Positioning: Why Trying to Manufacture a Niche Will Always Fail [E72]

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Show Notes:

What if your greatest business advantage isn't something you need to learn, manufacture, or emulate? 

How do you know whether you need a new strategy—or whether you've simply never taken yourself into account? 

What if positioning is something you need to uncover, understand, and build around?

In this episode, I get into orientation, and the uncomfortable process of figuring out what is actually you beneath the tactics, formulas and expectations you've accumulated along the way.

Because sometimes the thing you've been trying to fix is part of your advantage.

Episode Referenced:

Episode 64: Why the Path Forward Requires A Different Kind of Intelligence

❌The X Marks The Spot Audit™

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Email for client inquiry or collaborations (No guest pitches). iamsunitakumar@protonmail.com

Transcript

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[00:00:00] Welcome to Clear Signal and welcome to episode 72. That's relevant, but not at this moment, so I'll circle back at the end and explain why that's relevant Last episode was kind of a fake episode. It was episode 35, which I released in August, but then backdated. For guys who haven't listened to me in a couple of weeks, I had an episode 35 I released last week, and then I backdated it.

That episode is foundational because it talks about the Root Center. It was recorded in the fall of '24, and it was getting kind of ridiculous as we're almost heading into the fall of '26 that that was just laying out there. There are still three episodes that are missing, episode eight and a couple of episodes around last summer. I will fill those in, I will backdate them, and I will let you guys know when I fill them in because those are gonna be more spiritually arced [00:01:00] and very theoretical, and they're not gonna really represent where the podcast is going, so I don't want them at the top of the queue, but I'll let you guys know about them. And then we have 72 episodes. I'm being honest here, right? Because we don't actually have 72, but that's important because we're on the cusp of season two and season three. Season two was Foundations of Human Design for Business. Season three is gonna be completely different. Season three is gonna have more business, more collaboration, and it's gonna go where the podcast is where I want it to go. If you don't know, Clear Signal was really designed for 2027. I basically had to dick around for a couple years for society to catch up to where I wanna be. I redid an episode recently that is worth listening to. It is 11 minutes and 11 seconds. I didn't try to do that. That may change when I add in music, and that was when I said that moving forward will require a different form of intelligence, something like that.

And the net-net is that leaders are looking for the [00:02:00] hidden edge, and the hidden edge is not gonna come from what you see right now. It's gonna come from a different kind of intelligence. That includes human design and astrology, but not really. Those are tools. People use them as end-all be-all. Those are business models.

That is not my business model. Those are tools that I use to be able to see you better than I could otherwise, and I can see the cycles otherwise. And increasingly, that'll be less a focus of this podcast as I talk more about business stuff, but know that those are some of the tools that I use in the background Along with 30 years of business experience, and 20 years of marketing experience, and 16 years of being an entrepreneur this month.

It's all part of it. It's all foundational. Why am I sharing this with you? Because I

posted something on Substack, or I reposted something on Substack. In a post I'd done on Substack a couple of weeks ago said, "Your greatest business advantage isn't something you need to manufacture. It's something you [00:03:00] need to uncover, understand, and build around." And I read that and I thought, "Wow, that's really good."

And one of the things I'm doing is I am distilling everything I do, my podcast descriptions, my offers, my unique value proposition, my positioning statement. As I start to spread my message out, what is it that I actually do and who do I do it for? What is the net-net? Which is what all of us need to be doing.

That is positioning. How do you orient yourself in the market, and how does the market orient around you? Let's forget the isms and the unique value proposition and niche and client avatar and market research and all that. All that is important, and they are not the same things, but at the end of the day, it is orientation. This entire platform is around orientation, positioning in the marketplace, and how do you orient yourself navigating forward? Two very different [00:04:00] concepts that from a to get meta positioning perspective don't really make sense, but they are really the same thing, aren't they? First, you have to orient yourself where you are, then you navigate forward.

That's navigating with a unique kind of intelligence. You could make that a spiritual conversation. But if you're doing it in business and you're taking out the business aspect of it, I think you're missing part of the equation. You have to understand the actual model of business as well, and that's orientation as positioning

So I reposted that today and I said, "As I continue to deconstruct what I do into its simplest form and look at it across offers, tools, and types of buyers, this is still fundamentally the atomic core of it. I would even double down on this and say if you are able to do this, that will be the purest form of satisfaction you will ever feel in business.

People chasing validation, revenue [00:05:00] numbers, and money is great, but for most healthy people, it's not the end all be all or deluding themselves that self-worth equals work ethic are really chasing this. A feeling of producing value from what is innately you. There is nothing to force or fit.

It just is, and that is what I do. That is what Quantum Shift is about, right now, that's the only way to work with me in Alchemical Advisory. It is kind of entry level. One client would pay for it. It's a no-brainer. It sets you up for life. It will change your life, and it will take you six weeks, and yes, I just said that.

What I do is see what nobody else can see, say it in a way that nobody else says it, and catalyze like nothing else. One of my clients said, "Your ability to catalyze breakthroughs is unmatched." I own that. That is part of my positioning. I cut to the chase

And I break things down in a way that is so no shit [00:06:00] that now we can have a real conversation 'cause you're not confused. I don't dance around in smoke and mirrors to confuse you. That's not my brand. That's not my positioning what's interesting is as I think about this podcast and what I'm doing with this, I told you guys I was doing beta for two years. So now when we really dig into season three, we won't be beta, which is why I have a casual chat on here. I've got those three episodes that need to be filled in and we'll backdate them 'cause I don't want any podcasts that don't fit the direction. Although those will all be great episodes It'd be very easy for me to call in on the feed from two years ago that no one's gonna listen to. No, I want every piece of content on here to be quality. As I'm looking at my podcast, as I'm looking at my gifts, as I'm looking as where I've tried to perhaps mold myself a little bit into [00:07:00] what I thought I should do, what I realized is I was running away from the very thing that I do best, which is I can get on a mike, I can talk I don't need any pomp and circumstance because I've been doing this for so long and the concepts I talk about are so ingrained into me.

I don't need a script I don't need anything fancy. I like theme music, and yes, I will bring back my theme music 'cause I like it and I custom-made it. By the way, if you guys don't know, that theme music is a blend of Eye of the Tiger and Church from Kanye West and Jay-Z. One is futuristic and one is about Aries and let's fucking do this, and that to me represents entrepreneurship in 2026 like nothing else that's a choice.

I'm doing it 'cause I want music. It's not because I think podcasts have to be branded or anything like that. I was walking away from the thing that makes me, me. And then I go to these events where people are like, "Oh, you should learn to deal with stuff on the fly. You should learn to be ad hoc. You should learn to be able to navigate what things are thrown [00:08:00] at you and not worry what other people think."

I was like, "I do that anyway." I was running away from what made me, me. And a lot of times we do this in business. Why? Because the business we were in was partly us, but not quite us. Some people have said it's because they ran away from corporate. That's not really who I work with, people who are transitioning out of corporate.

But they, you know, were in corporate, and they had certain skill sets, and they ran away from the, the packaging. But they forgot that there were key aspects of that that was actually them. I'm gonna give you a little tip, which you may or may not already know. Where you have thrived in corporate or where you've thrived in roles that you didn't like, it's because it was leveraging a skill set that was innately you. So you were running away from you And a lot of you guys have gotten an aha just there. So what I do is I build the business around you. I am strategic marketing. I am root cause. The last episode was about the root center, which was foundational. I mean, think [00:09:00] about what a root canal is. Think about what root cause medicine is. Think about what all of it is. Think about a tree. You set something up at the root the tree can thrive. The tree can continue to get nutrients. Without that, it's all going to crumble. If you don't a- address a root canal, you have to get the whole freaking t- tooth removed. Sometimes you can actually have, actual physical, like, jaw damage, and that's so much of what is sold in business. And I was thinking about this Because I was just thinking about a lot of the messages I've delivered in season two about tactics and formulaic shit, which A little bit is coming to light now. We are entering a energetic time, which I've talked about on my other platform, where things are shifting, where people are looking for authentic, where people are looking for the real deal, where performative is not really gonna work, where me-too marketing is not really gonna [00:10:00] work.

Now, I'm not a social media expert, so that's the one area that I don't really understand. I don't understand social media. Because, in my opinion, people have been saying that that era was going to shift for a long time, and it hasn't yet. Is it now? I do believe yes. I also believe it's gonna take 18 months to two years.

So for me to speak on that now would be premature. But if you have been a listener to the Dark Matter show, which was formerly Cosmic Brew, which was formerly Cosmic Alarm Clock, I've been right on time for four years. I predicted a lot of the stuff that happened in business beforehand, and right there is an example.

Because to the surface simpleton, that platform is crazy. I sound crazy on that platform, especially towards the end 'cause I was singing, I was making accents, I was acting the fool. But if you are actually paying attention, what that platform is is four years of receipts of me predicting [00:11:00] shifts from a societal perspective.

Which do you think a high-level business person is interested in? Somebody who looks surface-level normal or somebody who can literally guide someone in the dark because they can see before somebody else? Who do you think I'm targeting? When you are thinking about positioning and orientation, you have to think beyond what everybody else is doing.

You have to think about, what can I do that nobody else can do? And sometimes in order to find that, you have to fuck around and find out, which is what one of my other episodes was. You're not gonna find your unique gifts by A theoretical framework. And so many people I work with, I can see where they're holding themselves back because they're trapped in a niche, they're trapped in a title, they're trapped in a, "Somebody told me I have to do this." They're trapped in this [00:12:00] shell of how they feel like they need to behave in order to be successful, in order to be taken seriously. And let me tell you, in the era that we're moving into the people who are going to take you seriously are the people who can recognize the gifts that you cannot see in yourself, and the more you hide them and you try to mask them under other things, the more the universe is not gonna be able to provide you the opportunities to showcase them if it's not obvious, is what I do best. I cut through the bullshit and I say stuff in a way that blows your face off because no one else is saying it in this way. And it feels true because it is episode 72 is relevant because 72 is the smallest Achilles number. Do you know who Achilles was? Achilles was a great warrior. Achilles was known for his strength, but Achilles was also somebody that [00:13:00] he had an Achilles heel. As you know, one of the most painful injuries And that is because his mother dipped him into the lake of immortality, and held him by his heel So, so many business owners, they are so powerful, but they can't see for themselves where they're weak.

Weak is a s- bad word. Better word. Insert better word there. I can't

So I'll give you an example for myself. As a defined heart, I often can do things better than other people. And as you know in business, if somebody can do something 80% as good as you, you should hand it off. No one's ever gonna do it like you can do it because nobody is gonna care as much as you care. That has been a bottleneck and will be a bottleneck until I address it. And that is my Achilles heel. What makes me so perfectionistic and makes me so dedicated to quality is also my Achilles heel, which is really in my [00:14:00] chart, by the way. There is a place I can find this in your chart, and it's not your Chiron. Okay? That is overplayed. The, the wound is everything. No. Is it relevant? Sure, especially in addiction, especially in certain business models where you really have had to gone through what the person has had to go through. Absolutely, your Chiron can be a marketing piece

Too many people leverage it in ways that I think are, in my view, very obviously leveraging fake pain, but we're not gonna go there today. People buy it. I don't One of the challenges of seeing what everybody else can't see is you also can see the bullshit, and then when you call it out early, you're just early. I called out something a year ago in the astrological community with receipts, and then a year later it became a huge scandal, and who was right? [00:15:00] I was. Who was negative at the time? I was. People sometimes are more focused on acting like we're recess on a playground, and everybody has to be liked, and we have to Kumbaya My Lord with everybody than we are with actually seeing what the fuck is happening it's why people hire me. And I was reducing it a little bit to be more podcaster-y, and I'm like, "Why am I doing that?" I'm looking to attract people onto my platform who are a fit for my offers or my world, and if I'm not doing that, why am I doing it? 72 is the smallest Achilles number. It is two to the third power times three to the second power. There's a whole mathematical calculation there about why it's an imperfect number, and so the whole thing was Achilles was perfect but an imperfect. That's the play on the numbers thing. And how could I not in the gateway [00:16:00] between season two and season three, and it's episode 72, with some caveats, which I've given you. We're missing a few, but it is episode 72. And think about that for yourself. Think about where what makes you strong actually is what making you weak. Where can you not see? One of the things that I do is, like I said, I see what other people can't see. But I'm here for people who know that there's something bigger happening below the surface, but they also know they can't or don't want to figure it out for themselves. People who understand the notion of Achilles is you cannot figure it out yourself. You cannot see it for yourself, or you can waste your time doing that instead of doing what you're actually supposed to do that's who I'm here for, and that's what I do. So that's what I do in Quantum Shift. That is when you're stuck in business, you don't know why.

You don't want to waste three years spinning your wheels, and instead in six weeks I'm like, "Here's what you're here to do. Here's what's holding [00:17:00] you back. Here's your unique value proposition. Here is your superpowers, and here's what you should be doubling down and leveraging," and you have that for life.

Your business is gonna change, your business model is gonna change, your clients are gonna change. That's not gonna change and whatever is the piecemeal version of that is I'm still figuring out. Nothing has felt like a yes, so I haven't offered it. I don't offer things that don't solve a problem. Sometimes when you do deep alchemical work and you offer things that are surface so that people can feel like they got some lower cost version of you, you actually fuck people more because they feel like they walked away. And somebody else I know said it well. They said, "They're walking away bleeding and they think they're solved, and then they actually just get sepsis later." Clarity sometimes is actually dangerous, surface clarity, depending on the work you do, and that is part of my money map.

So one of the things I mentioned in the last episode, which is now [00:18:00] backdated, is something known as The Money Map™, and The Money Map™, is how you're designed to make money.

Yes, you are designed to make money a certain way in business, ideally built into your DNA And that is a foundational component of a system I'm building, and that is something you have for life. It is building block. It is load-bearing. What does load-bearing mean? It means you can put as many other things on top of it, as many other bells and whistles, platforms, and all that shit. And it's load-bearing, means it doesn't matter, it's not gonna change. It doesn't buckle under the weight of that. It shouldn't. And if you put something on top of that and it doesn't fit, it means it wasn't meant to fit because it's not you.

Going back to what I said at the beginning of this

Root you Is it? [00:19:00] You need to uncover it. You need to understand it. You need to build around it, and I would say you need to build on top of it

The only reason I would say build around it is because let's say you have a money map and you have five different revenue streams. Well, they're not actually built all on top of that. They're built surrounding it. But it is still keystone. It still holds everything together, which is what I do in everything I do.

So I'm not here for people who want surface shit, because surface shit is what placates your brain to thinking you've done something. Makes you feel good Makes you check a box. I am the anti, "I'm looking for the blueprint. Give me the blueprint." If you are someone who's like, "Give me the blueprint I am actively repelling you as a audience member and as a client, which is a bold statement.

I really do think we're coming [00:20:00] to a place where we have to be very, very focused on attraction and repulsion. I've said that before. Last summer, I talked about bees. I think this is gonna be even more important moving forward. I really do Talk to me in 18 months and see if I'm right

If you guys understand energy, what's happening, and you understand the notion of the sun and bees, what I talked about last summer, well, then you'll get it. And in the episode I did that's 11 minutes and 11 seconds about how leaders are going to need a different kind of intelligence moving forward, I said in that, "Talk to me in 2032 and tell me I was wrong."

So This platform was built for 2027 and 2028 And that's why I've said, as a 5/1 and just with the way I am, I'm built for people who have fucked around and found out. The people who look for the tactics, the people who waste their time, the people who are attracted to the [00:21:00] person who's gonna tell you what you wanna hear, and then get fucked, and then need a different solution. That's who I'm here for, and the smart people don't need to go that far. But generally, you have to do that first, as a general rule. Not everyone is like that. My point is this. Everything in business that is your greatest advantage is something that you need to uncover and build around. It is not a tactic you need to build on top of, and unless you're willing to look at what is underneath and what is you and build from you

The rest of it is gonna feel, there's gonna always be like, I need to seek something else. And one of the biggest Achilles' heels people have, and I don't have this, is work ethic. They think that the harder they work, that that somehow translates into some type of self-worth, patting on the back validation that society has lauded and built up. Business owners are the worst of this because somewhere along the line people got this notion that if you're a business owner, you're not allowed to rest, you have to work 24/7. I don't know where that came from. [00:22:00] We are all prone to that because we get obsessed with stuff, we get focused on stuff.

I've been the worst of that, and looking back, that just caused poor lifestyle It wasn't the smartest move, and at the time I got myself into a situation and I had to do that to get out of it. We all do that sometimes. We all make mistakes. If we didn't make mistakes, we wouldn't be human. If we didn't live up to our mistakes, if we didn't learn from our mistakes, we wouldn't be human, which is what I talked about on The Root Center episode.

This isn't about being perfect. Achilles was never perfect, hence him as the thematic arc for this. But remember that what makes you you, what makes you strong, what makes you an Achilles is what you should be doubling down on, and too many people are not focusing on finding that, and instead they're focused on everything else

That is your episode for today. Money Map in the show notes. It is how you're designed to make money. I'm doing this at a rapid fire research [00:23:00] rate because I am doing certain things that I will explain at some point in the future. I have two dates in August. One of them is actually this Friday, and one of them is the end of August

You need an exact birth time, you show up. It's like 20, 25 minutes. I give you the thing. I don't teach you astrology. I don't explain it to you. I tell you, "Here's how you're designed to make money." I ask you questions, make sure you understand it, make sure you know how to leverage it in your business, and then I probably take about five minutes to get questions from you just to make sure that I actually landed the plane.

I've already done this with a number of people. I wouldn't be charging money if I didn't- already know it works. That's one of my Achilles' heels. As a one line and a Virgo, I go through perfectionism. I could be selling this for way more already done, but I'm like, I want it top down, bottom up, load-bearing, know it works, where does it not fit.

I wanna work with the people with a number of ideally different business models, and obviously, everyone has a different chart. This is natal to you. I don't normally do natal chart anything but this is natal to you, which means it never changes[00:24:00] 

That's a lot of words in a short amount of time I'll see you as we kick off season three at end of the month or early September after Labor Day, and money map in the show notes

Episode 35, if you haven't heard already, probably worth a listen. Root Center episode

I'll see you then