Scan time: 2-3 minutes / Read time: 3-5 minutes
Hey rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
Divya writes a weekly newsletter about big-batch salads and grain bowls.
She started it for one reason: lunch that isn't sad, soggy, or beige.
She helps busy people eat well all week — without a meal-prep coach.
And her readers? They want exactly that — no more Monday salad gone limp by Wednesday.
⛳️ Problem:
Divya describes her newsletter as "healthy, easy recipes for busy people."
Which is exactly what a thousand other accounts say too. Yikes.
New readers can't tell why hers is different. So they don't subscribe.
A year in, she sounds interchangeable with the whole healthy-food crowd.
Her problem: how to make readers instantly get why she's different.
🔥 The recipe
➡️ Position against the alternative
Picture two lemonade stands on the same street.
One sign says "lemonade."
The other says "cold lemonade, $1 cheaper than the gas station."
Which one do you walk up to? The one that beats the thing you'd buy anyway.
That's what April Dunford figured out.
She runs Ambient Strategy, her own positioning consultancy.
Over 200 tech companies have paid her to fix how they sell.
She wrote Obviously Awesome, the go-to book on positioning.
Her take: you don't define yourself in a vacuum.
You define yourself against the thing your reader would pick instead.
They already have a default in mind.
Your job is to beat that specific thing, not "everyone."
And get this — Dunford learned it the hard way.
Her team sold a piece of software as "a better spreadsheet."
Buyers shrugged — they already had spreadsheets. Sales flopped.
Then she noticed the one thing buyers actually loved.
It was small enough to run inside phone apps, which no rival could do.
So she stopped calling it a spreadsheet.
She named it for that one strength instead — and sales took off.
🚗 The steps
🔍 Step 1 — Name the real alternative.
Think about where you'd grab dinner with no plan.
It's not "every restaurant in town."
It's the one pizza place you always default to.
That single default — not the whole field — is what you position against.
Divya names her reader's default.
It's not other newsletters.
It's the sad $14 desk salad they buy at noon.
That's the thing to beat.
⚔️ Step 2 — Show where you clearly win against it.
A good deal doesn't say "we're better."
It says "half the price, twice the size."
Concrete wins move people.
Vague "better" convinces no one.
So list the exact spots where you beat that default.
Divya lists her wins over the desk salad.
Cheaper, prepped once for the whole week, never soggy, actually filling.
Real reasons — not "healthy and easy."
🏷️ Step 3 — Say it in their words, up front.
Read the back of a cereal box that actually sells you.
It doesn't open with a clever slogan.
It says the one thing you'd swap it for.
So lead with the contrast, in plain words a stranger gets cold.
Divya rewrites her tagline.
"Prep one big bowl Sunday — and never buy a sad $14 salad again."
Now a stranger gets it in one read. Boom.
The prompt below repositions you against the alternative your reader would otherwise choose.
You just tell it your topic and what readers do without you.
🧸 Beat the real default + say it plainly = readers who instantly get you.
🏄♀️ The prompt
Save this prompt as a Skill or add to Project in your favorite AI tool — build once, use often.
Update your input values in the prompt or just run as is, your AI sidekick will use the example values and will give output.
CONTEXT:
- (use what's available, fall back to the inline values)
- If my Voice Profile exists, write in that voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak.
- If my ICP / Audience doc exists, target that reader. Otherwise, use the audience below.
Inputs:
How I currently describe what I do (the generic line that sounds like everyone else):
{e.g. "healthy, easy recipes for busy people"}
What my reader would actually do if I didn't exist (their real default — a habit, a product, a competitor):
{e.g. buy a soggy $14 desk salad at noon, or skip lunch}
Where I genuinely beat that default (the specific, concrete advantages):
{e.g. cheaper, prepped once for the whole week, never soggy, actually filling}
For Audience: {e.g. desk workers tired of sad, expensive lunches by Wednesday}
For Outcome: {e.g. a sharp positioning line built against the real alternative, in plain words}
Outputs:
1. The real alternative — one sentence naming what my reader does instead of me (not "competitors," the actual default).
2. The win list — the 3-4 specific, concrete ways I beat that default. No vague "better."
3. The repositioned description — my newsletter described in terms of beating that alternative, in the reader's words.
4. The new one-line tagline — a single sentence a stranger instantly gets, built on the contrast.
Then name the generic phrase I should delete because it makes me sound like everyone else.
One real default named, not vague rivals.
One list of concrete ways you win.
One line a stranger gets in a single read.
That's it, my fellow outliers!
Yours 'making entrepreneurship fun again with your AI sidekick and AI coach' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️