Note before we begin: Dan Koe’s article “How to Fix Your Entire Life in 1 Day” got 90 million views on X. When I read it, I understood why. Also, some envy ensued. LOL!
Dan’s core thesis is that you aren’t where you want to be because you aren’t the person who would be there. Your actions reveal your actual goals, not your stated ones. Identity drives behaviour, not the other way around. And you can’t see your own conditioning from inside it.
I’ve been saying the same thing about businesses for years.
Your structural decisions reveal your actual position, not your messaging. Identity drives strategy, not the other way around. And you can’t read your own label from inside the jar.
Same insight. Different domain.
What Dan did brilliantly was create a protocol that makes the gap between intention and reality felt, not just understood. He didn’t explain transformation, he engineered it through carefully sequenced questions that surface what people have been hiding from themselves.
This article is my attempt to do the same for positioning.
Images by: Tatiana Tsiguleva
If you’re anything like me, you think most brand strategy workshops are theatre. Expensive theater. The kind where smart people gather in rooms with whiteboards, post-it notes, and a facilitator who’s never built anything, and emerge 8 hours later with a “positioning statement” that means nothing and changes nothing.
I’ve run those workshops. I’ve been the facilitator. I’ve watched the energy in the room, people genuinely trying to figure out what their company stands for, and then watched that energy evaporate within two weeks when everyone goes back to doing exactly what they were doing before.
The statement gets framed.
The deck gets filed.
The business doesn’t change.
Here’s what I’ve learned after years of getting this wrong: Positioning isn’t something you create in a workshop. It’s something you reveal by looking at what you’ve already built.
And here’s the plot twist: you can’t read your own label from inside the jar.
You already have a position. The market concluded what you stand for by watching your behaviour — your pricing, hiring, product decisions, and resource allocation. The question isn’t whether you have a position. The question is whether you chose it or inherited it by accident.
This piece is comprehensive.
It’s not something you skim and forget. It’s something you’ll want to set aside time for (ideally a full day) because the protocol at the end requires you to be honest with yourself in ways that are uncomfortable.
One critical caveat before we begin: this protocol will reveal your actual position. It won’t fix it. Fixing positioning takes years; 24 to 48 months to begin establishing ownership, 5 to 10 years to fully own mental territory. What you can do in one day is see clearly what you’ve actually built versus what you think you’ve built. That clarity is where real change begins.
If you’re ready to stop performing strategy and start understanding what your business actually stands for, let’s begin.
Two ways to use this piece:
Skip to the answer. If you want to see your positioning gap right now, without the full protocol, scroll to the bottom. There’s a tool that runs the outside-in analysis in minutes. No day required.
Go deep. If you want to understand why you can’t see your own position, how positioning actually works in human cognition, and a full protocol to reveal the gap yourself, keep reading. It takes a day, but you’ll never think about positioning the same way.
Or, do both. Your call.
1. You Can’t Read Your Own Label From Inside the Jar
When founders talk about positioning, they almost always focus on the wrong thing. They focus on messaging. Taglines. Homepage hero copy. How to describe what they do at a dinner party. They treat positioning as a communication problem, as if the right words will somehow create the right perception.
This misses the point entirely.
Positioning isn’t what you say. It’s what exists in customers’ minds as a result of everything you do. And here’s the problem: you can’t perceive your own position accurately from the inside.
For internal stakeholders (executives, employees, investors), the focus is on business strategy. Operations, financials, growth trajectories. You’re concerned with what you’re building.
For customers and external stakeholders, your business is experienced as a set of signals forming a perception in their minds. They care less about the intricacies of your supply chain and more about what pattern your decisions reveal. This creates a fundamental blind spot. You know your intentions. They only see your actions.
Think of a company with strong positioning. Volvo. Patagonia. In-N-Out.
Do you think Volvo has to convince people they care about safety? Does Patagonia need a clever tagline to prove their environmental commitment? Does In-N-Out need to explain they’re about fresh quality?
No. These companies don’t claim their positions. They’ve proven themselves through decades of structural decisions that made those positions inevitable.
Volvo didn’t become “safety” by saying it. They became safety by inventing the three-point seatbelt and giving the patent away. By making engineering decisions that prioritized passenger protection over performance metrics. By maintaining that focus for decades until the neural pathway “Volvo = safety” became automatic in customers’ minds.
In-N-Out doesn’t advertise freshness. They prove it by having no freezers. By limiting their geographic footprint to what their supply chain can reach fresh. By refusing to franchise. By keeping a simple menu that enables quality focus. Remove the word “fresh” from every piece of their marketing, and the position still holds because it’s structural, not verbal.
Now here’s the question that makes CEOs and founders squirmish: If I looked at your last three years of resource allocation, hiring decisions, product roadmap, and organizational structure, with no access to your marketing, what would I conclude you actually stand for?
Not what you want to stand for.
What you’ve actually built toward.
Most founders can’t answer this question honestly. And the ones who can often don’t like the answer.
2. The Cognitive Truth Behind Positioning
To understand why positioning works the way it does, you need to understand something about how human memory and decision-making actually function.
This isn’t abstract theory. It’s the cognitive architecture that determines whether your positioning creates real competitive advantage or just marketing noise.
Two Memory Systems
Human memory operates through two fundamentally different knowledge systems:
Declarative knowledge is conscious and explicit. It’s stored as facts you can articulate: “I know that Brand X claims to be premium quality.” This knowledge requires conscious retrieval. It’s easily modified by new information. And critically, it’s vulnerable to competitor counter-claims.
Procedural knowledge is unconscious and automatic. It manifests as behavioural patterns: “When I need this category, I automatically think Brand X.” This knowledge operates below awareness. It’s highly resistant to conscious counter-arguments. And it persists without continuous marketing investment.
The difference matters because declarative knowledge is weak positioning. Procedural knowledge is strong positioning.
Two Processing Systems
Daniel Kahneman’s research on System 1 (fast, automatic, unconscious) and System 2 (slow, deliberate, conscious) has direct implications for positioning:
When customers operate in System 1, which is most of the time, especially for familiar categories, they rely on automatic associations. Whatever fires first wins.
When customers are forced into System 2, through explicit claims that trigger evaluation, they become skeptical. They activate defence mechanisms.
Here’s the positioning paradox: Explicitly claiming a position forces System 2 processing, which weakens the position. Implicitly proving a position allows System 1 processing, which strengthens it.
The Defence Mechanisms
When customers recognize marketing tactics, they unconsciously activate sophisticated defences:
Persuasion Knowledge Model: Throughout life, consumers develop elaborate knowledge about marketing tactics. When they recognize a persuasion attempt, effectiveness drops sharply.
Psychological Reactance: People resist feeling told what to think. Explicit claims like “We’re innovative” trigger the instinct to push back.
Manipulative Intent Inference: Consumers continuously assess whether marketers are acting in their interest or being self-serving. Explicit positioning claims obviously serve advertiser interests, “Of course they’d say they’re the best.” This inference reduces persuasion systematically.
The Implication
Explicit positioning claims trigger the wrong processing system (System 2 instead of System 1), activate defence mechanisms, build only weak declarative knowledge, and require continuous reinforcement to maintain.
Implicit positioning through consistent decisions bypasses defences, enables System 1 processing, builds strong procedural knowledge, and creates a durable competitive advantage.
This is why the strongest positions are never explicitly stated. They are implicitly proven through consistent decisions that create procedural knowledge in customers’ minds.
3. The Position You Own Is Not the Position You Claim
All business behaviour is goal-oriented. Every decision your company makes serves some goal — sometimes conscious and strategic, more often unconscious and inherited from your industry, your investors, or whoever was in the room when key decisions got made.
Here’s where it gets uncomfortable.
If your company says it values innovation but your engineering budget is 40% maintenance and 60% incremental features, you don’t value innovation. You value not breaking things.
If you say you’re customer-obsessed, but your org chart has three layers between frontline staff and anyone with decision-making authority, you’re not customer-obsessed. You’re hierarchy-obsessed.
If you say you’re building a premium brand but your pricing strategy is designed to match competitors’ 10% markups, you’re not premium. You’re slightly less cheap.
Your stated positioning is what you wish were true.
Your structural decisions reveal what you actually believe.
The market doesn’t listen to your words. It watches your behaviour. Customers develop beliefs about what you stand for by observing patterns in how you show up, and those beliefs often have nothing to do with your messaging.
The Implicit Positioning Test
Remove every piece of marketing copy. Delete every tagline. Strip away every claim. Take away all the words.
What’s left?
If positioning is real, you see a pattern of decisions all pointing to the same concept without stating it. Product choices, pricing, partnerships, design, and resource allocation — all implicitly prove something.
If positioning is fake, you find confusion. The only thing holding the position together was the words used to describe it.
The Burj Khalifa doesn’t claim to own eminence. It proves eminence through every design decision, every material choice, every structural element. You feel it without it being named.
Patagonia doesn’t advertise as an environmental activist. Their business model, donating profits, suing the government, and telling customers not to buy their products, proves it.
In-N-Out doesn’t claim freshness. No freezers prove it. Limited expansion proves it. Simple menu proves it.
If the position survives the removal of all words, it’s real.
If a position collapses without words, it’s marketing claims only.
4. The Architecture of Real Positioning
Positioning operates through a specific architecture. Understanding this structure explains why some companies own powerful positions while others just rent vague associations.
The Linguistic Hierarchy
Before we get to the levels, you need to understand a critical distinction that most people miss:
Nouns are concepts. They establish mental territory. “Safety.” “Convenience.” “The future.” “Simplicity.” Nouns create perceptual monopolies that persist for decades. When Volvo owns “safety,” competitors can only claim “safe too” or “safer than,” derivative positions that acknowledge Volvo’s leadership.
Verbs are actions. They prove the noun through measurable outcomes. “Surfaces deal risks that improve forecast accuracy.” “Produces drafts 2-5x faster.” Verbs deliver evidence that validates the concept.
Adjectives are false positioning. “Innovative.” “Fast.” “Reliable.” “Trusted.” These are descriptions, not positions. Anyone can claim to be innovative. Adjectives don’t create mental monopolies. They force comparison rather than establishing territory. They trigger immediate skepticism.
The test: If you removed the adjective, what noun remains that you own?
“We’re innovative” → What innovation? Whose innovation? Innovation at what?
“We’re reliable” → Reliable what? Reliable compared to what?
If no ownable noun exists, you have description, not positioning.
The Four Levels
Now, the architecture itself. This is not a ladder you climb. It’s a structure where Level 4, the concept you own, is the foundation, and the other levels build from it.
Level 4 — POSITION: The Concept You Own
This is the foundation. A singular noun-based concept that becomes synonymous with you in customers’ minds, creating a perceptual monopoly where the concept cannot be discussed without mental reference to your brand.
This cannot be claimed explicitly. It must be proven implicitly through years of consistent decisions that create automatic associations operating below conscious awareness.
The test: Remove your name and all marketing copy. What single noun do customers associate with you alone, not as a claim you make but as an automatic association that fires when they think about your category?
Non-positions (what doesn’t qualify):
- Product category: “CRM platform” (describes what you make, not what you own mentally)
- Competitor comparison: “like Salesforce but easier” (derivative, defines you through others)
- Adjective: “innovative,” “trusted,” “fast” (descriptors, not ownable concepts)
Actual positions (ownable nouns):
- Volvo = safety
- Tesla = the future
- Amazon = convenience
- Patagonia = activism
- In-N-Out = freshness
Duration: 24-48 months minimum to begin establishing. 5-10 years to fully own. Decades to maintain.
Level 1 — FRAME: How You Articulate
This is the language and narrative structure you use to articulate your positioning. Framing is not the position itself, it’s how you talk about the concept you own.
Most people call this “positioning.” It’s not. It’s articulation.
Framing serves two functions:
- Internal: Filter for organizational decision-making (“Does this prove our position?”)
- External: Narrative that allows customers to consciously understand without explicitly claiming
Duration: 3-6 months to develop and refine.
Barrier: Weak. Words can be copied by anyone.
Critical distinction: When April Dunford asks, “How is your product uniquely the best at delivering something valuable to a well-defined market?” she’s teaching brilliant framing. But she’s assuming you already own something at Level 4. Framing without foundation is noise.
Level 2 — EXECUTE: Measurable Proof
This is where you prove the concept through observable, verifiable results. Verbs. Actions. Outcomes.
Every execution proof must answer five questions:
- What specific action does this enable?
- What baseline are we comparing against?
- What’s our measured improvement?
- How will customers verify this claim?
- What’s the timeline to value?
Cannot answer all five questions? Not ready to ship.
Duration: 90-day validation cycles.
Level 3 — LIVE: Structural Embedding
This is where positioning becomes integrated into organizational DNA through resource allocation and structural decisions.
The test: Do you allocate 70% or more of your resources to positioning-critical capabilities?
If you claim “quality” but only 30% of resources go to quality infrastructure, you’re not living it.
This level requires painful trade-offs competitors hate to match:
- Decisions that close doors
- Investments that seem irrational to outsiders
- Structural constraints that make deviation impossible
Examples:
- In-N-Out’s no-freezer policy (physically impossible to cut corners on freshness)
- Patagonia’s profit donations (structurally prove environmental commitment)
- Tesla’s Supercharger network (locks in electric future positioning)
Duration: 12-24 months to embed.
The Integration Requirement
All four levels must align:
If Level 4 says “convenience” but Level 3 doesn’t allocate 70% to convenience infrastructure → Positioning is a hollow claim.
If Level 3 embeds “quality” but Level 4 doesn’t own “quality” in customer minds → Wasted investment without mental territory.
You cannot skip levels. You cannot perfect Level 1 framing without a Level 4 foundation. Most companies oscillate between Level 1 and Level 2, wondering why their positioning doesn’t stick.
5. Inside Out Meets Outside In
Positioning fails when your internal reality (what you can prove) misaligns with external perception (what they need to believe).
This requires working through two lenses simultaneously.
Inside Out (IQ): What You Can Authentically Be
This is business strategy. Capability reality.
Questions:
- What can we prove that others cannot?
- What capabilities do we possess that create unfair advantage?
- What are we willing to sacrifice that competitors won’t?
- What decisions do we make that reveal our true nature?
- What do our P&L and resource allocation actually prove?
Assessment:
- Capability inventory: Map core competencies, not aspirational ones
- Resource reality: Where do dollars and talent actually flow?
- Decision pattern: What do the last 50 major choices reveal?
- Sacrifice clarity: What have we actually said no to?
- First principles: Strip away marketing, what are we fundamentally built to do?
Outside In (EQ): What They Need to Believe
This is market perception.
Questions:
- What concept do customers need owned in this category?
- What mental territory is vacant or weakly held?
- What associations do they make automatically vs. consciously?
- What emotional resonance exists that no one has claimed?
- What procedural knowledge formation is possible?
Assessment:
- Mental territory map: What concepts do competitors own?
- Vacancy analysis: What valuable territory is unoccupied?
- Association audit: What do customers currently associate with us (not what we claim)?
- Emotional opportunity: What do they need to feel that no one delivers?
The Positioning Sweet Spot
Position lives at the intersection:
Where unique capability meets unmet need. Where you can prove (IQ) what they need to feel (EQ). Where inside reality enables outside perception. Where structural advantage meets mental territory opportunity.
If IQ says you can prove “simplicity,” and EQ says the market needs “simplicity” owned, that’s a positioning opportunity.
If IQ says you can prove “speed,” but EQ says “speed” is already owned by a dominant competitor, that’s not your opportunity.
Stripe’s positioning emerged from this intersection: a developer-founded company with an API-first architecture (IQ: can deliver simplicity) meets developers frustrated by payment integration complexity (EQ: need simplification that no one owns). Result: Own “simplicity” in developer payments.
6. How to Reveal Your Actual Position (In 1 Day)
Theory is useless without practice. Here’s a protocol you can run in a single day to uncover what your company actually stands for — not what you wish it stood for. This protocol reveals your position. It doesn’t create a new one. Creating positioning takes years. But clarity about your current state is where change begins.
The protocol works in three phases: excavation (morning), interruption (midday), and synthesis (evening). Block the full day. Turn off Slack. This requires focus.
Morning — Excavation
Set aside 90 minutes. No distractions. Paper and pen.
We start with the Inside Out (IQ) reality.
The Resource Truth
Track where your company actually spends money and time. Not budget categories but actual spending. Categorize into three buckets:
- Positioning-Aligned: Directly serves your claimed position
- Neutral: Necessary but doesn’t reinforce positioning
- Contradictory: Undermines or conflicts with positioning
What percentage falls into each? If less than 70% is positioning-aligned, your structure contradicts your claims.
The Decision Pattern
Review your last 50 significant decisions: hiring, product, pricing, partnership, investment.
For each:
- Does this decision prove your claimed position or something else?
- What percentage actually reinforced your stated positioning?
- What decisions would a competitor never make?
- What patterns reveal your true (not stated) priorities?
The Implicit Test
Remove all marketing copy, taglines, claims, and words from your business. Look only at decisions and their pattern.
Do you see a clear pattern pointing to a single concept? Or confusion with no coherent direction?
If clear pattern: What noun/concept do decisions prove?
If confusion: You have no actual positioning, only claims.
Now the Outside In (EQ) assessment.
The Anti-Vision
If absolutely nothing changes for the next five years, describe your market position. What category are you stuck in? What do prospects say when comparing you to competitors? What talent won’t work for you? What customers have you lost to clearer alternatives?
The Territory Map
What concepts do your top 5 competitors own in customers’ minds? (Not what they claim, what they actually own.)
What valuable territory is unoccupied?
What would customers say you own if asked without prompting?
The Uncomfortable Questions
What truth about your current position would be embarrassing to admit to your best customer?
What would your company have to give up, really give up, to own a distinctive position? What revenue streams? What customer segments? What capabilities you’re proud of?
What identity would your leadership team have to release? What story about “who we are” would have to change?
Midday — Interruption
The excavation surfaces what’s buried. But awareness fades quickly. The point of this phase is to interrupt habitual thinking and force continued confrontation.
Set alarms on your phone for these times. Include the question in the alarm:
11:00 AM: If a competitor studied only our structural decisions( not our website, not our pitch deck), what would they conclude we actually believe?
1:00 PM: What strategic decision are we avoiding right now because it would force clarity we’re not ready for?
3:00 PM: What would have to be true for a customer to describe us with one word? What word would that be?
5:00 PM: Where are we trading distinctiveness for safety? Where are we hedging?
7:00 PM: Run the implicit test again: Remove all our words. What pattern remains? What noun do our decisions prove?
Take notes. The interruptions catch you off guard, when honest answers slip through before corporate rationalization kicks in.
Evening — Synthesis
Now we integrate.
Pull out your notes from the morning and midday. Review them. Look for patterns.
The IQ/EQ Intersection
Based on your Inside Out assessment: What concept can you structurally deliver and prove?
Based on your Outside In assessment: What concept do customers need that no one owns?
Where do these intersect? That’s your positioning opportunity.
If they don’t intersect: Either you can’t deliver what the market needs, or the market doesn’t need what you can deliver. Both require strategic decisions beyond the scope of this protocol.
The Diagnosis
After today, what feels most true about your positioning situation?
Scenario A: No positioning, good framing, unclear execution
- You’ve perfected articulation (Level 1) without foundation (Level 4)
- Fix: Pause framing work. Map mental territory. Select ownable concept. Rebuild from the foundation.
Scenario B: Good positioning, weak framing, weak execution
- You know what you own but cannot articulate or prove it
- Fix: Protect positioning vision. Hire for articulation and execution.
Scenario C: Execution without positioning
- Strong outcomes without concept ownership
- Fix: Identify what concept these outcomes could prove. Build positioning around capability.
Scenario D: Claiming instead of proving
- Explicit claims dominate over implicit proof
- Fix: Remove claims. Identify decisions that prove the concept implicitly.
Scenario E: Inconsistent decisions
- Different choices proving different concepts
- Fix: Identify a single concept. Filter all decisions through it. Establish consistency.
The Compression
Write a single sentence that captures what you refuse to let your company become. This is your anti-vision compressed. It should make you uncomfortable.
Write a single sentence that captures what concept you could own if you were willing to make the structural decisions to own it. This will evolve; it’s a starting point.
The Commitment Test
One-year lens: What structural decision would have to be made in the next year for your position to meaningfully strengthen? One concrete thing that proves the concept.
The 70% test: What would it take to allocate 70% of resources to positioning-critical capabilities?
The sacrifice test: What are you willing to give up, starting tomorrow, that signals to the market and to your own team that you’re serious?
7. Your Position Is Not a Statement. It’s Neural Architecture.
If you ran that protocol honestly, you now have something most companies never develop: clarity about the gap between what you claim and what you’ve built.
That gap is your strategic reality.
Positioning isn’t a communication exercise. It’s neural pathway engineering through behavioural repetition.
When Volvo makes safety decisions consistently for decades, they’re not just building a brand; they’re wiring neural connections in millions of minds. The pathway “Volvo = safety” strengthens through Hebbian learning — neurons that fire together wire together. After sufficient repetition, the association becomes automatic. System 1. Procedural knowledge. The position exists in neural wiring, not conscious thoughts.
This is why:
Consistency compounds. Every decision that proves your concept strengthens the neural pathway. The position gets stronger over time with less effort.
Inconsistency destroys. Competing patterns weaken overall association strength. One contradictory decision doesn’t just fail to build—it actively erodes what you’ve established.
Claims trigger defences. Explicit positioning activates System 2 skepticism. You’re working against human cognition instead of with it.
Proof bypasses defences. Implicit positioning through structural decisions allows System 1 processing. Customers generate their own inferences. Self-generated conclusions are more persuasive than stated benefits.
Time is non-negotiable. Real positions take 5-10 years to establish. There are no shortcuts. Anyone promising fast positioning results is selling framing, not positioning.
Think of your company as a navigation system. Your claimed positioning is where you’ve entered into the GPS. Your structural decisions are where you’re actually driving.
Most companies have entered a destination they’ll never reach because they keep making turns that lead somewhere else. Then they wonder why they never arrive. The protocol you just ran reveals where you’re actually headed. Not where you typed into the GPS — where your decisions are taking you.
The question isn’t whether you have a position. You do. The market concluded it from watching you. The question is whether you chose it or inherited it by accident.
And whether you’re willing to make the structural decisions, the costly signals, the resource allocation, the sacrifices, to own something meaningful.
Most companies will read this and do nothing. The excavation is uncomfortable. The IQ/EQ intersection reveals gaps they’d rather not see. The 70% resource test exposes misalignment they’ve been tolerating. The sacrifice requirement feels too costly.
That’s why strong positioning is rare. Not because it’s complicated. It’s not.
But because it requires consistency that most organizations avoid, sacrifice that most leaders won’t make, and patience that most investors won’t tolerate.
The companies that own categories don’t have better positioning consultants. They have a higher tolerance for the discomfort of commitment sustained over the years.
The protocol revealed your actual position. What you do with that clarity determines whether you ever own anything meaningful.
The Burj Khalifa doesn’t claim eminence.
It proves eminence through every decision.
That’s positioning.
If You Don’t Have a Day
The protocol above works. It will reveal your actual position if you’re honest with yourself. But most people won’t do it. A full day of excavation is uncomfortable. And even if you complete it, you’re still inside the jar reading your own label.
So I built two things that accelerate the process.
For the inside-out view: The CEO Clarity Kit
A one-hour, self-guided system for CEOs and founders who feel stuck in the fog. You know your product is good. You’ve got customers. You’ve got proof. But when you try to explain what you do, it still feels harder than it should.
The Kit walks you through eight focused questions, produces an output that names your position and surfaces blind spots, then feeds it into ClarityGPT, which turns the insights into assets you can ship the same day. Landing page copy. A clear offer. A rewritten LinkedIn profile. A 30-day plan, so this doesn’t die as “nice insight.”
One hour. Real clarity. Concrete output.
For the outside-in view: Monopoly
A perception intelligence tool that surfaces the gap between what you claim and what customers actually experience. Input a website URL. Get a full customer perception gap audit in minutes.
It scrapes your website for claims, then pulls customer voices from places you don’t control: G2, Trustpilot, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Google Reviews. What they say when you’re not in the room.
The report shows the dominant noun customers use to describe you (not your noun, theirs), perception gaps with severity ratings, and mental territory assessment: what’s owned, contested, and vacant.
Run it on yourself. Run it on competitors. See what the market actually believes.
Together, they give you both lenses.
The Clarity Kit reveals what you’ve actually built from the inside. Monopoly reveals what customers actually perceive from the outside. The gap between those two views is your positioning reality.
The protocol in this article will get you there in a day if you do the work. These tools get you there faster if you’d rather buy back the time.
Either way, the goal is the same: read your own label.
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