The Recognition Gap: How solopreneurs replace referrals with a sustainable pipeline and scale on purpose

When you're great at what you do, but nobody outside your network knows it.

Welcome to How Solos Scale. Each week, we share a new framework, concept, or example of how solopreneurs are scaling from $25,000 to $50,000+ per month. Today, we’re excited to share with you the first of many mini-books.

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Hey there,

Brian came to us with two classic solopreneur problems.

1. He was great at what he did, but struggled to explain it.

2. His business hit a revenue ceiling because it relied so heavily on him.

But Brian wasn’t a beginner. He had years of experience, a (mostly) full client roster, and $25K/month in revenue. Still, he couldn't scale.

Here’s what was broken:

• Every sales conversation started from scratch

• Every engagement was custom-scoped

• Every task was handled by Brian alone

• All new business came from referrals

He had no leverage, no consistency, and no language to describe what he actually did.

That meant he had no path to scale. To be clear, when we say scale, we mean earning more money without tapping into more of your time.

So we audited every client Brian had ever worked with—looking for patterns, preferences, and outcomes. Where did he make the biggest difference? What kind of work did he love? What results stood out?

Turns out, he had a repeatable method for building demand gen systems inside early-stage startups.

He just hadn’t packaged it, named it, or published anything about it.

So, we helped him do that.

• We turned his custom scoping into a signature system

• His scattered deliverables into a standard offer

• His fragmented process into a repeatable method he could refine over time

In 6 months, Brian scaled from $25K to $55K months.

Then, he hit max capacity.

He didn’t have time or energy to take on one more client.

So, we helped him delegate and automate. First, we offloaded all the tasks that "anyone" can do to a few trusted contractors. Then, we automated the delegation, QA, approvals, and client follow-ups.

By clarifying his offer and adding operational leverage, we doubled Brian's capacity.

Within two months, Brian was at $73K months—with fewer hours, more predictable clients, and a business that could grow without breaking.

But there was one problem left: Nobody outside his network knew who he was.

Despite all the wins, Brian still relied entirely on referrals.

He had no inbound pipeline, content presence, or reputation outside the bubble of people who already knew him. He wasn’t publishing. He wasn’t visible. He wasn’t known for anything (yet).

He had solved his operations problem, but not his recognition problem.

And that’s when the anxiety crept in.

• What if the referrals stop?

• What if clients drop, and revenue tanks?

• What if the business isn’t as solid as it looks?

If you’ve ever felt this way, you’re not alone.

You're in the Recognition Gap—and it's costing you more than you think.

But once you close it, everything changes. Generating leads and pipeline becomes reliable. Your POV becomes magnetic. And you stop relying on referrals to grow.

In this mini-book, we’ll show you how.

The Recognition Gap exists when you're great at what you do, but nobody outside your network knows it.

“Do great work and the rest will follow.”

That saying is true, and it's often enough to keep a $20K/month pipeline full. But here’s the problem: Referrals from doing good work give you initial momentum, but they don’t help you sustainably scale.

• Referrals aren’t scalable

• Referrals aren’t consistent

• Referrals aren’t word of mouth

• Referrals don't focus on the best-fit clients

• Referrals don't filter for the right types of work

Worst of all, referrals are hot and cold. Some come in ice cold without context for who you are, how you think, or what problem you solve. That’s a tough sell (and often leads to an even tougher client). Others come from people who know you and your business and are ready to roll, which makes selling easier, but inhibits your ability to standardize your offer and increase prices.

All in all, referrals aren’t reliable.

But they do bring in money, which is why too many solopreneurs miss the Recognition Gap signs:

• You can’t articulate what problem you solve (or who it’s for) in a clear and consistent way

• Most of your work comes from referrals, and the few cold inbounds seem like miracles

• You dread when a client leaves because you realize there’s no process to backfill clients

When you're in the Recognition Gap, you don’t own your visibility. You borrow it from the people who already know and trust you. So, you wait for the next intro. The next “Hey, are you available?” DM. You hope the referral well doesn’t dry up. And you tell yourself you're not ready for more visibility, or you don’t know what to do with it, until your offer is clear.

Or your calendar opens up.

Or your website is redone.

Or [insert your favorite excuse here.]

The uncomfortable truth: If nobody beyond your bubble knows what you do—or how you think—you don’t have a sustainable business.

Being good at what you do isn’t enough to hedge against risk. It’s like having zero insurance—you’re not in control when a crisis happens.

If your only marketing channel is “people who already know me," your business is one slow season away from chaos. That's incredibly stressful. And it's why you can be at $20K, $30K, even $50K+ months and still feel like your business could evaporate overnight.

It’s deceiving because you’re busy, making good money, and are excellent at your work. Until one day you look up and…

Panic.

Erica had this “a-ha” moment before she went solo.

While still in-house, she began building her personal brand and noticed that people on LinkedIn and Twitter (RIP) gave standing ovations to editing advice that, frankly, sucked.

• She had been editing at a high level for years

• She was excellent at her craft and had an eye for strong writing

• Yet the market elevated voices that lacked her depth and experience

That’s when it clicked: Recognition isn’t being seen in general—it’s being seen for something specific.

If Erica wanted to be recognized for what she was great at, get invited onto podcasts, and earn a seat at the “publicly credible” table, she had to start building her own reputation, on purpose. So, she reframed her point of view and started teaching the market how to perceive her on her terms. That shift changed her career and helped her become a successful solopreneur.

Recognition compounds when people associate you with something specific and valuable.

Most of our solopreneur clients already have a strong POV.

They’re opinionated. They’re smart. They’re just too close to the problems they solve to articulate them clearly. And because they’re not clear, they don’t publish often. Or they do, but it’s scattered, general, and painfully difficult to anchor their messaging to anything specific.

So the Recognition Gap stays wide open.

If that sounds familiar, you haven’t taught the market how to perceive you yet.

Which means people don’t know how to refer, hire, or even remember you. They might like you, but they have no idea what problem you solve or how to give you money. And liking you doesn’t move them through your funnel.

To close the Recognition Gap, you need three things:

1. Clarity on your POV and the problem(s) you solve

2. A consistent, compelling way to talk about it

3. Content that explores that problem and your process

That only happens if you say the same thing, in different ways, in public, consistently—especially in front of the people you’re trying to reach. LinkedIn gives you that access (for now!). So treat it like a public proof-of-work loop. You write. You refine. You repeat. Slowly but surely, the market will start to associate you with the thing you want to be known for.

The simplest way to do that is to follow the CP3 framework we use with every client to close the Recognition Gap and scale sustainably.

Let’s break it down.

CP3: Clarify The Problem, The Person, & The Process

You can’t scale what you can’t clearly see.

Most solopreneurs hit the Recognition Gap because they haven’t made a clear decision about what they want to be known for. They rely on word of mouth, custom-scope every project, and try to grow a business without ever getting anchored to the one thing they do best.

In our experience, this happens because we’re scared. Scared of prospects thinking we can’t do more than advertised. Scared of losing hard-won skills to atrophy. Scared of being seen as unable or unwilling to solve versatile problems.

The result is a business that evaporates the moment referrals slow down.

The CP3 Framework solves that by helping you get clear on three things:

• The Problem you solve

• The Person you solve it for

• The Process you use to solve it

This clarity changes everything.

Without it, you end up doing custom work for every client. You waste hours context-switching between projects. You burn energy trying to explain what you do in a hundred different ways.

And you stay stuck in a business that depends entirely on your time, effort, and presence to make money.

With CP3, your business gets leverage. You standardize your work, streamline your scope, and create repeatability. Most importantly, you build a business with a strong foundation that can scale.

Believe us when we say: Your broad expertise isn't the problem. How you're packaging it is.

Here's how to anchor yourself to a problem you're known for solving extremely well.

1. Clarify the Problem You Solve

You can’t close the Recognition Gap until you name the specific problem you solve.

Not the category. Not the list of services. Not the general frustration your buyer feels.

The problems you solve better than anyone else.

Because if you don’t name the problem, you don’t give people a reason to remember you. And you definitely don’t give them a reason to choose you over the swarm of other smart, talented people offering something vaguely similar.

But clarity doesn’t just show up one day.

It's something you build in public and through conversations. You get it by talking, writing, reframing, and refining the problem you solve—then doing it again and again. Each round gives you sharper language, stronger instincts, and a clearer niche.

That’s why we start with the problem.

When you frame the problem your business solves (and for whom and how), you build the foundation on which everything else rests.

Before people buy from you, they have to believe two things:

1. You understand their problem better than they do

2. You’ve solved it before successfully

This is about more than pain points. It’s about identifying the real friction in their business or life. The mess they’re stuck in. The moment that makes them say, “I can’t keep doing it this way.”

The problem should feel urgent, specific, and visceral.

Because that feeling of "Finally someone understands my problem!" is what gets people to invest now.

You know you’re close when:

• Clients say, “Yes, that’s exactly it.”

• You can name both the surface problem and the root cause.

• You can spot false solutions people have already tried (and why they failed).

Your job is to help people name the thing they can’t name and solve the thing they can’t solve alone.

Just like Erica did.

Before launching her coaching offer, Erica was well-known in the content space.

She had built a strong audience over 3+ years of publishing. She had three successful course launches under her belt. She had editing clients, thought leadership chops, and enough inbound interest to fill her calendar.

But something was off.

People saw her as “the editing person”—a second set of eyes.

Not as the strategic operator behind high-leverage content businesses. Not as the coach who could help them escape their growth plateau and step into the next level of their business.

That misperception created a mismatch.

• Her public content got attention, but not the right kind

• Her inbox filled with leads who wanted copy cleanup, not strategic clarity

• Her private coaching offer didn’t bring in as many clients as she wanted

So, she did the hard thing most solopreneurs avoid:

She paused and reframed the problem her business actually solves.

Because the problem wasn’t “bad writing.”

It was this:

Most solopreneurs hit a content plateau not because they lack skill, but because they lack a feedback loop. They’re creating in a vacuum—without sparring, without pressure testing, without strategy.

Erica stopped selling editing and started naming the real problem: stagnation.

She began articulating the problem of growth stalls and positioned her new (at the time) coaching offer—Content Sparring—as the bridge out. Within a week, she closed $8k in MRR. Within the month, she had a $250k+ ARR coaching program.

The insight? Erica didn’t magically find better clients.

She made it easier for the right clients to find her by naming a clear, specific problem she was built to solve. Once she did, everything else snapped into place: Her positioning. Her offer. Her pipeline.

And it all started with clarity on the problem.

Now, it’s your turn.

Let’s walk through how to clarify the problem you solve so your best-fit clients know exactly why they need you—and why they need you now.

5 Steps to Clarify the Problem

Let’s be honest, this is hard to do on your own.

Mainly because you're too close to your own expertise. You've had too many past clients and gone in too many different directions to get clarity on the problem you solve. So, you try to reverse-engineer clarity from chaos by saying:

• “I do a bit of everything.”

• “It depends on the client.”

• “I’m not sure what to call it, but once I explain it, people get it.”

If that’s where you are, you’re not a failure—you just need to clear the fog. Clarity is earned through reflection, feedback, and pattern recognition. It takes time to figure out.

Here's how to get clear on the problem:

Step 1: Mine the Problems You’ve Solved

This is where we start with every client.

We run an audit to look at past results and find repeatable patterns. Not just in the outcomes, but in what felt meaningful, useful, and scalable. The goal is to look at everything you've ever done for clients and find the work that:

1. Made the most impact

2. Lit you up the most

Then, you focus on that.

Start by listing 5–10 problems you've solved for real clients. Write down:

• What problem did you solve for them?

• What changed for them by the end?

• Which of these problems are emotionally resonant, painful, and urgent?

Then look for patterns.

• Where have you delivered consistent results?

• What problems did you actually enjoy solving?

• Where has money already exchanged hands?

This exercise alone surfaces what your business is already doing well—even if you haven’t named it yet.

Step 2: Identify Your Core Competency

Your core competency is often hiding in plain sight.

It’s the skill or approach you’ve refined over the years but haven’t fully claimed.

Think about:

• What kind of work gives you energy (not just revenue)?

• What kind of work do people always ask your opinion on?

• What kind of work is so easy you feel guilty charging for it?

This is the thing you do best, naturally and consistently. It’s your core competency. When you frame problems through your core competency, your perspective becomes uniquely yours because it’s rooted in what you've actually experienced and learned.

This is why two people can solve the same problem but sound completely different, and why your competition can't copy your perspective, no matter how hard they try.

Step 3: Go From Vague to Visceral

Clients don’t resonate with generalizations. They respond to specificity because it makes abstract problems tangible and personal.

Here’s what it looks like to sharpen the problem you solve:

• Vague: “Founders struggle to scale.”

• Visceral: “Founders waste 10+ hours a week onboarding contractors because every project starts from scratch, so there's no repeatable process.”
  

• Vague: “People don’t know how to create content.”

• Visceral: “High-level solo operators hit a content publishing wall because they don’t have a sounding board to help test, sharpen, and ship the big ideas they’re sitting on.”

If your version of the problem doesn’t include a person, a feeling, and a cost, it’s too soft to stick.

Step 4: Validate the Problem with Real-World Checks

Run your problem through this short checklist:

• Urgency: Are people actively trying to solve this?

• Specificity: Can you describe it in plain language?

• Solvability: Have you solved it before, or do you have a process that can?

Bonus: Test the problem in the wild. Drop your opinion about it into a post, a DM, or a sales call and pay attention to reactions. If someone says, “Oh sh*t, that’s me,” you've got signal.

Step 5: Map the Root Causes

Once you’ve named the problem, ask:

• Why does this problem exist?

• What’s the hidden cost of doing nothing?

• What myths, habits, or “best practices” keep people stuck?

Clarity isn’t just about naming pain. It’s about showing people the real reason they’re stuck. The part they can’t see yet.

When you do that, you shift from being “one of many” to being the obvious choice.

Your goal: Write a 1–2 sentence problem statement that hits like a punch to the gut.

Something like:

“Most solopreneurs depend on work from referrals, but they can’t scale past $20K months because they're in the Recognition Gap and are invisible outside their network.”

If you can say the problem you solve in a clear, confident sentence, you’re not just describing a problem.

You’re setting the stage for someone to say: That’s exactly what I need help with.

2. Clarify the Person You Help

It doesn't matter what industry you put on your homepage.

When you market a problem worth solving, the people who have it will reveal themselves to you.

Too many solopreneurs mess this up by starting with demographics or job titles. But not all “founders” feel the same pain. Not all “marketers” need the same solution. Not all “coaches” are ready to invest.

CP3 flips the script:

You define your ideal client by how close they are to the problem and how ready they are to invest in solving it.

The right person is someone:

• You can reach (you have access to them)

• You can help (you have proof and process)

• Who feels the problem acutely (and is looking for a solution)

You don’t build a business around the ideal persona in your head. You build it around the actual people who will pay you to help solve a specific problem. It’s about naming a pain. When you anchor to that problem, the right people reveal themselves.

Take one of our clients (we'll call him Mark), for example.

Mark was a HubSpot consultant who wanted to serve manufacturing companies. He had one successful client in that industry, and his logic was simple: “It worked once, let’s get more.” So he built his website, offer, and messaging around that persona.

But nothing landed. He didn’t have access to manufacturing companies.

Meanwhile, other marketing agencies kept coming to him, unprompted.

They resonated with the problem he named—disorganized marketing ops and broken lead handoffs. They said things like:

"We’re running into the same problem with our clients."

"Can you teach me how you’re implementing this?"

"Do you have time for a call?"

When Mark told Nick about this on a coaching call, Nick said, “Open your eyes, dude. You don’t sell to manufacturers. You sell services to marketing agencies now.”

Mark listened.

He adjusted his offer and stopped chasing a “dream ICP” and started serving the people already showing up. The people closest to the pain and ready to pay.

Within 48 hours, he booked 8 sales calls—just by following up with the agencies who had raised their hands.

He didn’t change the problem he solved. He changed who he solved it for.

That’s the power of letting the problem pick the person.

And once you lock that in, your sales, content, and positioning get a lot easier.

How to Clarify the Person

Once the problem is clear, your next job is to ask: Who feels this most—and is ready to fix it?

Focus on specificity.

You want someone who reads your problem statement and says:

“It’s like you have a hidden camera in my office.”

That level of resonance is what gets people to say yes—fast. That specificity only happens when you know the actual situation your person is in, and the challenge they’re dealing with.

Step 1: Create Your Audience Profile with the “Person in Situation” Formula

The simplest way to get to clarity is to fill in the blanks:

[Person] in [Situation], but [Challenge]

This structure helps you name the exact conditions your ideal client is living in. It captures the friction. It shows that you understand the nuance. And it becomes a copy-paste building block you can use everywhere: sales calls, content, landing pages, referrals.

Examples:

• You’re the head of marketing with a small team and BIG pipeline goals. You know you need to start (or scale) email marketing and/or or paid ads but limited expertise on your team & time constraints are preventing you.

• You’re working with an agency, but are not seeing results. You have (or recently had) an agency managing these channels already, but you’re getting frustrated because you can't prove a new pipeline generated from paid ad/email campaigns.

You want to make someone say, “That’s me.”

Here's how we make this clear for our solopreneur coaching clients at Duo:

The goal is to define 2-3 audience profiles using behavior and problem-first signals.

Step 2: Check for Three Signs of the Right Person

Once you’ve sketched a few profiles, ask yourself:

1. Do I have access to them?

   • Are they in your existing network?

   • Do they engage with your content?

   • Do you speak their language fluently because you’ve been one of them or worked inside their world?
     

2. Can I help them?

   • Do you have clear proof and a process for solving their problem?

   • Can you articulate why your approach is better or different?

   • Have you done it before, multiple times?
     

3. Do they feel the pain and want to fix it?

   • Are they actively searching for help?

   • Do they have the means and urgency to invest in a solution?

   • Will they recognize your POV as something they’ve been waiting to hear?

If you can’t answer “yes” to all three, you’re likely chasing a persona instead of responding to demand.

Step 3: Listen to What the Market Is Telling You

Sometimes, you pick the person. But other times, they pick you.

That’s what happened to Mark. He thought his ideal client was in manufacturing. But the people actually showing up, asking questions, and booking calls were from agencies.

He didn’t need to convince a new market to care.

He needed to listen to the people already raising their hands and adjust accordingly.

Access trumps aspiration.

Don’t build a business around who you wish you could help. Build around the people who already resonate with your problem—and are ready to pay to solve it.

Once you’ve named the problem and the person, the next step is figuring out:

How exactly do you solve it every time?

That’s where your process comes in. And it’s the difference between being seen as a credible consultant or fractional and being trusted (and paid well) for your expertise.

3. Clarity on the Process You Use to Solve The Problem

Your process is your power.

Not your background. Not your LinkedIn bio. Not your client list.

Your ability to take someone from problem to outcome—consistently—is what builds authority. The problem you solve earns attention. The process you use earns trust. And when you clarify and refine that process, you create exponential leverage.

Most solopreneurs never do this step.

They sell their time. They juggle a dozen deliverables that don’t ladder up to a repeatable system. They customize the journey for every client and wonder why they’re exhausted and stuck.

You’ve probably said this yourself:

“But every client is different.”

That’s true. But if every engagement is different—different scope, different steps, different value—you’re making growth impossible. This isn’t about forcing clients into a rigid container. It’s about identifying the through line in your work and using that to create repeatable results.

Your process is what turns scattered client wins into a scalable system.

Without a process, you have a job—not a business.

And your job has no leverage.

Clarifying your process changes that. It reduces context switching, speeds up delivery, and tightens your talking points. It makes selling easier and client results more consistent.

As Nick puts it:

“The more you do a thing, the less time it takes you to create value for clients. That’s not magic. That’s process.”

When you reduce your time-to-value, you unlock the ability to charge for outcomes, not hours.

For example, Amber is a revenue operations strategist for B2B tech companies. When she started Nick's coaching program, her reputation was solid. She had plenty of experience. But her work looked more like a string of part-time jobs than a focused, scalable business.

She’d jump into projects, fix whatever was broken, and move on to whatever the client needed.

That sounds great, until you realize that random work equals random reputation. Amber wasn’t known for any one thing. Even worse, she couldn’t explain what made her work different.

So, Nick helped her frame the problem and build a repeatable process.

Amber called it The Pipeline Black Box. This problem is the reason most GTM teams miss revenue targets even when they swear they won’t. Everyone is pulling different numbers from different systems, no one agrees on what’s working, and the data can’t be trusted. To solve it, she created a process called the Revenue Visibility Sprint—a 90-day engagement designed to help B2B companies see what’s driving revenue and what’s getting in the way.

This process didn’t just scale her business. It increased her pricing, shortened her sales cycle, and made her POV distinctive. She wasn’t selling her time anymore. She was selling a method, a point of view on why the problem exists and how to solve it, and a predictable result.

That only became possible once she clarified her process.

Amber’s story isn’t unique. Most solopreneurs have a process. But you can only scale it once you name it, map it, and standardize it.

How to Clarify Your Process

We use a simple 6-step approach to help clients map this out:

Step 1: Audit your past projects for patterns

Look at your most successful engagements. Ask:

• What steps did I repeat across clients?

• Where did things get stuck, and how did I fix it?

• What did clients always need, even if they didn’t know it?

Patterns = Process.

During the audit, look for process masquerading as custom work.

Just because you’re custom-scoping doesn’t mean it’s unique. Often, you’re following the same sequence over and over without realizing it. If you’ve done something more than three times, it’s a process waiting to be named.

A clear process makes your solution feel trustworthy.

• Makes your offer more tangible

• Builds buyer confidence (“I can see how this works”)

• Differentiates you from people who do similar work but lack structure

It’s not just about what you do. It’s how you do it. You don’t need a 50-step methodology. You need a specific, simple journey people can visualize themselves going through.

Step 2: Structure your process into steps

We use the Four-Phase Framework:

• Audit → Identify gaps. What’s working? What’s not? Where are the gaps?

• Implement → Fill the gaps and create a new way of doing things

• Optimize → Refine the system and sharpen the strategy

• Maximize: → Scale what works, and expand your reach

The goal is clarity.

You want prospects to see the process before they say yes. You want clients to feel the progress as they move through it. And you want your future team (or future self) to deliver it without reinventing the wheel.

Step 3: Define each step

For every step of your process, write down:

• Objective: What’s the goal of this step?

• Deliverables: What does the client get?

• Timeframe: How long does it take?

• Expected Outcomes: What will be true at the end of this phase?

This turns your expertise into an experience your client can walk through with confidence.

Here's an example from a positioning consultant:

Phase 1: Audit

• Objective: Identify gaps in current messaging and positioning

• Deliverables: Positioning audit, buyer journey map

• Timeframe: 2 weeks

• Expected Outcome: Clear understanding of what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to change

Phase 2: Implement

• Objective: Rebuild core messaging and reposition offer

• Deliverables: Brand narrative, revamped offer language, homepage copy draft

• Timeframe: 3 weeks

• Expected Outcome: Clear, consistent, high-converting messaging

…and so on.

Step 4: Describe each step of your process using clear, concrete language

Today is the day you stop using vague phrases like “strategy session” or “alignment call.”

Vague: “We’ll have a 90-minute ideation workshop.”
Clear: “We’ll have a 90-minute workshop to redesign your sales process so you stop losing qualified leads after the first call.”

Vague: “We’ll optimize your email funnel.”
Clear: “We’ll optimize your email funnel by rewriting your first five emails to create a compelling Welcome sequence.”

Be brave. Be specific. Tell the client exactly what they’re buying.

Step 5: Validate with real use

A “clear” process only works if it survives contact with the real world.

Ask yourself:

• Have you done this before?

• Can a stranger understand it?

• Could someone else implement it?

If the answer to any of those is “no,” go back and refine.

Your goal is to build a tangible, teachable roadmap to help people go from “stuck” to “solved.”

That roadmap becomes your:

• Offer

• Sales page

• Sales call structure

• Client delivery system

• Thought leading POV

• Content engine

This is how you stop reinventing your business every time someone wants to hire you.

And it’s what gives your business the one thing most solos never build:

Scalability.

Step 6: Decide your delivery model

Once your process is mapped, ask:

• Is this solving a one-time problem or a recurring one?

• Does this require a sprint or an ongoing engagement?

• What parts can be delegated, templatized, or automated?

CP3 helps you identify what already works in your delivery model and turn it into a repeatable system. This becomes the bridge between the problem and the outcome. It's also the process that your enablement and sales narrative are built around.

Clarity on your process gives you clarity on your offer, which unlocks scale.

CP3 Summary

The Cost of Being Unclear

One of our clients—we'll call her Sarah—is smart, strategic, and was already working with solid clients.

She’d been in business for a while. She had enough revenue to invest in coaching. She wasn’t struggling to land work. But she was struggling to scale.

Every time she pitched her offer, she used new language.

Every time she explained what she did, it came out a little different.

Every time she described the problem she solved, it changed based on the client.

Sarah wasn’t inconsistent on purpose. She just hadn’t made the core decisions yet:

• What’s the real problem I solve?

• Who do I solve it for?

• What process do I use to solve it?

Without that clarity, her messaging shifted from post to post, sales call to sales call, offer to offer. Even her best clients couldn’t describe what she did—because Sarah couldn’t describe it clearly herself. She didn’t need more skills or more credentials. She needed clarity she could repeat. Clarity she could anchor to. Clarity the market could remember her for.

That’s the Recognition Gap.

Sometimes it hides inside success.

That’s why CP3 exists.

To help smart, capable people like Sarah stop changing their story every time they talk about what they do—and start building a business people remember.

Because when you’re clear on what you do, for whom, and how, you stop being just another talented generalist. You become known for something specific. You can book more calls. You can land the right clients. You can build a reputation that compounds.

And your referrals stop dragging you into custom work you don’t want to do anymore.

That’s when you’re ready for the next step: The MP3 Framework.

CP3 → MP3

Once you have clarity, then you can build recognition.

That’s when you move into the MP3 Framework:

• Market the Problem

• Market the Process

• Market the Proof

CP3 gives your business strategic clarity, but MP3 gives your business magnetic recognition. Together, they give you the leverage most solopreneurs never build.

So before you scale, before you automate, before you flood the internet with “thought leadership”...

Get clear first.

Stop marketing your services and start marketing the problem you solve.

1. Name the problem you solve

2. Get clear on who you're helping

3. Deliver a specific process—again and again

When you do that, you create gravity. Because people don’t remember clever content. They remember the people who helped them see clearly for the first time.

No more whisper networks.

No more wondering where the next client will come from.

Just signal, belief, and a business that has the opportunity to scale.

Cheers,

Nick, Erica, & Katrina

In the next mini-book, we'll break down the MP3 Framework and how to build recognition by marketing the problem, process, and proof.

Ready to standardize your custom consulting services? Book a call with Nick and Erica.

Have questions? Ask us in a comment below.