How to Find Undiscovered (Yet Profitable) Niches

Why positioning can’t be delegated to marketing teams

Louis: What happens if you take three struggling freelance marketers, lock them in a 17th century cottage and don’t let them leave until we fix their businesses? In August, I rented an old cottage in rural Ireland and invited copywriter Rob E. Commerce, designer Laura and book coach Vicky. Three freelancers desperate to stand the fuck out. And over two days, I ripped everything apart. Their offers, their messaging, their branding, their legion. To find what was really holding them back. This is the concept of a new YouTube channel that I’m launching. You can watch the first episode for free right now. It’s half an hour long. It’s supposed to be entertaining as well as practical. I hope you’ll enjoy watching it. So please set half an hour aside to watch it around your morning coffee, breakfast, lunch break, or on the bus or at the gym, whatever. The link to Access this new YouTube channel is in the episode Show Notes. I really, really appreciate you taking the time to watch it. And then, you know, the usual to like it, comment to share, talk about it around you if you like it. Thank you so much. What do you say when you Talk to founders CEOs who basically tell you that, you know, positioning is just a marketing thingy exercise that they want to give to their marketing guy, marketing intern, marketer, cmo, whatever.

Emily Omier: I would tell them that. They just don’t fucking get it. It’s like telling the nurse at the hospital to name your baby. Like, you don’t do that if you’re the CEO of a company. I mean, this is. It’s not actually just the company’s identity that you’re going to be possibly changing and a positioning exercise. This is part of your ident.

Louis: Bonjour. Bonjour. And welcome to another episode of everyone hates marketers.com, the no fluff actionable marketing podcast for people sick of marketing bullshit. I’m your host, Louis Grenier. In today’s episode, you will learn the story of a positioning consultant who multiplied her fees by 5 thanks to her unique specialization. My guest today has very curly hair, she speaks six languages, and her late husband, Skeleton is now at the Art Students League of New York so the students can study artistic anatomy from its bones. Yes, she’s willing to share that publicly. I love it. But that’s not why we’re here. She helps a certain type of startup founders to grow their business and this is the story of how she chose that positioning. Emily Omie, welcome aboard.

Emily Omier: Thank you so much for having me.

Louis: Are you proud of the way I’ve pronounced your last name?

Emily Omier: Yes. It was awesome.

Louis: Yeah, I Made it the French. Yes, I could. So before we talk about your actual specialty, what do you say when you talk to founders, CEOs who basically tell you that positioning is just a marketing thingy, exercise that they want to give to their marketing guy? Marketing intern, marketing cmo, whatever.

Emily Omier: I would tell them that. They just don’t fucking get it. I mean, if you’re the CEO of a company and you’re telling, like, it’s like telling the nurse at the hospital to name your baby. Like, you don’t do that. So if that’s good, if you’re the CEO of a company, I mean, this is. It’s not actually just the company’s identity that you’re going to be possibly changing and a positioning exercise. This is part of your identity. Right. When you go to a cocktail party and somebody says, like, hey, this. This company that you’re building, what’s it all about? Like, how are you going to answer them? Are you really going to just tell your marketing team that, like, they’re in charge of figuring that out? No. You’re an idiot if you do. The other thing is that positioning doesn’t just. It’s not just a marketing exercise. So if your marketing team decides on your positioning, do they have the authority to go tell your product team, hey, guys, this is what we’re doing now. Get on board. Can they go tell the sales team, hey, this is what we’re doing. Go change your pitch deck. I want to review it and make sure that it’s in line with our new positioning. Chances are that your marketing team is going to get laughed out of town if they try to do that. If you want to get positioning right, part of it is getting alignment between everybody that’s in your company, and that means it needs to come from the CEO. And if we’re talking startup land, which is where I work, it means all the founders have to be on board and they need to be the ones that are running the exercise.

Louis: I think that analogy you just gave is perfect. You don’t ask the nurse to name your baby. That’s actually probably. It needs to go in the title somewhat or in the thumbnail. And I’m already making notes because that’s so true. Right. So I’m going to share a quick story. When I was working for hotjar, I was really into positioning, differentiation and all of that already, like product marketing, whatever you want to call it, this is what happened multiple times. So we had a initial positioning that worked extremely well. That was about all in one analytics and feedback. But the analytics were started to become loaded with analytics, was web analytics, was Google Analytics. And it was quite confusing because Hoja was a complement to that, not a replacement. And I think we did two or three times try to reposition it and me spending a lot of time on it and doing research or whatever. But the CEO, even though he understood positioning and marketing better than anyone else and his business better than anyone else, wasn’t that involved. Right. It was kind of a weird fucking situation. And yes, the biggest struggle was to actually communicate that newer positioning to the entire team. And it took us so, so long to be able to do it. But it worked, right? So we managed to reposition it from all in one analytics and feedback to be like behavior analytics. And to say that we basically give you data that Google Analytics can give you. And so that works well. But fuck, yeah, I wouldn’t advise anyone to go that route. The founder needs to own it, fucking for sure. And if, if they don’t, then it’s, it’s. You’re giving a massive, massive headache to your. Whoever is in charge. Like, it’s just a fucking huge headache.

Emily Omier: I mean, you’re kind of setting them up to fail. If you’re, if you’re, if you’re telling a marketing team to, to own the positioning because they can’t, they don’t have control over, over everything that goes into their, the company’s positioning. What can work is you have the CEO and the founders involved and you have the marketing person or team usually like a person acting like a facilitator. Almost like you’re using your marketing person in the same way that somebody would work like a consultant with me. Like work with me as a consultant. That can work. Then it’s just the marketing team. It’s like we’re going through this exercise together. We’ve got everyone in our team together. I’m facilitating it, but we’re doing this as a team. What doesn’t work is like, hey, marketing people, go figure this out. And then like come back with the answer. Yeah, come back with the answer and like design an email sequence around it. Like, that’s, that’s a failure.

Louis: Yeah, like, usually what works the best is when you get people involved from the very beginning. And by people, I mean representative from every single department, especially customer facing one. So if you have sales team, if you have customer success or customer service or customer support, whatever you want to call it, anyone who’s directly speaking to people every day alongside decision makers like CEOs and whatever, are not coming in from this is a marketing meeting, or not coming in with answers that are already there, but really coming in from a place of let’s learn from each other. Like, what do you hear the most? What do people love the most about us? What do they hate? How do they call. How do they describe the tool to others or the. Whatever it is, et cetera, et cetera. And then, then it’s easier, right?

Emily Omier: Yep. So this is exactly what I tell people. Cause this is like when I’m talking to a potential client, this is the like, number one question, who has to be there? And two things. Anybody who can sabotage the result will. This, this means all, all founders have to be there. But if you have like a really key person on your team who could sabotage the positioning, they must participate in the, the, the, the repositioning exercise.

Louis: How do you know, how do you recognize folks who might sabotage?

Emily Omier: Well, there’s a difference between somebody who might sabotage and somebody who could sabotage.

Louis: Okay, so nice to both.

Emily Omier: Yeah. So honestly, if you have somebody who really, you really think is likely to sabotage this project, like, why are they still part of your team? I mean, I guess if they’re one of your founders, that’s a problem. But hopefully you don’t have anybody on your team who you think think is likely to sabotage, like a new. A strategic initiative. However, there are certain people who could, if they wanted to, sabotage the positioning. And those are people. Well, a. They’re all the founders. If you have more than one founder, there are also people who are in charge of major areas. So like if you have a VP of marketing, for example, that person can be like, hey, I fucking think this, this new positioning is garbage. We’re just like, fuck that. We’re not. We’re not doing that. And I’m going to tell everyone who’s below me that, that this is bullshit. That person. That means that they need to be part of the process so that they’re bought in. The same with, you know, so a VP of marketing, or I should say a cmo, whoever’s your top marketing person, whoever’s your top sales person, whether it’s a CRO or a VP of sales or whatever you call them, your product person. In the type of company that I work with, whoever’s leading engineering is also really important. So, yeah, it’s really just the top person in the hierarchy of all your major business areas.

Louis: So this is clearly a strong opinion that you have a strong point of view about positioning and why the founder needs to have it and to own it. And all the Stuff we discussed. So is there a particular event story in your career that created this, you know, the villain story? Almost like what created this point of view so strong what happened to you?

Emily Omier: I will tell you that the thing that started pushing me there was an event that pushed me to go from what I was doing before, which was more like content writing, marketing, communication, to working with companies on positioning. And this is related to, because we had done this project, it was writing a white paper and designing this whole white, this whole campaign around this white paper. I had worked with the VP of marketing at this company and then she, we’re like getting ready to finalize this project and she takes it to the CEO. And the CEO was like, dude, this is not what we want to say. And then he sends an email with all the company’s point of view and it’s like a 180 from what this marketing person had communicated. And I was like, holy shit. Your guys problem is not about like we need to do another marketing campaign. Your guys’s problem is the marketing person who is leading marketing at this company and the CEO have a completely different idea about what the company’s point of view is about what they’re like, what’s differentiated about their product in their ecosystem. And that was the moment when I was like, I need to get out of doing like taking orders to be like a short order cook for writing marketing communications and start working with companies on like getting their ducks in order on like a much more deeper level.

Louis: Okay, so that’s a nice, you know, teasing about what we’re going to discuss about your own story. But before that, there’s something else that you strongly, strongly believe in and I completely agree with you. You said that like 90% of business is bulls. So bulls, whatever else. Right? Like is like is gusto and whatever guts, whatever.

Emily Omier: Yeah.

The courage required for business success

Louis: At least in the type of businesses we’re in. So tell me more about this. What do you mean?

Emily Omier: Okay, so when you’re in business, and in fact I actually think this applies to larger businesses as well or even to managing a career. So when you’re in business, what you’re fundamentally doing is you’re going out to the world and being like, hey, I have an idea that’s valuable and you should listening to me, I have a service or I have a product that’s awesome and you should have a look at it. And in fact you should pay me money to do this service for you or you should pay me money to use this product. It’s awesome. And people can feel really Timid about this. I mean, this is the core of business. But it is actually really scary because you’re opening yourself up to rejection, I should say. It’s scary for a lot of people because we’re not rational. Right. You’re not going to get hurt because somebody is like, nah, you know, actually, I think your product is shit. Or, hey, like, now’s not the right time for those services. Maybe I’ll. Maybe I’ll come. Like, we’ll get back in touch in six months. Like, that does not actually physically hurt you. But nonetheless, people can get really anxious about doing this. And it’s like, it is what business is about. It’s about, like, projecting that. That you are worth listening to, that whatever the thing you created is worth listening to you that are worth trying out, worth checking out. And this. It’s sort of funny. Cause I almost hesitate to say that it takes balls or that it takes guts, but I think that’s the feeling that a lot of people have, is that it requires a lot of courage to go out there and say, hey, listen to me, I’m here.

Louis: What’s the most uncomfortable event or thing in your business that needed that courage? You know, when did you need the most of this kind of advice?

Emily Omier: When I was younger and I sucked at it.

Louis: So tell me more about that.

Emily Omier: Okay. All right, so let’s go. Like. Like travel back in time. The first time that I really failed at this, I had an idea for, like, tour guides that you could have. You could listen to on an iPad and. Or no, sorry, on a. An ipod. That’s what they were called.

Louis: Oh, Jesus, you’re old.

Emily Omier: And the idea was that, like, you’re a tourist, you go to a new city. You don’t want to have your nose in a book all the time, but maybe you’re like a nerd about architecture or something. So you put it on your ipod and you go walk around and listen to somebody recording, telling you this about the architecture or whatever. So anyway, I had this idea. I actually built a website, built out a bunch of these recordings. They. It didn’t suck. But what did suck is my marketing efforts, which didn’t exist. Pretty much nobody knew that this thing existed except my mom. I think if I could go back in time and tell myself, hey, you need to have a little bit more guts and go out there and be like, hey, world, I’ve created something and it’s worth checking out. Come, come look at it. And actually, like, educate myself a little bit about. About how you go about doing that. Yeah, maybe it would have been a success, but it was not a success.

Louis: So after that, what did you do? Like when was the next step in your business journey?

Emily Omier: Well, then I went to graduate school. Then I had another, another business that failed for exactly the same reasons. I mean, but I say it’s not really a business. Like it, it never had like a dollar of revenue, so it wasn’t really a business.

Louis: What was it though?

Emily Omier: It was a magazine for like an online magazine for learning English.

Louis: Okay.

Emily Omier: Again, I think that it did not suck, but I do think like complete failure in a go to market effort.

Louis: So you learned that the hard way in your previous venture and yet you did it again with that one. So why do you feel that even though rationally I’m kind of answering my question with the way I’m phrasing it, but you knew rationally that this thing was needed, you needed to put words out there to grow it, and yet the second time around you didn’t do it.

From tragedy to business transformation

Emily Omier: Still, here’s what I would say. I think I’ve actually always been really good about selling my services. And selling a product is different. And I needed to have like multiple failures for that to like really get. And in fact in some ways, like I’ve never built a successful product business. I don’t have a product business now I have a services business when. And I help companies sell their products. But that is different from saying this is a product that I built. Come look at it even before when I’ve always been fairly good at like understanding that getting gigs is a, is a like selling your services as a numbers game. You go out and you talk to a lot of people. I think I’ve always been pretty good about that. But really getting serious about like niching down on a particular industry that we’re leaving that ambiguous. It took time to get there. And also now we’ll get to a little bit more of my personal story. So then I went to graduate school, I went to journalism school, which I do not recommend anyone do if they’re interested in business, because it will completely fuck up your relationship to money. This is why journalists are all poor. You’ll go to journalism school and they’ll be like, you’re defending democracy, thus you have to live in misery. Sorry. It actually really did sort of like mess up my mentality about, about being able to make a living. So I tried to make, make it work as a freelance journalist for a while. Complete failure from a financial standpoint. And then as you alluded to, my, my husband died. When it was two. Two months after our daughter was born. So I was like, I better get my shit together. Because, like, now. My husband was a fine artist, by the way, which may. May or may not. It’s not like he was supporting us financially either. But there’s something about being on your own versus being in a couple with somebody that you’re really like. I got to get my shit together. And if I’m not going to have another person that I can rely on, I better have a bank account that I can rely on.

Louis: Just to pause here, thanks for sharing this. I think this will connect with people more than you can imagine. I just want to say something that when my daughter was born less than two years ago, I did realize the power of. Of being a family and being like. To have support around you. Like, and I wouldn’t have done it without my wife. And I know that vice versa. So I applaud. Obviously, like, you didn’t have fucking choice, but you went through it regardless. Your daughter is now much older, but yeah, it is fucking tough on your own. Take care of the baby, build a career and stuff like that. So fucking well done from. For talking about it first and then for being where you are now.

Emily Omier: Thank you. Thank you. So anyway, yeah, I was like, I better get my shit together. Signed up for a coaching program with someone who helped writers in particular. So at that point, my main skill set was a writer. I had been a journalist, which has a lot of very applicable skills to the commercial world as well. But I didn’t know how to translate that into money. But I took that. I signed up for this coaching course and basically figured out how to match the skills that I already had to people who were willing to pay a pretty decent amount of money for them. And I still remember about a year after my husband died, I went to go talk to my therapist. I went to counseling for a little more than a year. And I told her I had made like $1,000 the month before. My daughter wasn’t like, in daycare. She was just like, I was just like working when she was asleep. And like, I just like a thousand dollars wasn’t really enough to cover my expenses. But she was like, holy shit, that’s amazing. Like, you made a thousand dollars and like, you’re just working like at night. And I was like, yeah. And she was like, no, you don’t realize how awesome that is. Like, that’s actually really, really amazing. So. And it did. It did felt like. It did feel at that point, like, okay, things are moving Forward. And. Yeah, so then slowly I started to. Actually, I guess not that slowly I started to specialize in the cloud native world and kubernetes.

Specializing in cloud-native and Kubernetes content

Louis: So what does that mean for. Sorry, you’re over?

Emily Omier: Yeah, what does, what does that mean? So what that means is a very specific type of software development that is geared at building, like, a platform that other software developers will use to actually build the applications that, like, me and you use on our computer. So really technical stuff, but there’s a pretty big ecosystem around it, and it is, it continues to grow at this point. And they really needed people like me who were able to take a really technical subject, talk about it in a way that a business person would understand, ask good questions, and translate that into good marketing copy. And then they also needed somebody who was just like, and here we’re going to come back to the balls part. Not afraid, not intimidated by a really technical subject matter. And it was funny because, like, after, you know, I’d been working in this area for like six months, people would be like, oh, can you write like a tutorial? And I’d be like, no, I don’t, I don’t. Like, I don’t. I can’t write a tutorial. But they would assume that I had, like, a level of expertise in the actual, like, actually being able to use kubernetes that I did not have, just because I, like, basically had learned the jargon, understood like, in relatively broad terms what the ecosystem was all about. And that did not take me, like, you don’t have to do a university degree in order to come up to speed in a particular area. And that, as you alluded to, allowed me to absolutely dramatically increase my fees. Because there wasn’t. It’s not that there was no competition, but especially at that time, there was very few other people who were good writers who were able to translate stuff to a business audience and who had also taken the time to understand the ins and outs of this really technical ecosystem.

Finding the intersection of skills, interests, and money

Louis: So what led you to that thing? Why did you start writing?

Emily Omier: Why did I start writing there? That’s a good question. Go back to this idea of thinking about the Venn diagram. Where’s my skills that I already have? Where’s my interests of things that I won’t hate doing? And then where’s people who are willing to pay me a lot of money for that? How can I find something that, that overlaps, where everything overlaps? And I actually had a pretty good idea from the beginning that, like, this, like, technology was going to be where that overlap was Because. Because in the process of building my two extremely failed products, I had learned something about building websites. I had been not super involved, I would say, but I’d gotten to know a bit about open source communities because I built my websites. I built websites using a fairly complicated cms.

Louis: What was it?

Emily Omier: And Drupal.

Louis: Oh yeah. Fucking hell. You didn’t pick the best one.

Emily Omier: I know it was, you know, somebody gave me super bad advice. Jesus Christ.

Louis: This person clearly hated you and wanted you to fail.

Emily Omier: Well, you know what the interesting part about it is? I actually built the websites and they didn’t suck, except from a business standpoint.

Louis: But like, so it’s very interesting here to reverse engineer this because that’s an advice I share as much as I can, which is look at the past where you naturally started to do things out of, you know, interest just because you wanted to. Whatever. Like, so this little experience you had building your website on Drupal, this little, you know, experience, I mean, not that little, but the journalism experience that you have, I mean, you know, it’s easy to take it for granted. Most people do, right? We take what we do, our experience, our passion for granted because it’s us, so it’s, it’s normal. But then when you think about it the way you’ve done, which is, you know, how can you. How can I kind of find the intersection of the things I love to do where I can make money and all of that? Then it becomes extremely interesting. So now you’ve actually drew like, you know, the little drawing thing is for kids where you have the numbers and then you follow around and it creates a shape. You know, I think it’s a bit like that, right? It’s like, don’t take for granted those, those numbers and don’t think you can create the shape without them. Just like, honestly, it could be as simple as just that, you know, that’s obviously this is it.

Emily Omier: So I think that that’s totally true. I also think it’s only now that I start to see how everything was connected. Like, if you had done this interview with me even like three years ago, I would have told you the stuff that I did in my 20s was just totally random shit. And who knows how it was connected to anything else. I can see more of a through line now than I could even a couple of years ago.

Louis: And it’s completely normal, right? And in three years time, you listen back to this episode and feel like, oh my God, I didn’t know anything. But it’s the best answer you have based on the context and the knowledge you have today. And it seems to be working out pretty well for you. So to give what your specialization is, let’s give people what they want to hear, which is like, so what is this? What do you specialize in?

What makes open source companies different

Emily Omier: So I work with open source companies on positioning and their commercial strategy.

Louis: So what’s Open source?

Emily Omier: Yeah, what’s Open source? So technically open source is actually a legal definition. It’s a software that has a license that’s approved by the osi, which is a, an organization that approves open source licenses. But basically it means it’s a piece of software that is open so you can see what the code is, what code has been used in order to create this software. You can modify that code, you can incorporate it into your own project. Oh, and of course it’s free to use. So the other, and we talked about Drupal. Drupal is not quite as famous as WordPress. WordPress is probably the most famous, most well known open source project out there. If I had been smarter, I would have used WordPress to build my websites.

Louis: Yeah, but then you wouldn’t be here.

Emily Omier: I’d say that’s probably true. So, but then the, the other interesting question is what is an open source company or an open source?

Louis: Right, because it’s all well and good to give, you know, to have your code open and everyone can see it and it’s free to use. But how the fuck do you make money?

Emily Omier: Yes, it’s actually, it’s really funny because I just moved to France and I had to do this visa project and, or do this visa process and you have to prove that your business isn’t bullshit. And I had this moment where I was like trying to explain to my lawyer and she was like, wait, so you help companies that make free software with their commercial strategy? And I had this moment where I was like, oh my God, I have a bullshit business. So anyway, it’s not bullshit, neither my business nor their business model, but an open source business has an open source project that they maintain and that provides real value to people who use it. So what that means is it’s not just like an API to connect to their proprietary software. You have to be able to actually get real value from using this project on its own. And then they also have a commercial offering. And the commercial offering could be services, it could be a product that, it could be a SaaS product. Like maybe they host the open source project and so you can use it AS with a SaaS experience. It could be that they have like enterprise functionality. So the sort of stereotype here is you have your open source project that has like a super shitty UI and it’s really ugly. And then you have your enterprise product that has like a. A very beautiful dashboard that the CEO of a company who’s not technical could easily interact with. That’s the stereotype or massive generalization. But basically an open source company has an open source project that is real and substantial and provides value plus a commercial offering so that they can make money.

Louis: So you were writing for that industry for a bit, correct?

The strategic shift from industry to business model focus

Emily Omier: Sort of. So this is where things get a little bit interesting. So in the industry that I was in before, there are a lot of open source companies. I used to specialize in this industry around Kubernetes, which I know most people have no idea what the fuck that is. But anyway you don’t need to know what it is. So there’s a lot of companies that are open source in that ecosystem. And what I realized is that as soon as I the interesting strategy distinction wasn’t between companies in the Kubernetes ecosystem and those out of it, it was between the companies that were open source or not. I shifted the type of company that I worked with so that the criteria was no longer you work in this extremely technical domain, but rather are you open source or are you not? Because they have strategic issues that I think are interesting and different.

Louis: So how did you come to this realization? Because it sounds like a little change, but it’s not right. It’s a huge shift from the way you’re being perceived. So what made you think this is a better position?

Emily Omier: I mean, you only figure this out by working with clients. You work with clients, you figure out how did this project go, how did this other project go? What’s the difference, you think is how unique was the experience that I brought to this one client versus this other client. You read other people in the industry, you read stuff by April Dunford or there’s a couple other positioning consultants that I know out there as well. And you think, okay, how different is the process that I use versus what April Dunford uses for an open source company or for a Kubernetes company? So my take on it would be if you’re a closed source Kubernetes company, you can take April Dunford’s process, use it, no modifications, and it’s fine. I don’t think the process is that different from if you have an HR software for positioning.

Competing against established positioning experts

Louis: So that means then if I’m reading between the lines it means that you can’t be the best in the world at this because Dunfeld is already the OG positioning for B2B tech. And those companies that are based on this technology basically are B2B tech companies. There’s no change. Therefore you can’t win, therefore you don’t want to be there.

Emily Omier: Exactly. That’s exactly what happened. And I’m not sure if all the clients in that space would have had that same realization, but it certainly was what I felt like, April Dunford could do this just as well as I can. So I’m not going to win in this space. Oh, go ahead.

Louis: So hold that thought. You know what’s interesting here, because I went through this exact thought process. I mean, when I say exact, the exact same thought process. So when I restarted my business three years ago, I doubled down on positioning as the key thing that I really wanted to do back based on the experience I had with Hot John and my own project that I positioned. And all of that standing the fuck out as the core idea behind all of this started to emerge after that. But only recently have I start to realize, you know, you can’t be a positioning consultant for startups, B2B Tech, because there’s already someone who owns that space and owns it very well. And honestly, you know, I have no interest competing against her because it’s, you know, I could make some money, but it’s never going to be, you know, the place I want to be. And the second thing was I was bored to death working with startups in general. I never felt it just wasn’t as interesting to me as working with smaller folks who were maybe solopreneurs or agency owners who were very creative and taking some crazy risk and very artistic in their approach. And that’s when I realized I could win there. I could become the go to person for positioning for marketers, creatives in running businesses. And so I haven’t updated my LinkedIn or anything just yet, but I’ve made it super clear in my newsletter, for example, that worked really well because the vast majority of my clients anyway come from that world. The vast majority of people listening also kind of fit. Anyway, so I wanted to say I completely understand exactly where you’re coming from because I had the exact same thought process about the exact same place. So it’s fun to hear that you went through that as well. Anyway, I interrupted you, so you had another thought and hopefully you didn’t forget it.

Emily Omier: Not at all. So actually it was just. But then I saw in the open source companies you could not take that process and just apply it to an open source company. It was a different, there was different variables that you had to take into account.

The unique positioning challenges of open source companies

Louis: What’s the biggest difference between the two?

Emily Omier: So the biggest difference between the two is that an open source company has two products. They have an open source project and they have a commercial offering and they have this way earlier in their company’s maturity than a proprietary software. And so you have a much more complex positioning challenge because you have to manage the relationship between those two things. You also have to then have a positioning for the entire company. It’s also a different relationship. The relationship between project and product is different than the relationship between like a suite of product of products. So and it’s not the same relationship in every company either. So it’s just dramatically more complex and it gets into positioning and managing. This relationship between product and project gets into like what’s your monetization strategy? What’s your business model? I think it’s even more fundamental for open source startups and also just dramatically more complex than a straight SaaS.

Louis: Straight SaaS as we call it. So when did you make the switch?

Emily Omier: This is a good question. I think it was about two years ago, but it might have been longer, it might have been closer to three years ago.

Louis: And what happened? So you made that switch, how nervous were you? Were you nervous? Did you feel like you were taking a risk? What was your feeling then?

Emily Omier: That’s a good question. I didn’t really feel like I was taking a huge risk. I think the thing that felt like more of a risk was actually going from being a marketing communication so being like a hands person to being a strategy person. That was more of a scary risk because it involved people coming to me with work that they wanted me to do and me telling them no and that every time that that happened it was scary.

Louis: How’s Carrie?

Emily Omier: Yeah, I mean it’s dependent on the moment. If I’d like just signed a big strategy contract the previous day, it’s like meh, then it’s not scary at all. But if it’s one of the things that I noticed as I made the switch to strategy is that my revenue got a lot bumpier. So each contract is more expensive, it’s larger. But I’m not signing new contracts every week. And if it’s been one day since I signed a strategy contract, I’m like, yeah, I don’t want to do that, that writing work. But if it’s been like a month, then you’re like, ah, I know I gotta say no to this, but it’s, you know, it’s not always easy.

Louis: Yeah, I get you like the diversification, like the fact that, yeah, it’s bitcoin contract, longer sales cycles, there’s more at stake. So therefore like you have the benefits as well as the inconvenience of it. So you had this kind of feast and famine fear. Right. So what about the results of this move? Right. Tell me more about what changed for you then.

Results and recognition in a specialized niche

Emily Omier: Oh man, it has definitely allowed me to get really famous in a very small niche. I’m keynoting at a conference in December and, and yeah, I’m like, next to the other keynoters at this conference are like, like I’m not going to delude myself. I am not on their level. Like, I don’t know, I don’t know what the organizers of this conference were thinking.

Louis: No, no, no, that’s your, that’s your fucking imposter syndrome talking. You’re also, you’re also a guest on that fabulous podcast. Like yes, yes, I think this is better.

Emily Omier: So it’s allowed me to get like, I mean I got, I’ve got lots of inbound leads, but also just the, the level of has been incredible. Obviously. Also this leads to having sales and increasing my revenue, which is important. But I think what’s really happened is that I can sort of see myself progressing in status, I think is probably the right word and people really listening to what I have to say. And yeah, I think there’s really just nobody else that’s talking a lot about the kind of things that I’m talking about. And yeah, I don’t know, is there a risk?

Louis: You think that you’re the only one talking about positioning for open source companies? Do you feel like maybe the market is too small and one day it’s going to shrink to a point where you can’t pay the bills?

Emily Omier: Oh yeah, I’d be lying if I said don’t worry about that. I often think, is it possible that the market is too small? Will there be a time when I’ve reached. Especially because positioning isn’t something that you do like every month, right? You, you, you work with a client and then like you’re, you’re done. So I do sometimes wonder, like, is there going to be a time when I’ve like saturated the market with my services? I don’t think that that time has arrived. And actually quite honestly, when I put my more like logical hat on, my less fear based hat on, I don’t think that time will Come the reason why I. The reason is there’s actually been kind of an explosion of open source startups. So I think the industry, I think the niche that I’m in is getting bigger and I also think there’s more and more people who are talking not specifically about positioning but about business and open source and you know, managing product marketing as well.

Louis: You know, like the wider stuff. I agree. I can see it as well. How is the category like the open source thing growing? Like why is is there such a drive at the minute you think?

Emily Omier: I’m not sure if I have a good answer to why. I will tell you. There have recently been a couple of venture funds started that focus like explicitly exclusively on, on open source companies, on funding open source companies. There’s a lot of like some people think that open source is eating software. This is the theory of some, well of one person in particular who runs one of these venture venture funds. Just that the, the way to be successful in the future is going to be by having an open source componen software. I’m a little bit cynical isn’t the right word. I’d say pragmatic in my. The way I think about open source companies, I don’t think they’re morally better. You will encounter people who do. I don’t think they’re by definition more likely to succeed than a closed source company. I think that there are really concrete business benefits that you can get from having an open source approach but you have to manage the tension that’s going to be inherent in an open source company and you have to know what business benefits you’re getting out of your open source project because if you don’t like you’re not going to be able to evaluate if you are actually getting them or not. You’re not going to be able to iterate and see what the result of the changes you make, see what they are. And so I think my take on the industry is like open source startups, they’re not morally better, they’re not more or less likely to succeed but they are definitely attracting a lot more interest and there are some real benefits to doing an open source strategy.

Louis: I think we are at the time we are recording this episode, it’s definitely like a pendulum switch back and forth and now at the minute we are definitely at the efficiency stage of business and startup where startups are waking up to the fact that they need to make money, that’s one. But they’re also waking up to the fact that distribution marketing like eyeballs unfortunately like just Being seen is absolutely key. You can have the best fucking product. And open source, I think, marries well with that because you’re using that as your beachhead, to be seen by a lot of people, to be used by a lot of people for free. And then you also have the second layer, which is like the pay layer that you explained very well before. So I think this is why potentially there’s this huge wave. And it’s interesting for you. And if we reverse engineer that for folks listening in terms of their positioning, their own positioning or for their own clients, like, one of the criteria I like to use is the energy of the category. Like, is it, is, is there something buzzing here? Like, is it. Do you feel like it’s, you know, as you said, investment for now, talking about it more like, do you feel it’s growing or is it stagnating or even worse, shrinking? Right. And sometimes it’s as simple as picking a market that is growing like that, because you don’t even need to convince people, like, they’ll come to you. And so it’s at the minute, for example, another thing is the creator economy. It’s sexy as fuck right now, like LinkedIn as a, you know, as a, as a topic as well. Is there so many little things like that that are growing so fast?

Emily Omier: AI, yeah.

Louis: I mean, that’s like. But like it’s true, right? And it’s not a trend, it’s not something that is going to disappear. Like, you can definitely bet on it now, you shouldn’t necessarily bet on specific tools or whatever because things evolve so fast. But fuck, yeah, it’s a massive, like, it’s a gigantic wave, probably the biggest we’ve ever seen in our world. So absolutely, like leaning on something like this that exists, that is in demand is already a big thing. So I agree. I don’t think you’ll ever go out of business with that. And then you said that positioning, you know, you do positioning and you’re done. You can also definitely sell complementary products on the line. You know that, right? Like maybe messaging, update, whatever. And then you can do that.

Emily Omier: I do.

Louis: You can sell stuff, like selling the same thing, but instead of doing it with you doing it for you, you can do it yourself. So you can sell courses, write books. There’s thousands of different ways you can apply your same knowledge. But I know you know that. But I wanted to mention that out loud as well.

Emily Omier: And in fact, I’m organizing a conference. So, yeah, there’s a lot of ways that you can sort of package the expertise I wanted to say actually another thing about why I was attracted to working with open source founders, which is that in a lot of open source companies. So even though I’m not going to go into the whole I don’t think open source is morally superior, but I do think there’s. Open source is all about building a community around your software. And the thing that I find a lot of open source founders feel is a tension inside themselves about how to manage, nurturing a community, being a hippie and also like building a billion dollar company and being like a hardcore capitalist. And I think that one of the reasons that I really like working in this space is because I also feel that tension in myself of like I have some, I definitely have some like hippie tendencies.

Louis: Really?

Emily Omier: Yeah. I don’t know. Is it noticeable? I don’t know. But you know, like I used to volunteer at an all volunteer food co op. It definitely exists in me. But then I also have the obviously really interested in business and have the same capitalist let’s increase our prices as high as we can tendency as well. And so I think I see there’s something about the need to manage that tension that’s almost like a psychological tension that I find really attractive because I see that tension in myself too.

Louis: Yeah, I love, like that’s a very deep thought about your market and yourself. And I again I completely relate. It’s the same thing for the type of people I love working with where they have this very like creative, artistic way and they want to fucking take some risk and play and have fun. But then on the other hand they want to obviously have money so that they can fucking live properly, which is the exact same for me. Like, you know, so it’s always this balance between the two and I completely connect with that as well. And so that makes us, that makes you, even though you position yourself as a positioning consultant for open source software, you’re I would say even more so a therapist slash coach slash psychologist, all of those things because yes, it’s the, the biggest struggle is really in their mind, right? Like this, navigating that tension.

Emily Omier: Yeah, absolutely. I mean there’s different models of consulting and one of them is like the, the psychotherapist model where people have to be awake during the process. That’s how I sometimes describe the work that I do because I’m acting as a moderator. I don’t review your website and then write a document and be like here’s the answer for what you should do. It’s a process, it’s a journey that we go on together. So there’s definitely the psychotherapist approach.

Louis: Great. Okay, Emily, thank you so much for sharing your story like that in a lot of details and transparency. Appreciate it. I really do. Before I let you go, what are the top three resources you would recommend listeners today?

Top resources for business courage and decision-making

Emily Omier: Okay, so I have three. One of them is a book called Improvisation and the Theater by Keith Johnstone. I know you had Jonathan Stark on recently. I wonder if he recommended this book, because that’s where I got the recommendation from.

Louis: Oh, nice. I don’t think he did.

Emily Omier: Okay, then I will go forward with my pitch for this book. So it’s a theater book about improv. And the specific chapter in the book that’s really useful for consultants is about, I’m going to say, not just consultants. For everybody who’s out there living their life is about managing and controlling power relationships or power dynamics. So if you want to, in a theater context, role play somebody who’s more powerful than an other than the other. There’s, like, a certain demeanor that each one will take, but if you’re aware of that and how that works, you can control the way that you’re. You’re acting in any given situation so that the other person understands, oh, this person is my peer, or, oh, this person is my superior, or conversely, you can also, you know, you can also behave in a way that makes people think, oh, this person is below me, and they will thus treat you in a certain way. And that’s really important because, you know, there’s so many things in life that are about power relationships. But I think, particularly if you’re in business, the ability to communicate to other people that you are their peer or possibly even that, like, they should be, like, so lucky to work with you because they’re like, you’re such. So in demand and you’re so awesome is really important. So anyway, that’s the theater book. It’s awesome.

Louis: It’s not on Kindle, unfortunately. I can see it’s only paperback and hardcover, which is a shame. I would have bought it straight away.

Emily Omier: Yeah, and it’s from, like, the 80s, so it’s 1999. Oh, shoot.

Louis: Yeah.

Emily Omier: Okay. It’s less old than I thought, but

Louis: yeah, maybe that’s the re edition of it.

Emily Omier: Maybe. Maybe. And in fact, you know, my second resource here is going to be related because I’m going to recommend that people take an improv class.

Louis: Nice. Have you taken one recently?

Emily Omier: I just started taking one in September, and I think it has. So back to this idea of business being about balls. So taking an improv class is basically about humiliating yourself in front of other

Louis: people and getting used to the feeling

Emily Omier: and getting used to it. Yeah. And a lot of business is about. Although hopefully you aren’t actually humiliating yourself, is feeling like you might be humiliating yourself in front of other people. And I think getting used to that experience is, is really good. Also, quite honestly, it helps with your public speaking. I really think that it’s helped my. I speak at conferences and I think it’s already helped my speaking at conferences.

Louis: Nice. And what’s the third one?

Emily Omier: Okay, so the third one. See, I had three books written down. Which one am I going to choose? I’m going to choose one that I haven’t actually read, but who’s. Let’s see, I’ll just say Annie Duke because I heard her on a podcast recently and I was like, blown away. So Annie Duke’s written a book called Thinking in Bets. I think she’s written another book recently too, but I only just heard her on a podcast. And the reason I’m bringing this up is because I’ve been thinking about it a lot and the importance of having kill criteria in whatever it is that you’re doing. So you’re trying it, you’re trying something out, deciding ahead of time. I’m going to abandon this project if XYZ does or does not happen at a certain point. And anyway, I actually, I haven’t actually read her books. I’ve just heard her on podcasts. But I was like, oh my God, that seems like such a valuable thing. It’s like, you know, I’m sure you’ve had this experience where you’re like, why didn’t I think of that before? Like, this is such an obvious, obvious idea. But I’d never incorporated it into my business.

Louis: The unknown unknowns. Which is a double edged sword because when you’re focused on your mission and you know what you want to do, you need to be careful with those because then it’s might derail you from it. But then on the other hand, if it’s so interesting that it could help you, you need to pay attention. So I’ve chosen like just, just to close that thing. By the way, that’s probably the most thorough answer I’ve got to this question ever. So thank you for sharing those three resources. But it’s, it’s. That’s why I don’t read books for the. For fun anymore or business books just because someone recommended to me. I do it the opposite way. If I have a deep question like a challenge, something. I read things on purpose to answer them, but I try not to read things just to get those unknown unknowns or else it derails me. I find it fucks me up a bit in terms of what I know now. So I purposely put the blinders on a bit sometimes.

Emily Omier: Yeah, makes sense.

Louis: Yeah, you disagree with this. But hey, we don’t have time to know why. So anyway, where can listeners connect with you and learn more from you?

Emily Omier: So I am on LinkedIn. I have a website. If you’re French then I’m Emily Omier. If you’re not French then I can be Emily Omir. It’s kind of like having two identities. It’s cool. Anyway, my last name ends in an ER. You can find me on LinkedIn. I’m pretty sure there’s no one else with my name and my website is just emilyomir.com I have an ebook that’s free on my website about positioning for open source projects. You can check that out. That’s about it.

Louis: Well, thank you so much. It’s been a blast.

Emily Omier: Likewise.

Louis: And that’s it for another episode of everyone hates marketers.com thank you so much for listening. I’m super, super grateful. I’d love for you to consider subscribing to my daily newsletter Monday to Friday called Stand the Fuck Out Daily. I send very short, hopefully interesting, surprising short, entertaining content to help you Stand the Fuck Out. It’s at everyone hatesmarketers.com you can subscribe for free and obviously unsubscribe whenever you want. I’m just gonna read a couple of emails that I got recently as a reply. Juma said, your content attacks the mind primarily, which is such a good thing because most of us are skilled at what we do, but we don’t have the courage to do it our way. Mark, who just subscribed couple days before, said, this is my first issue of your newsletter. Love it. Glad I subscribed. Brianna said, I just realized this morning that my email habit is now to 1. Skim through the list. 2. Select all unread industry email except yours. 3. Delete and don’t think twice. 4. Quickly skim yours. Amy said, Also loving the new content that’s coming from you. It feels really lovely. Kendall said, I like your writing a lot. It really resonate. There’s so much out there. It’s good to touch the authentic. And Chloe said, where is the I love this email button? Brilliant. I hope you subscribe. You’ll be joining more than 14,000 subscribers at this stage, which is crazy. It’s the size of a small stadium. Anyway, thank you so much. See you on the other side.