Tech layoffs, finance cuts, the quiet culling across industries... elite professionals with pristine credentials are now competing for the same roles and clients you are.

Working harder won't help. Working visibly will.

Here's the system that separates signal from noise when everyone's shouting the same thing.

Part 1: ANCHOR Your anchor is the specific thing you want to be known for. Not your job title. Not your industry. The problem you solve better than most.

Bad anchor: "I'm a marketing manager." Good anchor: "I help B2B companies fix pipeline problems caused by bad messaging."

One sentence. Specific problem. Clear outcome.

Part 2: PROOF Claims without evidence are noise. Proof is what makes your anchor believable.

Three types of proof that work:

You don't need all three. You need at least one, and it needs to be visible, not buried in a resume no one reads.

Part 3: SURFACE Proof that nobody sees doesn't exist. Surfacing is where and how you make your anchor visible to the right people.

For most professionals, this means three places:

Part 4: ECHO The most powerful positioning doesn't come from you. It comes from others repeating your anchor when you're not in the room.

Echo is engineered. You create it by making your work easy to talk about and giving people language to describe what you do.

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Robert Cialdini's research on influence identified social proof and authority as two of the six universal principles of persuasion. The Signal Stack combines both.

Your anchor establishes authority (you have a specific expertise). Your proof provides social evidence (others have validated it). Your surfacing makes it findable. Your echo multiplies it without extra effort from you.

The key insight: by the time a recruiter, client, or decision-maker talks to you, your positioning should have already done 70% of the convincing. Cialdini calls this pre-suasion, the work that happens before the conversation starts.

Corporate track: Your anchor is what you want leadership to think of when your name comes up. Audit your last five interactions with senior leaders. Did any of them reinforce your anchor? If not, you're being positioned by accident, not design.

Creator track: Your anchor is your niche. If someone asks your audience "what does [your name] do?", they should be able to answer in one sentence. If they can't, your content isn't building positioning, it's building noise.

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Use this template to build your positioning:

MY ANCHOR: "I help [specific audience] solve [specific problem] so they can [specific outcome]."

MY PROOF:

MY SURFACES (where I'll make this visible):

MY ECHO STRATEGY (how I'll get others to repeat this):

Fill this out before tomorrow's article. Wednesday, I'm covering the one LinkedIn mistake that's killing your reach, and you'll need your anchor clear before we fix your visibility.

Running a newsletter? The Signal Stack works for positioning your publication too. Beehiiv's built-in growth tools help you surface your anchor to the right subscribers.

Reply with subject line 'SETUP HELP' using the email you signed up with, and I'll share how I structured mine.

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Tomorrow: The LinkedIn mistake that's costing you 60% of your visibility, and how to fix it without posting more content.

Pro members get The Anchor Script Library: 12 fill-in-the-blank positioning statements across different industries and roles, plus the "Echo Engineering" framework for getting mentioned in rooms you're not in.