This Is Marketing: You Cant Be Seen Until You Learn to See

The commodity suckout
If you make something that others make, if it’s something we can find on
Upwork, on Amazon, or Alibaba, you’ve got pain.
It’s the pain of knowing that if you raise your price enough to earn a
decent return on the effort you’re putting into your work, we’ll just go
somewhere else and buy it cheaper.
When the price of everything is a click away, we’re not afraid to click.
Selling ice cream on the beach in the summer is easy. Raising people’s
expectations, engaging in their hopes and dreams, helping them see further
—that’s the difficult work we signed up for.
From now on, your customers know more than you do about your
competitors. And so your commodity work, no matter how much effort you
put into it, is not enough.
“You can choose anyone, and we’re anyone”
Imagine a shoeshine stand downtown.
One approach is to find the best location you can afford and offer to
shine the shoes of anyone who needs a shoeshine.
There are problems with this.

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First, if anyone can shine shoes the way you shine shoes, then a
competitor down the street will take half of your business—more, if they
cut their price.
Second, and more important, no one needs their shoes shined. It’s a want,
not a need.
And why should anyone bother?
Perhaps that customer wants to look good, look like his dad looked, or
like Michael Jackson looked; it makes him feel good. More confident. More
likely to contribute and feel empowered.
Perhaps it’s for someone who likes the status of having someone wait on
him. Once a week, he gets to sit in a throne, with a well-dressed, respectful
craftsperson putting effort into his appearance.
Perhaps it’s a signifier. That he wouldn’t bother with this except it’s what
people like him are supposed to do. And not any shoeshine. This shoeshine,
in this public spot, from this respected craftsperson.
Any of these edges and stories and transformations are available to the
craftsperson as soon as he decides to make a difference.
Knowing that this is the story your customer tells himself is insufficient.
You still have to act on it, open the door to the possibility, and organize the
entire experience around that story.
This is the work that helps people understand that you are special, and
this is the work that makes things better.