Ditching Hourly

Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. Fellow list member from my mailing list, Alexander Friedman, emailed to request a positioning statement teardown. I think the ensuing conversation might be useful. Alexander wrote, how does it sound for a positioning statement? I lower software R&D costs for startups by providing correct, efficient, scalable, and affordable software architecture design. And my first reply, I wrote, that's a good start. In my humble opinion, you could simplify it down to this. I help startups lower their R&D costs. And note, by leaving out the bits about how you do this or how Alex does this, it forces the reader to ask, but how, which starts a conversation, it creates curiosity in their mind. I suspect you'd benefit from getting even more specific and bold like saying, I help growth stage startups cut their R&D costs in half. Thanks for your note, Alex. Alex replied again and said, Jonathan, you're awesome as always. Hooray. By the way, you're spot on with growth stage as early stage slash seed startups don't give a rat's arse regarding correct software design. They want to ship before the money runs out. Exactly. So nailing your positioning supercharges your marketing efforts. If you've been engaging in marketing activities like blogging, emailing, podcasting, social media, outreach, and so on, but you haven't gotten any meaningful results, I'd be willing to bet that your positioning is too soggy. That's it for this week. I'm Jonathan Stark, and I hope you join me again next time on Ditching Hourly. 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.