Position Your Brand With Authority - Teacher: Winston A. Henderson

You know, what's the funny thing about it, Juma? Most businesses aren't even positioning themselves. The market is doing the positioning for them.

Because positioning I've realized is not something that you can leave to chance. You have to be very intentional about it because it relies on a lot of understanding of your business, your market, your buyers within, your particular market or region or whoever it is that you're going after their needs, their challenges, problems, aspirations.

There's a lot of intricacies and details and nuances that goes into positioning. So 

it's not something that just happens on accident. Hello, and welcome to the useful content podcast. And today we have a returning teacher in our useful content classroom, Winston Henderson. What's up Winston. 

I'm doing well. And I have to remember to put my headphones on, but I am doing very, very well. We had a conversation recently, so this is an interesting offshoot from that conversation. So we wanted to record something new and I see you smiling because you know what we're going, you know what we're going to get into today.

And I think this is going to be great for the people. But before we reveal the secrets of what we're getting into, could you please tell the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful content? Okay. Excellent. I know that's what you do. And, um, I've personally experienced some of it and we're going to get into that today because I think the, the genesis of this conversation, this ongoing conversation was a post you put up on LinkedIn and that post.

Uh, I can't remember what was the title of it. Uh, uh, what was the title of that post? I can't remember the title of it, but whatever the title was, it was referring to positioning. And I asked a question in the comments. And let me see, I have the question right here. The question I asked was, what's an easy formula?

What's an easy formula to know? Your positioning. When you saw that, question in the comments, what is the first thing that ran through your mind? 

Yeah. So that's the thing. I think a lot of people, myself included, struggle with positioning. All right. So before we go on, I want you to tell me, And what is your definition of positioning? So you're saying that positioning doesn't only make you stand out. It sets you apart from other people. Um, and I found, I found it has been a big conversation these days. Uh, and one of the big reasons for that conversation becoming more of a frontline conversation is because of how much low lying, uh, Content there is because of access to tools like AI, that people are not really making an effort to be different.

They're trying to take the path of least resistance when it comes to talking about themselves and their services. And I, and so I find that there's a segment of, of marketing that that conversation is bubbling up to the top, like, okay, well, these people are doing a lot of stuff. How can we stand, not just stand out, but how can we stand apart?

Do you think that that's something that's happening? 

Hmm. Hmm. You know, one of the things that I made a post about this, a kind of a rant post about this yesterday is the proliferation of, of AI comments, right. On LinkedIn in particular, I don't know about the other platforms. I'm sure it's happening there too. And one of the reasons. I don't like it apart from the fact that it's most times it's obvious that it's not a human being doing it as of now but also The, because of the nature of that type of interaction, that type of automation, all of them look the same.

It's just like, everything is, it's just the way people respond. You could predict the way they're going to respond. And I think that is a symptom of a bigger thing that is happening. And I'm happy you kind of pointed out that there are a lot of people talking about it, but not many people doing it.

Doing things about it. And when we spoke in the session, you said you wish you could give it away to everyone. Why do you feel so strongly about businesses having to be positioned? 

Right.

So I came across April Dunford's book, which I think was the first official, uh, introduction to positioning, right? She has a book 

called obviously awesome, which speaks specifically about positioning.

So I read that book. A lot of great information in there. Um, April is wonderful, but one of the things I found about the book is that I understood it in theory, but in terms of applying, 

it was a bit of a challenge for me, 

uh, because her book, I 

believe is more for people at the intermediary level to advanced level.

And 

I'm someone who is basically a beginner. So I think it's more towards 

marketers who are product marketers who already have some basic understanding 

of positioning. So struggle with it again for a few months after reading April's book. And then 

I came across the guys over there at 

Fletch, PMM, which would be Anthony and Robert, um, which kind of reintroduced the whole 

idea of positioning for me.

But they did it in a way where. I'm kind of like a baby learning to walk 

for the first time, and they held my hand and said, Step one, do this. Step two. 

So it gave me a really step by step, detailed approach of how 

to approach it. Um, which is really how my brain works and how 

my brain learns. And so, 

the challenge that I had 

though, with, with, 

um, their approach, is that, their their focus is 

Is mostly startup businesses in the B2B SaaS space, right? Which is a product focused. My business is a service based business. So I literally had to spend weeks. 

Consuming, uh, I probably consume at 

least, I would say 50 to 60 pieces of content that they have both 

from their social media and their LinkedIn posts, as well as, um, they have a notion 

that, that I actually paid for a yearly subscription and I literally just comb 

through everything that they did. And really, once I understood it 

enough, then I said, all 

right, how can I take what I learned from them and now apply it to my 

business? And so I tested that for a few months, for a 

few weeks, deciding on a 

new, um, specific, uh, ideal client that I wanted to go after, which 

is small businesses. No, decided to deprioritize marketing leaders. And it's not, it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm, I'm not selling to 

marketing leaders again, within organizations. It just means that for a specific period to build that authority, 

to build that positioning, I really want to focus on small business owners because they're the ones 

who probably need it the most. So a very long winded answer to your question. Why I 

said that I'd probably give this away for free because I understood, 

I understand what I went through those years of organizing of how to differentiate myself, how to differentiate my brand. I know it's a problem that a lot of startups and small businesses have as well.

So if I could really just teach them how to do this on their own, then I'll be much happier for it because I knew the struggle that 

I went through

Right. Well, I guess now there's only one question and that question is, well, what 

is your positioning statements? 

for my specific position statement or how to 

actually build it. 

Well, we're going to get into the building it, but if you struggle so long with it, I would 

love to know after all that

struggle, what did you come up with? 

What did you come up with?

And I'm going to. I've, I've slightly tweaked it recently because I, I realize it's, and it's funny because it's something I, let me tell you what it was before. And let me tell you the slight tweak that I made. So before it was building your authority or helping small business owners build their authority to generate more sales opportunities using content.

So that's what it was 

before. No, I've slightly tweaked it based on. Someone who connected with me recently and I asked them, well, what brought them to my profile? And they said, Oh, the part about you talking about leveraging expertise, that's what really caught my eye. So now it's more along the lines of helping small business owners leverage their expertise to build their authority to generate more sales opportunities using content.

Ah, 

So it goes back to that first introduction where you asked me, you know, what it is that we do. It's simple. Your expertise, your buyer's 

needs will combine it content to build your authority, which generates sales opportunities.

Right. Okay, good. I know, I know we're supposed to get into the actual system, but I have a few more questions before we do. I, I, I don't know if I've slightly lied when we were in the green room and said, I didn't prepare for this, but maybe I did more than I thought. Okay. So, so that's great. So that's, um, and, and of course it's okay to tweak your positioning over time. 

You'd have

to, 

You'd have to, why would you have to, why would you say that? 

because buyer's behaviors change, how they buy change, the market needs change. What's a problem for them today, won't be a problem for them tomorrow. As a matter of fact, there is a particular, um, head of marketing that I've been in dialogue with for probably the last three years. And every single time I have a conversation with that person, they're talking to me about a new problem that they're struggling with within the organization and how content marketing can help them fix it.

So. That's, that's, that's one of the reasons also why it's so important to just focus on one specific segment or one specific industry at a time. Because if you have more than one position in, it's going to be, first of all, it's going to be very hard for you to build authority to that one person or to multiple people or multiple personals at the same time.

And at the same time, they won't trust you as the expert. What it is that you really offer and how you can help them. And if you doubt this, think about it. If you think about who is the greatest that you believe at their craft, whether it's a Michael John for me at basketball, or whether you think that Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos is, um, you know, great at, at there being entrepreneurship or whatever it may be, or, you know, Isaac Newton or whatever the case may be, or Serena Williams at tennis.

All of them have one thing in common. They're known as the greatest for one thing and one thing only. I mean, even when Michael Jordan tried to leave basketball and go and play baseball, he was horrible at it. And no one, even though he was great at basketball, it was still hard to convince people that he was great at baseball as well.

Same thing. If you want to bring it here locally to the Caribbean, same thing with a Usain Bolt, right? Considered to be the fastest man in the world. that has ever lived, um, you know, made a great career for himself in the sprinting world, left and decided to try his hands at football, you know, Americans, they call it soccer.

And though he did okay there, there's no one who refers to Usain Bolt as the greatest or one of the greatest footballers of all time. They refer to him as the greatest sprinter of all time. And it's kind of the same concept that when you're building your position, when you're building your authority, you want 

to be known to one segment for one 

specific thing.

Hmm. Hmm. So are you saying that many businesses. 

Adjust positioning themselves too broadly. 

You know, what's the funny thing about it, Juma Most businesses aren't even positioning themselves. The market is doing the positioning for them.

Right, 

Because positioning I've realized is not something that you can leave to chance. You have to be very intentional about it because it relies on a lot of understanding of your business, your market, your, your buyers within, um, your particular market or region or whoever it is that you're going after their needs, their, their challenges, problems, aspirations.

There's a lot of. intricacies and details and nuances that goes into positioning. So 

it's not something that just happens on accident.

right. I hear you. I hear you. All right. So this is the last question I'm going to ask you before we get into the how to do it. So there's a whole thought on, uh, how internal people perceive this positioning versus external people perceiving a positioning and, um, are there parts of your positioning deliberately stay hidden or Um, a better question might be, do you have to do something different internally than you have to do externally?

Or is it generally the same thing that you're known by externally and 

internally in your business?

I'm going to say something that many of your other podcasting guests have said. That's a really great question. That's a really, give me a second. Let me think about that question. Um, I think it has to be the same. And here's the reason why I believe that. If we're talking about the, the buyer's journey, the customer journey, the buyer experience, the customer experience, it has to be the same throughout.

So it can be a case where externally through your marketing communications, whether that's social media, email, wherever it is that you, you do marketing, you're saying one thing and you're positioning yourself one way. But then when they interact with a salesperson, for example, It's a different way that you're communicating and position the company.

And then, you know, if you decide to become a client or a customer, then whether that's client support, customer support, customer service, they're saying something differently. So that's the reason why I said that it's not something that you can really do in a one hour workshop, because it involves the entire organization as a whole coming together and saying.

This is how we're going to position, um, the brand. This is how we're going to be known in the market. And every single person has a role to play at different touchpoints through that customer journey to ensure that we're staying on brand. Because whatever your positioning decides or whatever you decide your positioning needs to be, you need to stay on brand, um, on that.

But as you rightly said, positioning can change. Right. So typically I tell people, listen, give it at least six months, at most 12 months. And then if you realize that how you're trying to position really isn't working out, then you can always change it because positioning happens at two levels, or you probably even say three levels.

Um, to further answer your question, there's positioning at the company or the brand level. So holistically, in terms of the company, the brand, this is how we want to be positioned. This is how we want to be known at the, um, in the market. There's positioning at the, the departmental level where. Alright, this is how marketing supports the positioning.

This is how sales, this is how customer support supports the positioning. And then there's positioning at the product or the service level where you might say, well, we have product A for this specific segment. This is how we're going to position PO product A for this specific segment, product B for this specific segment.

This is how we're going to position it. But 

the key thing is that everything needs to flow back up to the overarching 

positioning at the brand or company level.

So it all has to be connected regardless of what you come up with for the product. For the, what's the second one? The second one is The 

the, the. department 

level. 

departmental, it all has to flow back into what the brand is. Yeah. 

Right. 

Okay, good. All Right.

good. So now that we've gotten all that going and we've cleared up all of those things that 

needed to be cleared up, let's now get into the actual exercise of this formula that I have experienced of how you Position.

Do you want me to teach it 

or are you okay with teaching it?

You know what I'd love to do? I'd love for you to share your experience. That's what I would 

love because it's one thing coming 

from me, but for someone else who's actually experienced it recently, I think the audience would appreciate 

that, 

All right. So, so here's the deal. I took that, they sent me the chart because there's a kind of a flow chart that you use in order to, to determine the positioning now, in order for this to work, the person who you're talking with, in that case, it was me. I had to have some knowledge of my ICP, my idea, client profile.

I had to have some knowledge of their problems. I had to have some knowledge of what the things that they were struggling with. and one of the eye opening things is that you you defined which, which I knew, but somehow it just, it popped, it, it became clear the system that,

we have that is helping them, we have to know what that is clearly, and, we have to define that, and it's nice to give it a name, something that is good, you know, something that's catchy that we could talk about that system that we have.

Um, so what happened is I took that flow chart that you gave me and I And my business partner and I sat down with that on Monday, going here. And I said, I told, I told him, listen, I did this, exercise with Winston. Uh, with ICAD. And it was a it was an excellent exercise, right? I think I've figured this thing out. I think we figured this thing out, but I told him since you weren't there and obviously we're business partners, let's go through it again. and let's look and see if what, I said made sense and what. Winston did with me, if that made sense. And we went back through and we tweak some of the things and through that followup process, I now think that our positioning statement is not complete yet.

Cause we still have to go in. And we still have to do the end part, which is our better way, right? So it goes use cases, the current way that's not working, the problems of the current way, our better way and the benefits of our way. And so the, the part that I think is, was really, really important that we need to now go and define and make it a step by step is, uh, what exactly is our better way, even though we've been doing it and we kind of know it, but I think that is so critical because we understand the problems of our clients.

Cause we've been talking with them. We understand how, what their struggles are, was not working for them and the problems with those things. But I think in order for really to us, for really to position ourselves properly and to serve them properly, we need to go back and really define our way and structure that out. and of course there are benefits on the end of that. so that's just a kind of summary of my process and the ongoing thing that's happening. Now I'll hand it back over to you, the professionals, 

so you can explain the details of how those things work.

Yeah. So it's, it's funny that you mentioned your way of doing it because. The way of how we approach it at iCAD marketing, we have named and claimed and framed our name, um, called the authority branding system. That's what we call it, which is an 11 step process of that positioning statement that I just mentioned, how to leverage your expertise, build the authority, generate sales opportunities, so on using content.

But we go through that 11 step process because we find that Positioning is not just deciding, Hey, this is how we want to position. Let's create our entire marketing communication, whether that's content, whether that's press releases around this, right? You have to really get deep and dive deep. So the aspect of that, that you mentioned that we went through, sorry, is the value proposition canvas.

Which is the fourth step in the 11 step process, but there are actually three steps before that, which are very important. And that first step is that you have to do a business assessment. That business assessment is understanding and this is how we are going to actually decide which segment to, to really go after.

So you look at all the pla, the past clients that you have, past customers, and you say to yourself, well, what are the commonalities between the ones that we really want to go after? Whether that's the criteria is we are looking at which deals are the most profitable for us. Which deals have the longest lifetime customer value for us, which deals are the easiest to close.

So whichever criteria that you decide that is the basis for your ideal client profile, then you focus on that. Then once you do that, you also want to do a SWOT analysis. And well, for those who, let me not assume everyone knows what a SWOT analysis is. So that means you're looking at, SWOT is actually an acronym meaning strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats.

And you want to go through that, but the one you really want to pay attention to are the first two, which are your strengths and your weaknesses. So you want to look on, well, what are the strengths that we have? Internally, culturally, technically, whichever way you want to look at it, that can help us to differentiate and really helps us deliver in a way that no one else can.

And then you also want to look at what your weaknesses are. You want to stay away from your weaknesses because it makes no sense trying to position your company around what you're weak at, right? The other aspect of that, we're still at step one, by the way, the other aspect of that is that competitive analysis.

So you want to also look at your competitors to see, well, where are their strengths? So you want to do the same thing as, as well. Where are their strengths and what are their weaknesses? And you want to stay away from trying to position yourself against their strengths. And you really want to focus on position yourself against their weaknesses.

So let me give an example of this. So, um, for the people listening. So for example, one of the strengths that I have, and I've developed culturally in ICAD marketing is that we're very detailed and meticulous in how we approach, um, working with clients. Hence why we have an 11 step process. And it's not just, Hey, just start creating content, right?

Because there are a lot of steps that go into this. So that's our strength. One of the weaknesses that we've identified with our competitors that clients have shared with us is that a lot of competitors or a lot of other agencies don't, um, don't take the time to understand their client's business. They don't take the time to really understand their client's customers.

A lot of them are really using a cookie cutter template with all their clients. So there's no sort of customization Based on what the client's goals are. So we've taken that. And by the way, it's not just something that we recognize in terms of our strength, but even clients have said to us specifically more than one clients, that the reason why they love working with us, because we're so detailed in how we approach doing things.

So that's step one, doing that business assessment. Step two now is based on your criteria of which particular segment you want to focus on, then you use that to do client research, which is really client interviews. So you want to speak to I would say at least 7 to 10, because once you get over 10, then the responses start to repeat.

So you're questioning them, or you're asking them, you're interviewing them, and what you want to identify are five things, or three things at least. One, before they actually started working with you, or before they came to you. Well, let me backtrack. There's actually a step before that. The first step is understanding what it is that they're trying to achieve, what it is that they're trying to get done.

Some people call it use cases. Some people call it jobs to be done. That's the first step. The second step is to understand through those interviews, well, how were they trying to 

execute this particular use case or this 

particular activity before coming 

to you? The third thing is what specific 

problems did they experience before actually 

coming to you?

So that would be their current way of how they were doing things before. And the problems associated with that current way that 

weren't allowing them to achieve the particular outcomes that they were after. 

And no, once you have all that information, then that's when, well, let me also include this because it 

would be important where that fourth question 

is, well, what value or what 

benefit did you get as a result of 

working with us? Right. Because that's, that's going to help you to build your value 

proposition canvas. So that's 

step three, which will be that client research that for no Zuma, which is what you just mentioned is where we take all that information and we create a flow chart. So the first step of that is, well, what are the top three use cases based on the 10 clients that we interviewed?

We'll pick the top three use cases. Then we look on, well, what were the current ways that they were doing these top three use cases before. What were the top three problems associated with those particular use cases or their current way of doing things. And now the other step would be that, you know, your specific system or way of approaching it.

That's the better way than how they were doing it before. I know the final step of that flow chart would be the benefits of actually doing it your way. So how you actually position yourself now as the authority to differentiate your brand, to differentiate than what all the other competitors are doing is to say, Hey, This is what you're trying to achieve.

These three activities are these three outcomes is what you're trying to achieve. The problem is that you're, you're doing it this way before, and because you were trying to do it this way, these are the problems that you had associated with this current way that you were doing it before. With our approach, this is a better way of doing it.

That leads to these specific outcomes. So let me, let me be very specific so people can actually get an actual idea of how this works. So let's take ICAD marketing, right? The top use cases that we found. Is that people are trying to find new ways to get clients. They're trying to find new ways of how to get those clients outside of their network to grow their business outside of their network.

And they're, they're trying to generate qualified leads who have a genuine interest in what they have to offer. So that would be the use cases or the outcomes that they're, that they're trying to do. Currently, how they were doing it before is that they were relying on their network. They were relying on their referrals to actually get businesses.

Some of them ran like cold as weather over LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook to actually generate leads, but it wasn't really working out because a lot of how their approach, it was very broad. It wasn't targeted. It wasn't segmented. So the, and that would be one of the problems. So the problems associated with that would be, well, Once they actually depleted their network, then it will be difficult for them to find new clients and get new business.

They found out a lot of the people generated, or a lot of the referrals from their network were unqualified leads. And they found that. it was harder to close those particular leads because. People didn't necessarily see the value in what they had to offer because this is someone who is basically an introduction to someone else, right?

So it's hard for them to really see the value in what you have to offer. If it is that they don't really understand what you offer in the first place. So what we had to do was to say, all right, this is how you were doing it before. This is the problems associated with it. Our authority branding system can help you where we can show you how to generate more qualified leads and sales opportunities without having to rely on your network, without having to rely on referrals.

So now we're talking about how can you tap into the cold market? How can you tap into the mainstream market to present your solution in a way where people who don't even know you. can understand the value that you deliver, can understand that why you're the go to expert for your particular thing. And that's the benefits where you tap into more sales opportunities outside of your network.

You generate and attract best fit clients who Actually 

see the value in what you have to offer. So that's pretty much the step by step flowchart that I just went through.

I realized that this flow chart is like a gateway drug, right? You essentially, I mean, and I understand that you give away the information you do the implementation, right? But it isn't like a gateway drug because when you go through this and you realize how much clarity you get from just this simple chart, you then you say, like, okay, well.

There's more, how do we actually, what's before and what's after and, um, and, and talking with, you know, and this is something that came up in the discussion that we had on Monday, we realized that some things are missing from this, there are gaps, right? Uh, because, Even though business owners know intuitively some of these things, uh, to order them, to put them in a system and to say, this is one, two, three, four.

And, uh, it's a hard thing. And I think for us, for like, for business partners, it might be even worse because my perception on the market, because of where I'm positioned might be different to my business partners, perception on the market. And I think what, what. One of the challenges we were facing when we got together is that, and that's why I'm saying we need to do our, our better way now, because I have a ton of things that I know I have experienced and I've done.

And he has a ton of things we have to come and bring the system together and align the system now so that we know exactly these components will work. So, uh, so my big question is, is that, uh, when people position themselves, right, does it often lead to major changes across the entire business? 

I would, well, my, my, my immediate answer to that would be yes. And, and let me elaborate. Um, yes, the difficulty in actually changing things across the entire organization would depend one, first of all. How big your company is, how many moving parties has, right? Because if it's just you and your business owner, for example, then it's just the two of you.

So it's easy for you to work through with those things. But let's say you have a business where you have a staff of five, 10, 20 people that you've been operating for the past five years, and you're used to doing things as particular way. On some level repositioning or changing your position and developing a new positioning will have to.

Influence or affect how you do business, because it's the same thing with me, for example, where I had to know change. As a matter of fact, I had to change my, my LinkedIn profile. I had to change the LinkedIn profile for the company page. I'm knowing the process of revamping our entire website to speak to this new position in.

So it does kind of shake things up a bit, but I think the most important thing is, and you said it. The main thing here is clarity, right? Because I, I promise you, I promise you, I've had enough of these conversations to know there are a lot of business owners who don't have clarity on how their position, why they're different, uh, who their ICP is.

There are a lot. And we often think we know, but just like you, this exercise gave me clarity to help me to realize that I really don't have a handle on this as I thought I did. And so if you're a business owner, then you have to ensure that how your position, and this is how, you know, if there's some sort of internal conflict as to the direction you should really take your position in.

And that's why I started with. The business assessment first, that helps you define who's specific segment that you're going after to develop your ICP because your positioning shouldn't be based. Primarily on not saying that you shouldn't have some input, but it shouldn't be based primarily on what my perspective is as the phone or CEO of the company, what you and your partner's perspectives are based on how you see the market.

Yes, that will play a role, but ultimately you should allow the market to determine that and allow the insights and the feedback that you get from those client research to determine that because they're the ones that you're going to be selling to, right? You're not selling to your business partner. I'm not selling to my marketing peers on LinkedIn.

If I'm targeting business owners, that is. It's the business owners. So one of the ways to really test this to see well, there's a particular metric. It's a qualitative metric that, that I use in those earlier days to really test to see if your positioning is really hitting the market, something I call problem resonance, problem resonance means that if we define a particular problem statement to.

Or ICP or best fit bars that we're trying to target is a problem relevant to them. And does it resonate with them? Right? So if I put it out there, do they say, you know what, this sounds like something I'm struggling with, or this sounds like something that I have struggled with, or man, I'm so grateful that you've actually put in towards what I've been thinking all along.

Like, those are the type of sentiments and statements that you want to get back from the market. And you can do this too, through two, three ways in terms of testing this, you can do to put, you know, content out there, which. Is, is a longer way, a longer path to go. But the other quicker way is that you can just try to pitch your services using a new problem statement.

So randomly just picking up the phone call and say, Hey, I'm, I'm Juma from, um, so on, so, We offer these services. One of the things we realize is that our clients typically struggle with this problem. Is this something that is the same for you? Because that's what I did. I, which is one of the reasons why I started offering the free consultation because it was mutually beneficial, beneficial to the people who took on the consultation because it helps them to gain clarity that they can now take for themselves and use it within their business.

Even without having to. Take up our services whatsoever, right? So it's, Hey, if you want to take this information and use it for yourself without paying us a single dollar, then fine. But at the same time, what I was getting back from it is when I spoke to these business owners, it helps me to identify, well, these are the specific problems that they have And then I'll pick the one that's the most common, and then I'll do another set of consultation to really push it to them to say, Hey, This is the problem that you're experiencing. This is how we solve it. Is that something that sounds interesting to you? And they'll say, yes. And I'll also use LinkedIn called Liam's for the very same thing where.

I'll message people. I'll add people. First of all, who fit within that ICP, I'll message them to start a conversation and at some point in time, I'll bring it, bring up the conversation around. Hey, Are you having problem getting clients? Do you mostly get clients through your network and referrals? Yes, has that been a problem for you?

And I would say eight out of 10 of the times people will say, yes, it resonates and they're willing to have a sales conversation about it because it's not just enough for them to say, yes, we have this problem, but are they willing to pay to have it solved? 

So just going through all that, you realize how.

Your content, your website, your, your, um, your sales pitches, your sales deck, how you approach selling everything in terms of how you communicate that, that,

positioning and that problem statement could literally change up how you currently do everything. 

Yeah. So hearing you say

this. Like from, if I was to be very objective, I would say that this is a, a fantastic thing because it would lead to more business and it would lead to better outcomes for everyone, but have you had a case or have you seen where people resist this new positioning or people are saying, well, Um, we don't need to, we don't need this, but when you hear them talk about it, you can tell it's a massive, is a wide swath of, of, um, people that they're going after.

They're not very targeted at all, but they, yet still, they resist having to be. Targeted for some reason or the other. Have you seen that happen? 

You're asking some really good questions. I can, I can tell you that, uh, I would say yes, but the pushback isn't necessarily them saying, Hey, we're okay. We're fine. We don't have a problem with this. And I wouldn't even necessarily call it a pushback really. I would more see it as the, whether they're incapable or they don't want to, the behavioral change isn't there.

So they'll agree with me 100%. Yes, we know we have, and they may not even recognize it as a positioning problem. They may come to me and they may say, hey, we're trying to get clients, but Or we're trying to generate qualified leads, but you know, the people who we talk to, they're not interested in what we have or we have to offer. or they'll say something like, well, we're trying to put ourselves out there to get new business.

But every time we do, they're either choose to do in whatever it is in house or they go with bigger name brands or more recognizable brands to do this particular thing. So they recognize a problem is there, but to actually get them to meet that shift to say, well, yes. We have this problem. Let's work on solving it.

I find that's the biggest hurdle. And as a business owner, myself, as a marketing, as a marketer myself, because I have spoken to marketers who have the same problem as well, I understand completely, and I empathize with them because even though I'm the one here teaching this and telling people to do this, it literally took me, I would say probably Two, three months.

So I was already struggling with this thing for three years. I found a solution that worked for me. It took about four months to really understand the inner workings of how it really works. And even though I understood how it worked for me to decide to deprioritize one segment and focus on just another segment and say, all right, this segment, which are business owners.

Are the only, is the only segment I'm going to go after and I'm not going to push communication so much to that second segment that I de prioritize. Even for me, it took me at least two months and several conversations to act well with myself. And even conversation in the comment section with Anthony from Fletch to really make that final decision that I, you know what, there's this fear of missing out.

But. 

Yeah. 

What's the worst that could happen, right? I mean, it's not like I'm an Apple or a Microsoft or a Google, where this established brand, everybody knows me for one thing. Like, it's not going to hurt the brand very little, if any at all, if I decide to just do this one thing. And Juma, man, I can tell you, when I made that decision to just focus on one segment, it was like, the same experience you had in that session was the same experience I had, where it just Everything became so clear, everything, what I wanted to talk about, how I wanted to talk about it, how I initiated sales conversations, the value I knew I could deliver versus what other competitors who offer content marketing services can offer.

Like everything became so clear. The offer in terms of the authority branding system and being able to break down that, that 11 step process and what each step entails became so clear. Because of that one decision to just focus on one segment. So to answer your question, I give very long, long winded answers as I can see, but to answer your question, yes, but it's not so much the pushback.

It's more getting them to make that mental decision to change what they're doing to a better way. And which is why a lot of my content centers around trying to get them to understand why their current way of doing things isn't working for them. Even though They may or may not be aware that it is. And even if they are aware, it's that because you've been doing it for so long, it's hard to really break 

that habit to do something that may be in your better interest than what you're currently doing.