Researching accounts. Building lists. Writing sequences.

There's a better use of your team's time.

Apollo is the AI revenue engine that handles the busywork, so you can stay focused on selling.

Plus, everything you need is in one place:

Stop doing busywork and start building pipeline, faster.

With Apollo — the AI revenue engine powering 4M+ users.

Sign up for free

Most businesses aren't losing because of the product.

They're losing because of the position.

When a prospect first encounters your business, something happens in their brain almost instantly. Either they "get it" — they understand exactly what you do, who it's for, and why it matters — or they don't. And if they don't, you've already lost them. They'll move on before you get a second sentence.

The typical response to this problem is to work harder on marketing. More content, more ads, better copy, lower prices. But none of that fixes a positioning problem. It just makes a confusing message louder.

I've noticed that every business that breaks through in a crowded market — no matter the industry, no matter the size — uses one of four specific moves. They may not have named it that way, but the pattern is always there. Miss the move, and you're invisible even when you're genuinely good at what you do.

Positioning is simply the answer to this question: "In the mind of your ideal customer, what specific place do you own?" There are four answers that actually work. Most businesses never choose one — which means they accidentally land on a fifth option: "generic provider." It's the most crowded position in any market and the least profitable.

Here's how the four real moves work.

The market has a well-defined category, and you're the dominant name in it. Think of the first brand that comes to mind when someone says "project management software" or "small business accounting." That's a category leader. They don't have to explain what they do — the category does it for them.

The upside: when the category is active and growing, prospects come to you first. You're the default. That's enormous for referrals, partnerships, and pricing power.

The downside: being the incumbent is expensive to maintain. You're a target. Every challenger in the market is using your brand recognition to define themselves against you.

To win: actively own the category definition. Write the guides, host the events, set the standards. Name the category in the way you define it — not in the way your competitors do. The leader who stops defining the category eventually stops being the leader.

You don't have the most market share, but you position yourself directly against whoever does. "We're what [the leader] should be." You borrow the leader's awareness and redirect it. Pepsi did this against Coke for decades. Local law firms do it against big firms — same quality, half the overhead, a lawyer who actually picks up the phone.

The upside: built-in contrast. Challengers are easy to understand because the comparison does half the explaining. You get brand recognition on day one by inheriting it from the leader.

The downside: you're defined by someone else. If the leader changes, pivots, or collapses, your position shifts with them. Vague challengers also sound defensive — "we're better" isn't enough. You need a specific, provable point of contrast.

To win: be surgical. Pick one dimension where you are genuinely, demonstrably better — speed, price transparency, specialization, service model — and own it completely. "We're faster" is weak. "We turn around client reports in 24 hours, guaranteed" is a position.

You're not trying to win the whole category. You own a specific slice of it — an industry, a customer type, a geography, a use case. "The accounting firm for restaurant owners." "The SEO agency for SaaS companies with between 10 and 100 employees." "The HR consultant for construction businesses in the Southeast."

The narrower the niche, the easier you are to remember. And in a world where attention is scarce, being remembered is everything.

The upside: referrals happen naturally when you're known as the person for something specific. Your marketing writes itself. Your pricing power goes up because specialists command more than generalists. Prospects pre-qualify themselves — the restaurant owner calls you, not your competitor, because they already believe you understand their world.

The downside: it feels scary to declare. Every time you say "we specialize in X," part of your brain screams that you're turning away Y and Z. Most business owners never get past this fear.

To win: niches are almost always bigger than they look from the inside. Pick one that's big enough to sustain your revenue goals but small enough that prospects genuinely feel like you were built for them. Then go all in on speaking their language — their problems, their vocabulary, their concerns.

This is the most powerful move — and the hardest. You don't fit neatly into an existing category, so you name a new one. You stop competing inside someone else's game and start defining a game where you're automatically the winner.

"We're not a marketing agency. We're a revenue operations partner for professional services firms." "We're not a consultant. We're a business performance coach for seven-figure founders who've stopped growing." The category you name is real, it's useful, and — crucially — you're the one who named it.

The upside: no direct competition inside your category. You can't be compared apples-to-apples with anyone else because no one else is doing what you do, framed the way you frame it.

The downside: high education cost. You have to teach people that the old way of solving their problem is broken, introduce them to the new category, and earn trust as its creator — all before they buy anything. This takes longer.

To win: make the old category look broken. Your new category exists because the previous solution wasn't working. Show that clearly, and prospects who are frustrated with the old way will find you compelling without much selling at all.

Most business owners treat positioning like branding — a logo, a tagline, something the designer handles once and then archives. That's completely backwards.

Positioning is strategy. It determines which customers you pursue, how you price, what you build, where you market, and who you hire. Get it right and your whole business gets easier. Get it wrong — or never choose — and you're in a permanent war of attrition with every other generic provider in your category.

Here's the uncomfortable part: if you haven't actively chosen a position, you still have one. It's just "general service provider" — the most crowded and least profitable position in any market. That's not a positioning failure. It's a decision failure.

Three questions worth sitting with:

The third question is the hard one. Positioning always costs you something. That's how you know it's real.

Until next time,

Steven

P.S. Which position do you hold right now — by choice or by default? Hit reply and tell me. I read every response.

Stop Solving the Wrong Problems in Your Business (Duct Tape Marketing)

Google Search Is Becoming AI Search: What This Means for Your Brand (Neil Patel)

Tech Stack Consolidation: The Business Case for Unified Systems & How to Build Them (HubSpot)

3 Surprising Business Decisions That Led to Dolly Parton's $450 Million Net Worth (Inc.)