Positioning Problems
Position. Then you won’t have to compete on “valuable content.”
First, why does positioning matter?
Well, why does any business exist sustainably?
Because someone specific wants something specific and believes a specific person or thing can give it to them. That's it. Every dollar ever exchanged happened because of that alignment.
If you don’t tell the market what you are, they’ll assume they already know.
And they’ll assume the most boring version of it.
Position. Then you won’t have to compete on “valuable content.”
The “be specific” advice sucks.
It implies that you’re not specific and it’s difficult to become something you’re not.
But you already are specific.
Every solopreneur already has a specific history, way of thinking, clients who've loved them, problems they solve faster than others.
Positioning isn't manufacturing something new. It's excavation. It's to name what's already different and stop hiding it behind vague language designed to appeal to everyone.
There’s a reason solopreneurs resist this work, and it’s not laziness. Positioning requires a kind of commitment that feels threatening. To say “I serve this person with this problem” is to implicitly say “I do not serve everyone else.”
That triggers scarcity fear — what if the niche is too small? What if I’m wrong about who I’m for? What if I close a door I’ll need later? The vagueness is protective. Keeping the positioning fuzzy feels like keeping options open. It feels safe.
But here’s what’s actually happening psychologically: the solopreneur who stays vague is also protecting themselves from a different vulnerability — the vulnerability of being seen clearly and still not chosen.
If you’re specific and people don’t want you, that’s a more pointed rejection than if you’re generic and people scroll past. Specificity raises the stakes of being ignored. So the resistance to positioning is often, underneath it, a fear of full visibility.
What will help is understanding the process behind positioning.
Because in solopreneurship the product is entangled with the person offering it, positioning seems more personal than it needs to be.
When something feels personal and overwhelming, giving it a structure is genuinely liberating. The process creates distance — not emotional distance from your work, but cognitive distance from the chaos. Instead of sitting with a vague, anxiety-producing question like "who am I even for?", you have a sequence of smaller, answerable questions.