Serve the Person You Once Were
Find your positioning in a challenge you have already overcome
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 94%
This positioning method begins with biography rather than market mimicry. Describe who you were before an important transformation, then inventory the challenge conquered, setback survived, obstacle overcome, or tragedy moved through. Select the experience that gives you unusually deep understanding of another person's present problem. Define that person precisely and place strategy around the story: what problem you solve, what lesson or capability you can transfer, and how your service helps them move forward. The mechanism turns lived experience into empathetic specificity and credible differentiation. Its output is not autobiography for its own sake, but a focused position in service of people whose current situation resembles your former one.
Origin
Brand Builders Group noticed this pattern after working with about 1,500 clients and now uses clients' stories to help uncover their uniqueness.
Core principles
- 01Lived experience creates credible service positioning
- 02Past struggle reveals a specific audience
- 03Uniqueness becomes valuable when used in service of others
- 04Story needs strategy to become a clear market position
How to run it
- 1
Describe your former self
Write a concrete picture of who you were before a meaningful change.
Pro tip Focus on circumstances, fears, and unmet needs rather than demographics alone.
- 2
Inventory hard-won changes
List challenges conquered, setbacks survived, obstacles overcome, and tragedies moved through.
Watch out Do not turn unresolved pain into an offer prematurely.
- 3
Select transferable experience
Choose the transformation that produced useful understanding or capability another person can apply.
Pro tip Prefer evidence of real change over a dramatic story.
Watch out Experience alone does not prove universal expertise.
- 4
Define the present audience
Identify the person currently living the problem your former self faced.
Pro tip Use language your former self would have recognized.
- 5
Position the service
Connect your story, the specific problem, and the method by which you can help that audience.
Pro tip State the problem you solve as simply as possible.
In the wild
A manager who learned to lead a growing remote team identifies her former self: technically strong, newly promoted, and overwhelmed by delegation. She positions her coaching around helping first-time remote managers build simple delegation systems, using her experience as evidence and empathy rather than making her whole biography the product.
→ Her audience and problem become more specific, credible, and referable.
Common mistakes
Making the story the product
A compelling history still needs a specific problem, audience, and useful path forward.
Claiming expertise from survival alone
Lived experience must translate into relevant insight or capability rather than unsupported authority.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for mission-driven experts whose credibility comes from a real transformation or hard-won experience.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when the past experience does not create relevant competence or when serving that audience would be unhealthy.
From the transcript
“you are always most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were”
“what challenge have you conquered what setback have you survived what obstacle have you overcome what tragedy have you triumphed over”
From the episode
Rory Vaden: How I’ve Helped Top Business Influencers Build Their Personal Brands
Rory Vaden