After speaking with countless Experts, Consultants, and Founders, I’ve noticed a recurring pattern. They desperately want to stand out from their competition. ‘Being just another Expert’ makes them feel icky, and they are eager to have their unique thumbprint on their work.
They crave a unique positioning, a strong message and a distinctive perspective that sets them apart like a hamburger in an Indian restaurant.
Yet precisely at this critical juncture, they get trapped by this monster called analysis paralysis:
- Who exactly is my audience?
- What stand should I take? What’s my unique Point of View?
- How should I craft my messaging?
They continue to wrestle with these questions without getting anywhere. The analysis-paralysis monster is powerful and refuses to budge down. Committing to a specific message or direction feels too daunting. The result? They can’t create impactful content that resonates, or finalize their website copy, or launch effective outreach campaigns.
Everything is at a standstill.
The more they analyze, the stronger the monster becomes.
But it’s just 2 steps
The conventional wisdom for solving this positioning problem has 2 steps:
Step 1: Find your ultimate “Big Idea”
Step 2: Keep that Big Idea at the center and market yourself around it
Easy peasy, right?
You determine your core message… the hill you’re willing to die on, and your unique perspective before investing in marketing efforts. Only after the Big Idea is ready will your website banner be perfect, content on your LinkedIn and YouTube, and emails make total sense.
Right? Right?
And yet that never happens
We pray to the Gods, and yet nothing… Days turn to weeks, weeks into months… and 2 years later, we are still stuck. Why? Our efforts are centered around the idea that:
Till the Big Idea is finalized, I don’t feel comfortable marketing myself.
However, that’s not how successful thought leaders think.
Remember the 2-step process?
Step 1: Find your ultimate “Big Idea”
Step 2: Keep that Big Idea at the center and market yourself around it
Yeah, successful Thought-Leaders don’t believe in this process. They approach it differently.
They don’t have their Big Idea sorted from the beginning. They are as confused as you and me. They still worry whether their Big Idea has any legs. And yet, they leap into uncertainty.
And how exactly do they jump?
They have two emotions that lead them – Frustration and Curiosity. They are curious about solving that problem and have a hunch about how they want to solve it. And they take on that journey to explore the hunch. A journey that takes them to interesting places.
Along the way, they create content, develop IP, proprietary frameworks, and more.
Eventually mess turns into clarity
Eventually a compelling Big Idea emerges. Whether it’s Jonathan Stark’s Hourly Billing is Nuts, Kim Scott’s Radical Candor or Jay Acunzo’s Resonance Over Reach… all came about through a messy process.
This beautiful quote by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche deserves a mention here.
“The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there’s no ground.”
Can we embrace the uncertainty?
Jay Acunzo’s Journey
Jay Acunzo, a thought leader in the Marketing space, often talks about his journey. His Big Idea is “Resonance over Reach.” But guess what? He didn’t arrive at this on Day 1.
This is what his website looked like in 2016 –
Today? Here’s what it looks like –
The stark difference between the two shows how messy the process is.
Hang on, what about my messaging today?
You and I run businesses that need to communicate value. We cannot wait for the exploration to be done before updating our website, sales decks, and LinkedIn. We need to update it today.
That is when we need to embrace imperfection and the associated discomfort. We make the best guess based on where we are today. Even if the message doesn’t sound very compelling… it’s okay. With more clarity, you keep tweaking it.
– Does this mean that your website will be messy initially? Yes.
– Does it mean that your copywriting keeps changing? Yes.
– Does it mean that you keep changing the banner of your LinkedIn quite often? Yep.
The Messy Process
Instead of the rigid 2-step template, the messy step-wise process looks something like:
- Make a hypothesis (version 1.0 of your Big Idea)
- Acknowledge this version doesn’t feel complete, but the general direction of your frustration is right
- Test it out and see how it resonates with your audience
- Create more content
- Work with more clients
- Develop more perspective
- Revisit the hypothesis
Your Big Idea is not the smoke, it’s the fire. (Hat-tip to internet friend Liam Curley for that metaphor.) The only mistake is not committing to any path and sitting and blaming the situation for not having the most compelling Big Idea yet.
What can you do today?
Start with where you are. If you’re an expert in Product Management, tell us what’s broken in the world of Project Management. Rant about it. What needs to be fixed? Give talks. Connect with others… see what resonates.
Connect with other industry leaders and interview them about this problem. Chalk out a tentative vision to solve this problem. Become known as someone who solves that specific problem.
In the meantime, keep tweaking your message. It won’t be perfect. And that’s okay. It will evolve. The worst thing to do is inaction. Because that magical Big Idea? Yeah, that’s never coming.
Gotta work for it.