for every opportunity that looks good on paper

Brought to you by The Art Of Positioning Podcast

The ones that look right are the dangerous ones

The obviously bad opportunities are easy. You see them coming, and you say no.

The ones that cost you are the ones that have a real business case, come from someone credible, and genuinely could work on paper. A partnership with someone well-connected. A collaboration with someone whose audience overlaps yours. A referral arrangement that makes logical sense. A new market that feels adjacent enough to be low-risk.

These aren't bad opportunities. They're just not filtered through the right question.

The question isn't "could this work?" Almost anything could work. The question is whether it makes what you're specifically building stronger or softer.

So, what does softer actually look like? 👇

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Your brand needs to evolve. But what if you lose the customers who got you here?

Customer experience leader Melissa Eaton and five-time CMO Amy Heidersbach have both guided businesses through repositioning without alienating loyal customers.

Most companies treat repositioning like a marketing project.

New logo, new tagline, done.

But your marketing team can't fix what's broken in operations.

Your sales team can't sell a story your product team hasn't bought into.

Listen to the full The Art of Positioning Podcast episode here.

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Burberry spent years saying yes to reach - more sales is good right?

Burberry spent years saying yes to reach - more sales is good right?

When the brand began it’s signature check design was interlinked with wealth and status.

Until slowly it started creeping into items that the masses could splurg on in the 1990s. Think dog leashes, baby carriages, scarves, caps, every category imaginable.

And sales went up. The numbers were good.

Then, the buyers for whom the brand was built slowly stopped wearing it.

If this marker of status is truly available to all, is it truly a symbol of status anymore?

By the early 2000s the check became associated with football hooliganism. And worse, ‘chavs,’ a particularly rude term for the younger working class.

That was the last straw for wealthy clients who had made Burberry what it was.

Whelp, they didn't want to be seen in it anymore.

Nobody at Burberry made one catastrophic call.

They said yes, repeatedly, to opportunities that all had a reasonable case.

More reach, more product lines, more licensing revenue.

Angela Ahrendts came in as CEO and with designer Christopher Bailey, they cut over 35 licensing deals and removed the check from 90% of products, walking away from the revenue those deals.

It took years to recover the ground that had been given away one reasonable decision at a time.

Does this actually apply at firm level?

For darn real it does.

And it's more often than you think.

A financial services firm takes on a referral partnership with a business coach who works with everyone from solopreneurs to enterprise.

The association is warm, the coach is well-regarded, the leads start coming in.

Six months later, the leads don't quite fit (aka they’re more headache than they’re worth.)

The same thing happens with:

• Brand ambassadors who speak to broad audiences

• Collaborations with organizations that serve everyone in an industry regardless of stage

• Acquisitions that add revenue but blur what the firm is specifically known for

The positioning cost doesn't show up immediately on a spreadsheet.

It shows up in the referrals that take longer to convert and the right-fit clients who looked around and couldn't clearly see themselves in what they found.

Let's fix it👇

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😎 Often, I see businesses hit a wall when their offerings and brands don't complement or build on each other, so I built a tool to find the best solution for your mix and goals.

It's honed in, where you get direction right up front as needed.

Align your offers and brands today.

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🏏 Badass Tip: The filter for anything sitting on your table right now

3 questions.

Apply them to any external decision: partnership, collaboration, referral arrangement, brand ambassador, new market, acquisition.

There's probably something in the inbox that hasn't gotten a clean yes or no yet. Run it through these before the next conversation about it.

1. Who does this signal we're for? (5 mins)

Not what the other party says about you.

What does the association itself communicate?

Write down the specific type of client this person or organization is known for, not their audience size, but the specific situation that audience is typically in.

Does that match the situation your best clients are typically in?

Picture the right-fit client finding out about this partnership. More confident they've found the right firm, or slightly less sure?

2. Can someone still describe what we do in one sentence after this? (5 mins)

Say it out loud. The sentence that describes what this firm is specifically for.

Now add the decision you’re weighing.

Does it still hold, or does it need a second sentence to explain why both things sit together?

If you're already drafting the explanation for why it makes sense, that's the filter telling you something.

3. What kind of work does this bring closer? (5 mins)

Every external decision shifts what comes next:

• A partnership brings in the other party's network

• A brand ambassador brings in their audience

• A new market brings in whoever that market sends.

Look at the last 3-5 clients or enquiries from this person's network if you have them.

Are those the clients you'd want more of?

If the decision you’re weighing passes all 3, the next conversation is about execution.

If it stalls on one, look at whether the scope or structure can be tightened until it passes.

If it fails more, the revenue case doesn't save it.

If Question 1 surfaces that the firm's own position isn't clear enough to measure against yet, that's your real starting point right now. This newsletter issue focuses on clearly defining your positioning.

And if the pattern is that marketing spend keeps going in without converting, that thread leads to the order in which you're focusing.

The cost that doesn't appear on the spreadsheet

Every partnership that softens the position moves something quietly in the wrong direction.

Not this quarter. Later.

In the enquiries that don't quite fit.

In the referrals that need more convincing than they used to.

In the right-fit client who found the firm, looked around for 90 seconds, couldn't clearly see themselves in what they found, and called someone who felt more specifically built for them.

None of that gets attributed to the partnership decision made eighteen months ago.

But that's where it started.

- B