Guest Bio
David Newman is a Certified Speaking Professional, popular keynote speaker, and the author of Marketing Eminence: 22 Strategies to Build a Bold Personal Brand, Become a Business Celebrity, and Drive Unstoppable Growth. He works with founders, mid-market CEOs, and professional service firms who want to play bigger, grow faster, and become a category of one. He also hosts The Selling Show, a top 1% podcast with 500+ episodes.
Episode Overview
This conversation is basically a masterclass on contrarian positioning, but not the gimmicky kind. David frames the core problem in plain English: we are all trying to earn attention in a hyper-noisy, AI-driven market, and “more content” is not the answer. He walks through his Market Eminence framework, visibility, respect, and brand preference, then makes a strong case that brand preference is the lever most people ignore, even though it is the one that de-commoditizes you.
From there, we go straight into the practical stuff: how to build your “contrarian slant” (David’s phrase) so you stop sounding like every other agency, consultant, firm, or founder in your space. The prompts he gives are sharp because they force honesty. What conventional wisdom is broken in your industry? What elephant-in-the-room truth are clients desperate for someone to say out loud? What point of view makes insiders uncomfortable, but makes ideal clients feel seen?
Then David takes it further. Contrarian positioning is not something you hide in a brand doc. It has to show up publicly, on your website, in social posts, on webinars, and yes, in sales conversations. That’s where the “electromagnetic fence” metaphor lands, contrarian messaging pulls in best-fit clients and repels nightmare clients. And the second half of the episode ties eminence to content strategy in the age of AI. David argues “how-to” content is dead because AI wins that game at scale, and he offers a better path: “how to think” content, belief-shifting content, and future-casting content that helps your audience see around corners. The result is a simple, repeatable way to build trust faster, get remembered, and become the obvious choice.
Key Takeaways
- Contrarian positioning starts with brand preference, not visibility. If you are not meaningfully differentiated, being more visible just makes you a louder commodity.
- Build a contrarian slant by challenging broken “conventional wisdom,” naming the elephant in the room, and amplifying the bitter complaints your best clients had about past vendors.
- Your contrarian positioning has to be public and consistent. It should show up on your website, in social, during sales calls, and everywhere prospects experience you.
- Stop relying on “how-to” content for visibility. Shift to “how to think,” “what to believe vs. not believe,” and “get ready for what’s next.”
- Use the “cliché killer” and “black marker test” to remove buzzwords and ensure your messaging cannot be mistaken for a competitor’s.
Favorite Quotes
- “The question I set out to answer in the book is how can CEOs, founders, leaders of any kind, how can they earn attention?” (01:01)
- “Brand preference is a combination of differentiation and positioning so that it seems risky, dangerous, and dumb to work with anyone other than you.” (01:54)
- “Build your contrarian slant.” (03:29)
- “You don’t want to be considered the best of the best. You want to be considered the only ones who do what you do.” (07:24)
- “Install a very powerful electromagnetic fence around you and around your business.” (09:08)
- “How-to content, it’s done. It’s over. It’s dead.” (11:30)
- “Be more like licorice.” (24:08)
Playbook: How to Apply
- Define your contrarian position in one sentence: name the broken “common belief” in your market, then state what you believe instead and why it matters.
- Make it public everywhere: put that sentence on your homepage hero, LinkedIn headline/about, and the first 60 seconds of your sales calls so prospects immediately “get” your angle.
- De-cliché your messaging: run the black marker test on your site and profile, if a competitor could swap in and it still reads the same, rewrite until it’s unmistakably you.
- Publish “how to think” content: stop leading with how-to, lead with POV, patterns, warnings, and predictions that only experience can produce, then repeat consistently for 30 days.
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