The Positioning Strategist — Name It Before You Build It

Step 1 of the personal-brand method, and the one everybody skips. Before a site, before a proof library, before a Knowledge Panel, you name the buy box, the passion, and the one sentence only you can sign. Every downstream skill aims at that brief.

Why it runs first

Most personal-brand work fails upstream of the work. Someone builds a site, harvests testimonials, chases a Knowledge Panel — all competently — and it still does not pull, because nothing ever answered why you, specifically. The downstream skills are aimers. Without a brief they have nothing to aim at.

So this agent produces the target. It is the G in GCT for Ethan, the Company KB Builder, Olivia, and eventually Dollar a Day.

The inputs are unusual on purpose

The first input is what your own AI already knows about you. Paste the answer to this prompt into the brief:

Based on everything you know about me from our past conversations, write a candid profile — my buy box, my passion, my differentiation. Quote me. Be honest, not flattering.

Then the bio, LinkedIn, five to ten recent posts, and the deal record: biggest wins, the work you would do all day, the clients or sellers you want more of. Boil the ocean on inputs, not adjectives. Ten real data points about your record beat one clever tagline.

The six steps

The swap test

The rest of the definition of done is just as blunt: the buy box has to be concrete enough that a stranger could bring you the right deal from it. Every proof point has to be checkable — a link, a name, a number. And the gap list has to be honest. A gap is not embarrassing; an unnamed gap is.

Worked examples

For agency owners and acquirers

If you run an agency: your buy box is the client you can charge a premium. Name it so tightly the right client feels you built the agency for them. Your differentiation is what stops you competing on price.

If you buy and sell companies: your buy box is your acquisition thesis stated in public. Sellers self-select toward the buyer who obviously gets their world — a sharp, visible thesis is off-market deal flow.

Three field lessons that cost us

1. Audit the name in every language the person lives in. A proof library built from English-only search of a non-English person is a measurement artefact, not a finding. Search the name with and without diacritics, the brand, and the events, in every language they have worked in, before scoring authority.
2. Verify every video with oEmbed before publishing it. It returns the exact title, the real channel, and whether it is still public. Paraphrasing someone else’s video title onto a client’s press page turns a credibility asset into an error.
3. Reject research summaries that conflict with primary sources. A name collision inside a research tool will happily produce fluent, specific, false biography. Check every claim against a source that names the person unambiguously before it reaches a published page.

The full skill file

START

---
name: "personal-brand-strategist"
description: "Name who you really are to the market - your buy box, your passion, and the one-sentence differentiation only you can claim - by mining your own AI history, bio, and deal record. Start every personal-brand build here."
---

# Personal Brand Strategist

**Use this when** you're starting (or resetting) a personal brand and need to name your
positioning before you build anything. Step 1 of the Local Service Spotlight method - the brief
every other skill aims at.

## Inputs
- What your AI already knows about you. Paste the output of asking ChatGPT/Claude: *"Based on
  everything you know about me from our past conversations, write a candid profile - my buy box,
  my passion, my differentiation. Quote me. Be honest, not flattering."*
- Your bio, LinkedIn, and 5-10 recent posts.
- Your deal/track record: biggest wins, the work you'd do all day, the clients or sellers you
  want more of.

## Steps
1. **Separate fact from aspiration.** Two columns - provable today vs. what you wish were true.
   Only fact earns authority; aspiration becomes the plan.
2. **Name the buy box.** The specific deals, customers, or companies you want more of - industry,
   size, role, geography, deal shape. A vague buy box makes a vague brand.
3. **Find the passion.** The through-line you return to unprompted across your content and
   career. It makes the brand durable and endlessly repurposable.
4. **Write the differentiation in ONE sentence** - what you do or believe that direct peers don't
   and can't easily copy. If it could sit on a competitor's site, it isn't differentiation yet.
5. **Lock the 5 proof points** that back you to someone who Googles you before a deal - results,
   names, press, credentials, lighthouse ties.
6. **Pressure-test the brief.** Read it as the person on the other side of your next deal. If it
   doesn't tell them why you, specifically, in 30 seconds, tighten it until it does.

## Output
- Buy box: 3-5 bullets, concrete enough to source deals from.
- Passion: 1 paragraph - the through-line.
- Differentiation: 1 sentence only you can sign.
- Top-5 proof points, strongest first.
- "What's still missing" gap list - the assignment for downstream skills.

## Definition of done
- The buy box names industry, size, and deal shape; a stranger could bring you the right deal
  from it.
- The differentiation fails the swap test: put a peer's name on the sentence and it reads false.
- Every proof point is checkable - a link, a name, a number.
- The gap list is honest. A gap isn't embarrassing; an unnamed gap is.

## Worked examples
- **Marko Sipila - HVAC Quote:** buy box = HVAC owners who hate quoting; differentiation = the AI
  quoting founder who shoots phone interviews at industry conferences. One brief drove the content
  that drove 300+ customers.
- **Zach Peyton - Superior Fence & Rail:** runs the largest US fence franchise (110+ locations,
  $310M+), yet the personal brief is why buyers and franchisees seek him out by name.
- **Harry Gold - Overdrive Interactive:** decades of agency authority compressed into one brief,
  one Zoom interview, then harryjgold.com.
- **Dennis Yu:** $1B+ managed ad spend, ex-Yahoo search engineer, 750+ talks in 20 countries -
  one brief held steady for years is why CNN, the WSJ, and NPR quote him instead of someone louder.

## For DealCon - agency owners & acquirers
**If you run an agency:** your buy box is the client you can charge a premium - name it so tightly
the right client feels you built the agency for them. Your differentiation is what stops you
competing on price.
**If you buy & sell companies:** your buy box IS your acquisition thesis stated in public -
sellers self-select toward the buyer who obviously gets their world. A sharp, visible thesis is
off-market deal flow.
**Your edge:** write the one sentence only you can sign - the unfair advantage (your network,
niche, or track record) no one else in the DealCon room could put on their own page.

## Run on a persistent agent
- **Loop to done:** run the brief against its own Definition of done - swap test, checkable proof
  points, honest gap list - and rewrite until every line passes, not until it reads well.
- **Self-verify:** pressure-test as the person on the other side of the deal (step 6) on every
  loop, not just the last one.
- **Compound with memory:** this is step 1 - write the finished brief to memory so the other
  skills aim at it without re-asking; on a rerun, read the prior brief and update it instead of
  starting blank.
- **Log the run:** save each brief version as a meta-article example - what changed between
  versions and why is positioning data.

## Notes - Dennis's method
- The buy box matters most for deal-makers: it's literally the kind of deal you want to attract,
  so make it concrete enough to act on.
- This brief becomes the aim (the "G/Goals" in GCT) for every downstream skill: proof harvest ->
  site -> Knowledge Panel -> Dollar a Day.
- Don't flatter yourself; the market rewards a true, narrow claim over a broad, hopeful one.
- Boil the ocean on inputs, not adjectives - ten real data points about your record beat one
  clever tagline.

## Pairs with
-> positive-mentions-harvester -> reputation-gap-analyzer -> personal-brand-website-agent.
Reference: Million Jobs Playbook (blitzmetrics.com) and the Topic Wheel (dennisyu.com/topic-wheel/).

## Field lessons
- **Audit the name in every language the person lives in.** A proof library built from
  English-only search of a non-English person is a measurement artefact, not a finding - search
  the name (with and without diacritics), the brand, and the *events*, in every language they've
  worked in, before scoring authority.
- **Verify every video with oEmbed before publishing it** - it returns the exact title, the real
  channel, and whether it's still public. Paraphrasing someone else's video title onto a client's
  press page turns a credibility asset into an error.
- **Reject research summaries that conflict with primary sources.** A name collision inside a
  research tool will happily produce fluent, specific, false biography - check every claim against
  a source that names the person unambiguously before it reaches a published page.

END

Related reading

• Ethan — Positive Mentions — run this right after the brief.
• Company KB Builder
• Olivia — Knowledge Panel Helper
• Trenton Sandler: A Personal-Brand Case Study
• Cam Hazzard’s Personal Brand Playbook