Every 4-6 Months, the Same Crisis Hits

Why your brain fights your best positioning decisions

Every 4-6 months, the same crisis hits.

I leaned back in my chair, palms covering my eyes, staring at the ceiling through my fingers. Three years of this cycle. Three years of questioning whether my engineering + storytelling intersection actually makes sense, or if I'm just too stubborn to pick a normal niche.

It's been 3 months since my last client.

"You're a mistake. You're an idiot for thinking you can do this. Over $15K sunk in and what did you get? Empty inboxes and no money."

I could go back. Fluorescent lights, tight cubicles. Coworkers who can make or break your day. Bureaucratic systems telling me to know my place.

But I can't go back knowing what I know now. Too much has changed.

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This cycle is an evolutionary tension.

We need categories. It’s how we survived for this long. But innovation requires creating new categories, which triggers our social isolation alarm. We're fighting two instincts: stay safe vs. create new.

But my work breaks categories. Engineering + storytelling doesn't fit anywhere clean. So, every 4-6 months, my brain revolts.

It says: 'Pick a side. Stop being weird.'

Every intersection expert faces this. Society demands boxes. We create new ones.

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I looked at an older client testimonial: "He's not just a ghostwriter - he's looking at your whole business and creating a systematic approach that actually generates revenue."

That line hit me. I hunted for crazy intersections. My footwear client was the first holistic footwear agency I'd met. I want to land a neuroscience PhD who runs his marketing consultancy using actual neuroscience.

It's the weird intersections that matter.

So I built a scoreboard. Not comparing myself to ghostwriters or positioning experts, but to people who build pipelines for unusual combinations others can't figure out how to market.

Where they scored 0-1, I scored 2/2:

• Teaching intersection positioning principles

• Predicting which intersections will become valuable

• Adapting business frameworks for weird combinations

The scoreboard showed me two things: I wasn't behind - I was alone in a category I'd accidentally created. AND I was explaining myself wrong.

Instead of saying 'I'm an engineer who writes,' I started saying 'You know how your ideas get dismissed as too complex? I solve that.'

Same intersection. Different category. Different framing.

The conversations shifted immediately. Instead of confusion, I got curiosity. Instead of 'How does that work exactly?' I heard 'Tell me more.”