Answering (More) Mailbag Questions

Is expertise still the product? Have the economics of expertise changed since November 2022, when ChatGPT was launched and started the whole AI mania in public? I was curious whether you think that changed the economics of expertise. —Emanuel, Romania

I don’t think any of us know, yet, what will really happen to the expertise marketplace. At the moment, that marketplace is generally flat (or down) because people who just need or want “good enough” answers can get them from an LLM. Even with the very best context engineering habits, though, it’s not nearly as good as a real advisor who can bend the advice to your situation. So I’m guessing that the middle of the expertise marketplace will be gutted (the “good enough” answers), and what will thrive is at the top (personalized advice from human experts), as well as the last-mile implementation to actually make things happen. I would anticipate that this brief interlude we’re in will fade by end of 2027, but that’s just a guess.

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How do you tell when a firm has actually outgrown its positioning versus when the owner is just bored with saying the same thing? Both can get described as “the market has moved on,” but they call for opposite responses. What would you want to see before telling the firm to change? —Eric, St. Louis

There is no such thing as outgrowing a positioning, because you’re always learning and going deeper, and because the field you serve is always changing. There may be something psychological going on inside you, or it could be that you’re just tired of repeating yourself. If it’s the latter, turn that insight into thought leadership and have clients read it, freeing you up to go deeper, beyond the basic.

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Take a digital marketing agency that has historically positioned itself around social media, content, and helping companies connect in a more “human” way but now wants to reposition as an “AI transformation” consultant. What do you look for to determine whether that’s the right move for the agency versus the owner simply being tired of the current positioning or chasing a trend? —Vanessa, Seattle

See the previous answer, for sure, about not misreading your exhaustion as really just being tired of repeating yourself. But let me say, first, that what you’ve described is not a good positioning, and so what you may actually be tired of is finding good clients who listen to you and want to pay you well. Should you be an AI transformation consultant? No. What you might do is help your existing clients incorporate AI, and make some extra money on that process for a year or two. It’s not going to last long, and it’s a service offering…not a positioning.

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One question as I am standing up my own boutique consultancy... I’m thinking about the next hire and trying to find someone with the ability and excitement to do both sales and execution (i.e. what I’m doing now as a solo shop). With the AI tools we have, we don’t need a doer—we’re already doing the work of what would have been 5-6 person teams at McKinsey. And we don’t need just a sales person—I have more than enough work to be very busy! But that sweet spot... feels like a unicorn. How have you thought about this or seen others do it well? Or badly? —Rachel, Miami

In a smaller firm, it’s good practice to combine roles. It’s easy to imagine someone doing your marketing and execution, but not sales and execution. Sales is your job and probably always will be.

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You are one of the strongest (and longest-standing) advocates for tight positioning. Which arguments against tight positioning do you secretly (or not so secretly) actually agree with? —Mark, Ottawa

None of them, silly man. But every argument I’ve ever seen against it has been addressed somewhere, but maybe that person hasn’t read it. Here are some examples of absolutely true statements that many critics forget:

• You need to socialize a positioning decision but not democratize it.
• The older the average age of your team, the easier it is to position the firm tightly.
• Any firm above roughly 45 people is automatically positioned as a big firm, and traditional positioning is a secondary factor and it’s called category experience.
• Positioning only relates to what you look for and not what you accept.
• Positioning usually only lasts 18 months at the outset, and then needs further tightening. (You have plenty of courage but lack the marketplace knowledge.)
• Vertical positioning carries four downsides: the most significant is the expectation of full service.
• But addressability is the biggest (of the four) disadvantages of horizontal.
• You can only have one marketing plan, and so if the right choice is to craft a sub brand, the main brand will (and should) wither.
• There will be the occasional client who will never hire a firm that specializes in their vertical, but good luck finding that 1 in 1,000 company.

I’m just getting started here, but I wanted to illustrate the point that people who fight positioning often just don’t understand it.

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Is SEO dead? Is AEO the new SEO? Or will GEO win? Will AISEO kill AEO? Should EOS factor in SEO, GEO, AISEO or AEO? Which EO acronym will we get next? —Michael, Dublin

The rumors of the impending death of SEO have been with us since there have been hot takes on LinkedIn. It’s not dying but rather changing. We all just need to keep up. Keep thinking and writing human to human and people will find you. Some of the technical details have changed, but not that part of it. Right now, it’s just the black hat SEO idiots who are slightly ahead of the rest of us.

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Will the new Anthropic watermarking scheme work to self-confess AI usage? —Robin, Melbourne

Probably not, mainly because the use of AI is on a spectrum and this solution is binary. I wrote a graduate paper on “Subconscious Repetition in Ancient Greek Literature,” noting that the second phrasing of a concept often uses an acceptable word used in the immediate past rather than the perfect word that would be appropriate for this later instance. This Anthropic “watermark” scheme pretends that humans always use the appropriate word, but we don’t. We search for a millisecond and then we default to something close enough. Eventually they’ll have to find a better solution, and I don’t know what that is.

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I recall you mentioning that the list is pretty important, and since I’m only 19,992 subscribers away from hitting your number of 20,000, I’d love to know what has been the most challenging / frustrating part since you started, and what did you do to overcome it? —Nikola, Belgrade

I’ve always felt like nothing else matters unless you can solve the new business problem, and that if you can solve that, you’ll figure everything else out. So I’ve always over-indexed on “being known and trusted” and that’s what I’d suggest as your biggest challenge.

Whatever you do for new business should be:

• Something you enjoy or you won’t do it (like exercise). In other words, wrapped around your personality.
• Particular to where you focus as a firm. Each segment is different.
• Simple. Maybe even singular.

If building the list is the biggest obstacle you’re facing at the moment, I’d start by bringing awesome webinar content to the associations that your prospective clients belong to and then add the names of those who attend.

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I’m a regular listener of the 2 Bobs podcast, and I’d love to know your take on building real trust and authority. Fake thought leadership is so cheap and available, so people tend to tune out. Thanks again, you guys rock! —Alexia, Austin

Be human (funny, concise, even irreverent, which LLMs don’t do well), avoid hot takes where you can, articulate tentatively held beliefs unless you’re absolutely sure, and tell prospects when you’re not a good fit. That gets you most of the way.

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I always wondered how your tight positioning can be achieved in a market/country that is too small and specific that there are not enough clients to position for. For example, I live in Greece with 10m people and $300b GDP ($47k ppp). Another difficulty is that Greek language is only spoken in Greece and nowhere else which makes it somewhat tougher to expand to other markets. How can a company tighten its position in such a market? I believe that what you advocate for is easier in a large market but there are many people who follow you and work in markets similar to Greece who would love to see your opinion on this. —Cetkovic, Greece

The numbers are still the same: 10-200 competitors and 2,000-10,000 prospects. But if you narrow it in Greece like you might narrow it in the United States, you’ll not have enough of either, and so your positioning will need to be broader. Whereas you might specialize in credit unions in the US, you’d focus on financial services in Greece. And the most likely means of picking up clients outside Greece will be to find international clients who want to reach consumers in Greece, but that’s seldom lucrative. (We have clients in >40 countries.)

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When does an expert’s reputation start protecting them from the feedback they most need to hear? Feels like the better known you get, the easier it becomes for everyone around you to nod politely. —Marko, Hamburg

Absolutely true, and thank you for surfacing this. You’ll always have the acolytes, but you want to listen more carefully to the critics, and lord knows they are everywhere. Every strongly held belief I have is tentatively held, and I’ve seen many things differently as time passes and the world changes. If you’re taking questions from a large audience, in real time, never fake it. Care more about the truth than being right. Assume every client will teach you something.

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You’ve written that positioning means saying no to most of the market. But the narrower the positioning, the more the firm’s value concentrates in the founder who embodies it, which is exactly what makes the firm unsellable later. Does sharp positioning quietly work against building something that outlives you, and if so, how do you resolve owning a niche with the goal of an eventual exit? —Muhammad, Liverpool

No, there’s no correlation between narrower positioning and founder concentration. Positioning is built on your entire team: it’s not as if you’re the thinker and they are the doers. They are the thinkers and you’re the conductor making sure the firm’s financials are solid, your service offerings are shaped around the future, the culture is right, and there’s a steady stream of opportunity.