How to Stand Out From Your Competitors

0:00When someone comes to my door, I know, because I'm using SimpliSafe. I get an alert straight to my phone and I can see, is this someone I should unlock the door for because I know them? Or is it someone I need to tell to get lost? But here's the thing I love most about SimpliSafe. It works when I am not looking at my phone too, because when I'm not keeping an eye out, SimpliSafe is. SimpliSafe is proactive with a double layer of defense that stops crimes before they start. First, AI-powered cameras spot potential threats outside, and then live agents step in, talking to the person through the camera and letting them know they're on video and police will be dispatched if they don't leave.

0:44They can even trigger a loud siren or spotlight. That's how you help stop a crime before it starts. And SimpliSafe makes it easy to use. There are no long-term contracts, no hidden fees. You can cancel at any time. It was named Best Home Security Systems by U.S. News and World Report for five years running. It offers a 60-day money-back guarantee, so you can try it and see the difference for yourself. This month only, take 50 % off any new system. This is one of the best prices you will ever see for SimpliSafe, so don't miss it. Just go to simplisafe.com slash problem solvers. Again, that is SimpliSafe, S-I-M-P-L-I, S-A-F-E, simplisafe.com slash problem solvers and lock in your discount.

1:33There's no safe like SimpliSafe. From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like, we have to start from scratch. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

2:21to others, and people don't have the time for it anyway. To explain exactly why you are unique is to explain nuances, and people don't always have time for nuances, and so you just feel stuck. Does that sound familiar to you? It sounds familiar to many entrepreneurs that I know. I'm going to capture it in a message that I recently received from a guy named David Letterman. He is a executive mentor. I guess you could call it a coach, but don't call it a coach for reasons you'll hear in a second because it's far more than that to him. But he had written me. He wrote, how do you effectively market a paradigm shifting service that doesn't fit neatly into a quick soundbite?

3:05And here, by the way, David is referencing the way in which he works with people because it is multidimensional. It's not straightforward. Anyway, I'm going to go back to what he writes. He writes, the work I do is layered. People understandably have a short attention span. And most people quickly assume that what I do is just better tactics for work-life balance when I actually dismantle the work-life balance paradigm completely. In other words, what David is saying is that he works with people in a special way, and it's really hard for him to help. People appreciate that and understand it, and so he gets lost in a sea of people who are just marketing themselves as executive coaches and stuff like that.

3:42How do you stand out? That's the question. How do you stand out? And I really wanted to answer that question because I've heard it from so many people. So I found someone who specializes in answering this exact question. I've been working with brands and doing brand strategy since about 2005. This is Carrie Harris. She's worked in so many capacities across so many brands, including as the president of the Canadian arm of Weber Shandwick, which is an enormous PR firm. Now she has a consulting practice helping large brands and also small businesses and solopreneurs. And that question that David had, that question about how to stand out, how to differentiate yourself in a crowded market, how to be seen for the fullness of what you have to offer, Carrie says that's one of the most common problems she hears about.

4:36And it's very solvable, but it means approaching business differently. The first thing that I say to entrepreneurs is that way too much energy and attention is spent on what I call strategic implementation or customer acquisition or marketing before a founder actually understands clearly there are two things, their business framework and then their brand plan. So on the business framework side, there's five questions that I would encourage everyone to really get clear on. What is the marketplace opportunity or problem you're going to solve? How are you going to solve it or take advantage of it?

5:15What makes you uniquely qualified to do? What does your business model look like? And who is your ideal client? You got to get really clear on your business framework. You got that? You remember it all? Don't worry, we're going to explore those ideas and many more in detail and then apply it to real life. Because here's what you're about to hear. I brought Kerry and David together. Kerry, the branding expert. David, the executive mentor who asked how he can stand out. I brought them together for a kind of public consulting session. They spoke in a community that I have, and Kerry did a deep dive into David's work and showed what's working about his presentation and branding and what is not.

5:58Other members in the community joined in too and then started asking their own questions. And in this episode of Problem Solvers, you get to listen in on it all. You'll hear what it sounds like when your branding is reviewed and clarified. You will understand some of the big things you are missing too, and you'll learn how to stand out. By the way, if you want to join in on things like this, the first step is signing up for my newsletter. It is called One Thing Better. That's the web address, actually. It's called One Thing Better. The web address is onethingbetter.email. So just go to the web address, onethingbetter.email.

6:38And from there, you'll see a way to join the community once you sign up. Okay, with that, we're going to take a short break here on Problem Solvers. And when we're back, It is a real life session helping an entrepreneur and you stand out. I lost my job in 2008, right before my wedding, actually. Getting let go would turn out to be my first step toward passive income, a fluid and dynamic way of earning income while changing lives at the same time. I found that online businesses are the best way to do that. It completely changed my life. My name is Pat Flynn. I created the Smart Passive Income podcast back in 2010 for anyone who's ever felt even a little bit like I did when I got let go.

7:22People who want to create and sustain a passive income stream online so they can spend more time with the ones they love, achieve the lifestyle they desire, and turn their passion into a thriving business. Whether you have a side hustle already in the works or you don't even know where to begin, or you just want to crush it with what you got, this show has it all. Wherever you're at in your journey as an online entrepreneur, you're not alone in your quest. Hit subscribe so you don't miss a beat. There's a new episode of the Smart Passive Income Podcast coming your way every Wednesday and Friday, wherever you'd like to listen to podcasts.

7:53Let's get started. All right, we're back. So here's where I'm gonna bring you in on the conversation that happened in this community. I had just introduced David and Carrie, as I have just done for you in the earlier part of this podcast. And I turned it over to Carrie who said, before we dive into David specifically, we need to zoom out and take a broader view of how entrepreneurs establish themselves in a marketplace. She'd listed off those five questions. I'm going to play them again. You just heard them a minute ago, but I know they fly by. So I'm going to play them again, and then she's just going to go.

8:29From there, you'll hear me moderating the conversation between Kerry and David, bringing in questions from some of the other folks who were watching. This all took place on a Zoom. And you'll hear the occasional other actual voice as well. It was really illuminating. I so appreciate Carrie, and especially David, who really laid it all out and was willing to be such an incredible sport in having his work picked apart here. But I think everyone was better for it. All right, let's bring it back to Carrie Harris. On the business framework side, there's five questions that I would encourage everyone to really get clear on.

9:08What is the marketplace opportunity or problem you're going to solve? How are you going to solve it or take advantage of it? What makes you uniquely qualified to do? What does your business model look like? And who is your ideal client? You got to get really clear on your business framework. Once you've done that work, then I move my clients to a brand plan. And that's where we're talking about the CBP, USP, all of those different brand building blocks. So that process is a little bit more in-depth in that understanding your brand building blocks is really critical to actually moving to customer acquisition.

9:45If you don't do this heavy lifting, you're going to run into a challenge that you're going to look like everyone else. And that's a real big challenge for most entrepreneurs is they're working in red oceans, veritable red oceans. If you've read Blue Ocean Strategy, you know what that is. it's a sector or a marketplace that's so crowded that being me too or looking like everyone else will actually kill you. You won't get out of year one or you won't generate any revenue. So being really clear on your ground building blocks is what will allow you to stand up, to stand out, to be that tall poppy.

10:22So most of the time, if I'm working with a smallie entrepreneur or a small business person, I say, let's focus in on those three critical brand building blocks, plus the one, which is the Y we talked about. So the first one is USP, your unique selling proposition. What do you do better than anyone else? You have to be really clear on that. The second one is your CVP. That's your consumer value proposition or client value proposition. And a lot of people use this term wrong. And I always cringe when they use it wrong. But your CVP is how you want your ideal client. And remember, you know a lot about your ideal client because we talked about them in the business framework, but how you want your ideal client to describe you both functionally and emotionally.

11:13So I'll back this up a little bit. A lot of people will say to me, what's a brand? And I always say to them, it's very simple. A brand is a promise delivered consistently across all consumer touchpoints or all stakeholder touchpoints. That's what a brand is, nothing more than that. But brands are both functional and emotional. Functional is, and we have a lot of examples of functional brands. So Microsoft is a functional brand. Apple is an emotional brand. Where we win is when you understand the emotional components of your brand. So how do you want your ideal client to describe your brand, both functionally and emotionally?

11:54Charles Satchi, who was a really famous advertising guy, said that as human beings, we like to think we make decisions based on functionality. In other words, the brand delivers what it says it's going to do functionally, but it doesn't deliver emotionally. And where you win is when you deliver emotionally. Because as human beings, we make decisions based on emotional. and we can see that's why Apple is so popular for the vast majority of people because if you're looking at the brand's functionality, Apple's not a functional brand. Microsoft is a functional brand. Apple's an emotionally-based brand.

12:32Nike, great example of an emotionally-based brand. So that's a little digression into brand. And we could talk about brand for a long time, but maybe for another day. So CVP is how you want your ideal client to describe your brand functionally and emotionally. And you need to be very aware of that. You cannot be all things to all people. And that's the second mistake I see, particularly coaches making, is they just say, I appeal to women, stressed women, but it's not going to be good enough because then that's a veritable red ocean. You have to be really clear on who your ideal client is, who your avatar is in another way, shape or form.

13:13So you have to really get clear because your CVP, your consumer value proposition, is really what you're aiming for when you're creating your brand building blocks. The next one is your brand promise. What does your ideal client or your ideal consumer get from you every single time they interact with your brand? What's the brand promise? So I'll give you an example. So Starbucks, everyone knows, Starbucks brand promises, they're going to be the third place in your day. Most people say to me when I ask that question, what's Starbucks brand promise? And they say great coffee, good pastries, whatever.

13:51Starbucks brand promises that they will be the third place in your day. There's home, work, and Starbucks. That's the brand promise. Disney, their brand promise is making family memories. Notice they don't define family. They just say making family memories. Your families might be your friend. That's the brand promise. seem to be clear on your brand promise. So what do I get when I interact with you as a brand? And then the fourth component we're talking about is your why. So we know what you do and how you do it. Most people know that, but most people don't know why. So why do you do what you do?

14:28And that's important too. Again, there's that emotional. So those are the brand building blocks. Once you have your business framework down and your brand plan down, then you can move to customer requisition because you will have created a brand that's that is anchored in a marketplace understands your ideal client and the brand components or the brand building blocks make you stand out so i always say that if you want to persuade someone to buy your product or service then what you need to do is communicate from the overlap your client has a pain point you can answer that pain point? What is that overlap?

15:06And that's why it's really critical that you understand your algeal client because you need to understand what is their pain point. So I realized this is a lot. I'm just throwing a lot. No, I appreciate that. That was great. So the reason I wanted to carry that having you start was a little bit of an experiment for me because last time we did a hot seat call, we started with the person in the hot seat who was Birna because what I wanted to try here was hearing theory and then let it hit the road. So you gave us a really good broad overview of the tactics that are required. And now let's have David walk right into that.

15:42David, I think your role here is that you're going to be speaking for I think many people on this call who are having very similar experiences. So I'd love to hear about what you've been struggling with as you try to get people to understand how unique you are and where you feel like you're just getting lost in the sea of other people who do at least a somewhat similar thing to you. So I spent 20 years in the tech field as a leader, in particular in user experience. And when I had a personal journey that led me to rock bottom, I started to notice that all the wisdoms of our day, the best practices of our day around high performance, being in fulfillment, all at the root contradicted one another.

16:28When you had to apply it day to day, stay the course to grow stronger. Don't ignore when life is nudging you to change. Say yes to giving to others, being a servant leader, say no and set more boundaries and take time for yourself. And I struggled with that. I landed right in the middle of that. And so I became obsessed in a way with trying to figure out why is nobody noticing this? And is there a way to actually make this sane? And that led me on a wild journey that totally transformed my life, changed my career and so forth. And let me just see that there's this monumentally different way that you can go about your day where you can feel way more alive, way more aligned and way more fulfilled right now.

17:11You don't have to get to some finish line. And it's very different than how we're going about this very crowded space of, okay, how do you be more performant? How do you have a little bit more wellbeing and how do you feel fulfilled at the end of the day? And so I've struggled primarily with everything I read was like, like Carrie said, you don't want to be something to everybody. So I'm like, okay, do I sit here and say, all right, I'm going to, I spend time trying to go, okay, I'll do the burnout thing and I'll focus on wellbeing and I'll focus on this little piece. But at the core, the people that I work with all say that it's like what you do best and what's been most helpful is it's a complete paradigm shift that truly integrates all three that allows this huge transformation to occur.

17:55And to say all that very quickly is a little bit, I found challenging. Maybe there's an easier way to do. And when I try to do it in a short amount of time, oftentimes people just take their spin on it and go, okay, oh yeah, you just do well-being. Oh, okay. You just are a performance coach or whatever else. And it's not really. So that's probably the quickest way I could explain it. Okay. Do you want me to jump in for you? Yeah, please. Carrie. So what are you hearing there? Actually, so David, let me just put a fine point on it. And then Carrie, I want you to take over. So David, you've described basically having a revelation about a very useful, complex thought that can be incredibly helpful to people.

18:37You devoted yourself to understanding it and to helping others with it. But the problem is that when you present it to people, you can't figure out exactly how to present it because if you're too small about it, then people confuse you with other things. If you're too big about it, then you're going on and on forever. So the challenge that you're experiencing, I just want you to hear you articulate it, is that it's hard to find clients or it's hard to explain to people what it is that you do such that they can really appreciate it. Where would you say is the, just the, where does this problem manifest the worst?

19:11I'd say the latter point in terms of how to communicate it effectively. Most of my client base is all word of mouth. And I want to move beyond that because the pain point is really large. There's not a person who doesn't always resonate with, oh, wow, yeah. How do you deal with this or that aspect? Because it does touch different things. the other part of it is not just the what is innovative but how I do it because my journey has led me to explore all these different bodies of wisdom to find a way to solve this and so I integrate things that most people look at and say those can't integrate but that's my special sauce is doing that finding that way and so it's neuroscience it's psychology it's mindfulness it's ancient wisdom when people hear that last part often they're like how does it all fit together.

20:01And so it does. But again, it's how do you communicate that or how do you convey on it? That's been mine. All right, Carrie, those are the questions. Oh, okay. So I, David, I actually spent some time on your website today. So I just had an opportunity to do a bit of a deep dive. And I would say there's a couple of points that I would put on the table for you to think about. And the first one would be exactly, there we go. Okay, so exactly what is it that you want to accomplish with this website? So your website is your most valuable real estate from a marketing toolbox point of view. And the landing page is the most valuable real estate that you can.

20:43And unfortunately, your landing page doesn't actually, isn't actually being utilized the way that it should be utilized. If I'm coming to your website, probably I've either heard you speak or it's a referral or someone said to me, you have to go and check this guy out. And the first thing that I want you to communicate to me is that you understand my pain point because I'm probably pretty much in pain by the time I'm actually coming to your website. I want to know that you understand my pain point and that you can actually help me solve my pain point. So there's that communicate from the overlap point of view.

21:23So I have a pain point. I'm burnt out. I'm stressed. And what you've done here on your landing page is you've gone like all the way to the end benefit without actually telling me, yeah, I get your pain point. So that's not helpful to me because I'm in pain and I actually can't imagine the end point or the end benefit already. So that's the first thing I would say. So your brand building blocks probably need to be really sharpened. And I would recommend to your business framework be sharpened because the problem that you're solving, you articulate it really well to us. You're really clear on that, but it's actually not being articulated on your brand.

22:09marketing toolbox. So remember we said a brand is a promise consistently communicated across all stakeholder touch points. So the next thing I would probably encourage you to do is if we go past the landing page and we go down to who you actually say is your ideal client, you need to be way more specific because you are everything to everyone and that's actually not going to be affected. So you need to choose your avatar. I think you probably want to narrow in on your avatar and be a lot more specific about who you work with. So I'm working with a coach now, actually a lot. He's a lot like you.

22:51Sorry, Carrie, I just want to make, connect what you're saying there, because I bet some people when they look at David's website and see, he asks these questions. Are you a high achieving, accomplished professional who who is considering a big life challenge and unsure whether to stay the course or pivot, sick of how much you spend each day feeling stressed, restless, or uncertain, tired of being successful in many parts of your life, but not able to fix that one nagging area, and so on. It goes on. So in some ways, I would look at that and think, but wait a second, Kerry, you just said that David needs to point out the pain points, but here is a whole list of pain points.

23:26But then I'm hearing you say, but wait a second, the problem is that the pain points that you're describing here are so broad that individuals actually won't find themselves in it. Is that the point that you're making there? Yeah. So if you go up a little bit and we talk about the professional so that the kind of lead into that, you need to be, or I would recommend you be a lot more specific. I have a coach, executive coach, client I'm working with right now. And when we started working together, he just said, I'm going to do executive coaching for everyone. By the end of the work that we did together, it's very clear on it.

24:00His sweet spot is working with technical professionals, specifically in mining. So when you go from professionals, which is a huge broad field to very specific, so it's either psychographically driven or demographically driven, so sector driven, it allows you to tailor your messaging architecture and then your customer acquisition in a much more focused manner. So if you're a sweet spot because you spent 20 years in the tech space and then you've walked in their shoes, you understand them, I would recommend maybe you consider my sweet spot are high performing type A technical professionals at this level.

24:45Now, it doesn't mean that's where you have to stay, but you really want to narrow in on who's your sweet spot, who's that ideal client for you, so that you can test your messaging, you can test your marketing, you can see, okay, is there enough of a total available market in that space? Because once you hone in, then you can expand, but you have to be super narrow and you need to micro focus on one group and get some depth and become a subject matter expert in that group. So once you have that expertise, then you can actually move out. So my executive coach client, he now is looking at, because he's been doing it for about 18 months, super stuck in with the mining field.

25:33Now he's actually moving to engineering. So it's a vertical group that he can actually expand to. Same psychographic overlay. they speak the same language there's lots of referral opportunities from a marketing point of view he can triple dip on his marketing so to speak so that's my first recommendation is get really clear on on that then you can get much more refined on your pain points because you're going to speak specific language to your ideal client so those are really generic pain points That could be anyone. We all actually feel like that. But I want to know, because I have a pain point, I want to know that you're talking to me.

26:14I always say this to clients. You are not the hero of your own brand story. You are not. The client is the hero of your brand story. You are not. You are the wise sage. This is for coaches. You're the wise sage. So it's critical to understand that and put yourself in that mindset. So you want to lead with that very specific pain point, whether it's, and I'm just pulling this out of the air. So let's say the ideal client is a professional in a tech space. There are certain pain points that are super specific to those professionals. That's where you want to hone in on. Because then you'll have people nodding, going, oh my God, this guy gets me.

26:55So that's the important thing is to clip it on its head and say, because kind of like baking a chocolate cake. We all have a secret, like every recipe that you see all has like a secret ingredient, secret sauce. But up front, I'm not really all that interested in the secret sauce. I just want to know you can solve my problem. So I'm going to get really technical here, so bear with me. In order to get someone to buy your products or services, you have to be able to press what's called a demand driver. So as human beings, we all have three levels of demand drivers. We have a primary demand driver, a secondary demand driver, and a tertiary demand driver.