TM#012 - Branding by subtraction

When we were putting up our first website, the biggest question in our minds was, “What services should we offer?”.

And it was a huge point of contention among the founders. What if we chose something wrong, what if somebody wants X but we have Y listed on our website, what if we don’t have a portfolio for X service either, etc.

That approach was entirely misguided.

But it was guided by something. Namely, other services companies in Pakistan that had made a name for themselves. We looked at Arbisoft, they had multiple services. We looked at Cubix, multiple services. We looked at CodeNinja, again multiple services.

That process of looking at successful players in the industry reinforced our mindset that we have to be everything for everyone. Or be close enough otherwise, we may lose leads.

That’s a dangerous mindset, for multiple reasons. For starters, emulating the end stage boss at the tutorial level is generally a bad idea since you don’t have enough resources. To unpack what that means, consider that for each service you add on your website, the burden of proof adds up: you have to have a portfolio for each item.

And portfolio doesn’t just mean “projects done”. It also consists of your content strategy, your social media presence, your personal experience in that industry, etc.

For each service you offer, you add one more “market” to the mix and each market has different needs and wants and you have to learn how to make all of them happy.

In other words, the more services you add, the more things you have to consistently “talk about” and be “known for”. Can you do that with a one-man team? Probably not.

Besides, these players have been in the industry long enough to have done all of that. They have the portfolio, the network, the ‘proof’ basically.

The key thing that beginner founders do not realize is that if you are starting from scratch, and I mean literally bottom of the barrel scratch — no foreign links, no expat relatives, no funding, no family support etc. — then you do not have the luxury to emulate founders who had at least some leverage at the beginning.

To put it into perspective, consider the fact that Arbisoft’s founders were Stanford alumni who had organic links with EdX top brass. Or at the very least, they were not exactly without experience or resources. That’s very different from founders who may be from remote villages, who made their name via freelancing, and are now bootstrapping their agency.

Ultimately, no matter the type of agency, there’s always that “one deal” at the beginning which is necessary for you to take-off, and that “one deal” is usually a result of luck. But that’s a separate topic.

To circle back to the topic: your strategy should depend on your starting point. If your starting point is that you don’t have much experience or network to back up what you say, then say less.

You don’t have to be everything for everyone. You don’t have to worry about “losing deals”. You have to worry about winning them. Instead of optimizing for “how do I not disappoint anyone”, optimize for “how do I make that one type of person really happy”.

In the infant stages of your agency, you don’t need millions in revenue to find leverage for yourself. Your entire life should revolve around finding that “one deal” that is going to give you the leverage to do the things you want to do.

Not surprisingly, that is also much easier than trying not to disappoint anyone. You just have to pick one thing that you’re good at, only offer services for that, constantly talk about just that and nothing else.

That’s how Tom Noble became known as the “No Code guy”. Justin Welsh became known as the “Solopreneur”. Vivek Viswanathan is the “Quant”. And so on.

I call this, “Branding by subtraction”. And it should be a very obvious thing but gets lost in the details: A brand is always known for “one thing”. If a brand tries to elicit multiple connotations in its fans’ minds, it will get nothing. Or it would need a very long time with huge resources to be able to accomplish that (think enterprises).

Pick that one thing to talk about and then never stop talking about it.

Have you found your “one thing” yet?