May 24, 2019

Question from reader Jay Trivedi - LFPS teardown, part 1

Sent by Jonathan Stark on May 25th, 2019

Reader Jay Trivedi wrote in to ask:

Hi Jonathan, By the way, I managed to download your “Pigeonhole Yourself” ebook and go through it. It’s amazing. I have come up with my own LFPS. It would be so great if you could review it and suggest changes. It goes as following. Thanks in advance. “I am an operations intelligence consultant who helps fast growing funded startups design easy-to-scale business processes using technology, data and AI. Unlike my competitors, I focus on short turn around time and smooth human-technology interactions.” Thanks, Jay

If you’ve never heard me talk about an LFPS before, here’s a quick definition from my student glossary:

A two sentence message that tells people what your business is, how they will benefit from it, and how it is different than others. It is typically not used verbatim in marketing materials, but rather as a guide for crafting various types of messaging (e.g., tagline, slogan, cocktail party answer, etc).

There are four key components to an LFPS:

Your DISCIPLINE
Your TARGET MARKET
Their EXPENSIVE PROBLEM
Your UNIQUE DIFFERENCE

Here’s an example of a pretty good LFPS:

I’m a Web designer who helps Fortune 500 retailers with abandoned shopping carts on their e-commerce sites. Unlike my competitors, I use A/B tests to focus on the bottom line instead of wasting time with arbitrary design changes.

See the pattern?

I’m a DISCIPLINE who helps TARGET MARKET with EXPENSIVE PROBLEM. Unlike my competitors, UNIQUE DIFFERENCE.

Cliffhanger!

Okay, with all that background out of the way, we are set to discuss Jay’s LFPS. Which I’ll do in the next message. In the meantime, here are some related links:

Stay tuned!

Yours,

—J