The Roots of Differentiation: How to Find a Unique Value Proposition Only You Can Claim
There is a particular kind of despair that settles in when you realize you sound exactly like your competitors.
You have worked for years building something real. You know your craft inside and out. You have put in the hours, endured the heartbreak, and acquired the slow accumulation of expertise that separates practitioners from pretenders. You have every reason to believe you stand apart. And then you visit a competitor's website, and the copy could have been lifted directly from your own. We help X do Y. Results-driven. Client-focused. Passionate about excellence.
It is enough to make you question whether differentiation is even possible, whether the market is so saturated that everyone ends up saying the same nothing in slightly different fonts.
I am here to tell you that the problem is not saturation. The problem is that you are answering the wrong question.
The Trap of "We Help X Do Y"
Most brands, when asked to articulate their value proposition, reach for the formula that feels safest: We help [audience] do [outcome].
We help small business owners grow their revenue.
We help busy professionals get in shape.
We help B2B companies generate more leads.
These statements are not wrong. They are just useless. They describe the category you operate in rather than the reason anyone should choose you over every other option in that category. They are the brand equivalent of a restaurant describing itself as "a place where people eat food." Technically accurate. Entirely forgettable.
The reason this happens is that most people mistake category membership for differentiation. They think that describing what they do is the same as describing why they matter. But every nutritionist helps people eat better. Every brand strategist helps companies clarify their message. Every business coach helps entrepreneurs grow. Naming the category puts you in competition with everyone else in that category, and once you are competing on the same playing field, you end up competing on price—which is a race to the bottom that no one wins.
The solution is not to describe yourself better. It is to find what cannot be described by anyone else.
Real differentiation lives somewhere else entirely.
The Three Taproots
When I work with clients to excavate their unique value proposition, I use a diagnostic built around three taproots. Your brand has three taproots—each one reaching toward something essential. One taps into your excellence. One taps into their craving. One taps into what cannot be copied. Your UVP is not found in any single root. It is found in the deep soil where all three draw from the same source.
The First Taproot: What You Do Exceptionally Well
This is what you do best—not what you can do competently, but what you do better than almost anyone. The thing that comes so naturally to you that you forget it is rare. The approach that seems obvious to you but that others marvel at when they see it in action.
Most people are terrible at identifying this because their greatest strengths have become invisible through familiarity. You do not notice what you are swimming in. The work that lights you up, the problems you solve effortlessly, the feedback you consistently receive about what you bring that others do not—these are the breadcrumbs leading toward what you do best.
The Second Taproot: What They Actually Crave
This is not what your audience says they want. It is what they truly crave, often without articulating it even to themselves.
People say they want to lose weight. What they crave is confidence in their body. People say they want more customers. What they crave is validation that their work matters. People say they want a better brand. What they crave is to be seen, to be understood, to stop being the best-kept secret in their industry.
Craving lives beneath the surface of stated needs. It is emotional before it is logical. And the brands that speak to craving rather than surface wants are the ones that create the kind of loyalty that defies rational explanation.
The Third Taproot: What Your Competitors Cannot Replicate
This is your moat—not a feature that anyone could copy with enough time and money, but something genuinely unreplicable. It might be an unusual combination in your background. It might be a proprietary methodology you have developed through years of iteration. It might be an extreme specialization that makes competition irrelevant. It might be a level of commitment that others are simply unwilling to match.
The key word is cannot, not have not. If your competitors could copy your differentiator in six months, it is not a moat. It is a head start. Real moats take years to build, which is exactly why they are valuable.
Uncovering What You Do Best
Let me walk through how to identify each taproot, starting with what you do exceptionally well.
The first approach is to look for the thing that lights you up. Not what you are good at grudgingly, but what you lose time doing. The work that does not feel like work, that you would do even if no one paid you, that leaves you energized rather than drained. What you do best often hides in the activities that give you energy rather than take it.
The second approach is to analyze your greatest hits. Look back at your best work—the projects that exceeded expectations, the clients who became evangelists, the moments when everything clicked. What did those situations have in common? What specific abilities made them successful? The pattern in your peak performances reveals what you might be taking for granted.
The third approach is to ask directly. What do clients praise you for? What feedback keeps appearing across different projects and contexts? What do people say you bring that they cannot find elsewhere? Sometimes the people who have experienced your work can articulate what you do best more clearly than you can, precisely because they have the distance you lack.
The danger at this stage is being too modest. You are not looking for something rare in the world—you are looking for something rare in your market, among the options your potential clients are actually considering. You do not need to be the best in the world. You need to be the best option for your specific people with their specific needs.
Uncovering Their Craving
The second taproot is about understanding what your audience truly craves, and this requires the kind of research that most brands skip because it is uncomfortable and time-consuming. (Which is precisely why it becomes a competitive advantage for those who do it.)
Start with the exact words your audience uses. Not your industry terminology, not your carefully crafted marketing language—their raw, unpolished descriptions of their problems and desires. Where do you find these words? Customer reviews, both of your offerings and your competitors'. Community forums and social media discussions. Discovery calls and sales conversations. Testimonials that reveal not just outcomes but emotional transformations.
Pay attention to what they say when they think no one is selling to them. The language they use among themselves is different from the language they use when a marketer is listening. That unguarded language is gold.
Look for the gap between what they say and what they mean. They might say they want more leads, but what they mean is they want the security of knowing the business will survive. They might say they want to improve their brand, but what they mean is they are tired of being overlooked. The craving beneath the surface is what you need to speak to.
Ask what they have already tried and why it did not work. The failures reveal the cravings that went unmet. If they tried a productivity system and abandoned it, you learn what they were really seeking from productivity. If they hired a coach and felt disappointed, you learn what they were hoping for beneath the stated goals.
The danger at this stage is assuming you already know. Your audience craves what they crave, not what you would crave if you were them. Humility is required. The brands that resonate are the ones that ask instead of assume.
Uncovering Your Moat
The third taproot is about what you have or can do that your competitors cannot or will not replicate.
One type of moat is an unusual background combination. Kasia Urbaniak brings together the perspectives of a former dominatrix, a Taoist nun, and a power dynamics teacher—a combination no one else has. My own work draws from being a third culture kid, from a personal library of over two thousand books spanning mythology, psychology, and business strategy, and from a specific understanding of how archetypal patterns create devoted followings. These combinations create perspectives that others cannot access by copying tactics or methodologies.
Another type of moat is a proprietary methodology. Something you developed through years of work, tested and refined across dozens of clients and contexts. CRAVE is my proprietary methodology—a diagnostic I built from studying what makes brands impossible to forget.
Another type is extreme specialization. Cora Harrington built an entire platform around lingerie as fashion, art, and history—a niche so specific that competition becomes irrelevant. When you go narrow and deep instead of wide and shallow, you own a category rather than competing in one.
And sometimes the moat is simply commitment level. What are you willing to do that others will not? What investment have you made that others have not matched? Building a library that spans disciplines and reading widely enough to make unexpected connections is a commitment most will not make. Ten thousand hours of practice in a specific domain creates a moat that cannot be bought.
The danger at this stage is confusing features with moats. "We offer responsive customer service" is a feature. Anyone can copy it. "We have studied this specific problem for fifteen years and developed approaches no one else has tested" is a moat. Features can be replicated. Moats cannot.
Where the Taproots Converge
Your unique value proposition lives in the deep soil where all three taproots meet.
This is the convergence of what you do exceptionally well, what your audience truly craves, and what your competitors cannot replicate. It is not a tagline you craft in a brainstorming session. It is an excavation of something already true about you—something that was there all along, waiting to be uncovered.
There is no formula for this—only questions. Who specifically do you serve, and what do they ache for beneath the surface? What do you bring that others cannot? What transformation do you make possible that no one else can claim? When you can answer all three from the same deep place, you have found your UVP.
Here is what that looks like in practice—my own UVP:
For ambitious women who are tired of being the best-kept secret in their industry, I am a brand strategist who connects mythology, literature, and archetypal psychology to business strategy, helping you transform from invisible to iconic through the CRAVE Diagnostic—unlike typical brand strategists who focus on logos and colors without the deeper strategic foundation that actually creates devoted followings.
Could a competitor say that? No—it requires my specific background, my specific methodology, my specific commitment. Does it make someone think "that is exactly what I need"? If they are my ideal client, yes. Does it sound like me? Absolutely.
That is the test. If your competitor could say it, you have not found your UVP yet. If it does not speak to a genuine craving, you need to go back to the second taproot. If it does not sound like you, the authenticity is missing.
What Grows from These Roots
Your UVP is useful for clarifying your thinking, but the real work is deeper than any sentence can contain.
Once you understand your three taproots, that understanding infuses everything you create. Your website copy. Your social media presence. Your conversations with potential clients. The differentiation that emerges from this work does not need to be stated explicitly every time—it radiates from your work because you have internalized what makes you irreplaceable.
Most people stop at "what do I do?" and never get to "what makes what I do unreplicable?" That is why most brands sound identical. That is why the market feels saturated when in reality it is full of people who have not done the excavation work.
Do not optimize for sounding professional. Optimize for being unmistakable.
Find your three taproots. Follow them down to where they converge. Let the differentiation emerge from truth rather than strategy.
Your real value proposition is waiting there, in the deep soil where it has always been.
