Ditching Hourly

Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. Today's episode is the audio from a positioning crash course webinar I gave where I give about a half an hour presentation and then I do teardowns of people's positioning statements for I think about an hour. So this episode is kind of a long one but I think it'll be really useful for you if you're struggling with your positioning or how to tell people what you do or to make it clear what your value proposition is in a concise, clear way. If you'd like to watch the actual video replay, you can go to my Crowdcast account and search for how to tell people what you do or go to the show notes and there's a link there as well. I tried to edit out any of the really webinar-y type stuff, all the setup and all that, so it's chopped up a little bit but I think it'll be fine. Hopefully you'll enjoy it. All right, on with the show. Okay, so this is basically, this is going to be a positioning crash course and it kind of answers the question how to tell people what you do. Who is this for? You'll know you're in the right place if you, you know, see people's eyes glazing over when you answer them. So you meet somebody at a barbecue and they're like, how's it going? You know, nice to meet you, Bob. So what do you do? It's such a common question, like why is it so hard to answer? And you know, if you've kind of found yourself 15 minutes into an answer, you feel like you need to pull out a PowerPoint deck to explain what you do, the other person's like falling asleep, you know you've got this problem and you're in the right place. Another classic symptom is that depending on who asks, you give them a different question. That's a really bad habit and I'll explain why as we get more into this. And the last thing that people tend to do when they really don't have a good answer for a simple question like this is they'll just say something glib or dismissive like, I'm a web geek or I'm a nerd or I type or something silly like that, which is basically just closes down the conversation. It's kind of a response that says to the other person, I don't really want to invest time in this conversation. So that's not a good thing for your business either. What we're going to cover is there's basically going to be three sections to this. The first is going to be why a clear positioning statement matters. The second is going to be three different types of positioning statements that are sort of easy, medium difficulty and hard, but more useful as they get more difficult. And the last, I'm going to try and use Crowdcast to create like an interactive area where we can workshop your positioning statements. So we're going to get into that kind of a back and forth and we can kind of critique them as a group and I'll give, obviously I'm going to give my opinion, maybe make suggestions. I've never really done that before. We'll sort of see how that works, but I've got a plan, so hopefully it'll work. So here's what I'd like you to do. If you would like to be involved in a direct sort of workshop or critique or assistance with what it is that you do, I'd like to have you go into the ask a question tab and basically answer the question, what do you do? So imagine that I'm asking you, hey, you know, nice to meet you. What do you do? Go and create a new question. I know it's backwards because you're actually answering my question, but create a question that says the answer to what you would say to me specifically if I asked you, what do you do? So go in there and just dump in whatever it is that you would normally answer to that. And then when we get to the end, after the slides are over, I'm going to go in and we're going to, in the comments, we can kind of work out underneath each one of those things, each one of those, you know, answer questions to kind of go in and try and tease out something a little bit more specific. So it's kind of pushing Crowdcast in a direction that's not really meant to go, but I think that might work. All right. So why does a clear positioning statement matter at all? That's a great question. So here are like six reasons. So you run a business. It's probably, you're probably a freelancer or a consultant or a coach or some kind of independent, you know, business owner, or maybe you run a small firm. And it comes up where if you can't answer to a person in front of you what it is that you do, you're going to be lost when it comes to putting headlines on your website or putting an email signature in your email or asking for referrals or introductions. Word of mouth is going to be pretty, probably pretty bad if people can't explain to their friends what exactly it is that you do, what's your value proposition or, you know, what is the benefit of potentially talking?

you are potentially hiring you. When it comes to your social media bios, you're not going to know what to put there or, you know, other any other marketing materials. Like I said, email signature, business cards, letterhead, you know, if you still have letterhead, more likely it's social media bios. And it's, you know, maybe doing webinars or other things that you're doing to publish content, wherever, all over the web or in real life. If you can't clearly articulate what it is that you do, who it is that you do it for, why you're the best person for the job, these sorts of things, it's going to be really hard for potential clients to just magically connect the dots like you don't even understand it. So how are they expected to understand it? It's not likely. So if you're not getting any leads and your positioning is really soggy, meaning that you've got a bad answer to the question, what do you do, then those two things are probably connected. And if you're freaking out right now about not getting enough leads, the fastest thing that you can do is clarify your positioning, make your positioning really clear, laser focused, and put it everywhere that basically strangers are potentially going to see you. Share that with your past clients, your colleagues, updated my positioning statement, you know, do you know anybody who might need something like this, and it would be really clear for them and they'll be able to introduce you to someone else much more easily if you give them these tools to describe the value proposition of what it is that you offer to someone who might benefit from it. So basically what it means is if you don't have a good, clear positioning statement, all of the other marketing stuff that you do is probably being wasted. You know, forget about spending, I mean, we didn't even mention spending money on pay-per-click ads or anything like that, SEO, all of that. You know, podcasting, trying to drive traffic to your website. If when somebody gets to your website, however you get them there, it's just unclear what it is that you do, then it's unlikely that they're going to do whatever call to action it is that you want them to do. Book a demo, set up a call, contact you, submit an application, because they don't understand what's in it for them. So it's critically important. It's probably, I mean, honestly, I think it's the foundation of any marketing. So if you're doing any marketing at all, you want to have a really clear positioning statement because that's going to be more effective that way. If you're not doing any marketing at all, then you're going to have other problems. Let's just assume you at least have a website. All right, so now I'm going to quickly describe three different kinds of positioning statements that you can use to kind of bootstrap yourself into something more and more focused, more and more clear for yourself. And these aren't necessarily going to be things that you'd use verbatim in every situation everywhere, but they might be, or they might be the basis of other marketing communications that you create that'll adhere to this kind of North Star. I'll show you what I mean. So here are three types of positioning statements that you see. And they're in order from sort of least effective but easiest to most effective but most difficult. So the first one I call A for B, where you just say, I do A for B. So that could be like, I do plumbing for small restaurants or single location restaurants, or I do websites for coaches. So you list your discipline first. So whatever it is that you do, I'm a copywriter, I'm a web developer, I'm a designer, industrial designer. You say, I do that skill, whatever that discipline is that you have, your craft. You do it for a particular group of people. So probably what most people are doing right now is I do discipline, period. Or I do discipline for people, or I do discipline for businesses. Like I do web development for small businesses. So the B there, the target market in that statement is really, really broad. So like people, businesses, companies, Fortune 500, enterprises, all of these things are huge, huge segments. They're not super specific. It's almost like saying I do web design for anybody, or I do web design for anyone who needs a website. That's not very effective. So in this first one, this A for B positioning statement, the more specific you can get with your B, which is your target market, the better it's going to be for you when it comes to word of mouth, referrals, introductions, marketing materials, and so on and so forth. So if you said, you know, I do web development for Irish pubs, probably a lot of people listening are like, oh, I can think of an Irish pub. Maybe I should introduce this person to my friend who runs an Irish pub. They have what I call a Rolodex moment because the specificity of your target market is

small enough or it's focused enough that it triggers a moment, a Rolodex moment in the listener's mind where they say, oh, I actually know someone who does that or my sister-in-law does that or my brother runs a business like that. I trust you. I know my brother trusts me. Maybe I should introduce you. Maybe there's a good fit there. So the more focused you get in this particular one, the more focused you get with your target market, the better off you're going to be. The discipline, the A in this equation, you probably already have pretty well figured out. You probably know you're a copywriter. You probably know you're a web developer. You probably know you're a 3D designer or video producer. You probably know that. So that's probably pretty easy. Now, the weakness of this particular positioning statement is that you're assuming that B, let's say the owner of an Irish pub, understands what A is worth to them. So let's say you make 3D animated models. The owner of an Irish pub might not understand how someone who makes 3D animated models can benefit their business. And maybe there's no way. Maybe architects would be a better example. So I make 3D animated models for small architecture firms. Maybe they can connect the dots there, because you're getting more and more specific, and it's probably someone who would know what that thing is and potentially understand how they could benefit from it. But you're asking them to collect a lot of dots, but it's better than nothing. The next one is the XYPS. And this is kind of like the Goldilocks one. It's not as advanced as the last one we're going to look at, but it's way better than the first one. So it might be just right for you. Now, this one is I help X with Y, which might sound almost exactly like A for B, but it's not the same thing. It's I help X. Now, X is your target market here. So here would be your small architecture firm with Y. So small architecture firms with or make 3D animated models. You're going to say, I help small architecture firms close more deals, increase their fees, or some other business outcome that they're immediately going to care about. And once you have their attention with that, then it's like, well, how are you going to do that? It's like, well, I use 3D animations to completely blow your clients' minds. Let me show you a couple of demos. But now you're in a conversation, even if it's just mentally. You're in this back and forth where the people in the target market, which in this case is the X in the XYPS, the target market is like you help them with an expensive problem, like a problem that they have. Get more leads, close more deals, make more money, cut costs, improve employee morale. These sorts of things are things that business owners care about. And if you're selling to businesses or department leaders or whoever you're selling to, if it's B2B, in other words, you're selling to some kind of a business person, the things they care about are not how fast your 3D animation models render. They don't care about that. That's your job. All they care about are these business outcomes, which is what you would put into the Y section. So I help X with Y. I help small architecture firms make more money, close more deals, delight their customers, get more referrals, something that a business owner cares about. Okay. So that's the second one. And that's probably, that's the place where if you only got to that level and you couldn't get to the next one, I'd be pretty happy. If we could do that today, that would be amazing. The last one is LFPS. It stands for Laser Focus Positioning Statement. This is kind of the soup to nuts, everything you need to know to run a marketing campaign, outreach, sales, everything. It's long. It doesn't usually flow off the tongue, but you want it to be clear and use it when you're crafting your other messaging. So you'd use it to craft headlines on your website. You use it to craft a lead magnet. You use it to craft an opt-in page or email nurture or all of your other marketing activities. So it's the complete soup to nuts everything. And it's got four variables in it instead of just two like the other ones. In this one, I spell them out and it goes like this. I'm a discipline. That's one variable. Who helps target market? That's the next variable. With expensive problem. That's the third variable. It could also be big opportunity, but we'll stick with expensive problem for now. Unlike my competitors, I have some unique difference. So there's four things going on there. What craft it is that you do, that's your discipline, copywriter, animator, video producer, software developer, web designer. Then the target market is some segment of the population that's your ideal.

customer, the one that you are most well suited to assist or create value for. It could be defined in lots of different ways. It could be a vertical market like architecture firms. It could be a psychographic like environmentalists. So psychographic is the way that people think or believe or what worldview they have. It could be a demographic like soccer moms between 35 and 45. But it's some segment of the overall population in almost ideally the smallest possible segment that you can think of. Really small. Women over 30 who kayak. Like really specific. Because if you say to me, hey, do you know any women over 30 who kayak? I'm going to like, yeah, I think I do actually. Let me check. But if you just say to me, do you know any women? I'm going to be like, yeah, but why? Like, well, I'd like an introduction because I do animations. Like, well, yeah, but OK. But which I know like 10,000 people and half of them are probably women. So like, you got to help me out here. Like, why? Let's connect the dots for me. So the smaller your target market is, it's almost impossible to go too small with a target market. So you can go really, really small with it. And this applies to the XYPS as well as the LFPS. Now, the last thing, the sorry, so that was target market. Next one is expensive problem. Expensive problem is some pain that they have that's ideally costing them a lot of money. Like we're sitting on two million dollars of invoices that we can't even get out before they expire. Well, that's an expensive problem. So if you can help, let's say, I don't know, like some kind of service firm like a landscaper who does commercial projects for big companies. And they're sitting on two million dollars of invoices that have an expiration date on them. If they don't, the deal is in the contract. If you don't send me an invoice within 60 days, we're not paying it. And they're sitting on them and they're expiring and they're losing a million dollars every week of invoices because they're you know, they can't send out businesses going great in the sense that they have lots of work, too much work to do. But this is a very expensive problem for them. Another classic expensive problem is you're spending one hundred thousand dollars a month on AWS. Another expensive problem is you've got this really amazing enterprise software, but you're not booking enough demos. Nobody is signing up on your website to book these demos. I can help you book more demos by creating a content marketing campaign and a nurture campaign or whatever. So you got to you want to find an expensive problem, something that someone is really, really suffering from. It's keeping them up nights and it's closely as closely as possible tied to some kind of a financial impact. Like I said, it could also be a big opportunity. Could be something like, you know, in the current climate, you need to scale a business 10x to accommodate demand for cleaning services. So it's a big opportunity to expand, but they can't grab it. That's sort of the aspirational flip side to the more pragmatic expensive problem. So it's some business outcome that your ideal buyers and your target market really care about. And the more closely associated it is to a bottom line dollar amount, the easier it is going to be to get a conversation and probably make a sale. Now, the last variable, the last variable, unique difference is probably the toughest one for people to answer. And they usually make up some weird stuff that's just like, oh, I've got 20 years of experience as if that's unique. And the reason why people usually have such a hard time with it is because they don't first think. OK, well, who are my competitors? If you think about what you do and who you do it for and you think, OK, well, who else might they hire instead of me? Then it becomes a lot easier to come up with things that are different. So if you're like a management consultant, but you're a solo operator and you've written a bestselling book on organizational change or something and your competition is McKinsey, which is like probably the biggest management consulting firm there is, you've got to come up with some difference. Like why, you know, why you're different from McKinsey in a way that would be beneficial to a certain kind of customer. So you've got to figure out what that is. But it starts with figuring out who your competition is before you can figure out how you're different. You can't figure out how you're different from nothing. You've got to figure out how you're different from something. So you could say, you know, we're like Uber, but for dogs, you know, that kind of a thing. It's like we're like McKinsey, but for small architecture firms who can't afford McKinsey. So, you know, it's got to be something like that. So to recap. These three types of positioning statement start off really easy and they get harder as you go up. But the farther you go to the bottom, I should say that the closer you get to the LFPS, the more blanks you can fill in there, the more direction that you're going to have when it comes to having sales conversations, making marketing materials.

and all the other copy that you have to put out in the world. All right. So that's really it for slides. We're going to jump to your answers to my question about what it is that you do and see if we can kind of workshop some of this stuff. All right. So the first one here is, I help family-run food brands increase their direct-to-consumer sales. That's killer. That's a great X, Y, P, S. It's sort of the Goldilocks one in the middle because it immediately makes me have a Rolodex moment. I think, hmm, do I know any family-run food brands? I don't know if I do, but my brother might. I think my brother might know one or my wife might know somebody. Actually, when I come to think of it for real, like my wife probably does know somebody. So family-run food brands increase their D2C direct-to-consumer sales. Like, huh, I should probably introduce, you know, Ruben to Christy, you know, and see like, now I'm curious, like, well, how does he do that? So this is the interesting thing about the X, Y, P, S. I don't know what he does. I don't care what he does. If I'm a family-run food brand and he can increase my D2C sales and that's a credible claim for some reason, I don't really care what he does. He could wave a magic wand or redo my website. Whatever the case, if the money's right, if the price is right, I'm going to hire him. So that's a great, so we started off with a really good one. That's excellent. All right. Next one says, I do content marketing and copywriting for purpose-driven brands. I also often say I share messages that matter to conscious companies. Oh, I'm glad that we got an example like this. Okay. So this, there's a couple of things going on here I want to comment on. It's pretty solid. One of the things that's tricky about this is the second one. I share messages that matter for conscious companies. That's a little bit cool and you're a copywriter, so that makes sense. It's cool. It's poetic. It has like a rhythm to it. It feels nice, but it's not a hundred percent clear. So you always want to optimize for clarity over cleverness. So if you have to choose between two options and one is really clear, it's like brain dead, like a 10-year-old would understand it. And then you've got this kind of more fun, creative, clever one, but it's not as clear. And like, I don't necessarily know what that means. Then I'd opt for the clear one a 10 times out of 10. Another thing to mention here is, it looks like a she, sorry, the pronouns thing. I don't know how to talk without saying she or he or whatever, but this person, let's say, I do content marketing and copywriting for purpose-driven brands. So when I see a conjunction, it's not necessarily bad, but when I see a conjunction, it usually means that there is a decision that hasn't been made here yet. Which one is a better thing, a higher value thing for this person, Ashley, to do for purpose-driven brands? Can she deliver more value as a content marketer? I'm asking Ashley, actually, can you deliver more value doing content marketing or copywriting? I already know the answer. The answer is content marketing. So why put copywriting in there? And I'm going to guess that it's because you're hedging. You're hedging because you're like, I don't know if I'm going to get enough content marketing work to stay busy, so I'm going to leave the copywriting in there so I can pay the bills. That's fine to do copywriting to pay the bills, but you're going to get those requests anyway. You don't have to advertise them in your marketing materials and your positioning statement. So I would focus on, just for Ashley and for everyone else, I would focus on the highest value thing that you're confident in delivering and leave out the lower level execution support and maintenance things that are lower value and aren't the first impression that you want to give a stranger. Because these, I didn't say this before, but these, I didn't articulate it explicitly, but these are most important for first impressions with strangers. So that's the most important thing. It's like the T-shirt that you wear that says, I help small architecture firms close more deals. Like that's the T-shirt you want to wear all the time. You don't want to have a lot of extra stuff in there. You want it to be super clear. If it's clever also, that's fine, but it has to be clear. So here, I would just boil this down a little bit more to, I do content marketing for purpose-driven brands. So that's an A for B, the first type of positioning statement. And it's much better than I'm a copywriter or I do content marketing. Do you know anybody you should introduce me to? Do you know anybody who wants to hire me? Now the question becomes, do you know any purpose-driven brands, which

is an open question and it's the last thing I want to talk about on this one. I understand what purpose-driven brands are. The question is, will that trigger a Rolodex moment in anybody? Do people who run purpose-driven brands consider themselves to be primarily a purpose-driven brand? If I'm at Charity Water or Patagonia, is that the term I use to describe myself? Am I going to notice that? Perhaps more importantly, do the people around that person or company understand what a purpose-driven brand is? When you're picking your target market, this is a good one. What I'm questioning is the language. Is there anything that we could do to make this even more specific? I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is. You might, because if you've been working with purpose-driven brands, there might be a more obvious, more tangible, externally obvious factor in your clients that is going to create a Rolodex moment. The only purpose-driven brands I can think of are really big ones, but maybe the bookmobile truck that parks in front of our donut shop, maybe that's a purpose-driven brand. They sure seem like that's something they're into. Maybe the local farmer's market is a purpose-driven brand. I don't know who a purpose-driven brand is. Maybe if you talk to someone directly who is running a purpose-driven brand, they'll get it, but then you lose the kind of introduction power, the word-of-mouth power of everybody who knows that person. If you said something like, a classic one is that there's a high correlation between people who are environmentalists and people who shop at Whole Foods. If I was going to target someone who was an environmentalist, I might say something like, I do content marketing for people who shop at Whole Foods. Do you know anybody who shops at Whole Foods? I could immediately think of a dozen people. That's kind of an exaggeration to make a point, but there might be something that's like that for purpose-driven brands. If you ask me how many environmentalists I knew, I couldn't answer that. A few people I could come up with, but I could definitely come up with 20 people who shop at Whole Foods. If 80% of the people who shop at Whole Foods are also environmentalists, then I've found a signal that's obvious to an outsider that they're in my target market. Just a couple of things there. Try and drop any conjunctions. Probably you want to pick the highest value thing. When you're defining your target market, however you articulate it, you want it to be really clear to anybody who knows the person, not just the person, if you see what I mean. Next one. What do you do? I find solutions for problems that professional genealogists often face. This is interesting. Laser-focused target market, professional genealogists. I love that. It's so specific. I don't know any professional genealogists, but I had a Rolodex moment anyway because my aunt is really into the family tree stuff. Maybe she can introduce some third party. It's like the power of friend of a friend. Now, the way social media is, is incredible. People know so many people. They're like one step away or two steps away from someone who could probably be a great customer for you if they understood that you wanted to be introduced to those people. I absolutely love the professional genealogist angle here. The soft part, the soggy part here is I find solutions for problems that professional genealogists face. It makes it feel less credible to me that Mike doesn't know what those problems are. If he worked with professional genealogists a lot, he could probably come up with anywhere like a half a dozen problems that professional genealogists face on a regular basis that are the kinds of problems that he can help solve. I would say find those things out. Even though you can solve six or three of those problems with whatever your skill set is, I'd pick the most common one and use that right in here so that when a genealogist sees this, they're going to immediately see that Mike understands their language. Mike is part of the tribe. He's in the in crowd. He specializes in genealogists and I can tell because he's using language that only other genealogists would understand. Or at least not necessarily they would only understand, only them would understand. It could be.

It could also be some stuff that they commonly struggle with, like maybe professional genealogists have trouble making travel arrangements because they have to fly all over the place to do grave rubbings or something. I don't know. But if it said something like, I help professional genealogists, let's see, I find solutions to problems that professional genealogists have to face. So you could say I help professional genealogists manage their travel arrangements or document management or whatever the thing is, the biggest problems that they face that you can help with. The more specific you can get, the more credible it's going to seem. So solutions for problems, that's basically every business. I help businesses solve problems. That's every service business. That's what they do. So the more specific you can get, the better. But having a target market is probably the most important thing that you can do out of all of these variables that you fill in for. Having a really clear target market is going to be the most helpful because that is enough to get you introductions to people. All right. Okay. This is a good one. I help brands and individuals refine and clarify their visual communication. All right. Okay. I love this one. This is a classic example. So thanks for this one, Katie. So brands and individuals, what's left besides brands and individuals? It's a little bit too much like saying businesses or everybody or companies and individuals. It's a little too broad. It's not going to make me think of anyone specifically. At least give me some kind of brand. What kind of brand? What kind of individual? An individual could be someone who runs an Irish pub. It could be an NBA basketball star. Big difference between those two types of people. And yes, I understand that you can clarify visual communication for both of those people. But which one's the ideal one for you? Which is the one that you would love to have? A stable of clients that are all this kind of person. If you want to work with people who run pubs, then say it. Put it right in there. I understand that you could do visual communications for literally any brand or individual. But if you want to get better clients over time, get specific about the kind of better clients you want. I want to do visual communications for pro basketball players or people who run Irish pubs or small architecture firms. If you don't put it in there, it's never going to happen. And so when you just kind of cast this wide net, I'm going to do this skill for anybody, then you're going to end up attracting no one. It's like trying to use the same bait to catch a fish or a coyote. They don't eat the same thing. All right. So I help brands and individuals refine. So now here's another thing. This is a really, really important point, and it's subtle. So check it out. Katie has taken what actually is a A for B positioning statement, the first one, and flipped the words, the sections, so that it is masquerading as X for Y or X Y P S. It's actually not. So if I was going to rephrase this, I would say I do visual communications for brands and individuals because it doesn't say what the actual problem is that she's solving. What's the expensive problem here? What's the expensive problem that your visual communication skills solve? Because that's a little bit too close to a discipline, if you ask me. I do visual communications for brands and individuals. Okay, great. That's kind of like saying I do visual communications. Do you want to hire me? You're either a brand or an individual or something in between. So how do you think about this? How could she get closer to the money? How could she get closer to the expensive problem? If Katie thinks back while you're here, think back to your favorite client, the best, your favorite, the best one to work with, and figure out, think back, hopefully you'll know this, when you applied your skills of improving their visual communications and clarifying their visual communications, what result did they get? What was the result of that? More leads, more sales, higher fees, more demos, more meetings? What did that do for them? They didn't want it just so it was pretty, I'm sure. If they paid you money, it wasn't just so it would be pretty. They thought it was going to do something. They wanted to, I don't know. I don't know what they did, but think back to your favorite, favorite client. And if you want to put it in a comment, you can say, oh, my favorite client was this. They did this. It was a pharmacy or it was an NBA player or whatever it was. And think back to what benefit that they got out of it. Why did they value your intervention? Why were they happy that they gave you that $10,000? Why were they not disappointed that they gave you that $10,000? What did they get in return?

return for that trade. They traded you a bunch of money and you gave them some kind of money back, some kind of result back, something that they wanted more than they wanted the money they gave you. If you're listening to this and if you're in Katie's shoes and she can't think of it and if you're thinking of yourself and you can't imagine, you're like, I don't know, I'm a web developer. I don't know what they got out of it. I just write Rails apps. And whatever they got out of it, I don't know. They just wanted me to write a Rails app, so I wrote a Rails app and they gave me the money and they seemed happy. What that tells me is you need to get testimonials because if you get testimonials especially from your favorite kind of clients, they'll tell you what benefit they got out of it. So then you can just take their language and put it into your positioning statement. So if they say something like, oh, Todd revolutionized our business. We're sending invoices multiple times per day now instead of once every six weeks. That's like a tangible benefit. So you could say, I help whatever, small cleaning companies or regional cleaning companies send invoices out daily instead of monthly. That's an expensive problem. They're sitting on a pile of invoices that they can't get out fast enough. Cool. Small film studio. This is Katie following back up. Small film studio, clearer brand position and messaging and confidence in bidding for bigger clients. Okay. Now that's getting a little closer. So you could say, I help small film studios increase their confidence bidding for bigger clients. Or if you were really good at this, maybe you got, if you focus right down on small film studios and you really got good at maybe using things besides just visual communication, maybe you got better at a bunch of things that all contributed to small film studios landing bigger clients. I help small film studios land bigger clients. That's a killer positioning statement. All right, next one. This is from Allison. Allison says, I help biotech companies eliminate friction between stakeholders and developers on web application projects. All right, so this is kind of in my domain. I love that you said biotech companies, that there's probably even a subset of that that you could go down to. It could be startup biotech. It could be a bunch of different kinds of biotech, or it could be giant biotech. But that's really good because biotech, I immediately had a Rolodex moment. I know at least one person in my family who works in biotech, actually two people, two Rolodex moments already. So the target market is good. Now what, here's the thing. Eliminate friction between stakeholders and developers on web application projects. Why does that matter? It's obvious to you why it matters, and I've done enough software projects that it's obvious to me why it matters, but why would it matter to your buyer at a biotech company? Who cares if there's friction between stakeholders and developers on application projects? We'll work it out. What's the big deal? What's the downside? If there's friction, what happens? If you're not there or someone like you is not there to reduce that friction, what is the result? I think we both know the answer. Anybody want to guess? The answer is probably that the project will go over budget, miss the deadline, and potentially fail. Or it finally launches, and it doesn't even solve the problems that the stakeholders cared about. So you could say something like, I help biotech companies increase the probability of their web application projects being successful, or I help biotech companies decrease the risk of failed web application projects. Business buyers understand things like risk and success and probability and opportunity cost. So it could be another one. I help biotechnology companies ensure that their web application projects won't go over budget or won't miss the deadline, won't miss the launch date. These are things that business people care about, and they're like evergreen. It doesn't even have to be web application. I mean, maybe that's your specialty, web app projects. Rob chimed in, be more efficiently delivering their web app projects. It's still not close enough. Efficiency. I mean, okay, I would put it like this. So if efficiency was going to be the angle, I would say I help biotechnology companies save money on web application projects because that's what efficiently delivered or release them sooner, something like that. Just like because more efficient, I could see that working in like a supply chain area, but this is more of a creative area. So it's not bad, Rob. Sorry, Rod. It's not bad, but I think you can get more specific. All right.

Hopefully that helped Alison a little bit. All right. A.H. says, I make technology get out of the way so that you're able to just focus on what you do best. All right. This looks like a classic headline from a tech expert or some kind of developer. What's missing here? You can say in the chat. What's missing here? There's no target market. It's just you. So I don't have a Rolodex moment. So, you know, A.H., who is your best client? What's your ideal buyer? Who can you deliver the most value to? What kind of a company or business or person is in a situation where the technology is really getting in the way and it's causing an expensive problem? So there's also no discipline here, but that's OK. You can get away with not having a discipline in there. It's kind of implied that it's in the technology space. It could be IT, could be software, could be hardware. It could be product design. I mean, this is all over the map. You know, focus on, well, what do I do best? I mean, it's kind of like saying, I help companies make more money. It's like, OK, but I don't. That's great, but it's too abstract to be credible and it doesn't have any of the it doesn't create a Rolodex moment. I don't know how to introduce you to. So similar exercise to before, I would think back to my best clients or if you've never done work in this space before, think to your dream clients. What kind of clients would you really like to work with? Maybe it's e-sports leagues or maybe it's, I don't know, you know, religious organizations. Like, who do you want to work with? Who do you want to hang around with? Who do you want to spend time with? Because you're going to spend a ton of time with your clients. So pick somebody who you like and you would really like to help and get more specific in your language. Like what kind of technology problems are in their way? Is it hardware? Is it software? Is it networking? Is it security? Is it some kind of IoT or physical device issues? Small business tech company game dev, maybe 20 to 80 staff. I'm an IT consultant. OK, so I'm an IT consultant who helps small or indie game studios. I'm an IT consultant who helps indie game studios. What's the expensive problem? Do what? Get their first office? Like what? Secure their network so that there are no leaks to the media? What? What's the what is the problem? Like I make technology get out of the way. I understand what you're saying, but it doesn't connect me with anything. So IT consultant, that makes me think like networking and infrastructure. So what does an indie game studio or maybe even bigger than an indie game studio, but whatever, let's say indie game studio. What kind of IT problems do they have? What are the top three? And then pick one of those that you're the best at solving or the one that's the most expensive to them and say that's what you help them with. I mean, it's just adding indie game studios to this is like a huge improvement. I help indie games. No, I make technology get out of the way. That is way too big. It's clever. It's not clear. I help indie game studios or I do IT. Here's the simple answer. You already got your A for B. I do IT consulting for indie game studios. That leaves it to them to connect the dots between what an IT consultant could possibly do for them. But now you know what groups to hang out in online. Now you know who to connect with on LinkedIn. Now you know what conferences to go to and maybe set up a trade booth at the trade show. Now you know where to advertise if you're going to do that. Now you know what podcast to start and who it's for. Now you know what to write to an email list because you know you're talking to indie game studio owners. It's immediately better. Sysadmin, network administration security. I would have to figure out how to translate that into their language. Yeah, but this is like immediately as soon as you give me like a target market, and that's a good one, by the way. That's like really clear. I like that level of specificity. And there are thousands of them. Folks might think that's a small market. It's not a small market. They probably keep AH busy for the rest of his natural life or her natural life. So that's a great start. So, hey, do you know anybody who runs an indie game studio? Call them up and ask. Connect with them on LinkedIn. Say, hey, I'm an IT consultant. Kind of researching this space. Do you guys ever have problems setting up email or setting up new users? Are you taking valuable developer time off of game development and putting it on system administration? Like, wouldn't it be cool if you had like a done-for-you network infrastructure that I could...

Set up for you remotely and manage remotely. Wouldn't that be great? If you fix your Wi-Fi, clear your current jams. I don't know what it is, but it's definitely stuff they don't want to be doing. Cool. All right, next one. Interesting. Okay, Natasha. This sounds familiar, actually. I'm a Notion consultant helping online entrepreneurs building their digital workspace by having their ideas, strategic plans, client projects, and files in one place. Unlike my competitors, I offer my services for the German-speaking market. Okay, it's a pretty good differentiator. So I'm going to assume that it's true that there are no Notion consultants that focus on the German market, or at least you're the most prominent one. So that's good. There's a very clear discipline, very clear differentiator. Online entrepreneurs, also pretty clear. It's still pretty broad, though. Online entrepreneurs, is that Shopify store owners? Is that someone who's bootstrapping a SaaS? Is it an info product business? So I think you could get a little bit more specific about online entrepreneurs. And then everything you have, they're building their digital workspace by having their ideas, strategic, blah, blah, blah. It's too long. Who cares if their stuff's in one place? What problem do they have if their stuff's not in one place? They're disorganized. They can't move fast enough. So you could say something like, I'm a Notion consultant who helps online entrepreneurs or Shopify store owners or something, you know, info product gurus, something specific, get their data organized or something. So get organized, increase the organization of their digital documents or something. But this, what should I say? Interesting. We should talk. All right. Oh, got a connection here already. All right. So here's another thing to think about. We didn't talk about this. We didn't talk about all the different ways to specialize because that's a whole different topic. But what Natasha is here is she has a platform specialty. Her specialty is being an expert on this particular platform. That's like being, that's like saying I'm a Shopify consultant. I'm a Salesforce consultant. I'm a FileMaker consultant. They are a Facebook ads guru. Like they are really good at working on a technology that their ideal buyers know that they have. So like for me, I use Drip as my email marketing software. I use it every single day. So I'm highly invested in the platform. It'd be very hard for me to switch. I'm paying for it. So it's important to me. So I'm going to be interested potentially in someone who is a Drip consultant or something specific with Drip like Drip migration or Drip automation or integrating Drip with other services that I use. So this is a sort of a sub niche of a horizontal specialization I call the platform specialization. So your online entrepreneurs, whoever they are, they probably already have notion. If they don't, then I wouldn't, you know, it's like you, I would decide, am I going to be a notion consultant or a notion expert who helps info product gurus organize all of their content marketing and strategic communications into one place so their entire team has access to their information? And even if I say that, it could be, I help online info product gurus enable their team to work without them, something like that. So it's like they already have notion and they want some, they want something. They're paying for notion for a reason. It's because they're disorganized, but that's not the reason. The reason is something past that. Well, okay, well, so what if you're disorganized? Well, then we can't get invoices out on time. Oh, well, that's interesting. How many invoices are you throwing away or aren't going out or how much money are you sitting on? Or my marketing message is all over the place because everybody's pulling the wrong logo or everybody's pulling a different version of the course or I'm sending out the wrong emails to my list because disorganization is causing these problems farther downstream. So like the root cause is that they're disorganized, but the symptom is that there's some kind of, they're sending out the wrong email messages. So I might have a cough. The root cause might be, I don't smoke, but the root cause would be smoking, but I don't necessarily go to the doctor because I'm smoking. Hey doc, I'm smoking. Can you help me? It's like, no, hey doc, I have a cough. Can you do something about it? So they're like, well, we could fix the root cause and you could quit smoking.

okay, I'm not doing that. All right, well, I can give you something to help with the cough, but obviously you should really quit smoking. The symptom is why I come into the doctor. If my head hurts or my chest feels tight, that's why I go to the doctor. I don't know what the root cause is necessarily. They're going to help me understand that. So if you think downstream from disorganization, having all of this stuff not in one place, what's the cough? What's the symptom that they're going to notice? Like, hey, InfoProductGuru, have you ever sent out the wrong marketing campaign? Have you ever launched to the wrong list? What is the mistake that they're making that comes from disorganization? Or maybe the disorganization could be a problem unto itself, but it would be nicer to see something a little bit closer to the money. It's hard for me to imagine an online entrepreneur losing sleep, because my files aren't all in the same place. I can't go to bed until my file is in the same place. But I can't imagine someone losing sleep because I'm not going to make payroll this month. That's something you lose sleep over. So if you can get closer to these kind of lose sleep kind of expensive problems, the closer you can get, the more value you can add, the more you can help, and the easier it's going to be to close deals and attract clients and all that stuff. All right. So we've got about four minutes left until we hit the top of the hour. I can stay on a little bit long tonight, but it is Friday here, and I have another call coming up. So I'm going to get through as many more of these as I can. And I'll shoot out an email to everybody after this with the slides. And if you have any follow up questions, we can kind of pick up the conversation there. Next one. This is from Rod. I'm a marketing strategist, discipline, who helps small business owners, target market, who struggle with growth so they can be more profitable. Okay. So that's pretty solid. I think small business owners feel too vague. I mean, that could be a bike shop, a laundromat, a Shopify store owner, a pub. I mean, I understand that you probably could help all of those types of businesses, but what's the ideal one? What's the one you want to help? The one you want to hang around with? The one you want to go out with for drinks? Do you want to hang out with a guy who runs a laundromat? Maybe, but pick the company, the kind of people. Maybe it's eco-friendly small business owners or mission-driven small business owners or outdoor brands, small outdoor brands or small direct-to-consumer outdoor brands or lifestyle brands or fitness brands. It's like small fitness brands. People who sell jeans on Instagram. There's so many. I mean, I think small business is the biggest segment of the US market. I'm sure that's probably true around the world. It's way too broad. It's a good start, but it's way too broad. Struggle with growth. I feel like that could be phrased much more specifically if you picked what kind of small business. So what would the growth look like? Because different kinds of small businesses are going to think of the word growth in different ways. If you are, say, doing marketing strategist for co-working spaces, as one of my students is, that's a very different kind of growth that they're looking for. You can get into specifics about the growth and use language from their world that is going to make you seem more credible and make it feel more urgent that they talk to you. So I'm a marketing strategist who helps co-working spaces fill those empty seats or expand into a new market. Those are much more tangible and connected instead of this kind of like small business owners struggle with growth. It's very, it's very high level. It's like 30,000 foot view. It's like pick someone. What's the problem they have? What are the words that they use for that struggling to grow problem? Because it's a good expensive problem. I think the language could be more persuasive though. Connect more. What's the next one here? Travis says, I train digital project managers how to think like mini COO slash business developers so they can run more profitable projects. Ah, interesting. Okay, so what you've got in here is a little bit of a how. So if I was going to abstract it, not that you would need to do this, but if I was going to abstract this to its kind of core principles, I'm kicking this back. If you're going to abstract that to the core principles, I would say, I help, or I'm a trainer if you wanted to discipline, or you could just say, I help digital project managers run more

for profitable projects. That's the core. And then how do you do that? Well, I help teach them to think like mini-COOs or business developers. But that's not relevant, necessarily. It's relevant, but it's not top of mind. The top of mind thing is, hey, I'm a digital project manager. Am I up nights wanting to run more profitable projects? Why would I want that? Let's workshop this a little bit. Why would I want to run more profitable projects? I'm imagining I'm an employee, not a consultant, digital project manager. What do I want in my life? I want promotion, probably. Maybe I want a bonus. What is it that I want personally? Why would I care about running more profitable projects? If they're more profitable, that money probably just goes to my boss. What do I care? Of all the things I'm going to worry about, why would I worry about that? So what I'm saying is, is this really an expensive problem? Maybe it is. Maybe all digital project managers are up nights worrying about how they can run more profitable projects. But I could also imagine it being more like, I help digital project managers figure out how to get a bigger bonus at the end of the year. Or I help digital project managers get promoted. Or I help digital project managers, I don't know, go out on their own and run their own projects. Something that's a little bit more, there's like a huge assumption here that digital project managers care about running more profitable projects. Maybe they do. It's not obvious to me that they do. But the focus is pretty clear. It would be really easy to come up with a LinkedIn search to find probably 10,000 people with this job title. You could probably find 500 in a metropolitan area easily and run a free webinar or something about what? Is it about running more profitable projects? Why am I going to spend an hour watching somebody talk about how to run more profitable projects? But if the webinar title is, hey, digital project manager, here's how to get a promotion. Here's how to be the star employee. Here's how to set yourself apart from all the other people and not to get fired. Here's how to ensure that you're going to get promoted. Here's how to get a bonus. Here's how to get a raise. And again, I'm just guessing that running more profitable projects is going to be recognized by their boss. And here's another one. I train digital project managers on how to help their boss look like a rock star. It's just a kind of a more funny way to put the idea of what the benefit might be to them. Interesting audience is usually digital agency owners. Oh, okay. Send their PMs to us. Oh, okay. Interesting. So the update here is our audience is usually digital agency owners who send their PMs to us. Why do they send their PMs to you? Why do they want to make them more efficient? Or it's not obvious to me why they care about this. Because your real client, then, if your buyer is the agency owner, even though you're working with the project managers, the buyer, your target market, is the owner. Big difference. So if you're saying, I help digital agency owners increase the profitability of their project management staff, hello, that's interesting. How do you do it? I train them to think like an operations person. I'm a trainer who helps them understand the way to think. And maybe you even help the agency owner come up with an incentive plan that will financially reward the project managers in a way that supports the initiative. So it could be more than just training. Success. All right, good. So that was an interesting point. I don't want to gloss over too much. Even though, shoot, I already erased it, but even though this person works with one group of people, that's not the client. The client or the buyer is the owner, even though they're not working directly with the owner on the bulk of the project. So an interesting, important distinction. All right. We've still got 64 people on. I'll keep going maybe 10 more minutes. I see a good one coming. Okay. Kevin says, I said, Kevin, what do you do? And Kevin says, I'm a human resources consultant with a specialty in labor relations. I help private unionized employers negotiate collective agreements.

that allow them to thrive in a competitive, typically non-union environment. Okay, that is like bouncing off my head. I think there's something there though. I help private unionized employers thrive in a competitive environment. Or even more closer, I help private, like what's the word private doing there? That's kind of throwing me. So if I just take that out for a second so my brain will unlock. I help unionized employers. What do you mean by thrive? Land a deal? Like sell more? What's thrive look like here? Because you could say I help unionized employers beat non-union businesses. Or I help unionized employers compete against non-union employers. Private means it's not a publicly traded company. Okay. Interesting distinction. Okay, fair enough. So I help private unionized employers. That's a little, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. I wish, I feel like I wanted to be like theater or event production. I want it to be something that's like something I can tell from the outside. Because I have no idea who a private, I can't even think of anyone remotely who runs a private unionized something. Is it a boutique car manufacturer? Is it a auditorium? Is it like live event production stadiums? I help unionized stadium owner. The stadium owner is not unionized though. Yeah, I would love a concrete example. It feels very not concrete at the moment. But I think the expensive problem is that they can't, they probably for financial reasons have a hard time competing against non-union whatever it is that they do. So really what you can say is, the expensive problem is, we'll help you close deals against, we'll help you beat your non-union competitors to the deal or whatever. Okay, yeah, so private in Canada, especially those not public employers. Okay, but it'd be cool if there was some kind of concrete, like who in Canada, come up with some examples of private businesses in Canada that are of the size that you would like to help. Is it event production? Is it hotels? Is it conference centers? I know you could do all of them, but what's one that is common or what's the one that you like the most or one you think you're the most effective at or the kind of market that you think will be growing and not receding? If you can think of one, if you can think of one, then I would use that as my target market. So like I help unionized theater companies beat non-union theater companies or something. I can't even talk about it because I have no concrete, I have no basis for, it's just so far outside of my, what are they competing for? I guess that's part of my problem. So you're in human resources, what are you competing for? Like to help them hire more people? Yeah, like what kind of competition? I'm actually gonna move on from this one, but when I send the follow-up, Kevin, if you wanna like engage in an email conversation with me after, because now my curiosity is peaked. But right now it's, as you can see, I'm totally confused by it. All right, so next one. Looks like it might've been hotels, yeah. All right, here's one. I offer, this is Marie, I think it says Marie. I offer writing, translating, and proofreading services in French. Okay, so this is pure discipline. So it's, you know, there's an implied for anyone. If you're, you know, the A for B, it's like, I do writing, translating, and proofreading in French for anyone, for companies, for businesses, for people. All right, so here's what I would ask. Who needs, I'm drawn to the translating one the most because translating to what, I feel like that's gonna be, I feel like automatically if you're doing,

I feel like immediately you'd have a smaller number of competitors if you specifically focused on translating because it seems like a subset of any kind of proofreading or writing. It feels like a subset to me because you have to know two languages. Maybe it's more than two languages. Maybe you can translate from a bunch of languages into French or from French to a bunch of other languages. So target market for this, who cares about this? I help New York Times bestselling authors translate their self-published book into French or into the most popular languages. So I would go after, or info product people, anybody who, like who would stand to benefit the most financially from having a translation of something? I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is people who sell info products where all of a sudden the product is available to a new market, like instantly or not instantly, it would take you a little while, but basically I could say to you, hey, I've got five books, they're all self-published. Could you just translate them all into French? And how much would it be for you to translate all of them into French? And then once I, let's say for my demographics or some sort of tracking or whatever, I know that I have a ton of podcast listeners in France, let's say, or in other French speaking areas, then it's almost a slam dunk that those people who, if they don't read English, they're not buying my books. So maybe I could break into a new market. Maybe I've got some kind of strategic initiative to move into French speaking markets. Then it feels like with a single investment with you, I could then just publish those and reach an entirely new market very easily. But yeah, but this is pure discipline. There's no target market. So there's really nothing to work with. There's no, from a marketing standpoint, I don't know what conferences to send you to. I don't know who to connect with on LinkedIn for you. I don't know what to tweet about. I don't know what to write about. I don't know how to have a webinar. I don't know how to podcast because we don't know who our audience is and you can't talk if you don't know who you're talking to. You just, you need to have a sense of their level of understanding, what their hopes, fears, dreams, worries are in order to really connect and communicate with them. You can't have empathy if you don't know who you're talking to. And empathy is the thing that's gonna help them really connect with you and build trust and authority and increase your impact and value and therefore pricing and profits and all that stuff. So if you're just like, I dig holes, anybody need a hole dug? Then it's, there's very little you can do proactively to increase like your leads or your pipeline in any way. So you'd almost be better picking anything than picking nothing. Doop. All right, I got about three more minutes here. Looks like that says Kia. Sorry, the text is really light. It says, I'm a tech minimalist. I can help you focus more on your life, work and clients and not the tech you use. All right, so this feels very B2C, business to consumer. So what would I do? I can help you. So there's no target market. This is sort of trendy right now. So Cal Newport and all that. So it could be, this could just be a horizontal specialization where you just become famous for this. So this is, we didn't really talk about this today and it's not really the subject of today, but if you're gonna do a horizontal specialization, be like, essentially how to improve your life, your emotional wellbeing by decreasing the amount of tech in your life. You basically need to be famous for this. So like, you'd have to become famous, like write a really popular book, speak at conferences, get on TV, just been following along with James Clear, interviewed him on my podcast about six months before Atomic Habits came out. That would be the path that you would go down if this is what you wanted to do. Unless you pick a laser, because it's very broad appeal and it does have a mass market appeal. So anybody, do you have an iPhone? You need to read my book, right? So it has a broad appeal, but you need to go that like guru, thought leader, authority approach if you're not gonna pick a target market. Now, on the other hand, if you say, I help Silicon Valley CEOs focus more on life, work and clients, not the tech you use, or I help Silicon Valley CEOs get back four hours a week.

Now all of a sudden I'm listening. I don't care if you're a tech minimalist. I don't care how you do it. Now I'm really interested, and I'll probably pay a lot for that. You could be a coach. You could be a productivity coach for Silicon Valley startup CEOs or funded CEOs or Series A CEOs or startups that have gone public. But you'd want to pick somebody who's very wealthy and had a lot more money than they had time and then use your skills, your superpower, to make some beneficial change in their life. Maybe they're feeling depressed. Maybe they're feeling scattered. Maybe their relationships are suffering. Some kind of pain that they have. If you were going to follow the kind of positioning statements that we've been doing today, it would be like, I help target market. I've been saying CEOs here, Fortune 50 CEOs, something like that. Get back five hours a week of time they're wasting on their phone. Basically that, of time they're wasting on their phone. Maybe you could say something like that. This is an interesting one because honestly, I think probably the book angle, the guru angle, the Marie Kondo, James Clear, Seth Godin angle, that's probably not a bad... I mean, now's a good time to do it, I suppose. Go that route. It's definitely a possibility for something like this. But if you were going to focus on a service business and you were going to sell services, I would pick a really wealthy target buyer who you'd like to help, who you'd like to hang out with, and focus on them. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to wrap up. There's a bunch of these left, but my battery's dying and I'm late for another phone call. So I'm going to have to cut it off. I'm really sorry about that. But I hope that going through some of these exercises with some of the folks that I did get to, I hope that that helped you kind of see what the process is like and sort of make it a little bit more concrete about why it would be important to be able to have good answers to these questions, how to just go through your past experience with the clients and come up with answers that make sense, maybe how to pick a good target market, how to figure out who your competitors are so you can figure out your unique difference, how to translate what you do, copywriting, translating, productivity, into some beneficial problem or expensive problem solution. So how will your target market benefit? What will be the result of the activities that you undertake? Not like, oh, I'm going to massage your back. It's like, I'm going to help you walk again. So it's like, oh, do you wish you could still walk? Great, I'll help you with that. So let's see. Cool. So it looks like it was helpful for folks. That's great. So yeah, I'll send out a follow-up email. And if people are really, really struggling, I can try and go through those. Man, there's a million of these left. I'm really sorry I didn't get to more of these. Okay, well, I do have to wrap up. So thanks for coming and I'll see what I can do to follow up with folks individually on email. Have a good weekend. Hey, Jonathan again. Do you have questions about how to improve your business? Things like value pricing your work instead of billing for your time? Or positioning yourself as the go-to person in your space? Or maybe productizing your services so you never have to have another awkward sales call or spend hours writing another custom proposal? Book a one-on-one coaching call with me and get answers to these questions and others in the time it takes you to get ready for work in the morning. Best of all, you're covered by my 100% satisfaction guarantee. If at the end of the call you don't feel like it was worth it, just say the word and I'll refund your purchase in full. To book your one-on-one coaching call, go to jonathanstark.com slash call, C-A-L-L. That URL again is jonathanstark.com slash call. Hope to see you there.