Growth = Mixed Signals?

There’s a point in building your presence when more people begin to pay attention.

Your ideas travel beyond your immediate circle. Your content reaches people at different stages. Opportunities arrive from rooms you haven’t entered yet.

And with that growth comes a question:

You can spend years becoming known for a particular kind of work. Then a new offer, a broader content series, or a change in how you introduce yourself gives people a different impression.

Each becomes another clue they use to decide what to approach you for.

That is why growing your audience requires care with your positioning.

Consider Armani Exchange. Armani describes it as an accessible expression of its world, with its own urban identity and focus on everyday wear. The connection to the parent is clear, and so is the distinct role it serves.

The useful lesson for a founder, advisor or public figure is this:

A public workshop might help someone understand a problem. A private engagement might involve applying that understanding to decisions with substantial consequences.

Both can be valuable. Their purpose, depth and demands are different.

When those differences are left unexplained, price can become the easiest comparison.

And meaningful difference has commercial value.

In a Kantar study of 810 New Zealand panel members across yoghurt and cat food, even shoppers who described themselves as price-driven paid 14% more for brands they perceived as meaningfully different. That is a consumer-category finding, rather than a forecast for professional services, but it offers a useful prompt: can people explain why they would choose you?

Here are 4 things to make clear as your presence grows:

1. The problem you want to be remembered for.

“Strategy,” “leadership” and “personal branding” leave considerable room for interpretation.

Name the situation in which your work becomes especially valuable.

Try completing this sentence:

“People come to me when __, because I help them __.”

Make it specific enough that someone could recognize the right moment to refer you.

2. The purpose of each way people can work with you.

If you have multiple offers, explain who each serves, what it helps them do, and where its scope ends.

A different name or price does little to explain the distinction on its own.

Ask yourself: could a prospective client choose the right offer without needing me to explain everything on a call?

3. The evidence behind your positioning.

Review your last ten public posts.

What do they demonstrate about your judgement, experience and the problems you can handle?

If you want to be considered for consequential work, give people evidence of how you think through complexity: the trade-offs you notice, the questions you ask, and the decisions you help clarify.

Make this evidence a recurring part of your presence.

4. The quality of the opportunities your visibility creates.

Reach tells you how far something travelled. Look at what came back, too.

Over the next month, track:

• How many enquiries fit the work you want to do?
• How many referrals describe your expertise accurately?
• How often do you need to correct someone’s understanding of your offer?

These are useful signals of your Return On Influence. They show whether attention is becoming relevant opportunity.

You can welcome a wider audience and remain precise about the work you do.

The more people your presence reaches, the clearer that distinction needs to become.

Until next week,​
​Gurnoor

P.S. If you’ve been following the new RECO series, RECO is the more accessible brand from House Of GKB. House Of GKB continues its work with HNIs/UHNIs, category creators, public figures and enterprises. The distinction is intentional: a shared foundation, with different remits.