Why I pay double for vegan food every Friday

It's Friday as I write this. I'm on my 3rd coffee of the morning (fighting my coffee addiction). And my stomach is starting to rumble. On Fridays I've settled into a routine over the last 6 months. I head to this tiny vegan restaurant in downtown Poblado.

The restaurant is unremarkable on the outside. You would walk right past it and not give it a second thought. Sun-beaten walls. Stripped-back interior. Looks more like a cafe than a restaurant. But here's the thing...

It's easily the best dining experience in the entire city. They have two dishes I keep coming back to time and time again... deep-fried onion tacos, papas con queso crema.

Even typing this out my mouth is starting to salivate.

I shit you not. I've had these two dishes close to 30+ times this year and I keep coming back.

Why?

Because, to put it simply, I can't get these flavours anywhere else. It would take me weeks of research to find a replacement on my culinary roster.

So I pay whatever they charge... they are easily 2x the price of the other small local spots around them.

For fucking vegan food. I know, I'm as surprised as you are... I'm the biggest carnivore I know.

I call this the buffet vs the signature dish phenomenon.

And it's one of the biggest reasons coaches and consultants never grow their practice above 6 figures and into the multi 6-figure and 7-figure range.

Think of it like this. The buffet does everything and you never really crave it. You can go get it anywhere. It's utterly interchangeable. But the signature dish, like Real Vegetal, has people queuing round the block for an onion taco.

This is the simplest lesson in the power of effective positioning I can think of.

When your expertise is only available from you, in the eyes of your customers, your price stops being in the conversation.

And you can charge egregious amounts for your unique signature blend of expertise simply because there is not another expert like you around.

Here's the brutal truth though... you already know the power of positioning if you're hitting 6 figures in your practice and you have clients.

But most experts never go all the way through with it. Positioning feels terrifying because the whole exercise is narrowing the options of who you can work with and deliver your expertise to.

Picking a niche feels like you're cutting off your options.

But that's good. It's meant to take courage. If your positioning decision doesn't feel at least a bit uncomfortable, you haven't gone narrow enough.

The way I look at it with my clients is simple:

Different beats best.

The only leverage you have as an expert is withholding your expertise.

And effective positioning for your business means your expertise and offer are not interchangeable with someone else's.

There's only two ways to pick a lane:

Vertical positioning. A defined who, for example "career coaches working with execs who wanna land a job with Google" - go deep enough into the submarket and you've got a category of one and differentiated positioning.

Or horizontal positioning... this is where 90% of experts sit. They differentiate only based on their method and offer and work with anyone with a pulse.

That's a quiet death sentence for your long-term client retention because you're interchangeable with the myriad of other people who do the same thing as you.

Champion vertical positioning. Find your signature dish and the following can happen for your business:

You stop having to sell people on what you do. They arrive already knowing and trusting.
You're relevant to fewer people, and those people happily pay more.
Higher fees and better retention, because your expertise can't be swapped out.
You escape the "teach me everything, then I fire you" cycle that kills interchangeable coaches.

In life and business, be the restaurant. You don't need to be everything to everyone. Sometimes one dish is enough to have people lining up round the block.

Want me to send you my positioning playbook to help you identify your differentiator? Reply to this email with "DISH".

Be great,

Luke Shalom