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Hello rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
Claire writes a weekly newsletter about easy cocktails and mocktails at home.
She started it for people who want a great drink, minus the whole bar cart.
Her pitch is simple: a good drink is three ingredients and confidence.
And her readers? They want exactly that — fancy drinks, zero fuss.
⛳️ Problem:
Claire's newsletter looks like every other drinks newsletter out there.
Same trendy recipes, same neon photos, same influencer tone.
So she does what we all do — she copies what's working for the big accounts.
And the more she copies, the deeper she sinks into the crowd. Yikes.
A year in, she blends into an inbox full of identical drink emails.
Her problem: how to stand out when everyone covers the same thing.
🔥 The recipe
➡️ When everyone zigs, zag
Picture a street where every shop sells the same red umbrella.
You walk past all of them without looking, right?
Then one shop hangs a bright yellow one — and your eyes go straight to it.
That's what Marty Neumeier figured out about crowded markets.
He built and ran branding firms — including Neutron, later merged into Liquid Agency.
Big companies paid him to make their brands stand out.
He wrote Zag, a classic on brand differentiation read by founders everywhere.
His take: in a crowded market, copying the leaders makes you invisible.
The winning move isn't to do it better.
It's to do it differently.
So get this — in the 2000s every carmaker raced to build bigger SUVs.
MINI, a small British car brand, did the opposite and went tiny.
While the giants fought over the same crowd, MINI owned the buyers who wanted small.
🚗 The steps
👀 Step 1 — List what everyone in your niche does.
Before a magician fools you, they study every trick the others already use.
You can't surprise a crowd until you know what they expect.
So write down the shared playbook — the clichés everybody follows.
That list is the zig.
Claire lists the drinks-world zig in two minutes.
Trendy syrups, neon photos, "you NEED this gadget," boozy everything.
↩️ Step 2 — Pick one thing to do the opposite of.
Think of a room where everyone's shouting to be heard.
The one person who whispers is the one you lean in to hear.
So choose a single cliché and flip it hard.
The flip is your zag — and your edge.
Claire flips two at once.
Three-ingredient drinks, no gadgets — and half her recipes are alcohol-free.
🧭 Step 3 — Make the zag your whole identity.
A band with one weird, unforgettable look beats ten polished cover bands.
The look isn't a gimmick.
It's the thing people remember.
So don't just dabble in the difference — commit to it.
Let it shape your name, your photos, your every issue.
Claire rebrands around "three things, no bar cart."
Now readers spot her in a crowded inbox instantly.
The prompt below finds your zag by mapping what everyone else zigs on.
You just tell it your niche and what the big accounts all do.
🧸 Do the opposite of the crowd = an edge nobody can copy.
🏄♀️ 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:
My niche and what the big accounts in it all do (the shared playbook everyone copies):
{e.g. home cocktails — everyone does trendy syrups, neon photos, "you need this gadget," all-boozy drinks}
What I've been copying from them (the clichés I've adopted that make me blend in):
{e.g. the neon look, the gadget pushes, chasing whatever drink is viral that week}
What I genuinely believe that's a little against the grain (a real opinion the crowd doesn't share):
{e.g. great drinks should be three ingredients, no gadgets, and often alcohol-free}
For Outcome: {e.g. my zag — the deliberate opposite I commit to, and how it reshapes my brand}
Outputs:
1. The zig list — the shared clichés of my niche, written plainly, so I can see the playbook everyone follows.
2. My zag — the one or two clichés I should flip hard, based on what I actually believe, and why the flip stands out.
3. The commitment plan — how to make the zag my whole identity (name, look, recurring angle), not a one-off.
4. The thing to stop copying — the cliché I should drop today because it's making me invisible.
Then write a one-line positioning statement built entirely around my zag.
One zig list of everyone's clichés.
One bold flip that becomes your edge.
One identity nobody in the feed can copy.
That's it, my fellow outliers!
Yours 'finding high-potent AI lazy automations so you work less and enjoy life' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️