The Free-Range vs. Factory Farm Choice

Last week we talked about pruning and cutting what drains you before we turn the page on 2025 and welcome 2026.

This week I want to talk about what you build in that space you just created.

But first, a story from the farm.

My nephew is staying with us for a bit. Great young man.

He's getting used to the farm life, getting up early and savoring the noblest part of the day. We enjoy having breakfast together and talking.

The other day as he was making our eggs. While I got the fire going to heat up our home, he cracked an egg into the skillet and stopped.

"Uncle Dale, why is the yolk so orange?"

I smiled. I love this question.

"Those come from our friends, Jonathan and Ruth Hilty. They're an Amish family about a mile from here and have free-range chickens. Not factory-farmed."

He looked at the egg like he'd never seen one before. Bright orange yolk, thick and firm. Nothing like the wobbly pale yellow ones he's used to from grocery store eggs.

We had a good conversation about the difference. Free-range chickens eat bugs, forage naturally, and get real nutrition.

Factory chickens eat manufactured feed made of who know what, and live under fluorescent lights, imprisoned in cages.

Different inputs. Different outputs.

Then my nephew asked the question that changed the whole conversation: "So why doesn't everyone just do free-range?"

It got me to thinking...and the answer to that question is the same reason most consultants are broke.

Here's what I have for you in this issue:

🛠️ The Free-Range vs. Factory Farm Choice: Why category of one positioning beats competing with the masses 

🤖 The "Positioning Level Mini-Audit" Prompt: Discover if you're commodity-positioned or premium-positioned 

The Great Irony

Factory farming is necessary.

During the Industrial Revolution, millions of people moved from farms into cities. Someone had to figure out how to feed urban populations at scale.

Post-WWII, factory farming exploded. With the invention of the tractor and other mechanized implements, then antibiotics and assembly line operational efficiencies, large-scale operations followed and...

…we solved the quantity problem.

We can now feed billions.

But we sacrificed quality.

Factory eggs are cheap and available most everywhere. But they don't come close to the nutritional value of free-range eggs. Lower in vitamins. Pale yolks. Less flavor.

You can't have both. You can't be free-range AND factory-farmed.

And there's a free-range vs. factory-farmed choice to make as consultants too.

 Here's what I mean....

The Consulting Industry's Factory Farm Problem

Walk through LinkedIn. Everyone's a "business consultant." Everyone "helps companies grow." Everyone offers "strategic guidance."

It's the consultant equivalent of factory farming. Commodity positioning. Interchangeable. Racing to the bottom on price.

The symptoms:

- Competing on hourly rates

- Offering everything to everyone

- Building "productized services" to scale

- Copying what big firms do

- Trying to serve as many clients as possible

The result is exhaustion and an empty bank account. You're indistinguishable from everyone else.

You're trying to be the factory farm when you should be the free-range operation.

Why You Can't Scale Like McKinsey (And Shouldn't Try)

McKinsey is factory farming. The pyramid model. Junior analysts doing research. Leveraging people less experienced than you. Volume play.

That works for them. For now at least. They have brand, capital, and infrastructure.

You don't. And you don't need it.

Trying to scale like them means:

- Hiring people less skilled than you (lowering quality)

- Commoditizing your expertise (competing on process)

- Fighting on their terms (you'll lose)

- Losing what makes you valuable (your expertise and relationships)

The lie we tell ourselves is: "I need to scale to make real money."

The truth is: Premium positioning beats volume every time.

My friends Jonathan and Ruth sell those eggs for 3x the price of factory eggs. And people like me drive to their farm specifically to buy them.

Same with consulting. Premium clients seek out expertise, not the cheapest option.

The Four Positioning Quadrants

Every consultant falls into one of these four categories:

Quadrant 1: Factory Farmed (Low Price/High Volume)

- Competing with thousands

- $75-150/hour rates

- Exhausting, unsustainable

- Most consultants are stuck here

Quadrant 2: Free-Range Pricing, Factory Delivery

- Charging premium but delivering commodity

- Won't last long

- Reputation killer

- Get out fast

Quadrant 3: Factory Pricing, Free-Range Delivery

- Delivering premium value

- Charging commodity prices

- Going broke slowly

- This is where good consultants suffer

Quadrant 4: True Free-Range (Premium Price/Premium Delivery)

- $10K-30K monthly retainers

- Exceptional delivery

- 10-15 selective clients

- Category of one positioning

- Sustainable, profitable, fulfilling

- Where you need to be

The Free-Range vs. Factory Farm Choice

Here's what the free-range choice looks like in practice:

1. Category of One Positioning

You're not competing with other consultants. You're in a category you created.

This comes from four unreplicable elements:

➝  Your Lived Experience: The 20-25 years you spent in the field. The mistakes you made. The patterns you witnessed. The transformations you created. Nobody else has your exact experience.

➝  Your Learned Skill: What you know from doing the work. Not theory from books. Real-world knowledge earned through repetition and refinement.

➝  Seeing What Others Miss: You spot opportunities before they're obvious. You recognize patterns from market forces converging. You've seen this movie before and know how it ends. This is strategic foresight that comes only from lived experience.

➝  Your Signature Methodology: How you deliver your unreplicable experience systematically. Your Business Breakthrough Software. Your frameworks. Your process.

When these four elements combine, you become fundamentally uncopyable. Someone might try to copy your system, but they can't copy your 25 years of lived experience or your ability to see around corners.

2. Selective Clients

10-15 great clients beats 100 mediocre ones. Quality over quantity. Every time.

3. Deep Relationships

Multi-year partnerships, not one-off projects. Retainer model. You're their strategic advisor, not their hired hand.

4. AI as Your Research Assistant

Here's where AI fits: It amplifies your speed without replacing your value.

AI handles commodity work—research, data analysis, information gathering. You provide what AI can't—judgment from lived experience, pattern recognition, seeing opportunities others miss, strategic decisions based on wisdom.

You research faster with AI. But clients pay for what took you 25 years to learn, not what AI can do in 25 seconds.

5. Premium Delivery Through Your System

You're not selling hours. You're selling transformation through your proven methodology.

Something only you can deliver because it's built on your unique experience.

How to Make the Shift

If you're stuck in commodity consulting, here's how to reposition:

📌  Step 1: Identify Your Uncopyable Elements

What makes you fundamentally different? Not your services—your experience.

What have you lived through that others haven't? What patterns do you see that others miss? What mistakes did you make that taught you what actually works?

Not "business consulting." That's factory farming.

"I spent 15 years in manufacturing operations, made every mistake, and now I see profit leaks others miss" is category of one positioning.

📌  Step 2: Raise Your Prices Dramatically

Premium positioning requires premium pricing. If you're charging $150/hour, you're positioned as commodity.

$10K-30K monthly retainers position you as irreplaceable strategic partner.

The price signals your category. Charge commodity prices, get treated like a commodity.

📌  Step 3: Get Ruthlessly Selective

Fire your commodity clients. The ones who question every invoice. The ones who drain your energy. The ones who want the cheapest option.

Keep and attract the ones who value wisdom over price. Who understand that 25 years of experience costs more than ChatGPT.

📌  Step 4: Shift to Partnership Model

Stop selling projects. Start building partnerships.

"I don't do one-time projects anymore. I build ongoing strategic partnerships. Think of me as your advisor who's with you as long as you're growing—$10K monthly, no end date, we're partners in this."

📌  Step 5: Use AI to Amplify Speed, Not Replace Value

AI compresses research from weeks to days. But that's not what clients pay for.

They pay for your ability to see opportunities they don't see yet. For pattern recognition from lived experience. For knowing how this plays out because you've watched these market forces collide for 25 years.

AI makes you faster. Your lived experience makes you irreplaceable.

📌  Step 6: Tell Your Uncopyable Story

Your positioning is your story about why you're fundamentally different.

Not "I use AI tools" (everyone says that).

Not "I have 20 years experience" (so do thousands of others).

But: "I've spent 20 years seeing what happens when [specific market forces] collide. I know the patterns others miss. I see the opportunities before they're obvious. And I've built a systematic way to help you capture them."

That's a category of one story.

The 2026 Positioning Decision

You're at a fork in the road heading into 2026.

Option 1: Keep competing as commodity consultant. Race to the bottom. Fight with thousands of others. Watch AI make your generic advice worthless. Burn out.

Option 2: Position in a category of one. Become fundamentally uncopyable through your lived experience, learned skill, ability to see what others miss, and signature methodology.

Here's the urgent part: AI is making commodity consulting worthless. Any business owner can get generic advice from ChatGPT for $20/month.

But wisdom from 25 years of lived experience? Pattern recognition that sees opportunities before they're obvious? Strategic foresight from watching market forces collide repeatedly? A methodology that delivers your unreplicable expertise systematically?

That's irreplaceable. That's premium. That's category of one.

The consultants who position this way now will own their category. The ones who wait will compete on price with AI bots.

In upcoming issues, I'll show you the complete Category of One framework—how to identify your uncopyable elements, articulate them powerfully, and build your positioning so strong that prospects literally can't compare you to anyone else.

But it starts with this decision: Factory farm or free-range? Commodity or category of one?

Choose Your Farm

My nephew gets it now. That bright orange yolk isn't luck or accident. It's the result of intentional choices Jonathan and Ruth make about how they raise their chickens.

Free-range chickens cost more to raise. Produce fewer eggs. Require more care and attention.

But the eggs are worth 3x more. And people seek them out specifically—driving to the farm to buy them. They don't compare free-range eggs to factory eggs. They're in a different category entirely.

Same with your consulting practice.

You can't be both free-range and factory-farmed. You can't be premium and commodity. You can't be category of one and competing with everyone.

You have to choose.

Choose free-range. Choose premium. Choose to be uncopyable through your lived experience, learned skill, strategic foresight, and signature methodology.

That's where the real money is. That's where the fulfillment is. That's where 2026 becomes your breakthrough year.

Want to dive deeper? Check out these related articles:

👉  The Q4 Pruning Assessment
👉  The Lead Activation Framework From Content Consumers to Retainer Clients

You might also find these interesting:

🔎  The 10X Brainpower Lever: How Top Consultants Multiply Output Without Working More
🔎  The Human Edge: Why AI's Trust Problem Is Your Biggest Opportunity

P.S.: When you're ready, here are more ways I can help you...