Why I Made Major Changes to My Newsletter's Positioning

I've been in marketing for 5 years now (longer if you count my self-publishing career).

During that time, I've learned a lot. Made almost every mistake in the book. And stumbled my way into a few big wins (hundreds of thousands of books sold, tens of thousands in affiliate earnings, etc.).

If I was strapped to a rocket aimed at a field of puppies and the only way to free myself (and save the puppies) was to tell you the one marketing idea that would unlock everything else, it'd be this: pick one, incredibly tightly defined audience — ideally one you are already, naturally a part of.

The reason should be obvious: focus makes our jobs easier. It makes selling easier.

As the bible of marketing says it:

The essence of marketing is narrowing the focus. You become stronger when you reduce the scope of your operations. You can't stand for something if you chase after everything.

— Al Ries and Jack Trout from The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

So, that is exactly what I did. But like any good story, the gold is in the specifics, so let's dive in.

Problemista

Up to this point, Bending Pink Steel has had two guiding principles: (1) it's for men and (2) it's about mental health.

Problem 1 is that "men" is not a niche. Neither is women. Those buckets are far too big. There's too much variety within. There are no patterns to tap into or advantages to leverage.

The niche you choose should give you an unfair advantage. So, if you don't have one you're either not in the right niche for you - or not in a niche at all.

Problem 2 was the generality of "mental health." I simply didn't know what I was trying to tackle. Depression? Anxiety?

Then, the more I bumped up against those topics the more it felt like I was driving outside of my lane. I didn't want to compete against psychologists and therapists —nor did those battles interest me.

I think one of the most humbling experiences was getting to talk to dozens of other creators at the Newsletter Conference in New York.

During that event, I had to explain what I did over and over again. And each time, I was pretty dissatisfied with the answer. You could tell the audience was too. It just wasn't clear or distinct enough to be worth remembering.

Because I didn't know who it was for, I also didn't know who to keep out.

The last straw was the postcard marketing blunder.

Nearly $2,000 spent with little to show for it.

That was my sign that something needed to change and fast. I'm a great communicator, so for every single one of my marketing experiments to come up short... that was a humbling experience.

But it also forced me back to basics. To accept the truth of the situation and find where I had messed up along the way.

Just In Time

I was neck-deep in this stuckness when the MKT1 newsletter published the following piece:

It is arguably the best content on positioning available on the internet. It helps if you have the context of product marketing like I did - but it's still accessible if you don't.

The premise was simple: work their process to come up with a clearer "who" (your ideal customer), a clearer "what" (the value your product delivers, not just what your product is), and then use those newfound insights to take better actions.

For the next 2 days, I did exactly that. I burned through a dozen of these handwritten pages - combing through every mental health resource I could find, along with every man-focused resource too.

I narrowed down what I was drawn to and started identifying the gaps.

For me, the intersection of physical fitness and mental health was the loudest voice on every page. There's such a strong link between the two, but in nearly every resource I studied that link was merely background noise for something else they wanted to say.

What if I took it out of the background and brought it to the forefront?

💡

PS: I know I skipped over a lot of the gritty positioning work itself. If you want to see how I'd actually walk through the MKT1 process, or if you have questions about how to apply it to your project, shoot me a note on X.

The CrossFit Advantage

Now, if the whole process up to this point seems a little fuzzy, that's because it is.

Positioning work is a lot of wading through the dark until you stumble upon cracks in the ceiling where a little light can get through. Then, you grab a sledgehammer and start wailing away at the crack to see where the weak spots are so that, eventually, clarity can flood right in.

At this point in the process, these are the nuggets I had in place:

My new positioning will still include men and mental health
But physical fitness has to be at the core of this project.
My own fitness journey took a massive turn when I started CrossFit.

This is where the first major piece came together. What if I only focused on men who do CrossFit?

I'm already a part of the target group.
My advantage is the years I've been in the community (I know the players, the seasonal way the sport works, the gaps in their offerings, etc.).
I can offer a product that compliments the changes they're already experiencing.

Here's why this is such an attractive niche.

Unlike the creator economy that is primarily supported by ads & sponsorships, the CrossFit industry is primarily supported by subscription products (gym memberships, apps, recurring supplements). Therefore, my product & business model would fit right in.
I know exactly where my avatar is multiple days a week — at one of the 5,000 affiliated CrossFit gyms in the US. That means I can target them, send them physical mail, and hone in my efforts.
Influence is still very concentrated in the community. There are roughly a dozen influencers who account for 90%+ of the content CrossFitters pay attention to. This is a wild. It's basically the modern version of TGIF from the 90s, when everyone talked about the same shows come Monday morning. If I can break in, I win.
Finally, the fact that my avatars all talk to each other multiple times per week means the spreadable potential is massive. Every gym I reach could account for 1-50 potential customers on average.

Benefits

Let's get explicit about what these changes enabled me to do:

Be able to say "no, this is not for you" or "heck yes, this is for you" immediately upon talking to ANY potential reader.
Charge more because of it's specificity (we'll talk about this in an upcoming report)
Plan my content better now that I know exactly who I'm writing for.

Mental Fitness vs. Mental Health

Once I got the "who" in place, the last piece was crafting a positioning statement that made sense for that group of people.

Here's what I came up with:

Now, the reason for changing from health to fitness terminology is less quantifiable than I'd like to admit.

In one sense, there's been a clear uptick in searches for the term over the last 5 years. But filtering out which of those might be due to our aging presidents and leaders is hard to do.

What I can say is that "mental fitness" passes the gut check.

It allows me to write about a broader span of topics while moving away from the therapist/psychologist niches of actual mental health support.
It helps me frame my content as a supplement to overall health. I'm a gym, not a hospital.
The goals are more in line with CrossFit men. They were attracted to functional fitness for a reason. It's different than straight weight lifting or cycling or running. There's variety and practically embedded into it. Two things I know I can deliver with my product.

Furthermore, I'm filling a real gap in the industry. I can confidently partner with gym owners, influencers, and supplement-sellers, knowing that my product is not competing against theirs. It's complementing it.

Your Niche

If you want to see more of the changes I made in person, scan over my website. Read the about page, the CTAs, the welcome series. Look at the examples I include, the sites I link to, and pay attention over the coming months to the type of people I associate with.

A niche isn't just a thing you claim. It's a thing you have to inhabit.

Most marketing is outsider marketing. It's people who don't really know who you are, trying to sell you products you don't really need. Outsider tactics require a lot of money and force to be effective.

Insider marketing is the opposite. It's swimming downstream, with the current. It's becoming the customer before you try to sell them. It's offering help that just happens to be a product.

This isn't just outbound vs. inbound either. It's about empathy. The how is window dressing.

The more you can make your positioning an extension of what you already care about, the bigger you'll win.