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You need to define and courageously proclaim a position, then you've gotta behave in the way a person in that position behaves. You also have to work like crazy to validate the position and before you know it, the positioning you've created for marketing purposes becomes your actual position.

If you read Ries and Trout, Ries is a subscriber of mine, you want to read their book on “Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind” and their “22 Immutable Laws of Marketing”, and you gain a deeper understanding of positioning as a strategy.

And if you read psychological authors like Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s “Psycho-Cybernetics”, Jim Newman’s “Release Your Brakes”, and books like “Prosperity Consciousness” and authors like Catherine Ponder and Stuart Wilde, you see that positioning is also a powerful application of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Then if you really study the works of Napoleon Hill and their meaning, you'll discover what I call the “dominant thought principle” - the secret Dr. Hill refers to at the beginning of Think and Grow Rich. Link all of those together, and you'll know what to do, and how to do it, for positioning to quickly become an actual position.

Unfortunately, I think society, academia, and even corporate America insists on conditioning people that they have to be positioned by somebody else, by some third party. Someone else has to recognize and appoint you. You do certain things, then you get recognized, get an award, a promotion, a degree, or a title. Status follows achievement.

But if you follow that pattern in the entrepreneurial environment, you'll starve. In real business life, the opposite. That's the way it works. The super successful person decides on his status first, then backs it up with achievement.

Let's take an insurance agent who wants to specialize in dealing with CEOs of family-owned businesses. Conditioning says, he goes to a bunch of classes and seminars, takes courses, and somehow gets somebody to certify him as such an expert, or more correctly has prepared to be such an expert. Then he goes and labors for years, working with one, then two, then three such clients and gradually ever so slowly, that community takes notice of him, and finally, maybe some association or media proclaims him an expert in his field.

You should live so long.

In real-world selling, here's what the smart agent does. He prepares himself as best he can. Then he proclaims himself a Minnesota specialist and advises CEOs of family-owned businesses. Then he gets busy doing things that go with and support that position. He writes a book, gives a lecture, and a seminar. He starts sending out news releases to the media to get interviewed as this expert. And he narrows all of his marketing to support this position.

And then he is that positioning.