Where I’ve been (Pt 2) - Positioning

So, it's the beginning of the year. Things are changing and evolving, and life is coming at me fast. I need to fix the business and figure out my path. 

What do I do? I start by making my first AI powered brand tool.

My positioning was trash

Making the tool, I put myself through it. Combining my existing methodology with the unrelenting nature of the agent, I understood that my grasp on brand positioning was incomplete. I actually had no real positioning to speak of.

See, positioning is one of the strongest pillars a brand can have. Do it well enough and it really is half the battle. It puts you in your customer's mind in a profound way, and that's the place of advantage.

So I started working on it.

I knew what I did. I knew some of the people I did it for. But I hadn't really thought very hard about who I really wanted to do it for. Who exactly I wanted to target and focus on. Who I liked working with the most. Who I wanted to work with more.

In the midst of trying to survive and make things work, it is easy to be all things to all people. It feels like the safe choice. It is really the wrong one. And in really digging into all of that and understanding the true state of my positioning, I started to understand where I really wanted to go.

The important insight here is that your entire reality doesn't change at once. I still had the same clients, to an extent, I still have a lot of the same work coming at me. But from the point I understood this concept, I knew who I really wanted to focus on, the market segment with the problem I really wanted to solve. For the first time, I could proactively take the path towards it.

Inspired, I started writing again. If I was going to make this brand a thing and push the studio, I needed to get the content engine going.

Between February and April, I put out six essays on positioning and foundational ideas about brand. Those posts were my crash course in the basics of building a brand that makes sense - defining your positioning, picking a lane, picking an audience, going deep, and structuring your offer. They encouraged me to focus and begin the journey.

Who you're for

Most brands are forgettable because they have poor positioning. Your position is who you're for and how you help them, specifically. And being specific is such a huge part of it. Specific enough to know who you are, what you do and what you don't. What you're for and what you're against.

Even if currently, they are far away. Sometimes, you have to be for a specific kind of person, even if they don't see you yet, or understand what you do or how you fit in their universe.

Most businesses fail by trying to be for everyone. That's usually the instinct, and it usually comes from a good place, but it's the wrong idea. You have to be precise about what you want, who you want, what you do and how you do it. And you have to work towards it.

A brand that stands for everything will fall for everything.

When I thought about my own positioning, I knew I wanted to serve a certain kind of client: one who could pay the fees, who I could actually do the work with. 

If that was the case, if that was my choice, then, I'd to say no more often to the things I don't want to do, even though they are usually the things that already come to me. 

The convenient things, the quick jobs. You take them because you've got no other choice. You've got bills to pay, business is slow and the economy has been rough lately.

But if you say you want to serve a certain kind of client, you have to figure out what that means. Saying no, sure, but what are you saying yes to? Who are they?

Do they know who you are? Are you putting yourself out there? Are you in the places they gather? Are you giving them the kind of value they're looking for? Do you know their problems, and are you trying to solve them?

It's a whole different texture and posture from saying "I don't want to serve this client" and hoping it works out. It doesn't happen that way.

And here is the thing. It is not easy to let go of the ones you already have, the ones knocking at the door. You still have to pay the bills. So I did something else.

From February to April, I did the work I had, sure, but I spent all the rest of my time pursuing this rabbit hole, exploring the ideas I was coming to understand. For months, I spent way more time building around my obsessions than chasing client work. Even though I needed the cash. 

The building bug had bit me. First brand clarity, then messaging, then a brand audit, then an early content engine. I had the inkling of having found something. The first version of the Brand OS was born, and I didn't know it yet.

The audience you choose

One of those essays was about the audience you choose. I realised, and I've been realising it even more lately, that the market I have is a market of convenience. It's the market that has been with me and grown with me over time. But the client I want, I have to go after.

It's like going after the person you want to date. The person who might be a little out of your league. You've got to impress them, you have to come correct, look good, smell good, present yourself as if you're the guy, even if you're not the guy yet.

That's what I have to do with my business and my clients. If I say I want to operate at a certain level, then I have to start acting at that level. Moving, talking and connecting at that level.

The audience you choose means refusing to settle for what comes to you and going out to hunt for what you want. Be a strong brand, choose your audience, then go out to them.

What that meant for me specifically was making content, sure. But it was also thinking deeply about these clients, this chosen audience, and obsessing about their needs, their stresses, their worries and the goals they were trying to achieve.

And that's a cheat code to life and business. If you can find a way to know what people want and deliver it to them, you will most likely also have what you want. The trick is getting out of your head long enough to empathise with them and create for them. You have to...

Go deep

Once you're going after them and really understanding who they are, you have to go deep. It's the same problem as positioning too wide: sometimes you offer too many things. You might have so many talents and abilities, but offering all of them is the wrong way, because it's a menu and not a solution.

If you're going to position yourself towards a market, you have to become an expert on that market. Know their problems and be able to solve them, in your own way. You only get there by doing it so much and for so long that you really understand not just their problem but the many ways it fails, and your solution, the way that ensures success.

Customer success has to be your obsession.

And once you've figured out your solution to the problem, every service you offer becomes part of that architecture, part of that spine. You have to take what you do beyond the mechanics of delivery and understand what it means for the client.

What problem am I choosing to solve?

I've been doing branding for a while, helping clients look the way they should, present themselves and communicate the way they should. For a long time I was satisfied with doing the minimum, the expected. Sure, I'll design your logo and your look and feel, the website. You give me the copy and all that, and I'll put it in.

But nobody knows what they're doing. Clients aren't writers. Consultants know some things, but not everything. I know brand strategy would be so important for them, but they don't really know what that is.

I also know very little. So how do I solve their problem regardless?

That has been my journey this year. That has been my obsession.

First I identified my ideal customer: founders of businesses trying to scale. People who have been in business for a while, gained some traction, are doing well enough. Making somewhere between R2 million and R15 million a year. You know you could do more, and you're trying to move the brand to where it could be.

I started to wrestle with the problem, to get into the mind of my target. I feel something, and they feel it too: the itch of where your business should be, of what your brand should be, and the frustration of not knowing how to get there, or even what you're doing wrong.

That's what I started to hone in on. What is the real problem here? What is the main issue? Where is the gap in the brand? What is the model? What are you trying to do, how are you trying to grow, where have you been and what's next? What is your brand, for real? Who are you focusing on, for real?

Because if you already have traction, and you focus it on the most valuable segment with the most painful problem, you can turn that traction into gold. You can turn it into a profitable business.

So for months, I built my way into the answer. I did one thing, and then another. I made one tool, and then had the idea for a third. I kept going until I realised that the pieces that felt disparate actually fit together, and revealed a new picture, a new perspective...

This is how I framed it. If my target market was founders and businesses at a certain level trying to grow, what did that mean? They were usually quite disciplined and talented. They were passionate about an area. They were able to get traction and get things working. Their real problem wasn't having a great logo; they probably knew enough talented creatives. It wasn't building a website; they probably had one already. It was being consistent. It was solving the content and attention problem. It was engaging their brand the way they probably did a lot of other things in their life.

Their real problem was turning brand into something truly operational. Something they could work on and work through.

That was the problem I was going to solve.