Find Your Brand Positioning

A warm welcome! This course took me a long time to make — and the reason is personal.

For years I could describe other people’s positioning with clarity — and go blank on my own. Two things kept me stuck:

• Standing out seemed to mean performing: louder claims, sharper edges, picking fights for attention. None of that felt like me, so I chose invisibility instead.
• And putting my position into words felt like signing a contract with a version of myself I might outgrow.

What freed me: realizing I already stood somewhere. My clients could feel it. I just hadn’t put it into words — and staying wordless wasn’t keeping me free, it was keeping me hard to find.

If your Strengths doc felt like “a bit too much”...

Several of you said reading your Strengths doc out loud would feel like too much. I understand that feeling — and positioning is the answer to it.

• Your Strengths doc is the big mirror: everything your clients experience.
• Positioning distills it into a few small, sharp things you can comfortably say out loud.
• By the end of this course, “what do you do?” gets easier to answer — without the flinch.

The same permission as before:

• Try on a position the way you try on clothing. Nothing locks you in.
• Your positioning is a living snapshot, not a cage. You’ll revise it as you grow.
• Nothing goes public until you want it to.

Where we’re headed:

A one-page Brand Compass — five parts:

1. What you stand for
2. What you stand against
3. Which widely-loved brands you’re resonant with
4. What makes you distinct among your peers
5. Your positioning statement, in your own words

Everything grows out of the Strengths doc you already built — very little to gather, a lot to discover.

Share in the Student Discussion doc: what’s your relationship with positioning right now — avoiding it, attempting it, somewhere in between? 🙏🏼

Let’s take the two fears off the table first.

Fear one: standing out means performing

• Exaggerating. Picking fights. Being louder than feels right.
• None of that is positioning. That’s performance — and it’s exhausting, which is why it never lasts.

Fear two: words will box me in

• This came up beautifully in our previous course: as soon as we put ourselves into words, we worry we’ve ossified a self we’ve already started outgrowing.
• So let’s say it clearly up front: your positioning is a snapshot of where you stand now. You’ll revise it as you grow, the same way your Strengths doc stays a living mirror.

What positioning really is:

• You’re not inventing a position. You’re locating one you already occupy — against three reference points you already have:

1. What you’re against (the approaches your people are weary of)
2. Who you’re akin to (brands whose values feel like yours)
3. Who your peers are (and what makes you distinct among them)

• AI does the legwork of the comparisons. You stay the judge of what’s true.

If you’ve been through a pivot...

• A career change, a modality change, a whole different life before this one — positioning is where that history becomes an asset.
• What you stand for, and what you stand against, was often forged in the work you left. The contrast is your material, not your baggage.
• Your Strengths doc holds who you are now. Positioning gets to use where you’ve been.

Try this right now:

• Think of one person doing work adjacent to yours whom you admire.
• Now one whose approach makes you wince.
• You just named two of your three reference points. That’s how close you already are.

Share in the Student Discussion doc: without naming names — what’s one approach in your field that makes you wince, and one that makes you glad? 🙏🏼

Everything in this course grows out of the documents you already made. Positioning doesn’t start from scratch — it starts from evidence.

Set up your AI for this course:

• Start a fresh chat for this positioning work, and attach all three documents from the previous course: your Evidence file, your Strengths doc, and your Brand brief. [Attach the files — don’t paste them.]
• Don’t submit your prompt yet -- we’ll complete it in the next lesson.
• Why all three: the Strengths doc is the essential one, but the Evidence file carries your clients’ raw language underneath it, and the Brand brief carries the distilled version. Together they keep this work in your people’s actual words instead of a summary of a summary.
• Only have one of them, or a self-interview? Attach what you have. You’re not blocked.
• Why fresh: you want the AI’s picture of you to come from your evidence — not from whatever else you two have been chatting about.
• Browser AI is fine, by the way. Don’t let a desktop-app install eat your work time today.

Worth remembering as we go: your AI drafts, but it doesn’t know you. Disagreeing with it is part of the work — you’re the final voice, in this course and every course.

No Strengths doc yet? Start here:

You can position from a short self-interview. Nobody needs to be blocked.

• Gut-check: read the summary again tomorrow, and cross out anything that’s an aspiration rather than a description. Position from what’s left.
• For the full evidence-based version, the Brand Strengths course is the deeper dive — this interview is enough to keep going with today.

Ready when you can answer:

• Is my Evidence file, Strengths doc, and Brand brief attached in a fresh chat — or as many of them as I have?
• Am I holding off on sending anything until the next lesson?

Share in the Student Discussion doc: what’s one line from your Strengths doc (or your self-interview) that still surprises you when you read it? 🙏🏼

The easy half first — because it’s already written down.

It’s in your Strengths doc:

• Your North Star and your non-negotiables already name what you stand for. We’re lifting it out cleanly, not creating it.
• These are the values and commitments your clients already experience in your work — that’s why they’re in the doc.

Now complete the prompt you set up:

In the chat where your documents are attached, send this:

You confirm — with one question:

Go through the list and ask of each item:

• Would I defend this, even when it costs me?

That question separates a value from a nice sentiment.

• A creativity coach might keep “originality over trends” — she’s turned down lucrative copycat projects for it.
• A grief counselor might keep “no silver linings” — he holds that line even when families want him to rush the hopeful part.

Keep what you’d defend. Cut what merely sounds good.

Go ahead and do this now:

Run the prompt, then mark each item: defend-at-cost ✅ or merely-nice ✂️. Aim for the five or so that survive.

In the Student Discussion doc, share one “stand for” you’d defend even when it costs you. 🙏🏼

You know yourself partly by contrast — and some of you started this in the previous course, when we asked what qualities people would say you are not. If you jotted any anti-qualities down, bring them here.

The rule, before anything else:

• Your against-list targets patterns, paradigms, and cultural norms — examples might include: hustle culture, guru-posturing, one-size-fits-all formulas, pathologizing normal grief.
• Never name colleagues. Never whole modalities.
• Contrast with a system sharpens you. Contrast with a person diminishes you. (And if you’re licensed or registered: your professional body governs what you may publish about colleagues — one more reason to keep this at the level of patterns.)

Why not a whole modality?

Worth explaining, because this is the one people trip on.

• A modality — CBT, Reiki, EMDR, breathwork, NLP, whatever it is in your field — is a large tradition practiced by thousands of sincere people, and it has genuinely helped many of them and their clients.
• What actually bothers you is almost always how it gets applied: delivered as a rigid protocol, sold as a cure-all, used without real consent, taught in a weekend and marketed as mastery.
• So name that. “A protocol applied without regard for the person in front of you” is more accurate than the name of the method — and it’s more useful to your reader, who can now spot the problem anywhere, including inside your own modality.
• It’s also strategically wiser: a skilled practitioner of that method can nod along with you instead of getting defensive. Some of them will send you clients.

The steps — three, in order:Step 1 · You go first (two minutes). Before the AI touches this, jot down what already irritates you about how things are commonly done in your field. Don’t polish, don’t be fair yet, don’t organize. You know your field far better than any AI does, and your own irritations are the highest-signal material there is.

• If the blank page is the problem, flip the order. Skip ahead to Step 2, let the AI go first, and use its list to react to — “no, not that one… but that one, yes.” Recognizing is much easier than generating. Then come back and add the ones only you would have thought of.

Step 2 · Hand it over, with your documents.

Step 3 · You curate. Keep the ones that make you sit up — the “yes, that” reaction. Cut the ones that are merely true but not yours. Five or six is plenty.

If naming “against” feels uncomfortable — try this instead:

Some of us freeze here. Kindness is a strength, and it can make even pattern-naming feel harsh. Here’s a gentler door into the same room:

Meet your anti-mission statement. Everything that made you wince about them is your against-list — and nobody real got named.

Share in the Student Discussion doc: one pattern (not a person!) your people are weary of. 🙏🏼

Your against-list has teeth now. This lesson is the ethic that makes it safe to hold — and, when you’re ready, safe to publish.

The pairing rule:

• Every “against” gets paired with the better alternative you offer instead.
• Naming a pattern and pointing to a humane alternative is leadership. Naming without an alternative is just complaint.
• Example: against manufactured urgency → instead, invitations people can decline without penalty.
• Example: against one-size-fits-all healing formulas → instead, methods adapted to each nervous system.

The fairness test:

Before any of this shapes your public words, run each “against” through one question:

• Would a decent practitioner who currently works this way recognize themselves in my description — and find it fair?

If not, it isn’t positioning yet. Refine the pattern until it’s true.

“But won’t fairness make me sound like everyone else?”

A reasonable worry, and no — for two reasons.

• Fairness governs how accurately you describe the pattern, not how strongly you disagree with it. You can be precise and unmistakably clear at the same time. What fairness removes is the caricature, and the caricature was never what made you distinctive.
• Distinctiveness is next module's entire job. We’ll find which widely-loved brands you’re resonant with, compare you against real peers in your field, and name the transformation only you tend to create. Your against-list sets the direction; Session 2 is where you get sharp.

This list doesn’t have to stay private:

I want to correct an impression I may have given. Yes, this list is internal clarity first — but a good portion of my own audience was built by writing publicly about the practices in my industry I think are harmful, and what I’d do instead.

• Consider gradually publishing your anti-patterns — one at a time, over months. A post, a video, a newsletter section: name the pattern, why it costs people, and the better way.
• Framed that way, it isn’t an attack. It’s a service: you’re teaching your people what to watch out for, and how to find help that actually helps them.
• This is also why the guardrails matter so much. Patterns, never people. Always paired with the alternative. Always passing the fairness test. Those three are exactly what make an anti-pattern post publishable rather than regrettable.
• Go at your own pace. Some of these you’ll publish this year; some will only ever shape how you write about your work. Both are fine.

Run the prompt:

Output: your “what I’m not — and what I offer instead” list.

In the Student Discussion doc, share one pairing — “I’m not ___. Instead, I offer ___.” 🙏🏼

You now hold the values half of your Brand Compass. This week, one experiment — and it does double duty.

Your first audience poll:

• Brand exercises can build your brand while you do them. When you ask your audience where you fit, you’re positioning in public — and people enjoy being asked.
• In the previous course, your clients told you your strengths. This week, your audience tells you where you fit.
• The ask: a short post with 2–3 playful either/or questions — “Is my work more like [A] or [B]? And why?”
• A somatic coach might ask: “More Headspace, or more National Geographic?” A money mentor might ask: “More Patagonia, or more Costco?”
• Add one open bonus question: “What other well-known brand would you associate with my work and presence?”

Let AI set it up:

• Step 1 — In the same chat where your Evidence file, Strengths doc, and Brand brief are attached (or re-attach them), run the first prompt below. It’ll suggest pairs where either answer would teach you where you fit.
• Step 2 — You curate: keep 2–3 pairs that feel fun to ask, using names your audience will recognize instantly. (Well-known is the point — borrowed clarity only works with brands people already understand.)
• Step 3 — Run the second prompt so AI drafts the post in your voice, plus a short private note for the next step.

Then, after you’ve picked your pairs:

Send it to a few people directly:

• As soon as your poll is up, send the link privately to 3–5 people (more if you can) who represent your ideal clients — using the warm note from the prompt above: kind support or a private reply by a gentle due date, and no pressure if they can’t right now.
• This step makes the poll work at almost any audience size. Ten direct asks are worth more than one public post.
• Votes are fun; the reasons people give are what you’re collecting — your audience describing your brand in their own words.
• A plain post usually beats a poll widget, since widgets count clicks but hide the reasons. If you do use one, invite the “why” in the comments.

Also, keep noticing:

• Which “stand for” lines you catch yourself acting on this week — and which “against” reactions show up in the wild.
• Your reactions are data: every wince and every “yes, this” is your positioning confirming itself, or asking for a revision.

Bring back what came back:

• Even one reply is usable — and zero replies is fine too; next session works either way.
• Next session we turn outward: which widely-loved brands you’re resonant with, what makes you distinct among your peers, and your finished Compass.

Comment in the Student Discussion doc with a link to your poll once it’s up, so other students can vote too — and answer a couple of theirs. You may be someone’s ideal-client representative. 🙏🏼