June 13, 2023
Positioning, Vision, Mission, Theme, Tagline... OH MY!
A thread from Twitter...
@vikramshettyc
Hey @jonathanstark how come your vision
“ditching hourly billing, not trading time for money.”
makes sense but ours don’t
“to help every sustainability analyst find insights using data science.”
🤔🧐🔍
@jonathanstark
Hm... Can you clarify what you mean by “makes sense”?
@vikramshettyc
In your case it is clear by not trading time for money or selling smarts rather than efforts
In our cast finding insights using data science becomes too broad. It misses clarity even though I want to build a SaaS product company with a couple of dozen employees
@jonathanstark
Thanks for the additional info!
I think we might have a semantic disconnect.
I’ll try to lay out the perspective from my side in hopes of shining some light on this for you...
My vision:
A world in which both buyers and sellers of expertise consider “the number of hours it takes to deliver the service” as irrelevant to the price of the service as, say, the average humidity in the region the service is performed.
My mission:
To rid the world of hourly billing.
The central theme in my writing/speaking (i.e., the Sun in my content solar system):
Stop trading time for money
My tagline:
The Ditching Hourly Guy
My value proposition (aka my XYPS):
I help experts make more money without working more hours.
My laser-focused positioning statement:
I’m a business coach who teaches experts how to make more money without working more hours. Unlike my competitors, my advice is specifically designed for solo practitioners.
My A4B positioning statement:
I do business coaching for solo consultants.
Okay, so... that was an “off the top of my head” tour through various components that contribute to my overall messaging.
The one you mentioned in your original post (i.e., “Ditching Hourly Billing”) is the central theme of my writing and speaking (vs my VISION which is related but different)
Your phrase “to help every sustainability analyst find insights using data science” looks like a mission statement to me form-wise, not a vision statement. A vision statement would paint a clear picture of a better future.
If you agree that your phrase in the original tweet is a mission statement, AND you say it’s not working for you, there are three things that could be wrong:
- Not enough people are aware of it
- Not enough people understand it
- Not enough people are moved by it
Your remedy would depend heavily on which of these is the main problem.
If you don’t know which is the main problem, a useful next step would be to experiment a bit in the market and find out.
Once you are confident which of these is the source of the problem, your next steps would be fairly obvious.
(Thanks to Jeremy Wells for resurfacing this thread!)
Yours,
—J