Positioning is one of those things in business that sounds like it should be easy to create until you go through the process of developing this for yourself. And it’s particularly challenging if you have a portfolio career.
What makes positioning hard for people is that it’s hard to wrap your brain around when you have a non-linear or generalist career arc.
So let’s start with what positioning is not.
Positioning is not…
your social media bio!
your LinkedIn tagline!
your origin story or elevator pitch either! (That’s storytelling, which is also important, but is not , I repeat, NOT positioning).
And if you’re building a portfolio career—a body of work that spans roles, mediums, and income streams—it’s foundational.
Defining Positioning
Here’s how I define positioning in the context of portfolio careers:
Positioning defines how you are the best possible choice for delivering a specific kind of value to a specific kind of person or problem space across your multiple expressions of work.
Yes, that sounds a little squishy. But that’s because portfolio careers are complex! (I promise I’ll dive into this further down below with examples.)
Most people’s first exposure to positioning as a concept is some version of a “statement.” And often when I am asked to speak about this topic, it looks something like this:
Fill in the blanks:
I help [target customer]
Who struggle with [problem]
I offer [service/product]
Unlike [alternatives]
So that [insert unicorns and rainbows outcome here]
These exercises aren’t useless but they’re sometimes insufficient or overly simplistic for positioning more established portfolio careers.
Why?
Because these sorts of statements assume:
You operate in a single category
You deliver value in one way
Your competitors are obvious
Your work resolves itself down into a neat and tidy sentence
And, well, portfolio careers break all of these traditional positioning assumptions, don’t they?
But trust me, well done positioning for a portfolio career is not an exercise in watering your skill set down into a set of fancy buzzwords that can fit into a single sentence. The key is organizing your complexity so other people that are less immersed in your world can immediately understand how your web of work connects together—and still manage to trust you to do the very specific job they need to hire someone to do.
Positioning as Audience Orientation
The easiest way to understand positioning is to think of it as an exercise in setting the stage.
In this sense, your positioning sets the context for your prospective client, reader, viewer, what have you. Without that opening context, everything you say or do after that point will feels noisy, confusing, and easy to dismiss.
Without it, your audience will be left wondering, “What the hell do I do with this person?”, are they:
a consultant, a life coach, a creator?
more strategic or operational?
And depending on all of the above, they start to wonder, “Why tf am I here exactly?” In fact, until those foundational questions are answered, your audience won’t see the value of what you do even if it’s absolutely extraordinary.
Good positioning, on the other hand, answers these big sorting hat questions first, so your audience can relax and pay attention as they start to go deeper into the little world you’ve created for them.
Providing a Frame of Reference
Good positioning also creates a frame of reference.
It tells people:
Who you’re message, services, products are well suited for
What or who you compete with (even if indirectly), AND
The range of outcomes your method unlocks
This is often where resistance shows up for portfolio careerists. These sorts of frames can feel constraining at first. (“Does this mean I have to pick a niche?”)
Clear framing for your audience will give you more freedom to operate in the long run, though.
Here’s an example:
If I say to you, “I help people with their careers,” the frame is so broad it’s meaningless to you, right?
But if I instead say, “I help second-act professionals develop their positioning for their portfolio careers so they can grow their sales pipeline.,” a very specific set of assumptions clicks into place.
Now you know, ok:
This person isn’t going to help me with resume tweaks
This person isn’t suited to help someone straight out of college
This person has experience helping other professionals like me that struggle to summarize the breadth of their experience to other people
This person will help me build IP, not just jump through ATS hoops.
And yet, it’s still broad enough that I can help a variety of hyphenates (fractionals, freelancers, side-hustlers, creatives, etc) with this very problem space that my positioning statement is intended speak to.
Your Positioning Web: Person Market Fit
Where I personally believe people get hung up is that they want one positioning statement to rule them all! When, in reality, you need different levels of positioning as a portfolio careerist.
You need a high level statement that connects all the components of your portfolio and then you need positioning statements for each offer that then sits within your portfolio.
In the business world, they call this brand vs. product positioning.
You wouldn’t expect a single product-level positioning statement to describe everything that a big brand like P&G does. Would you? So why are you trying to jam your entire portfolio into one sentence for every context yourself?
Just like a company with multiple products, you need a high-level, modular positioning statement that connects the whole portfolio and yet can be adapted to the various contexts in which you operate.
I’ll use myself as an example:
On my website:
The positioning on my About Me page is intentionally high-level to encapsulate the entirety of my portfolio. I connect all of my work under a single throughline: I’m a Product Strategist And Future of Work Sensemaker. I write, speak, and podcast independently about our relationship with work and technology for fun. I help individuals change their relationship to work and, in turn, with themselves. This helps the viewer navigate the rest of my site with more ease since their are a variety of products and services listed.
On Substack:
I position myself as a podcast host. This sets expectations that my writing will primarily be some combination of observational, reflective, and useful for sensemaking for indie workers.
On LinkedIn:
I position myself primarily as a business coach and future of work thought leader. I do things like give tips for how to grow your portfolio career and build an audience online so that I attract speaking gigs and product consulting work, not just coaching clients. I’ll also occasionally share short form pieces on events in the AI and product management realm to demonstrate SME authority and credibility to readers who might become prospective clients.
The Five Components of Positioning (Reimagined for Portfolio Careers)
So, as you think about your own portfolio of positioning statements for your career with commas, here are some things to think about :
1. Your Competitive Alternatives/Substitutes:
What would someone do instead of working with you?
Hire a traditional consultant?
Read books?
Follow influencer or guru advice?
Take digital courses?
Focus less on competing with people or brands. Think of yourself as competing with the strength of an intended outcome across a set of alternatives.
2. Your Differentiated Capabilities:
Don’t just think about what you do but think about how you see the world and how you go about solving problems:
Your pattern recognition
Your synthesis
Your empathy
Your rapid learning capabilities
Your big picture thinking
This is where generalists really create a defensive moat around their skill set!
3. Your Transformation:
What changes for someone after engaging with your work?
They see themselves differently
They make braver or bolder decisions
They operationalize big portions of their back-end systems
They stop outsourcing their joy
They save gobs and gobs of cash
4. Your Target Audience:
Portfolio career positioning works best when it is psychographically and demographically specific, like:
People disillusioned with traditional systems
People who value flexibility and autonomy
15-20+years experience
Income +$XK
You’re not for everyone. Remember that!
5. Your Role:
How do you fit into your audiences lives?
Are you:
A coach?
A strategist?
A writer?
A guide?
An activator?
A steward of ideas?
The role(s) you choose to play in your client and/or audience lives will eventually shape your pricing, engagement expectations, elevator pitch, the list goes on.
What Positioning Makes Possible
If you take nothing else away from this piece, REMEMBER THIS:
Positioning is the foundation of a strong small business.
Your product messaging, brand storytelling, website copy, and newsletter strategy all depend on how you position yourself. Nail this? And you’ve got person market fit. Your offers start to sing together, the right opportunities start coming TO you, and strangers can explain what you do accurately even when you’re not in the room!
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