what don't you do? [idgaf 036]

“Nah, I’ll pass.”

He just looked at me for a bit, kinda shocked.

“Huh? What do you mean pass?”

I could almost hear his brain ticking, trying to understand how I’d say no.

“Yeah mate it’s not something I’m interested in, you’ll need to find someone else.”

Alright so this was probably about 2 years into running my web design business (just before I met my horrible business partner). I’d been introduced to this dude who was high up in this franchise brand.

He had this idea where they could basically force each franchisee to buy a website that the franchisor could have control over, and was talking to me about maybe being the guy to set it all up.

Problem for me though: he had very particular ideas about how it would all work, wanted it done cheap per site (but many many many sites), and just wanted me to be the grunt that makes it happen.

We were talking something in the realm of $100k+ at even the lower end of the projections, so that would have been really nice.

But….

I wasn’t the “follow instructions” guy, or the “keep spitting out these templatey looking sites over and over again” guy.

Back then, I was trying to use all my sales and marketing background to be the expert about what businesses need to be doing to grow.

That’s the kind of position I wanted to have in the market, not little button pusher web nerd.

But wanting doesn’t mean much. What matters is how my “want” holds up when someone wants to pay me to give it up.

Thankfully for me, I was able to say no and stick to my beliefs.

Over the past year or two, I’ve seen lots of copywriters, consultants, and even some designers, suddenly become “positioning experts” on LinkedIn.

But there’s a small issue…

What they’re doing isn’t positioning.
DUNN DUNN DUNNNNNNN

Positioning is who you are, who you serve, what category you’re in, and why you’re uniquely different to all your competitors. So positioning work involves actually deciding these things.

What these hombres are all doing is on the communication side. They don’t actually make the choices, they just come up with the words to describe all of the choices that the business has already made.

And that sounds a hell of a lot more like copywriting than positioning.

It’s confusing because the work they claim to do is similar on the surface.

They’ll interview you, maybe your team too, maybe some clients even. And maybe that process gets intense cause they challenge the BS you normally say, and that turns into some clarity and realisations for you.

But then they take what you’ve said, decide what positioning strategy fits how you work, then write the words based on that strategy.

Meanwhile, actual positioning work involves making the hard choices that affect how your business works. It’s cutting a service that makes money, or choosing to niche (or not), or changing your entire pricing model, or a bunch of other things that require genuine change to make real.

It’s saying no, to give your yes some actual meaning. It proves the yes matters. After all, claiming to be the expert doesn’t mean shit if you’ll still gladly take orders for money.

If they’re not helping with the decision making, and if the service doesn’t involve you changing how you do things, it’s not actually positioning.

Well, basically, a lot of people call themselves positioning experts so they can charge more for their copywriting service (what a shock).

If they’re not helping you make the choices about what you say no to, it’s copywriting. Might be “strategic” copywriting, but it’s still not going to be solving this big and expensive problem they’re promising to solve for you.

But here’s something awesome: you can kinda/sorta start moving in the right direction of figuring this shit out yourself, without paying anyone a fortune.

First start by listing all of your beliefs. This is the stuff you believe in about what you do, that maybe isn’t super common in your space. Then narrow it down to the stuff you feel the most strongly about, the stuff you are 100% all-in on.

Then, look at how those beliefs shape your approach to your work. What are you actually doing differently because of those beliefs?

If you’re not doing anything differently, it’s time to change how you do things.

And if you do that: congratulations, that’s positioning. You can charge yourself lots of money now.

My friend Cass had been doing copywriting for a while, but was kinda getting over it and decided to start offering digital products.

She had this hugely impressive background in high level copywriting, had done all the studies, read all the books, bla bla bla (what a nerd lol), so came up with this idea that would use all that experience.

Her plan was to break down marketing principles in detail, explaining how and why they work, and how and when to use them in your copywriting to make people buy your shit.

Made sense on paper, since that’s where all her experience was. So she started doing it (and its been pretty great).

The problem is that Cass just… didn’t like it. It didn’t feel right to her. Shit, she wasn’t even enjoying copywriting anyway (that was the idea of the digital products), so why pick marketing copy as the thing?

But while Cass was stressing over what she wanted to do when she grew up, she was writing these amazing stories in her free newsletter (highly recommend you subscribe btw). Like, great stories that had brilliant transitions from story to lesson to pitch.

Not the kind of stuff you see a lot, and coincidentally also the kind of stuff she believed not many people were doing well.

It was when she started looking at her belief and it’s impact on her approach, that she realised she needed to make a change.

So…. she made this huge dramatic pivot to storytelling: breaking down stories, what made them work, the decisions made (and discarded), and all this other cool shit that people would actually benefit from learning about and understanding.

Now she says no to copywriting work unless it’s the kind of storytelling she enjoys, and has the storytelling focused product instead of the marketing one.

This is the path that gets her known as being an amazing storyteller and writer, and THAT’S what positioning is all about.

Cowabunga,
Nick Gulic