing in. And like, does a service fit inside that box? Great, let’s add it. Does a service not fit inside of that box? Let’s kill it. Right, right.

Yeah, but I mean I think we definitely want to do a plug here. Our colleague Philip Morgan has written a wonderful book on positioning at thepositioningmanual. com. He has a free crash course on positioning at positioningcrashcourse. com. Both of these will be in the show notes. It’s positioned for, you know, I believe development shop owners, but. The principles that he advocates, the strategies he advocates, they’re evergreen. They apply. I mean, I do marketing things, they apply to me. You do design things, they apply to you. I recommended my father, who’s an attorney, read this book. And he was like, This was a really good book. It helped me understand positioning better. Even if you aren’t exactly who this book is positioned for. There’s going to be lessons in there that you will be able to apply to your business. Yeah.