How to figure out what your business actually stands for
I came across a prompt on Threads recently that I haven’t stopped thinking about since.
The idea: name four descriptors or adjectives that you'd be furious to learn someone had used to describe you or your business. Then flip them to their antonyms. Those words are your brand differentiator.
That's it. Painfully simple, I know. But when I actually did it, the words it surfaced were more clarifying than any positioning worksheet I've worked through in six years of running this business.
Why this brand differentiator exercise actually works
Most positioning exercises ask you to articulate what you stand for. That sounds useful in theory, but in practice it tends to produce the same flat list of values everyone else has: authentic, impactful, results-driven. Those words get used so often that they basically have lost all meaning, at least in the abstract.
This exercise comes at it from another angle. By starting with what you'd hate to be called, you bypass the polished, brand-y part of your brain and access something more honest. Anger is specific in a way that aspiration isn't, tapping into your core values or the things you hold most dear.
That's where your real differentiator lives. Not in what you want to project, but in what you're determined not to be.
The four words I'd be furious to hear
When I did the exercise, the words that came to me most immediately were:
Exploitative
Dismissive
Patronizing
Smug
These aren't random. Each one names a specific version of "coach" or "consultant" I've encountered online in the last few years (sometimes hired them, sometimes been on the receiving end of). They represent the kind of business owner and person that I’d absolutely despise being seen as.
On the flip side:
Exploitative —> Generous
Dismissive —> Empathetic
Patronizing —> Supportive
Smug —> Curious
That's the business I'm trying to build and who I want to be. Not aspirationally, but as an actual practice on a day to day level. I want to spend some time reflecting on what that looks like.
What generosity actually looks like in practice
The idea of being seen as exploitative was the first thing that came to me. If someone saw me that way, it would be absolutely devastating.
I’m committed to leading with generosity in my business. What that looks like in practice is that I want someone to get value from me no matter how they choose to engage with me or my content. Reading a single newsletter, one post on LinkedIn, finding a blog or template on my website once and never coming back. If you never pay me a dollar, I still want you to walk away with something that helps.
I don’t do this as a marketing strategy, it's a deeply engrained value. This means I don't gate the useful stuff and save the real insights for paying clients. The thinking I share publicly is the same thinking I do privately.
If you get on a call with me, yes we will talk about how coaching might apply to your situation and whether we’d be a good fit for one another, but I’ll also ask questions that hopefully will lead to new insights. Whether you decide to pursue coaching with me or not, I hope you’ll walk away with some new perspective or understanding.
I'd rather be the person who people see as giving away too much for free than the person who teases people into a sales call with scarcity tactics or other unethical selling manipulation tactics.
Leading with empathy
Empathy is another one of those words that has lost all meaning in recent years.
Before I went through coach training, I was the person who heard someone describe a problem and started solving it in my head before they'd finished talking. I’d listen to people talk about their problems and felt like the solution was obvious. “Why don’t you just…”
I thought that was helpful, but it really wasn't.
Telling people what to do doesn’t work, and it comes from a place of assuming you know better than them. I cringe when I think back to the moments when I did that.
Now, I embody empathy by listening to people (clients and otherwise) and actually hearing their experience without immediately offering a solution or jumping to "Here's what you should do."
Empathy as a practice means letting the hard thing be hard. Naming the specific hard thing instead of generalizing it. Not rushing past it to the silver lining, not turning someone's stuck moment into a teaching opportunity. Just being with them in it long enough that they feel actually met, not performed at.
What being supportive actually requires
Being supportive means being honest when honesty is the harder thing to offer. It means asking the question the person has been avoiding, even when they came to me hoping I'd let them keep avoiding it. It means holding people accountable to the goals they want to achieve, the things they want to do. It means trusting that the person in front of me is capable, and refusing to do their thinking for them even when that would be faster.
The opposite of patronizing isn't just being agreeable or supportive no matter what, it's treating the person across from me as a full adult with their own intelligence, their own context, and their own answers (even when they can't see those answers yet).
Patronizing coaching positions the coach as the expert who hands down wisdom. Supportive coaching positions the client as the one who already knows, and the coach as the one helping them hear themselves.
That distinction shapes how I run coaching sessions, how I write, and how I talk about my work.
Curiosity over expertise
The opposite of smug, for me, is being curious. Genuinely curious, not as a “branding” statement.
I don't pretend I have it all figured out (because I don’t!). I have a Ph.D., over six years of business experience, and an ICF credential, and I still get stuck, second-guess my decisions, and need other people to think with me regularly. That's not some kind of confession, it’s just the way it works. My coaching practice is rooted in the idea that we think better in the company of others than we do alone, and I’d be a pretty big hypocrite if I didn’t include myself in that as well.
When I ask a question a coaching call, I genuinely don't know what the answer is going to be. I'm not running you through a script I've already mapped out. I'm genuinely curious about your specific situation, your specific stuckness, the specific shape of what you're trying to build. I love that we get to find the solutions together, or at least get a little bit closer than we were at the beginning of the call.
Your brand differentiator isn't (just) a tagline
Here's the thing this exercise made clear to me: a brand differentiator isn't a tagline you write once and put on your website. It's the daily, unglamorous practice of acting in opposition to the things you're determined not to be.
If I'd just written "generous, empathetic, supportive, curious" on a values page, it would be meaningless (half the coaches on the internet would probably write the same list). Reflecting on how my brand differentiator shows up in my day-to-day work was a powerful affirmation that I’m living into my values in this business.
So if you try this exercise, the real question isn't what your four words are. It's whether and how the way you're working, writing, selling, and showing up reflects the opposite of the things you'd be furious to be called.
