Ditching Hourly

Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. The lovely and talented Alex Hillman of phillyfreelance.com invited me on last week to speak to their membership about repositioning your freelance business in response to COVID-19. The reaction from the audience was really positive, especially regarding the Q&A segment at the end that we did. And Alex graciously allowed me to republish the audio of the talk as an episode here on Ditching Hourly, so other freelancers could potentially benefit from it. Alex has a really long history of creating cool, useful, and innovative products and services. So if you're a freelancer or consultant, you should really check out his stuff. And I've got links in the show notes to indiehall.org, stackingthebricks.com, and of course, phillyfreelance.com. If you'd like to have me speak to your community or appear on your podcast, just shoot me an email at jstark at jonathanstark.com with what you have in mind, and we can work it out. All right, here's the recording of Repositioning Yourself, a crash course from phillyfreelance.com. All right, it is five after the hour, so I'm going to say we should get things going. Welcome back, everybody. Thank you for making some time in your day for joining us for the latest in our Tuesday freelance focus sessions. For those of you who are joining us for the first time, welcome. Super glad to have you. For those of you who have been to a number of these in the past, super glad you keep coming back. That's a real strong signal to us that these are valuable and that you want them to keep happening. So we're going to keep doing them as long as they are useful to you. In the last several weeks, we've been working on sort of a progression that's been a little bit intentional. And I want to sort of suggest that that progression may relate to the image on the shared screen right now. And this image was shared by our guest for today's workshop, Jonathan Stark, something he shared with me early on in our conversations about this. I think does a really good job of summing up sort of his world of work, which I'll let him describe some more, but also a really great way of thinking about the areas of focus for improvement when it comes to growing our businesses, not just getting more clients, you know, flat out, but also getting the right kinds of clients, doing the right kind of work so that we can earn more money and maintain our time and sanity and all of those kinds of things. So, you know, last week, I think Janelle's session about education fits really, really squarely in the publishing portion of this diagram from Jonathan. I think we're going to talk a bit about pricing going forward. But for today, the topic is positioning, how you talk about yourself and who you talk about yourself to. So with that, I want to introduce Jonathan Stark. I've known Jonathan through the internets, as part of my cohort of internet friends who I think are really smart, do really great work in supporting freelancers, independent consultants, small business owners. Jonathan himself is a writer and an educator. And this area of positioning is actually one of the ways that I came to know Jonathan. He published, self-published a book called The Positioning Manual. That's right, Jonathan. And is that right? That's actually Philip Morgan. We're good friends. Oh, shoot. I'm sorry. I got you mixed up with Philip. I'm sorry about that. No, I do talk about positioning all the time. I wrote Hourly Billing is Nuts and The Freelancer's Roadmap. But people should check out The Positioning Manual from Philip. Yes, yes, yes. I'm super sorry about that. Very embarrassing. But that's right. All of Jonathan's stuff is excellent. Highly recommend it. So today he's going to be talking about positioning and taking you through some interactive exercises on how to think about how you communicate your work, who you communicate it to, and how you can do that strategically, especially right now, where the people you're used to communicating your work to might need to change because those clients have gone away or they're not spending money the way they used to. So without further ado, and with that silly snafu out of the way, I'm excited to introduce Jonathan Stark. I'm going to unshare my screen so he can share his and take it away, Jonathan. Great. Well, first, thanks for having me, Alex. Don't worry about it. People confuse Philip and I all the time. We must have a positioning problem. But thanks for having me. Catherine, too. Thanks for setting this up. And thanks, everybody, for joining today. I do want to kind of start from that jumping off place right where Alex left it about repositioning in this current situation is so weird, but we're all in the service business. And before coronavirus, you were in the business of helping your clients solve problems. And during this, you're going to be in the business of helping your clients solve problems. And after this is all over, you're still going to be in the business of helping your clients solve problems. So the fundamental nature of

business isn't really going to change. The thing that did change or is changing and probably continue to change is that the problems that they have are not the same problems anymore. Like a whole bunch of new problems cut the line and jump to the front. So you might have to reposition yourself a little bit so that the thing that you used to sell, if it's not as high priority as it used to be, you could potentially pivot to something that is suddenly high priority to them that still fits within your area of expertise. And that requires, you know, broadening of the way that you think about what it is that you do and perhaps, you know, maybe some skill acquisition or whatever the case may be. It's going to be different for everybody. But the core function of what you do is solve problems for clients. They still have problems. So you just need to figure out how to apply your skills to those problems in a way that's high priority to them now. All right. So what we're going to talk about today is really what is a positioning statement, first of all, but why it matters. Three different types of positioning statements that you can use. Easier, tougher and really hard to create. And we're going to I want to leave a lot of time for questions because I know even even if you understand the theory of some of this stuff, it can be really hard to apply it to yourself. It's you know, it's a sort of forest for the trees problem. It's hard to read your label from inside the bottle. You just know what the ingredients are. But, you know, what's on the front of that thing? How do people perceive me from the outside? It's not the same as the the label on the front is not the same as the label on the back of, you know, say, a bottle of aspirin. You've got all the ingredients on the back of the label and you know all of those intimately. You know all of the things that you're capable of and all of the skills that you have and all of the things that are inside of you that make you up. But when you look at a bottle of aspirin, that's not what it talks about on the front of the label. The front of the label, it says something like quick headache relief or it focuses on one benefit that a buyer would get from, you know, purchasing this particular medicine. I think positioning you can kind of boil boil positioning down to how do you tell people what it is that you do? So, you know, I call it the cocktail party question. You meet somebody at a cocktail party and they say, oh, you know, Alice, nice to meet you. What do you do? And if, you know, if y'all are like most people I work with, they've got either a really soft answer to that question where they kind of say, oh, I do web stuff or I work in computers or, you know, something glib or flippant or something like that or really vague. Or they'll say something different depending on who's asking, which I think is a really, really bad thing to do for a variety of reasons. But almost nobody, when I start working with them, has a really clear laser focused answer to that question. And we're going to and that's a problem because if you can't answer that question yourself, knowing everything you know about, you know, what your capabilities are and even all the client work that you've done, if it takes you like 15 minutes to try and paint a picture of what it is that you do or how you can help people who you work with or who your target market is or the people you most like to work with, there's no way that person can introduce you to someone who maybe you could help or they might not even recognize that you could help them. So not having a really clear, concise answer to the question, so what do you do, is a sign that you've got a positioning problem. A really clear positioning statement matters like crazy because you're probably a soloist or maybe you run a small firm or you maybe have a partner. You probably don't have a ton of energy to pour into marketing every week. You're probably not buying ads, you know, or at least not spending a ton of money on ads. You live and die on word of mouth and referrals and introductions. And if you can nail a really clear positioning statement, it's going to pour fire on whatever word of mouth or referrals that you're currently getting because everyone who hears it will immediately know who you can help and how you can help them. And people generally want to help people they know. And if you give them the tools to understand who you help and what you help them with, they're going to introduce you naturally. But probably right now, all of the people that you know, your friends and family, maybe even your spouse, they can't even say what you do. They're not sure what you do or they might say just your discipline like, oh, he does video production or he does design, something super vague like that. And what a good positioning statement will do is connect the dots between whatever your area of expertise or your focus or your skills are in some beneficial business outcome for a particular target market. So if you can do that, if you can quickly and concisely say that in a memorable way to someone, then that gives them what they need.

say, hey, maybe I should introduce you to Bob. He does that kind of thing or he was just complaining about that problem yesterday. And this takes your sort of small amount of resources that you have to devote to marketing and it just puts it on steroids because now everyone you know can become sort of like an outside sales force for you or a referral generating engine. Your positioning statement would show up in lots of different places. It's good for, like I said, introductions, referral and word of mouth. You're going to put it in social media bios, you're going to put it on your website, you're going to put it in other marketing copy like your email signature or business cards. Wherever you're going to put it, you want to have this really clear, concise statement of who you help and what you help them with. So I'm going to go through three different kinds of positioning statements, sort of small, medium and large, if you will, or bronze, silver and gold. They go from easy to difficult to create. So the easiest kind, you can see here I call A for B. The middle kind, it's a little bit harder to create, but it's a little bit more effective, is what I call an XY positioning statement. And the toughest to define, the toughest to set for yourself is the LFPS, which stands for Laser Focus Positioning Statement. So I'm hopeful that by the time we get off this phone call, you can at least settle on an A for B. That would be amazing because that's at least, well, I'll go through them, but that would be a great start. If you don't already have something that's that clear, then that's way better than, well, I kind of do computers or I'm a designer. That's too vague for people to help you. So let's go through each one of these individually. A for B. So basically you would say, I do A, and A in this case would be your discipline. So maybe you do audio editing for podcasts, or maybe you are a video production person, or maybe you do graphic design, or maybe you do 3D modeling, or maybe you build Rails applications. Whatever it is that your discipline is, the craft that you practice or the thing that you do, you would insert that for A. So I do copywriting, I do video production, I do audio editing. And then for B, B is some kind of target market, some kind of ideal audience, your ideal buyer. It could be a vertical, it could be a demographic, it could be a psychographic. It's some segment of the population that's smaller, a lot smaller hopefully, than everybody. So you don't want to say, I do design for businesses. That's too vague for me to have what I call a Rolodex moment. You want the person who's listening to this positioning statement or reading this positioning statement to immediately go, huh, I wonder if I know someone that Alice can help. I wonder if I know someone in this target market that Alice could, you know, with her whatever, graphic design skills, or maybe she makes logos, or maybe she builds Rails apps, or Node, or something like that. So that's one way to define a target market. That's a niche. Some people call that a niche. You niche down on a particular vertical, or you could niche down on a demographic. So a demographic would be sort of a defined subset of the overall population based on something that's sort of true about them. You know, I build Rails apps for soccer moms, or I do, I don't know, I do copywriting for males 25 to 35, or who are trying to start a side hustle, or something demographic. Demographic things are kind of like outwardly obvious facts about a person. Could be gender, could be age, could be zip code, could be income level. And it's a way to segment an audience. I think probably the most sophisticated way to segment an audience would be a psychographic. And a psychographic is a group of people who believe a certain thing, or act in a certain way, or have a particular worldview. So they might look all different, gender, race, age, income, might all be different, but they all align around a particular worldview, like environmentalists, or like a Democrat, like a political cause, or something like that.

regulation. It could be anything, but it's a way to segment an audience into people who feel a certain way about the world. So that would look something like, you know, I write speeches for environmentalist activists, something like that. So then if you say that to me, I'm going to think, oh, do I know any activists in the environmental space? And maybe I'm going to, that's the Rolodex moment, maybe I'm going to think of someone. And if I am, I'm going to say, huh, I wonder if, you know, I wonder if Carol needs help with her copywriting. I should maybe introduce you guys. It's like magic when this starts to work. And this is just the most basic kind of positioning statement. So an A for B is I do your discipline for a particular kind of target market segmented in one of these ways that I've described. So vertical, psychographic, demographic, those are all really common ways to segment an audience. If you're not sure, you know, but you're probably thinking right now, but I do, I can do copywriting for anybody. I can do it for nonprofits. I can do it for Republicans. I can do it for Democrats. I can do it for guys and girls, and I can do it for anybody. I totally understand that. And you can continue to do it for anybody. But if you want your marketing to start working, talking about what you do with other people, communicating more specifically about who you help and what you help them with in your marketing is a really powerful thing to do. The analogy I like to or the picture I like to paint is, you know, there's this Irish pub near our house. I haven't been there in a long time now, but there's an Irish pub near our house that has like 200 beers on the menu. And when you go in and sit down, they'll give you a menu or you can see behind the bar. There's 200 beers that you can get there. But out in front of the restaurant, before you walk in, there's a sandwich board, you know, one of those A-frame sandwich boards on the street, and it just says one beer on it. And it'll depend on the weather or whatever is the season. It'll say, you know, ice cold, whatever, Dos Equis or ice cold Miller Lights or whatever. But if it's more of a fall season, it'll say something like, you know, voted city's best Guinness. And yes, I see that. I don't expect that they only have Guinness inside. I expect that they're going to probably have a lot of different things. But in that first impression, that's sort of like that thing that's going to grab my attention and help me understand, like, you know, like snap me out of the conversation that's in my head and say, oh, you know, ice cold Dos Equis would probably be nice right now on this hot day. The sign, the sandwich board sign on the sidewalk doesn't tell me everything I need to know about the pub. It doesn't tell me everything that's on the menu of the pub. That would be totally overwhelming. This is the front of the label. And it's the thing that's going to get me to think, oh, maybe I should go in. When I go in, I'm not going to be angry that they have other beers. I'm not going to be surprised that they have more beers than just the one kind that's advertised outside. But it's the thing. It's the right level of focus for something out there that's going to be attracting the attention of strangers or people you haven't met yet. It's kind of like a first impression or an icebreaker. You can think of it like that. It's not about, it's not meant to encompass every possible thing that you could do for someone. So, okay, target market. I don't want to harp on target market too much, but I think it's probably, if you just did one thing after this, it would be to pick a particular target market to focus on for three to six months. You're just going to target this target market for the next three to six months and try to make inroads in that industry. It's incredibly powerful. All right, let's move up to the next level. The next level, it's a little bit trickier to do. And it's very similar to A for B, but the XY positioning statement is instead of what you're going to do, you talk about how you help. It's a subtle distinction. Let me go into it here for you. So I help X with Y. So about myself, I would say I help independent software developers increase their profitability. So it's very specific, but it doesn't say what I do. It doesn't describe the activities that I engage in. It just describes the outcome that they'll get. It's an important difference. It's left to the imagination how I might do that. Maybe it's through coaching. Maybe it's through classes. Maybe it's through books. Maybe who knows what it is. It could be anything. But if an independent software developer is interested in increasing their profitability, then they're going to be like, oh, let's talk. Or if it's not an independent software developer, but they know one, they'll say, huh, I wonder if Bob would like to increase his profitability. So it's this automatic. It's very similar to the first one. It's very similar to A for B. But the difference is that it focuses on the transformation that you help your ideal buyers or your target market achieve. And it focuses less or not at all, really.

on the activities that you engage in to get them there. And what's really interesting about this is that over time, as you get better at delivering that particular transformation to this particular kind of client, you can broaden the activities that you undertake to get the transformation done, to make it real. So maybe right now you do video production, and the transformation that you make for your clients is that you increase the amount of, I don't know, signups on their website. So they've got a website, and they want people to sign up to demo their software or something like that. So, and right now you do video production, and you know that one of the use cases for the video production that you do is to create these explainer videos that SaaS founders will put on their website, and it will attract more signups or free trials or whatever the call to action is or the conversion is that they want. If you talk more about getting them more signups or free demos or whatever the business outcome is that they want and talk less about the fact that you use video production to do it, over time you can broaden the ways that you help the client achieve that. And what that means a lot of times is you can do things that are easier for you, but still as beneficial or even more beneficial or effective for your client, which, you know, we're not gonna talk about pricing today, but that's my main focus. Having a really strong positioning statement allows you, especially benefits focused like this X, Y, P, S version, if you're focused on the benefit that you deliver, the business benefit that you deliver to the client instead of the deliverables or the work output that you give them and hopefully makes their business better, then you can broaden the range of options that you have or the number of beers on the shelf, but still be delivering that same outcome. And this gives you a huge lever to pull in terms of increasing your profitability down the road, but that's a topic for another time. So, okay, so the big thing about the X, Y, P, S that's hard for people is lots of folks don't know why their clients value what they do. If I say to someone, if I say to you, why does your client give you money? Don't they expect something in return? Most people are gonna say, yeah, they expect me to deliver the videos that I said I was gonna deliver or they expect me to deliver the lines of code that I said I was gonna deliver or the features that I said I was gonna build. The clients don't want the videos, the clients don't want the code, they don't want the features, they don't want the white paper that you're gonna write for them. They want what they think that thing is going to do for their business. That's what they really want. They don't want the videos, they do want more signups because they know signups is gonna turn into money. The videos, they don't care if you use videos or wave a magic wand or stand on the street with a sign, they just want more people demoing their software. That's the thing they want. They don't really want the videos, they just think the videos are gonna lead to something they actually want. So a lot of people don't know that answer. They don't know the answer to the question, why do your clients give you money? Clients do not give you money for your work product, they give you money because they think it's gonna make them money somehow downstream, somehow. And if you don't know what that is, it's really hard to write one of these XY positioning statements that focuses on the business benefit instead of the activities. So you might be wondering, how do I get that information? And the way that you get that information is to reach back out to your happy clients, because I know you have them, and you go through a specific, you basically ask them for testimonials and you send them a specific list of six questions that you would ask them, and those questions are specifically designed to elicit a benefits-oriented testimonial, which you can then use as your positioning statement. It sounds silly to say it out loud, but basically if you don't know why your clients give you money, you have to ask them. And a great way to ask them is to ask for a testimonial from your happy clients. And when you get that testimonial, if you use these questions, it's not gonna say, oh, she was always on time and she never made us feel dumb and he was great to work with and a real nice guy. That stuff's all fine, but that just is saying that you're a professional. You want a testimonial that's gonna talk about the results, the transformation that you enabled for the client. And it's a very different kind of thing and you have to ask specific types of questions in order to get that information. But once you have it, I'm willing to bet you're gonna see some patterns in the testimonials that you get and you can take that, the ones that is your favorite, your Guinness in front of the pub, you can take the one that you think is the most powerful or the most interesting or the easiest to translate to more clients and use that as your sandwich board, use that as your positioning statement. And as you attract people who are interested in that kind of a transformation for their business, then

They're inside the bar and you can have a conversation with them and explain that, oh, we've got lots of things that we can do in here. Let's talk about what problem you're trying to solve and then we'll come up with some diagnosis and a prescription for how we're going to achieve those results. So, you know, it's a new, for a lot of people, this is a new way of thinking. Instead of thinking my time is worth money and I'm great at Photoshop or I'm great at Node and people, you know, I put in an hour, they should pay me for an hour. It's a very different mindset with this XYPS. All right. Now let's look at the last one and this is sort of the big daddy and this is called a laser focused positioning statement. It's very difficult for people to put together. It can take a long time. Once you have one, though, it will drive your marketing efforts for potentially, you know, one to two years, maybe even longer. So having it is a really good thing to do. It gives you a sort of North Star, a compass, a guiding light, a map to all of any of the other marketing things you do. So things you share on social media or on your mailing list or on your podcast or your YouTube channel or Instagram, wherever you're putting things into the world, having a thorough laser focused positioning statement is going to make all of those efforts much more effective. So let's go through it. In this one, you'd say, I am a discipline. So maybe you'd say I'm a copywriter who helps target market. Maybe you'd say something like non-technical SAS founders with an expensive problem, not just a problem, but an expensive one, one that's really, really hurting them. Unlike my competitors, I and then you insert a unique difference. Well, it's different about you. Why are you uniquely qualified to help this particular target market? So this is a full soup to nuts. It covers all the important bases. There's these four variables here, discipline, target market, expensive problem, and unique difference. And you might notice that sort of buried inside of this is the XYPS. The XYPS is the middle bit of the first sentence. I help target market with expensive problem. It's basically the same as the value proposition piece of the LFPS. Adding your discipline in there can be very useful in lots of sort of random ways. Certain kinds of introductions, you're going to want to be able to say what it is that you do. I'm a consulting designer or something like that. Or I'm a Rails developer or something. You're going to want to have a nice, tight, concise way to say what craft it is that you engage in, even though that's not the main focus of your marketing. It's useful in lots of situations. And the target market we've already talked about, it's the same as I help X with Y or I do A for B. It's the target market that you could segment in all of these different ways, but it's very important for that to be in there. And then the expensive problem is kind of like the Y in the XYPS. It's like the pain that your clients are wrestling with or it's a big opportunity that they can't seem to grab on their own. But there's this tension that exists in your ideal buyer where they're in a current state and they know they want to be in a different state. So say they have a headache and they know they want to be rid of the headache or they want to have, you know, they don't have washboard abs and they want to have washboard abs. So it's like a pain version is the headache and the aspirational version is the abs, to use a visual metaphor. And then the last thing here, the unique difference, people who are having a really hard time with this typically don't know who their competitors are or they feel like they're competitive with everybody. So if you're, say, a copywriter again, so if you're a copywriter and you can't come up with a unique difference, it's probably because you feel like you're not different and that's a problem or you don't know who or maybe you're something more sophisticated or not sophisticated but specialized like, you know, you're a blender expert. You make 3D models and animations. It's like it's a smaller market than copywriting. It's like a tighter specialization. There are fewer people that do it. And maybe you're like, well, I don't really know who my competitors are. Like nobody really does this or hardly anybody does this on a professional level. Like you're either going to hire IDEO or some big agency or some freelancers who are basically just college kids goofing around. I'm the only one. So what's my unique difference? I don't know. Okay, so the unique difference one is very difficult for people because of those two reasons. One, either they have no idea who their competitors are or they actually don't feel like they're different from anybody else. So both of those things you'd need to rectify before you could fill this in, which can take some time. Okay, so that's enough of me talking. I'd like to get into questions, but I want to just kind of wrap all of that up with the most important thing to think about here

The thing that you want on that sign outside in front of your business for strangers to see is who you help. That is the most important thing. I know you can help anyone, but who's the ideal one? Who do you really want to help? If you could just pick the kind of client that you wanted to help, the one that you believed in their mission, or you really felt like they were an underdog, or you've got an unfair advantage because your entire family is in this business that you want to help with, so you understand everything about their industry. If you can just focus down on that for, let's just say you do it for three to six months, and you update all of your marketing materials to focus on that one thing, if that's the only thing you do, I can almost guarantee that you're going to start to see marketing traction from whatever marketing efforts you're currently engaging in because everybody is so connected that you're automatically going to be getting more referrals and more introductions. You're going to be getting more sales calls, sales interviews, and I can almost guarantee it happens over and over again. If you can focus on just that one thing for a few months at least, I think you'll really see some traction. I know it's not easy, but you can do it. Okay, so that is all I've got there. Let's switch over to questions. I'll look to Alex to perhaps let me know how you want to handle it. Yeah, that was great. First of all, thank you. We've got a little tradition borrowing from the Indie Hall community in terms of sharing applause, so the way we do that since we don't need everybody to mute is just a little like spirit fingers. So give Jonathan a little round of Zoom applause. Feels nice, right? It's pretty good. That was great. Thank you. We do have some questions in the chat, and I'm going to suggest that probably easiest to keep questions in the chat. If you want to ask a follow-up question, something more detailed, there's already a couple of really good ones in the chat, so I'll have you start there, Jonathan. Okay, so you just want me to walk through it? While you're working through those, if you have a question that is maybe more complex than you want to type out or you would just like to come on the video, the way to do that is to raise your hand, and you can click the Participants button and then the little Raise Hand icon, and that'll raise your hand. And so we'll use that for if you want to come on screen and ask your question. Otherwise, we can use the chat room for there. Sound good? Cool. But yeah, I think the first question that I saw was from MG, so if you want to start there, Jonathan, go ahead. All right, let's see. I'm going to start from the most recent, even though that's not fair. Sure. So let's see. Did I miss the six questions? All right, the six questions thing for the testimony. Is it okay if I drop a link in here in the chat? Yeah, go for it. We'll include that link in the recording as well. All right. All right, so this is something I originally saw from Sean D'Souza, who wrote a book called The Brain Audit, and I've kind of beefed it up a little bit with some email communications about how to reach back out to past clients. It's sort of a two-email sequence, and there's a bunch of rules around it. It's very easy. If you just don't mess with the formula, it works like magic every time. So I would literally get off the phone and just send these out as soon as you're done today, because when you ask somebody for a testimonial, if you've ever been asked for a testimonial or a recommendation, it's pressure, it's like a to-do, it might take you three months to get around to it. But generally, happy clients do want to do it for you. They just need some guidance, and this provides that guidance, and it's going to result in these sort of benefits-focused testimonials instead of just like, hey, he's a nice guy or she's a nice gal. It's going to be much more about the business transformation that you help them achieve. So definitely put that right on your to-do list for sure. Okay, next one. What if you offer more than one service which can also tie into the uniqueness PR and web one-stop shop? So let me read that out loud in case somebody's not reading the chat. So what if you offer more than one service which can also tie into the uniqueness PR and web one-stop shop? So I'm a big fan of specialization, but specialization doesn't necessarily mean that you only do one discipline, like you just do PR, you just do web development or web design. You could specialize in solving a particular problem. So your specialization could be increased demos for SaaS products, or I will help you grow your mailing list. And maybe you'll use PR and you'll use web design to do that, but you can still specialize in a particular outcome. So you could theoretically use that as your uniqueness, but I think uniqueness really should be positioning yourself kind of against your competitors.

or whatever the alternatives are. So kind of like, we're like Uber, but for dogs, you know, it's like, I'm like all of these other freelancers who do this thing, except whatever. I have my pilot's license or something that's genuinely unique about you. Maybe you could say that you're the only person who specializes in flight schools. And that could literally be true. You might be the only PR web design person who specializes in increasing the number of signups to mailing lists for flight schools. So like a quick way to differentiate yourself and be unique is to just get super niched down, like really pigeonhole yourself as helping one particular type of client with a particular expensive problem. Let's see. So hopefully that helped. What's the difference between the, what is the difference between the positioning statements and value propositions? I feel like they're very similar. I don't really see them. I see the XYPS almost as a pure value prop. Yeah. It's like, if you want help with this, hey you, if you want help with this problem, here's the benefit. The benefit is that you won't have that headache or in six months you're going to have washboard abs or whatever the pain or dream is that they're wrestling with, you solve that. So that is basically the same thing as a value proposition, but you could apply a value proposition to like toothpaste or pretty much anything. I see as a service business, I think the XYPS, which is the closest to a value proposition, is kind of like a value proposition for someone who has an expertise-based service business. So they're practically the same thing, that middle one, the XYPS. Okay. So here's one that's not a question, but I want to point something out because it's a really common thing to do. And I think this is just from the introductions at the beginning. So I'm definitely not picking on anyone here, but it's a great example of an A4B masquerading as an XYPS. So there's one in here that says, I help people portray themselves, their companies and products and services through content strategy and user experience design. It doesn't actually say what the benefit is there. I really hate to pick on this person, but this is pretty solid. This is a solid A4B, but it uses the word help and it's masquerading as an XYPS. But really what you're saying here is, I do content strategy and user experience design for companies. And the closest thing to a benefit is portray themselves. It would be more of, that's not really a business outcome. It probably would lead to a business outcome, but I feel like you could connect the dots a little bit better there. Instead of portraying themselves, what would think, just think downstream, what would be the point of portraying themselves? You could say raise awareness of their products and services. And you might say that, oh, that's just semantics, but I don't think so. I think it's definitely an important distinction. So help raise awareness or increase trust in the brand or some kind of, you want to, usually in an XYPS, the business benefit is going to have some word like increase or decrease. You're going to make some change, some measurable change in the business that the client can detect. So it could be something really intangible like brand repute or morale or something like that. But even though you can't measure those things the way you would measure a table, you can absolutely measure them. In fact, if the client has a problem with morale or has a problem with brand reputation, they know it because they're measuring something. Maybe their star ratings on Amazon are terrible. That's a subjective, star rating is totally subjective. It's maybe not scientific, but it is absolutely a measurement. And people use it all the time to make decisions. So your customers, they want you to improve something about their business. They're not going to give you money unless they think you're going to give them money back or give them value back or profit back or increased wellbeing back. You're going to give them something back. And it's not experience design. It's not a content strategy document. It's the thing that the client believes those things will lead to, which maybe in this case is increased awareness of their products and services in this particular marketplace. So again, apologies for just grabbing one and using it as an example like that. But it's a perfect example of an A4B, which is a solid A4B, but it's sort of looking like an XYPS, but it doesn't actually have a business benefit. It can be really hard to get those business benefits in there. Let's go back to that again. Oh, good. I see that you're not bothered. Thank you. How's this? I help my clients increase authentic connections with their communities through mission-driven...

programs and events. All right, so this is sort of straddling the fence, I think. I always notice when people use the word through or by, because what they're really doing is sneaking their activities in there. They're sneaking their discipline in. You're telling me what you do. You make mission-driven programs. You organize or do something with events. So what you could say, you could just say, I help my clients increase authentic connections with their communities and leave it at that. You don't have to stick your discipline in there necessarily. And you didn't really. Your discipline is probably not creating mission-driven programs and events. It doesn't sound like a job title. But I would go, if we were working together, I'd push harder on that increase authentic connections. What is the, is that something that your target buyers, which you left out, you just say clients, I'd like to know who is most likely to benefit from the kind of assistance that you provide. You just said clients, you could just say I help businesses increase authentic connections with their communities. I guarantee you there are different types of businesses who would stand to benefit more or less from this. For example, an author or a trainer or a speaker. These sorts of independent solo businesses would probably stand to benefit quite a bit. I help New York Times best-selling authors increase authentic connections with their communities. Now, if you pick something specific like that, a target market that's specific like that, then you can actually go farther downstream from authentic connections with their communities. So you could transform it into I help New York Times best-selling authors have a follow-up number one hit by increasing connection with the communities. So all of a sudden, if I've had my first, oh, it's even better. I help first-time New York Times best-selling authors. So, oh, you just had your first bestseller? You want to have another one? I help New York Times best-selling authors avoid the sophomore slump. It writes itself. If you pick a target market, it all becomes obvious what some of the less abstracted benefits could be for that particular kind of person. Now, if you imagine your same skill set and you apply it to Fortune 50 retail brands, now all of a sudden the benefit is completely different. They're not going to have a follow-up hit. I mean, even though they might benefit from connections with their communities or increased authentic connections with their communities, for them it would be sell more products or get more positive feedback on social media or increase social media sharing or increase brand repute or launching a membership community, like an actual membership community, like Nike. Hey, somebody like Nike. I help companies like Nike finally create a paid membership group or paid program like Amazon Prime, something like that. So even though your skills are the same, if you apply them to different types of clients, they're going to end up with these different benefits. I mean, the difference between a thriving loyalty community for Nike versus a follow-up number one best-selling book for an author. Which one of those would you rather work with? They're completely different experiences, and I know your skills probably allow you to work with both, but it makes it really hard to put a label on the front of your bottle. It makes it really hard to put a sign out in front of your pub that's going to attract the kind of ideal buyers that you want, which reminds me of a quick tangent. If you don't love your clients now, you need to pick better clients. And you're not going to automatically get better clients unless you think, well, what would a better client look like? Who would I really rather work with? And then take actions to get those better clients. So if there's anybody on this call who's maybe not super happy with the clients that they've had, or they think clients from hell is a fun website to go to, then maybe take some steps to go after and proactively try to attract the kinds of clients who would be better for you. All right, I'll get off the soapbox there. Might it leave potential clients in the dark if you don't say what you do? Is it concrete enough without it? Okay, this is a fair question. So some clients, I don't think it necessarily hurts to say what it is that you do. So if you say, to use that last example, I help New York Times bestselling authors have a follow-up number one hit by increasing authentic community engagement. I don't think it's going to hurt you. The problem with it is a lot of people, it's in their comfort zone to talk about the activities that they are good at. So there's a tendency to rely on it.

Much like a crutch. I almost want you to take the crutch away first so that you can really get focused on who's your target market and what's the expensive problem that you help them with. And then if you want to sort of let some of that like and here's how I do it back into the equation, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world. Although in a lot of situations, I like that it's a little bit in the dark because then that is, if it's a situation where a conversation can start like in person or in some kind of a chat real-time situation, I like leaving out the how you're going to do it part because then that makes them ask the question. So if you say, oh, I help New York Times bestselling authors avoid the sophomore slump, and you're talking to an author, they're going to say, whoa, how do you do that? Now you're having a conversation. It's not you pitching. It's not an elevator pitch. It's them interested. It's them expressing interest in learning more. So if you leave it out, I think it's actually a great way to start a conversation with the right kind of buyer. But it depends on the context. On your website, you're not having a conversation with someone. I just wouldn't lead with my discipline. I wouldn't lead with the how. I'd lead with the transformation that you bring to the table. And if they're interested, they're going to keep reading. And then you can say a little bit farther down the page or smaller type, like, oh, I do this by increasing authentic community connections. Just to add a little bit there, because that last point I think you made, Jonathan, is super, super important. One of the things that I always think about is like old manners tips. It's like the best way to appear interesting is to be interested. And if you want to show up in a conversation and get people interested in you, the easiest, most consistent way to do that is start up showing interest in them and show that you understand them, understand their problems. Let them be the one to ask, but what do you actually do? It not only opens the door, but it gives you a clue that you actually have their attention. Yeah, 100%. I couldn't agree more. That's how I run sales interviews. Like if I've got a huge client on the line, I barely talk. I just ask questions the whole time, a couple of open-ended questions, maybe six open-ended questions in an hour. And they just talk the whole time. And at the end, they're like, that guy's an amazing conversationalist. It's very much about engaging with the other person, really connecting, having some empathy, putting yourself in their shoes, understanding the pain, understanding the tension. So the tension between where they are and where they want to be. Another thing that I was thinking of before when you were talking about how a good thing to look for is a description of the change, of the delta, either an increase or a decrease or something along those lines. When I'm trying to take an abstract thing like authentic connections to their community, which is like, it's a real thing, but it's tough because it's kind of squishy. When I'm trying to connect that to something concrete, one of the first ways in, I'll think to myself or ask them about recruitment or retention. So how do they get more or how do they keep the people that they have? So when I think about authentic communities, you can take authentic communities directly to, well, here's how that's going to make the experience more cohesive, more sticky. Some more people are going to want to join as well as people that have already joined are going to want to stay. And then you can tie that more concretely to a business outcome of either increase or decrease. Yeah. It's like, oh, would you like to have a waiting list for your coworking space? Yes, I would. Yeah. Guess how? Would you like to know how? Through authentic connections and community and blah, blah, blah. So it's like, it's basically, it's about leading, starting the conversation with the problem, not the solution. So like I always, I love the doctor metaphor for this because the doctor is not going to, you know, you walk in and say, hey doc, I need you to give me a triple bypass. The doctor, you know, the equivalent being like, hey, I need you to do a video production. You do video production, right? Could you produce some videos for me? The doctor is not going to just say, yeah, jump up on the table. I'll go get my scalpel. They're going to diagnose the situation first. They're going to say, well, hold your horses. Why, you know, what's the problem? You know, like, oh, my chest is hurts. Like, how long has this been? Oh, I woke up with it. Like, oh, okay. Did you have fourth meal at Taco Bell last night? Oh, yeah. As a matter of fact, I did. Well, maybe you just need an antacid, not a triple bypass. So, you know, this is sort of a sales, sort of a topic I talk about in a sales context, but automatically prescribing or talking about what you're going to do is not, it's just not an engaging way to start. You're talking about yourself. You want to talk about the other person or you want the other person talking about themselves so you can find some way into the situation if you can help. And if you can't help or if you're not a good fit, you should walk away or put them in touch with someone who can do a better job than you, which is a positioning type.

topic by the way, because one of the things with positioning that scares the dickens out of people, I can't believe I just said dickens, is that they're like, well, but if I focus on one particular target market, I'm not going to get other kinds of clients. Or it's going to like, you know, that's going to decrease the number of leads that I'm getting, and I'm already getting barely any leads. And I know it's a paradox, but the smaller your focus is, the bigger your leads get. Because now your network can help you. Right now your network cannot help you because they don't know who to introduce you to. They don't know how you can help those people that they would introduce you to. It's like you've got all of these salespeople out there who would love to help you, but they don't have the tools to do it. So if you get specific about who you would just love to work with, I would love to work with NBA stars. I do tattoos for NBA stars. I can do tattoos on anybody, but I really love the NBA. I'm a huge fan. I want to do tattoos for LeBron and anybody else. I don't know basketball stars, but I want to do tattoos for pro athletes or NBA stars or whatever. Now all of a sudden your network can engage. They can be like, oh, my cousin is a coach for blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And all of a sudden these crazy like six degrees of separation things start happening like magic. It feels like magic. And so if you focus, so like this weird poverty mentality about like, but if I narrow my focus I'm going to get less work is completely wrong. It's counterintuitive. I understand. It seems like a paradox, but it's the exact opposite of what you think is going to happen. Indeed. I think that's our time for questions. We can give one more round of applause for Jonathan. Zoom style. Awesome. Thank you. This was great. Thank you. We'll grab those slides from you and share them out if that's okay. Sure. And I want to thank everybody for being here, for contributing, for sharing. Hopefully this was useful. I would love if you revise your positioning statement and want to send that to us. If you got a good one, we'd love to see it. Pass along to Jonathan as well. I'm sure he'd be into seeing the results of what he taught all of you. We are going to continue with these Tuesday lunchtime sessions going forward. Next week we have a session on branding and communication as well. And what am I forgetting, Catherine? We've got a legal happy hour coming up. That's right. That's on May 26. So for those of you who came to the Philly Freelance Fest in person, our legal support coach mentor that day was Tony Lopes from Lopes Law. Has been excited to get back into the mix with us. And so we're figuring out exactly what that looks like. But I thought maybe, you know, lunchtime legal stuff. Nobody really wants to talk law in the middle of the day. But maybe over a beverage happy hour time, bring either an adult beverage or coffee or tea or whatever you like at the end of the day. Would be super fun. If you do have follow-up questions for us, you can send them to me and I can pass them along to Jonathan as well. Jonathan, what's a good place for people to follow you to catch up on things that you're doing? You mentioned your book earlier as well. Where can people find you online? I would go to, you can just send me an email. It's jstark at jonathanstark.com. It's fine. I run a daily mailing list. I'm in email quite a bit. So you can just shoot me an email if you have a follow-up question. You can, if you can't remember that, just go to jonathanstark.com and you can connect with me there. Awesome. Thank you. So yeah, so we'll be back here next week. Stay tuned. If you've got other freelance or solopreneur friends who would be interested in this sort of thing, feel free to let them know. We're going to keep things updated over at the meetingplace.io link. And as always, we'll send out the recap video in about a day or so. So thank you again to Jonathan, Catherine for running things behind the scenes, all of you for being here, asking great questions. Oh, and Catherine just reminded us that we do have Philly freelance mugs and stickers as well. You can check those out at phillyfreelance.com slash gear. Some awesome quotes that we pulled that have been designed by some local Philly artists putting on some swag for you to enjoy. That's it for today. Let everybody get along with their Tuesday. Thank you again, everybody. Have an awesome day. If you'd like to have me speak to your community or appear on your podcast, just shoot me an email at jstark at jonathanstark.com with what you have in mind and we can work it out. All right. Here's the recording of repositioning yourself, a crash course from phillyfreelance.com. 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

To book your one-on-one coaching call, go to jonathanstark.com/call. That URL again is jonathanstark.com/call. Hope to see you there.