Positioning

What should you actually be known for?

Your title tells people what you are. Your position tells people why they should remember you. A simple way to turn deep expertise into something the market can repeat.

Positioning · 5 min read

“I'm a founder.” So are millions of other people.

“We help companies grow.” So does everyone.

“We're innovative, customer-focused and results-driven.” You and half the internet.

One of the hardest questions for an accomplished founder or executive is surprisingly simple:

Most people answer with their job title.

That's not positioning.

• CEO.
• Founder.
• Managing Partner.
• CRO.
• Hotelier.
• Investor.
• Consultant.

Those labels provide context. But they don't create distinction.

Strong positioning gives the market a mental shortcut.

When your name appears, what idea comes with it?

That's the question.

Successful people usually know a lot. That's part of the problem.

A founder might understand sales, leadership, hiring, product, fundraising, culture and their entire industry. So they try to talk about all of it.

The result is technically accurate and strategically forgettable.

People rarely remember complexity. They remember associations.

The objective isn't to reduce everything you know to one tiny niche forever. It's to create a clear entry point into your expertise — something people can attach to your name.

Good positioning usually sits somewhere between four things:

• What you know deeply.
• What you've actually experienced.
• What your market cares about.
• What supports where you want to go next.

Miss one and the positioning weakens.

• Expertise without market relevance becomes intellectual entertainment.
• Market relevance without real expertise becomes generic commentary.
• Experience without direction becomes autobiography.
• Commercial objectives without authenticity become advertising.

The strongest position sits in the intersection.

“Leadership” isn't much of a position. Neither is “innovation.” Neither is “entrepreneurship.”

They're categories.

A strong position contains a perspective.

• Maybe you believe hospitality technology is making hotels less hospitable.
• Maybe you believe financial firms massively underestimate the importance of founder-led trust.
• Maybe you believe most enterprise SaaS companies create complexity to compensate for weak positioning.

Now there's something to work with. Something specific enough to recognize.

This is often where the best material lives.

Your experience has given you pattern recognition.

• You have watched customers make the same mistake repeatedly.
• You've seen strategies that sound good on paper fail in reality.
• You've changed your mind about things.
• You've noticed where your industry says one thing and does another.

Those observations are incredibly valuable because they cannot be manufactured from surface-level research.

They were earned.

Your positioning should create room for them.

This matters.

A clever LinkedIn headline isn't positioning. Neither is a beautifully written About section. Those are expressions of positioning.

The position itself is deeper. It determines:

• What topics you consistently discuss.
• Which stories you tell.
• Which conversations you enter.
• What you decline to talk about.
• Which audience begins associating you with which problems.

Eventually the market starts doing the positioning for you.

People introduce you as:

• “You should speak to her about…”
• “I follow him because…”
• “They're the people who really understand…”

That's the point.

Most experienced founders and executives already have the raw material.

• The years.
• The mistakes.
• The pattern recognition.
• The stories.
• The opinions.
• The results.

The problem is usually not a lack of expertise.

That's positioning.

And once it's clear, everything downstream becomes easier.

• Your profile.
• Your content.
• Your conversations.
• Your reputation.

Because before you can become known, you have to decide:

Known for what?