Find Your Point Of Difference in the Marketplace as a Service Based Solopreneur
If you’re a coach, therapist, or educator, growing your audience sits fairly high on your priority list. Fresh eyes on your work on a regular basis is essential. Because without that, your offerings can’t reach enough people or generate the income you desire.
And this is where marketing comes in, that part of business many of us have a complicated relationship with. You know marketing is necessary, but it feels cringy, pushy, or plain exhausting.
This article explores why many highly aware, service-based solopreneurs struggle to discover their point of difference in the marketplace, and what you can do to allow that clarity to emerge.
— In this article —
The problem with copying what works for others
During my first few years of self employment, I used to think that If someone was getting great results, I should just do what they’re doing so I could have the same kind of success.
I remember being at a glamorous mastermind event in Florence. There were four members on stage who were earning six figures, and my question to them was, “What do you believe made the biggest contribution to your rapid success?” They all said some version of “Monthly webinars.”
“A-ha, so that’s the key to success!” I said to myself, and committed to doing the same once I returned home.
But by the time I got back home, I could feel the misalignment of offering regular free webinars in my bones. I had zero excitement or interest in this approach, and I would only be doing it because it worked for them.
We’re not taught to think in terms of how an approach feels in our body. The prevailing thinking is to copy what is working for others right now.
When that happens, your own unique ideas tend to be totally discarded, or put on hold until they can be validated somewhere.
The irony is that the ideas you’re setting aside are often the very ones that would give your point of difference in the marketplace.
Why things stay in draft for way too long
This is often the point where things stop moving, even though you’re still thinking, adjusting, and trying to do the right thing.
You might revisit your messaging, tweak your sales page, refine an offer, go back to what you’ve already created, and try to make it clearer and more aligned.
Some refinement is part of the process. But there’s a point where refining becomes a way of keeping everything hypothetical.
As long as nothing is decided on, nothing has to be seen by the world. Your ideas stay safely in draft form where you can keep asking “what if,” keep imagining different outcomes, keep preparing for a future moment when you’ll finally feel ready.
The problem is that your point of difference can’t emerge when it stays in hypothetical form. It emerges through real situations. Through choosing something and letting it be seen. Through noticing how people respond once your messaging, offers, and content are no longer theoretical.
When everything stays in draft, your point of difference never quite has the chance to emerge and take shape.
The problem with being handed solutions
One of the main reasons your point of differene can stay hidden is that many business environments are set up to hand you answers. You ask a question (without needing to bring your own thinking with it) and someone more experienced tells you what to do. You follow the advice and hope for the best.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but if it becomes your standard operating procedure, an important skill never gets developed: The skill of sensing into options, noticing how they land in your body, and discerning what is aligned for who you are.
Often, when someone tells me they don’t know what their next step is, it turns out they actually do have ideas, and they can even name them.
So why does this show up as ‘I don’t know what to do next’?
Because when those ideas surface, such as an impulse to try a different format, a topic that feels more interesting to talk about, or a way of showing up that feels more like them — those ideas are often dismissed immediately.
Thoughts like, “That’s off-brand,” “I’d need to change my website first,” or “What will people think?” step in and shut the idea down.
So the idea gets parked. It doesn’t fit the set of rules they believe they need to follow.
This is when the ability to pause and ask yourself this question can change your trajectory: “If there were no rules about brand, message, or how this is supposed to look, how would I do this?”
When you let yourself answer honestly, something usually reveals itself.
That’s where experimentation begins. You try something, you notice how it feels, you observe its resonance with your intended buyer. And from there, your unique edge starts to take shape, through experience.
When you fall out of love with your business
There’s a reason we fall out of love with our business, and it’s not because we don’t enjoy our work, we’ve lost motivation, or we’re confused.
It’s because we’ve been forcing ourselves to express our work or market ourselves in ways that no longer feel like us, and that probably never did in the first place.
But we keep going with it because it’s working well enough, or because we worry that changing course will cost us momentum and income.
Falling out of love with your business is simply your sign from the universe that you’ve drifted away from who you are, your energetic signature, and that it’s time to recalibrate.
Exchanging certainty with experimentation
If you’re still reading this article, then it’s highly likely that what is setting you back the most in business is your need to be certain before you move.
But in reality, clarity arrives once you start doing something real. Through doing the thing, offering the thing, or saying the thing.
When you choose a direction and stay with it long enough, it starts to reveal things. You notice what feels alive and what doesn’t, and adjustments becomes grounded in experience rather than guesswork.
Your primary aim is to treat your business like a living experiment. Move with curiosity rather than certainty.
Environments where your difference can emerge
If you recognise yourself in any of this, it’s worth looking beyond what seems to be working for others and towards the environments you’re placing yourself in.
Are you mostly in spaces where the focus is on being given the right answer? Or are you supported to develop your own way of thinking, deciding, and responding to what you notice?
The former keeps your attention directed outward. The latter supports you to build trust in your own way of being in business.
This is the kind of work I support people with. Trusting your own impulses, experimenting without overthinking, and letting your point of difference surface more organically. Start your journey with me here.
I’d love to know what’s been most useful for you here. Let me know in the comments. ⤵
Dani Gardner
The Quiet Marketer
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