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The Red Thread This Week:
Are you different? Does anyone care? Can you sustain it?
Welcome to part 3/5 of our Brand Strategy blitz series.
The goal of this blitz is to accelerate how you think about yourself, your work, and your business through the lens of “Brand.”
In the last 2 issues we covered:
What a brand is: A Shortcut and a Promise
Where to apply your energy and resources: The Brand Clock
This week is about 3 hurdles (questions) you must answer in order to build a brand that makes an impact.
And a lot of really well intentioned, hard working entrepreneurs and business operators skip these questions all together.
Because even though they’re not complicated, they’re tough to answer:
What makes you different?
Does anyone care?
Can you hold your position over time?
Instead a lot of founders and operators tend to jump to tactics:
Content calendars
Shiny tools
Growth hacks
But being tempted by tactics without addressing these hurdles is a great way to put a lot of miles on your car and not actually go anywhere.
You can post every day for a year and still be invisible if nobody can explain in simple, straightforward language, what you do differently—and why they’d miss you if you were gone.
So the Red Thread this week: how to evaluate your positioning, and determine if it actually works.
~ Jaime
🔑 The Unlock
Positioning has 3 hurdles.
Clear all 3 and your brand-building momentum compounds.
1️⃣ Are You Different?
Not “Are you good?”
Are you different in a way people can clearly articulate?
Differentiation isn’t what you think about yourself. It’s what your audience can say about you without hesitation.
If I ask someone what makes you different, can they answer in one sentence?
If their answer is:
“You’re thoughtful”
“You care”
“You’re authentic”
That’s not differentiation.
That’s baseline competence.
Example:
Trader Joe's doesn’t compete on price (Walmart wins) or selection (Whole Foods wins that one.)
They compete on quirky curation and experience.
That’s specific. That’s memorable.
Your move:
Write one sentence that starts with:
“I’m the only one who…”
If you can’t finish it cleanly, this hurdle isn’t cleared.
2️⃣ Does Anyone Care?
Ok, you found something unique. You’re differentiated. You’ve got your Purple Cow.
But is it relevant to enough of an audience, or addressable market, that you can build a real business around it?
Or is it a problem no one knows they have?
Or so far out on the edge that you’re really just hiding (you’re working on teleportation devices, or your 3-movement classical concerto of just silence)
Here’s the tension:
The more differentiated you are → the smaller your potential audience.
The more relevant you try to be → the less differentiated you become.
Ferrari is highly differentiated. But not relevant to most people.
Kleenex is highly relevant. But not differentiated.
Example:
Peloton didn’t launch as “fitness for everyone.”
They launched as boutique cycling classes at home for people who didn’t want/couldn’t get to a studio.
Specific enough to be different. Broad enough to matter.
Then they expanded.
Your move:
If your positioning could describe:
Any ambitious real estate agent trying to grow on Instagram
Any B2B founder posting thought leadership on LinkedIn
Any coach or consultant offering “growth and insight”
Any independent creator “building a personal brand”
…it doesn’t describe anyone clearly enough.
You’ve got to really be able to answer — who is this specifically for?
3️⃣ Can You Sustain It?
Ok, you’re different. And enough specific people care there’s a market.
But…can you maintain that position over time?
Competitors copy what works
Platforms change
Energy fades
Brand sustainability comes from barriers and constraints.
Example:
In-N-Out Burger has expanded to only a handful of states in decades.
They could scale faster. They choose not to.
Limited geography + family ownership = quality control competitors can’t replicate.
That constraint is the moat.
For builders like you, barriers might be:
Owned distribution (your email list)
Deep expertise (years, not months)
Systems (repeatable workflows)
Community (real costs associated with leaving)
Your move:
If someone with 10x your resources copied you tomorrow, what would they struggle to replicate?
If the answer is “nothing,” you don’t have sustainable positioning, you have a collection of tactics that might not work for much longer.
💡 Mindset Shift
Brand positioning isn’t something you discover.
It’s something you choose — and then protect.
You don’t find differentiation.
You claim it.You don’t wait for relevance.
You narrow for it.You don’t assume sustainability.
You engineer it.
Here’s what’s easy to miss if you’re operating without this bit of brand strategy:
Every piece of content you publish is reinforcing a brand position in your audience’s mind.
Your newsletter
Your podcast
Your social posts
Your website
The question isn’t whether you have a brand position.
It’s whether you chose it.
🎲 Prompt Playground
The 3 Hurdles Audit
Use this to evaluate whether your brand positioning clears all 3 hurdles, and identify which one needs the most work.
Prompt:
You are a brand positioning strategist evaluating whether my brand clears three hurdles: Differentiation, Relevance, and Sustainability.
My Context:
What I do: [describe your business]
Who I serve: [specific audience]
What makes me different: [your claim]
Content I publish: [newsletter, podcast, social, video, etc.]
Competitors or similar voices: [who else serves this audience]
How long I've been doing this: [duration]
Evaluate:
Differentiation: Am I actually different, or just "good"? What's the clearest one-sentence differentiation I could claim?
Relevance: Am I too narrow (differentiated but irrelevant) or too broad (relevant but generic)?
Sustainability: What barriers make my position defensible? If a competitor with 10x my resources copied me, what would they struggle to replicate?
Final: Which hurdle am I failing? What's the one move that strengthens my positioning most?
Be direct. Tell me what I need to hear.
⚡ Before You Go
Here are a few ways I can help right now:
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Thanks for spending time with Red Threads this week, I’m glad you’re here :)
~ Jaime