The question always comes. At a networking event, in a waiting room, over dinner: so what do you do? Whatever comes out of you in that moment is your positioning statement.

It is the version the other person passes on later.

The sentence works when you are not in the room

A good sentence travels. Someone hears it once and can repeat it to another person three days later, without you being there.

That is where most enquiries come from in founder-led businesses: through a third person who remembered your sentence.

What a positioning statement is made of

Three parts are enough: who you work for, which job you take on, and what changes because of it.

I design kitchens for small restaurants, so they can get through service with fewer staff on the floor.

Eighteen words, three pieces of information, no jargon.

Where this sentence shows up

It reaches well beyond the conversation. It sits in the subject line of your first email to a possible client. On the home page, in the first line. In your LinkedIn profile, under your name. In the proposal, right at the top, before the numbers. And in the head of the person recommending you.

Every one of those places calls for the same sentence, and that starts to count as soon as more than one place speaks about you. With a settled sentence, people remember what you do.

A short, clear sentence gives confidence — to you and to the person listening. It sounds like someone who knows what they are talking about. And it leaves room: anyone genuinely interested will ask on their own. The details come later in the conversation, where they belong.

Where this sentence comes from

The sentence sits at the end of a process, and it arrives almost on its own.

First the business gets sorted: what you do, for whom, in what way, to what end, and what sets you apart. Each answer takes away some noise and uncovers what really carries the project.

By the end the sentence is already there. All that is left is to recognise it.

The reaction is usually the same: it seems so obvious that it is hard to understand why it was not there earlier. And with that, the search ends.

That is Foundation.

How you know it has landed

There are three signs, and they all come from outside.

Someone repeats your sentence without you prompting it, and roughly in your own words.

The follow-up questions change. Instead of “and what does that mean exactly?” you get “and do you also do X?”. That is the moment someone is already checking whether you fit.

And the enquiries fit better. Fewer of them, closer to what you want to be doing. These signs show up in the first weeks of using the sentence, and once they do, the sentence is settled.

What else this sentence carries

It is the smallest unit of your brand. Out of it come the headline of your home page, your LinkedIn profile, the first line of your proposal and the answer to the question at the start.

That is why it sits at the beginning of every project, ahead of the logo and the website.

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