The most valuable business asset isn’t what you think it is, and most entrepreneurs are wasting time chasing everything else.

Let’s cut through the noise: You don’t have a marketing problem. You have a courage problem.

There, I said it.

The thing your business coach probably tap-dances around while selling you another funnel optimisation package.

I’ve spent over 15 years watching brilliant therapists, coaches, and consultants systematically avoid the one thing that would exponentially grow their practices. And it’s not TikTok, a better website, or heaven help us – another certification!

It’s the willingness to stand for something meaningful enough that some people will actively dislike you for it.

The Painful Reality of Differentiation

Yesterday, a client called me in near tears. After investing USD$12,000 in a “high-ticket closer” program elsewhere, she had precisely zero new clients to show for it.

“I followed every step,” she explained. “I optimised my profile. I posted consistently for 90 days. I did the follow-up sequences. But it feels like I’m screaming into the void.”

When I asked her to describe her ideal client, she gave me what I call the “Coach’s Special” – a description so broad it could fit anyone with a pulse and a credit card:

“I help professionals overcome challenges, achieve their goals, and live their best lives.”

No wonder she was invisible. She was trying to be universally likeable.

But here’s what successful business leaders understand: Profound impact requires profound specificity. And specificity means some people will scroll right past you.

Professional services differentiation, firms with clearly articulated, narrow positioning saw 3.7x more inquiries and commanded fees 42% higher than their “we-do-everything” counterparts (this data is from my own clients).

The study confirmed what I’ve observed coaching hundreds of entrepreneurs:

The fear of missing out on potential clients by narrowing your focus actually guarantees you’ll miss out on all of them.

The Discipline of Saying “No”

In Singapore, where I’m based, there’s a cultural concept called “kiasu”, roughly translated as a fear of missing out or losing to others. It’s what drives parents to enrol their children in seventeen extracurriculars and what pushes businesses to chase every trend simultaneously.

It’s also what keeps most solopreneurs perpetually overwhelmed and underpaid.

Warren Buffett wasn’t just being quaint when he said, “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.”

For the helping professionals, especially, this discipline of rejection is excruciating. We entered these fields because we genuinely want to help everyone! The thought of turning away someone in need feels almost unethical.

But let me pose this counterintuitive truth: Your refusal to specialise isn’t noble, it’s selfish.

When you try to serve everyone, you dilute your expertise to the point of generic platitudes. You become what I call a “comfort entrepreneur”, someone building a business around what feels comfortable rather than what creates transformative value.

The Three-Question Courage Test

To determine if you’re operating from courage or comfort, answer these three questions honestly:

1. Can you name three ideal prospects who would hate working with you (and why)?
2. Have you lost potential clients because your approach wasn’t “positive” or “flexible” enough?
3. Could a stranger read your LinkedIn profile and immediately name the precise problem you solve?

If you answered “no” to any of these, you’re likely stuck in the cosy quicksand of comfortable entrepreneurship, where you’re working twice as hard for half the results.

Let me illustrate with a quick example:

One of my clients, a therapist transitioning to executive coaching, initially positioned herself as helping “leaders reduce stress and improve performance.” After three months of crickets, we narrowed her focus to “helping recovering perfectionists in tech leadership stop micromanaging their teams during high-growth phases.”

Too specific? That’s exactly what her competitors thought.

Four months later, she had a waiting list, raised her rates by 60%, and was speaking at industry events as the authority on leadership transitions for technical founders.

Her secret? She had the courage to be disliked by most people, so she could be essential to a few.

The Mediocrity Tax

Every day you spend trying to appeal to everyone, you’re paying what I call the “mediocrity tax”, the invisible cost of blending in.

This tax manifests in:

• Lower fees you can command (because you’re interchangeable)
• Higher marketing costs (because your message resonates with no one particularly well)
• Endless content creation (because you’re hoping quantity will compensate for lack of clarity)
• Exhausting client relationships (because you haven’t filtered for fit)

Businesses with narrowly defined audience segments achieved a 72% higher ROI on their marketing efforts compared to those targeting broader demographics.

The math is simple:

Courage pays. Comfort costs.

The Myth of the “Personal Brand”

At this point, someone inevitably brings up the concept of “personal branding” as the solution. Just create a consistent visual identity, post inspirational quotes on Instagram, and voilà – business success!

If I sound a touch cynical, it’s because I’ve watched too many talented professionals waste precious years on personal branding exercises that amount to little more than digital narcissism.

Your “brand” isn’t your logo, colour scheme, or clever tagline. It’s the transformative problem you solve and the distinctive way you solve it.

Everything else is just packaging.

In coaching sessions, I often ask a seemingly simple question: “What makes working with you a categorically different experience from working with others who offer similar services?”

The uncomfortable silence that follows is telling. Many practitioners have never considered this question deeply enough to have a compelling answer; one that goes beyond vague claims of “personalised approach” or “holistic methodology.”

From Comfortable to Courageous: The Strategic Pivot

If you’re recognising yourself in this critique, good. That’s the first step toward building a business based on courage rather than comfort.

Here’s how to make the shift:

Step 1: Embrace the Power of Strategic Rejection

Begin with clarity about who you’re NOT for.

This isn’t about being unnecessarily exclusive, it’s about being purposefully specific. Make a list of client types, problems, and approaches that you will actively avoid.

For example, when I pivoted my coaching practice, I explicitly stated I do not work with:

• People are looking for quick fixes without addressing the underlying issues
• Those unwilling to examine their role in their business challenges
• Anyone expecting me to simply validate their existing approach

This clarity has saved me countless hours of misaligned consultations and frustrating client relationships.

Step 2: Develop Your “Lighthouse Statement”

A lighthouse statement does exactly what the name suggests: it guides your ideal clients to you through the fog of generic offerings.

It follows this formula: I help [specific audience] overcome [specific challenge] to achieve [specific outcome] through [specific methodology].

The specificity is what gives it power. For example: “I help therapists transitioning to group practice overcome operational overwhelm to build sustainable 6-figure businesses through systems-based scaling methodologies.”

Notice how this statement self-selects. Those who don’t identify with the specific challenge or outcome will naturally opt out, and that’s exactly what you want.

Step 3: Create Content That Polarises

This is where most practitioners retreat to safety. They write bland, inoffensive posts that no one could possibly disagree with and consequently, that no one particularly cares about either.

Courageous content takes a stand. It challenges conventional wisdom. It presents a clear perspective that some people will disagree with.

Content with a clear point of view and counterintuitive insights generates 4.3x more engagement than purely informational or inspirational content.

My most successful clients commit to what I call the “60/30/10 Rule” for content:

• 60% of their content should educate their audience about their specific problem
• 30% should challenge industry norms or present counterintuitive insights
• 10% should directly differentiate their approach from common alternatives

For instance, a financial coach might publish content arguing that most financial freedom courses actually create dependency rather than independence, directly challenging competitors while establishing their distinctive perspective.

The Economics of Expertise

Beyond the marketing benefits, there’s a compelling economic case for courage-based business building.

When you specialise deeply in solving a specific problem for a specific audience, you create what economists call “information asymmetry”, you know something valuable that most others don’t.

This asymmetry is the foundation of premium pricing.

Consider this progression of value perception:

1. Generic Generalist: “I help people overcome challenges.” (Commodity pricing)
2. Focused Specialist: “I help female entrepreneurs overcome imposter syndrome.” (Professional pricing)
3. Problem-Specific Authority: “I help female tech founders overcome imposter syndrome during funding rounds.” (Premium pricing)
4. Outcome-Specific Authority: “I help female tech founders overcome imposter syndrome during funding rounds to increase their valuation by 30%+.” (Elite pricing)

Each level of specificity dramatically increases both the perceived and actual value of your services. By the fourth level, you’re no longer selling time or process; you’re selling a specific, measurable outcome for a precisely defined audience.

This shift fundamentally changes the economics of your business. Rather than competing on price or marketing tactics, you’re competing on the uniqueness of your solution to a specific problem.

The Case for Ethical Audacity

Some practitioners worry that this approach to business feels somehow manipulative or excessively commercial. I would argue the opposite, it’s the most ethical approach to building a service business.

When you get specific about who you serve and how you serve them, you:

1. Respect people’s time by making it immediately clear whether you’re the right fit
2. Maximise impact by focusing your expertise where it can create the most value
3. Build sustainable economics that allow you to serve deeply rather than broadly
4. Create clear expectations about outcomes and processes

The truly unethical approach is promising vague benefits to everyone while delivering transformative results to no one.

As the psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl observed, “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.”

Building a business based on courage rather than comfort provides exactly this: a freely chosen task that creates specific value for specific people.

The Path Forward: Courage as Strategy

If there’s one thing I’ve learned working with hundreds of entrepreneurs, it’s that business success is less about tactics and more about tolerance; specifically, your tolerance for being misunderstood, rejected, and occasionally criticised.

The entrepreneurs who build remarkable businesses aren’t necessarily the most knowledgeable or the most well-connected. They’re the ones willing to take a clear position and accept the consequences.

In practical terms, this means:

• Saying the quiet part out loud in your content and conversations
• Naming problems specifically rather than hiding behind euphemisms
• Taking clear positions on controversial topics in your field
• Rejecting “best practices” that don’t align with your values
• Charging properly for the value you create

Each of these actions requires courage. Each creates differentiation. And each moves you away from the crowded middle where most businesses struggle to survive.

The Final Inconvenient Truth

Here’s the statement that often stops my coaching clients in their tracks:

Your business is perfectly designed to produce the results it’s currently getting.

If you’re not attracting the clients you want, charging the fees your expertise deserves, or making the impact you’re capable of, it’s not because you need another certification, marketing tactic, or social media platform.

It’s because you’ve built a business optimised for your comfort rather than for creating distinctive value.

The good news? Courage is a practice, not a personality trait. It can be developed through small, consistent actions that gradually expand your capacity for bold positioning and clear communication.

Start with one small act of business courage today:

• Remove a service that drains you, but that you’ve kept “just in case”
• Raise your rates for new clients by at least 20%
• Write content that directly challenges a popular approach in your field
• Reach out to that dream client you’ve been too intimidated to contact

The secret to business success isn’t hidden in some marketing guru’s USD$12,000 course. It’s hidden in plain sight; in your willingness to be uncomfortably specific about who you serve, how you serve them, and why your approach is meaningfully different.

The choice is yours: continue paying the mediocrity tax, or start investing in the courage that creates clarity.

Your future clients are waiting for you to decide.

What’s one area where you’ve been choosing comfort over courage in your business? Share your thoughts in the comments, I read and respond to every one.

#BusinessCourage #StrategicDifferentiation #EntrepreneurialSuccess

About the Author: Jaye is a Business Strategist and Mentor to Entrepreneurs in the Helping Profession. Based in Singapore, she supports therapists, coaches, and wellness professionals in scaling their impact and building sustainable businesses. Her work focuses on translating clinical expertise into entrepreneurial success, leveraging over a decade of experience in coaching, training, startup development, and strategic growth

Want to explore how to develop a courage-based business strategy? Book a discovery call to discuss how Oneness programs and offerings help entrepreneurs build distinctive, profitable practices. Oneness Consultancy & Academy