How to build a standout brand via anti-positioning

The most successful people in life are great at one thing:

Pattern recognition.

After all…

Think back to your exams at school.

The people who got the best grades, were, more than likely, the guys and gals who could spot the “pattern” in which the examiners wanted you to write your answer (“Point, Quote, Explain” from English Literature springs to mind…)

Think about writers.

Every good piece of writing follows the same “pattern” — (1) you grab someone’s attention with a problem, (2) you provide context so that they’re receptive to a solution, (3) you show them a desirable transformation to prove you can deliver, (4) you offer to help them do the same.

Finally, think about creators.

The most successful creators are the ones who can analyse those 1-2 steps ahead of them, connect the dots, and then reverse engineer their success for themselves.

And this is something I’ve prioritised since Day 1 as a Creator.

I’d say it’s served me fairly well.

I’ve built a $15,000/month personal brand.

I’ve gained over 6,000 followers.

I’ve grown this newsletter (which you are now a valued member of) to over 2,600 subs.

And I’ve helped multiple other brands scale beyond $10,000/month too.

All while most personal brands are still struggling to stand out, attract clients and, more than likely, haven’t even earned their first dollar yet.

Which brings me onto the point of today’s email…

What separates the brands which succeed from the ones which…. don’t?

When I joined Twitter in November 2023, I obsessed over this question for MONTHS.

I spent weeks studying creators 1-2 steps ahead of me.

And even longer studying the guys who were completely out of reach (for now…)

Dan Koe.

Kieran Drew.

Alex Hormozi.

And one of the great things about spending 6+ years studying maths, computer science, and applying these to a bunch of different industries, is that you get pretty damn good at pattern recognition.

(Ask any software developer what their job is really about, and they’ll tell you it’s about critical thinking and pattern recognition — the “coding” itself, is the easy part. Similar to writing content tbh).

And I’ve noticed one key thing ALL these “big brands” do, without exception:

They position their competition as the enemy.
And they use this to swoop in as their audience’s saviour.

After all…

Most of your audience feel very lost and confused.

Every day, they are bombarded by a swathe of content and societal programming, all with conflicting messages, telling them how to live their life.

All they’re looking for?

Clarity.

A knight-in-shining-armour to come along, sweep them off their feet, and tell them “this is the one true way”.

And to help you understand how to do this with your own brand, I’m going to introduce you to a new term today:

Anti-positioning. 

Anti-positioning is the picture you paint of your enemy / competition which then opens up the gate for you to position yourself as their saviour.

Think of this as a chess game:

You sacrifice a piece (i.e. you accept you’re gonna piss a few people off).

But that sacrifice allows you to make the “big” move and check the King.

I’m going to use Dan Koe to illustrate how this works, simply because it’s the creator you’re most familiar with (I promise I’ll stop using Dan as the example in my emails soon, it’s just such low-hanging fruit hahahaha).

Think about who Dan’s competition is.

Other creators?

Wrong. (Not at this point anyway).

Dan’s real competition?

Employees, universities and other big societal systems.

And I’ll prove it to you:

Dan: “You were made for more than to sit in an office for 8+ hours every day”.

Anti-Positioning: Jobs lead to lack of purpose.

Positioning: “I’m going to help you build a career which brings true meaning to your life.”

Dan: “You lack fulfilment because you have followed the default path, accepted what other people want for your life, and have not learned to set your own goals.”

Anti-Positioning: Society teaches you to become a sheep, which leads to a lack of fulfilment.

Positioning: “I’m going to show you how to think for yourself, so you can take back control of your life”.

Dan: “The public school system and employers force you to learn a set of hyper-specialised tasks, which limits your potential and

Anti-Positioning: You’re only terrified of being replaced by AI because you don’t have the skills required to become irreplaceable.

Positioning: “I’m going to help you become a generalist, who has a set of evergreen skills which allow you to thrive in any environment”.

Do you see how that works?

I’ll illustrate it further with my own positioning:

Me: “The marketing and copywriting space is full of stupid, overcomplicated systems and jargon that cause more issues than they solve”.

Anti-positioning: “You’re struggling to grow your brand because you’re listening to morons who overcomplicate this shit.”

Positioning: I’m going to serve up common sense advice that even the layman can understand, assimilate and use to build a big online business. That is, after all, the way I’m building mine.

Anti-positioning → Positioning.

That’s the “secret” to standing out in the online space.

Not just in 2024, but always.

This is a timeless principle which will serve you for the next 20+ years (or however long you build your brand).

And to help you get started with this framework, consider the following 4 questions…

Q1: Who is your enemy?

Your industry? Other creators? An accepted convention or dogma?

This is where your positioning starts.

Once you’ve identified who you’re standing against, we ask ourselves the next question…

Q2: What do you do differently to them?

Now you’ve opened up your enemies “weaknesses”, it should be more evident how to position yourself.

To help you get started with, here’s a couple of things I always think about…

Q3: What are the accepted conventions you strongly disagree with?

We start with the negative.

Why?

Because, similar to how it often takes one too many hangovers before you realise you really don’t want to live that life…

… it’s often easier to figure out what you do stand for by first working out what you don’t stand for.

Then we use these “anti-views” to highlight our own beliefs…

What principles do you strongly believe in?

Here’s a few of mine, for example:

I think short form content is overrated.

Tweets. TikTok Reels. YouTube Shorts. They’re fine for getting exposure, sure. But they do fuck all to stay in your audience’s mind for days after they’ve finished reading. You’re occupying (almost) no mental real estate. And thus, you’re limiting the number of high-paying customers and clients you can accrue. For that, you need depth. And that’s where long-form content comes in.

I think most creators are building their brand completely ass-backwards.

They want to land clients. But they spend all their time tweeting and commenting, rather than learning the evergreen skills which would make this possible. They refuse to buy good courses. They refuse to invest in mentors. They refuse to commit hours to studying and implementing what they learn on their own brand. And then they wonder why they struggle to build authority and land clients. Go figure.

And then there’s my whole common sense mantra.

I’ve already touched on that above, so I won’t go into that any further today.

But do you see how that all works?

• Identification: we identify our enemy.

• Anti-positioning: we analyse what our enemy does so that we can highlight the flaws in their approach.

• Positioning: we create a stark contrast between what our enemy does and how we operate, so that we can position ourself as our audience’s saviour.

That, my friend, is the secret to a stand out personal brand.

It took me a long time to find the clarity to express this.

I hope this has helped you clear up a few of the doubts you had when you woke up this morning.

Talk soon,

Harry

PS. You now understand the importance of brand positioning.

And you have a solid understanding of what to do.

But if you’d like a system to help you implement this, then listen up.

Over the past 8-9 months I’ve curated a “database” of 100+ content ideas specifically designed to:

• Position my competitors as the enemy

• Position myself as the solution

• Tease out the buyers within my audience

And this “database” of content ideas is the main reason I’ve been able to earn over $70,000 in the past 6-7 months all via inbound DMs.

Imagine owning a brand where you’re being chased, rather than always being the one on the hunt.

Want access?

I’ll be releasing this as an exclusive bonus to the first 50 buyers of my flagship course, Hypnotic Writer.

After that — no-one else gets a peek.

Join 120+ people on the waitlist here for more exclusive bonuses.