Strategy Note 1: The Invisibility of Universal Appeal

The brands that struggle most share a common trait: they are trying to appeal to everyone.

This sounds like wisdom. Cast a wide net, catch more fish. Remove barriers to entry. Make your offering accessible to anyone who might conceivably want it. The logic seems unassailable.

In practice, universal appeal creates invisibility.

When you speak to everyone, your message becomes so diluted that no one hears it as meant for them specifically. The person scrolling past does not stop because nothing in your message signals this is for you. There is no recognition, no jolt of "wait, they're talking about me," no reason to pay closer attention.

I think about this when I watch brands contort themselves to avoid alienating anyone. They sand down every edge. They qualify every statement. They use language so broad it could apply to any business in any industry serving any customer. They become, in effect, a blank space onto which no one projects anything—because there is nothing distinctive enough to project onto.

The fear behind universal appeal is understandable. Specificity feels like exclusion. If you say "I work with female founders building service-based businesses," you have just excluded male founders, product-based businesses, and anyone who does not identify as a founder at all. That feels like leaving money on the table.

But consider what specificity actually does.

The female founder building a service-based business who encounters your message does not experience exclusion. She experiences recognition. Finally, someone who understands my specific situation. Finally, someone who is not trying to serve everyone and therefore serves no one well. Finally, someone I can trust to know what I actually need.

That recognition is worth more than a thousand vaguely interested prospects who might theoretically become customers but probably will not.

The math of specificity works in your favor even when it feels like it shouldn’t. A message that resonates deeply with 100 people creates more business than a message that vaguely interests 10,000. The deeply resonant message gets shared, remembered, acted upon. The vaguely interesting message disappears into the scroll.

I learned this the hard way. Early in my work, I tried to position myself as a brand strategist for "social impact businesses," a category so broad it includes nearly everyone who's ever hung a shingle. I was invisible because I was everywhere.

When I narrowed—when I started speaking specifically to ambitious women who are tired of being best-kept secrets, who value depth and substance, who want strategy that feels like magic—something shifted. Fewer people saw themselves in my message. But the people who did saw themselves so clearly that they reached out, engaged, hired me, referred others.

You cannot be the obvious choice for someone who does not know they are the someone you serve.

The work is not to appeal to more people. The work is to appeal so specifically to the right people that choosing anyone else feels like a compromise.

This requires courage. It requires accepting that some people will self-select out, that your message is not for them. It requires trusting that the people who remain are exactly the people you want.

But that is the trade-off that builds a business worth running. Visibility to the right people. Invisibility to everyone else. And the clarity that comes from knowing exactly who you are talking to.

Stay Curious,