"But the kind of differentiation I’m trying to describe here is harder to name precisely because it doesn’t live on any single axis at all. It’s relational. It’s structural. It’s the accumulation of how you show up across hundreds of small interactions that individually seem insignificant but collectively produce a feeling in the customer that they can’t fully articulate either. They just know they’d rather work with you. They renew without shopping around. They refer you without being asked. And if you asked them why, they’d probably say something vague like “they just get it” or “they’re easy to work with”, which is the most consequential thing anyone will ever say about you in the fewest possible syllables."
The companies (and even individual people) that end up with real differentiation and actual authority are the ones who look hard at how they’ve been living and operating, with genuine honesty about what’s there, and then say something true based on what they actually see instead of publishing some aspirational catechism.