Tuesday, October 6th, 2026

Pull up your homepage. Right now, before you read the rest of this.

Read the headline out loud. Then read it again, but this time picture your closest competitor's logo sitting right above it.

Did it still work?

If it did, you don't have a headline. You have wallpaper. It's pleasant, it covers the wall, and nobody has ever stopped in a hallway to stare at it.

I've been running some version of this exercise with business owners for a long time, and it's gotten noticeably worse over the last year and a half. Not because people got lazier. Because everybody got the same tools at the same time and pointed them at the same problem. Ask a model to write a homepage for a bookkeeping firm and you'll get a perfectly reasonable homepage for a bookkeeping firm. Ask it again for the firm across town and you'll get the same page with different stock photos.

The result is a market full of marketing that's working very hard not to be disliked by anybody.

And that's exactly why it doesn't work.

A couple of numbers worth sitting with.

In March, Gartner published a survey of 1,539 US consumers. Half of them said they'd prefer to give their business to brands that don't use generative AI in their consumer-facing messages, ads, and content. Sixty-eight percent said they frequently wonder whether the content and information they see is even real. You can read the full Gartner release here.

Half.

That doesn't mean you throw your AI tools in a lake. I use them every single day. It means the default output, that smooth, agreeable, nothing-technically-wrong-with-it copy that comes out when you don't give a model anything real to work with, is now the exact thing your buyers have learned to scroll past. They've seen it a thousand times this month. Their thumb knows the shape of it before their brain reads a word.

Google is pointing the same direction. Its guidance for succeeding in AI search tells publishers to focus on unique, non-commodity content that actually satisfies the reader. Not more content. Different content.

Put those together and the strategy writes itself. When everybody can produce agreeable content for free, agreeable is worth nothing. The only thing that still cuts through is stuff with a point of view. And a point of view always costs you somebody.

I'm reading a book this month called The Courage to Be Disliked. It's a long back and forth between a philosopher and a skeptical young man about Alfred Adler's psychology, and I'll give it a proper write up in Friday's roundup. But one idea from it keeps rattling around my head every time I look at a sales page.

The idea is that when you live for other people's approval, you end up living by their standards instead of yours. Freedom, in the book's version, requires being willing to have some people not like you.

That's a life philosophy. It's also, almost word for word, a positioning strategy.

Watch what happens when an owner writes their own marketing. They write a sentence that would really land with their best customer. Then they think about the person who might be put off by it. So they soften it. They tack on "and more." They widen the target from "family-owned HVAC companies doing two to five million" to "businesses of all sizes." Every edit makes the copy a little more acceptable to a few more people, and a lot less interesting to the ones who'd actually buy.

Nobody does this on purpose. It feels responsible. It feels like you're not leaving money on the table.

You're leaving all of it on the table. You've just spread it so thin you can't see it anymore.

Here's the system I use. It runs about a week if you do one piece a day, and none of it requires a rebrand, a new website, or a designer with opinions about kerning.

Grab five pieces of your marketing. Your homepage headline, the first paragraph of your about page, your best-performing post from the last month, your booking page, and the last sales email you sent.

For each one, mentally swap your company name for a competitor's. Then highlight every sentence that still works.

Those sentences are the problem. "We're committed to excellent service." "Results-driven solutions." "We treat every client like family." Your competitor can say all of those. Most of them already do.

Count them up. Don't be shocked if half your sentences fail. On homepages it's usually worse.

You're not rewriting anything yet. You're just getting honest about how much of your marketing is generic, which is a surprisingly uncomfortable afternoon.

Before you can say who you're for, you need the nerve to write down who you're not for.

Pull up your last twenty customers or clients. Sort them into three piles. The ones you'd clone tomorrow. The ones who were fine. And the ones who cost you more in time, stress, and refunds than they ever paid you.

Now look hard at that third pile and write down what they have in common. Not demographics. Behaviors and beliefs.

They wanted it done yesterday but took a week to answer your emails. They were shopping on price and told you so on the first call. They wanted a guarantee on an outcome they controlled. They'd tried four other providers and every single one of them was "terrible."

That's your Not For list. Five to eight lines. Keep it somewhere you'll see it, because you're about to put a version of it in public.

Every strong brand is against something. Not a person. Not a competitor by name. A belief. A practice. Some way of doing things that your industry quietly tolerates and you think is wrong.

Fill in two sentences.

We believe ______.

We refuse to ______.

A roofing company might say: we believe you should see photos of your actual roof before you sign anything, and we refuse to quote over the phone. A coach might say: we believe accountability beats information, and we refuse to sell a course to somebody who needs a coach.

If your answer is something nobody on earth would disagree with, like "we believe in quality," try again. The test of a real belief is that a reasonable competitor would argue with you about it.

That sentence will lose you a few people. Good. It'll also be the first thing your right customers repeat to their friends.

Adjectives are where marketing goes to hide. Fast, reliable, personalized, premium, trusted. None of them mean anything, because everyone uses all of them.

Go back to every sentence that failed the swap test and replace the adjective with something specific.

"Fast turnaround" becomes "drafts back in three business days, every time."

"Personalized service" becomes "you'll have one person's cell number, and it's the same person in month twelve."

"Experienced team" becomes how many jobs, in which neighborhoods, over how many years. Only use numbers you can actually prove.

Specifics do something adjectives never can. They let the wrong customer rule themselves out. The guy who needs it in 24 hours reads "three business days" and moves on. That's not a lost sale. That's a refund you'll never have to process.

And the best source of specifics isn't your own head. It's your customers' mouths. Record your sales calls and pull the exact words people use to describe the problem. I run Fathom on every call for exactly this reason. Once a month I search the transcripts for the phrases people use when they're frustrated, and some of my best lines have come straight out of other people's complaints.

This is the step that makes owners nervous, and it's the one that does the most work.

On your main sales page or booking page, add a short section. Two columns if your site allows it, or two short lists if it doesn't.

This is for you if...

This isn't for you if...

Pull the second list straight from your Not For list, rewritten in plain, kind language. You're not insulting anybody. You're saving them time.

Something like: This isn't for you if you're looking for the cheapest option in town. We're not it, and we'd rather tell you now than after you've filled out a form.

Here's why this works, and it's the whole trick. The moment a buyer reads a list of people you'll turn away, they stop evaluating you and start evaluating themselves. Am I the kind of client they want? The pressure flips. Now they're qualifying for you instead of the other way around.

And the people on the first list feel seen in a way "we serve businesses of all sizes" never could.

Most booking forms ask for a name, email, phone number, and a free-text box nobody fills out. That's a form built to collect as many leads as possible, which is the wrong goal.

Add three questions that do real work.

One about budget or investment range, with honest ranges and a "less than X" option at the bottom.

One about timeline. When do you need this solved?

One about what they've already tried.

Then route people based on their answers. Somebody picks the lowest budget range, they don't get a calendar link. They get a kind email with a cheaper resource or a referral. I build these in Go High Level because the form, the routing, and the follow up all live in one place. If your stack is spread out, you can wire the same logic together with Make.com sitting in the middle.

Your lead count will go down. Your show rate, close rate, and sanity will go up. I'd make that trade every day of the week and twice on Fridays.

Being willing to be disliked doesn't mean being a jerk. It means being clear. The difference shows up most in how you turn people away.

Write three short scripts and save them somewhere so you never have to think about it again.

The fit no: "Based on what you've shared, I don't think we're the right fit, and I'd rather tell you that now. Here's who I'd call instead."

The timing no: "We can't do this well on your timeline. If that changes, come back and we'll pick it right up."

The scope no: "That piece isn't something we do well. Here's someone who does."

Notice every one of them ends with somewhere to go. A no with a referral attached is one of the most trust-building moves in business. People remember the company that told them the truth and pointed them somewhere better. And a surprising number of them come back later, ready to buy.

I'm not anti AI. I'm anti handing it the pen when you've got nothing to say.

The pattern that works for me is simple. I write the draft, with my opinions and my specifics in it, even if it's ugly. Then AI tears it apart. Then I fix it.

Here are the prompts I actually use. I run them through Galaxy.ai so I can throw the same draft at a couple of different models and see where they agree.

"Mark every sentence in this draft that a competitor could publish without changing a word."

"List every adjective in this copy. For each one, suggest a specific, provable replacement, or flag it if there's no proof."

"Read this as the customer described in this Not For list. Where would they still think this is for them?"

"What's the strongest belief in this copy that a reasonable competitor would disagree with? If there isn't one, tell me."

That last prompt is brutal. Most first drafts fail it. Mine included.

Confusing edgy with specific. Swearing on your homepage isn't a point of view. Neither is picking fights with your whole industry for attention. The goal is to be clear enough that some people opt out, not loud enough that everybody notices you.

Getting disliked for the wrong reason. If people dislike you because you're rude, slow, or careless, that's not courage. That's just a bad business. The only dislike worth earning is the kind that comes from being honest about who you serve.

Disliking your customers. Your Not For list is about fit, not character. Nobody in that third pile is a bad person. They're just somebody else's best client.

Panicking at the unsubscribe number. When you get more specific, some people leave. Your list will shed a few readers the week you say what you actually believe. I watch it happen in Beehiiv every time I publish something with a real opinion in it, and the replies that come in afterward are better than the ones I lost.

Don't judge this on lead volume. Lead volume is going to dip, and if that's the number you stare at, you'll panic and undo the whole thing by week two.

Watch these instead. Booked to showed. Showed to closed. Average deal size. Refund or cancellation requests. And the one almost nobody tracks, which is how many prospects show up to the first call already using your language.

When people start repeating your "we believe" sentence back to you before you've said it out loud, it's working.

I put the whole system in one place so you don't have to rebuild it from this email.

It's called The Disqualifier Kit. Inside you'll find the swap test worksheet, the Not For list builder with the three-pile sort, the "we believe" and "we refuse" template with examples from a handful of industries, an adjective-to-specific conversion table, three versions of the "who this isn't for" section ready to paste, a bank of booking form questions with routing logic, the polite no scripts, all four AI critic prompts, and a seven day rollout plan with a thirty day scorecard.

No cost. No sequence waiting behind it. Duplicate it into your own workspace and go.

Get The Disqualifier Kit here

If you work through it and realize the real issue is that you don't actually know who your best customer is, or that your business depends on the people in that third pile to make payroll, that's a bigger conversation. That one's exactly what Pinnacle Masters is for. Hit reply and tell me what you found.

Run the swap test on your homepage headline. Just the headline.

If a competitor could use it, write three new versions that they couldn't. Send them to your best customer and ask which one sounds like you.

That's it. One headline. Ten minutes and one slightly uncomfortable text message.

Q4 is when a lot of buyers quietly decide who they're working with next year. Give the right ones something to recognize.

One step, one day. Grace over guilt. — Dan Kaufman

Tools I use and trust. If you sign up through these links I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend things I actually use.

Make.com, automate your workflows without writing code

Fathom.video, AI meeting notes that actually capture what matters

Galaxy.ai, all your AI tools in one place

Go High Level, forms, CRM and follow up in one place

Beehiiv, where serious newsletter operators publish