Someone asks what you do. You have five seconds, and you spend them hedging, a job title, a qualifier, a "well, it depends," and then a second attempt that is longer than the first. You know your work is good. The sentence is not.
- A description that changes with every listener cannot be repeated on your behalf.
- Five answers become one sentence, and four tests decide whether it is ready.
- Use it in five places so your profile and your mouth say the same thing.
This is not a confidence problem and it is not a writing problem. It is a structure problem, and structure problems have solutions.
What follows is the formula I use, the four tests a sentence has to pass before I trust it, and the five places it goes once it works.
The tell
You describe your work differently every time someone asks.
Here is how you know you do not have a positioning statement yet: the answer changes based on who is asking. One version for recruiters, another for a conference, a shorter one for your neighbour, something vaguer for family.
Each version is honest. None of them is repeatable. And because none of them is repeatable, nobody ever hears the same thing twice, which means nothing accumulates. The person who met you at a conference last year and the person reading your profile today are forming two unrelated impressions.
A description that changes every time is a description nobody can repeat on your behalf.
Your job title is not a rescue. A title tells someone which box your employer put you in. It does not tell them who you help, what changes for those people, or why you in particular.
The formula
Five answers, one sentence.
Everything in a positioning statement comes from five questions. Answer them in plain language first, badly is fine, you are collecting raw material, not writing yet.
- Who is it for? Be specific enough that someone could be excluded.
- What do they struggle with? In their words, not your industry's.
- What do you offer? The thing itself, not the category.
- What makes it different? The part someone else could not copy by trying harder.
- Why should they believe you? Evidence. A number, a name, a thing you shipped.
Then assemble:
The structure follows the positioning statement in Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm, which he wrote for products. This version is written for a person.1
Write it three ways. Once strictly by the formula, which will sound stiff. Once in plain words, as if you were explaining it to a friend, which will be too long. Then tighten the plain version until it is the length of the formula version. The third draft is the one you use.
Four tests
A sentence you cannot defend is not finished.
Most positioning statements fail in a predictable way, so there are four tests. Run all of them. Each failure has a specific fix.
If the sentence describes an activity rather than a change, add the outcome. "I run research" becomes "I find the thing the roadmap missed."
If yes, the difference slot is empty. Put something in it that someone else could not claim by working harder.
Read it aloud. If you run out of air or stumble on a clause, it is written for the page and you will never actually use it.
If your sentence uses internal vocabulary nobody searches for, you are invisible to the people looking for exactly what you do.
The out-loud test catches the most failures. A sentence that survives on paper and dies in your mouth is the most common outcome of this exercise, and it is the one people keep anyway.
Where it goes
One sentence, five jobs.
The reason this is worth an afternoon is that you write it once and then stop rewriting it everywhere else.
Two more, and these are the ones people miss. It becomes the hook of your About section, the first two lines, which are the only part most readers see before deciding whether to expand it. And it becomes a content filter: if a post you are about to write does not connect to the sentence, it is someone else's post.
That last one is the real return. Most people do not have a content problem, they have a coherence problem. Ten posts that all point at the same sentence build something. Ten good posts pointing in ten directions build nothing.
Worked example
One sentence, filled in.
An invented example. Imagine a bookkeeper who works with independent physiotherapy clinics. Her five answers:
- Who: owners of independent physiotherapy clinics with two to ten staff.
- Struggle: they do not know their real margin until the accountant calls in March.
- Offer: monthly bookkeeping with a one-page margin report.
- Difference: the report is in plain language and arrives by the 10th.
- Proof: [number] clinics on the same schedule, [one named result].
The stiff formula version comes out as: For owners of small physiotherapy clinics who find out their margin once a year, I am the bookkeeper who sends a one-page margin report by the 10th of every month, backed by [number] clinics on the same schedule. It is accurate and it is too long to say in one breath. The plain version, the one she would actually say, is: I send small physiotherapy clinics a one-page margin report by the 10th of every month.
The four tests, applied.
So what: yes, the owner now knows their margin monthly. Only you: the one page by the 10th is a promise others can copy but few keep. Out loud: the short version fits in one breath. Search: the words physiotherapy, clinic and margin are what a clinic owner would type. It passes, so it goes in all five places.
Do it this week
Thirty minutes, one sentence, five placements.
Answer the five questions in plain language. Assemble the formula. Write three drafts. Run the four tests, out loud, on the third one. Then put it in all five places on the same day, so your profile and your mouth are finally saying the same thing.
You do not need a better job title. You need one sentence you can say out loud, defend, and repeat until other people can repeat it for you.
Sources
- Moore, G. A. (1991). Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers. HarperBusiness.
Writes The Visionary, field notes from the AI-native frontier. Building in public: practical builds, named methodology, receipts, no fluff.