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Lesson Info

Find Your Unfair Advantage

you ever get the feeling that you're saying the same thing as everyone else? Yeah, all the time. Yes. You feel like you're saying the same thing. Why would anyone pay attention to you or your business in particular? Why would someone decide to buy your jewelry or coach with you or by your gardening class, or get your legal help? Why? When we're saying the same things as everyone else, why would someone pay attention to us instead of someone else? When we're all creating the same things, saying the same things, pricing them the same way and marketing them the same way. We're really just contributing toe all that noise that's out there. I don't want your business to be a part of the noise. I want your business toe, have that quiet power that really helps it stand out and not only helps it stand out, but helps it create more meaningful, more impactful experiences for your customers. On the way to do that is to look for your unique opportunity. Every business has a unique opportunity to do...

things differently when your business is doing something differently when you're doing what everyone else is doing, but putting your unique spin on it, really leaning into that quiet power. That's when you are really leveraging your unfair advantage. So we've already examined your quiet power. We've talked about your fascination language. We've nailed your guiding principles. Let's discover that unfair advantage that you all possess. How do you dio what you dio differently? Just sit with that question for a moment. How do you dio what you dio differently than everyone else I want you to consider as you think about that. You're guiding principles. The those statements that we created that guide every decision you make, every tactic you try, every product you create. I want you to consider that fascination language, that unique language that you use to communicate and b'more compelling and more fascinating. Your unique way of connecting the way you create new relationships with people the way you are more persuasive, your fresh solution. What is it about your product or your service? Your package, your program that's different than the rest of the market's offerings? What's your experience, your education or your story? How does that play into the difference that you bring to the market? And then finally, how are your materials or your process different. How do you dio what you dio differently? Now, instead of talking this all through with you, we're gonna leave it there and we're going to do Ah, hot seat. Because I think when it comes to thinking about what your unfair advantage is, it's much easier, uh, to be shown than told. Right? So let's work through this process. Do I have a volunteer? Who? Melissa. Come on up. We'll start with you. I like people who are quick on the draw, and I'm already feeling hot. Oh, awesome. Have a seat. You get that chair, I get this chair. This is our fun talk show area. Do you like it? I'm going to Oprah. You now. Um So tell me more about let's talk about your market first. Well, actually, I take that back. Tell me quick who you are, what you do where people can find you online, and then we'll talk about Okay. I'm Melissa Dinwiddie. You can find me at Melissa din, witty dot com or living a creative life dot com. We'll get you. There is. Well, what I do is I'm an artist and creativity instigator. I'm on a mission to empower people to feed their creative hungers. Because when you do your art, whatever it is and share it with the world, that's how you change the world. Beautiful. Alright, tell me about other people. Businesses offers products in your market. Okay. Uh, the first one who stands out, it's Daniel Report and her whole desire Map and Firestarter sessions. All of that. Um, Jeffrey Davis is another one. I don't know if you're familiar with his work. Um, tracking wonder, uh, Leonie Dawson got a whatever got us guidebook and got us. Leonie? Um, no, of course I'm in the hot seat, so I'm totally blanking, but they're Sark is another one. And, um oh, Kelly, Ray Roberts, Flora Boli are in similar similar markets. Okay, so just thio kind of pause you right there. Those air all personality brands. Are there any solutions Products, services that aren't based on personality brands? The artist's way is okay. I mean, Julia Cameron is a personality brand, but that book kind of started the ball rolling. Yeah, Arena. Yes. I would say that's kind of a solution or a brand in it. Of itself. The artist's way Yeah, really good. Anything else? I'm thinking Austin cleans books. Um uh, steal like an artist and share your work. Um uh, the War of Art book and that syriza books by, um, Stephen Press Field. Thank you. What about products that help you be creative instead of tell you how to be creative? So do you know what I mean? Like, products that you would you like that you would buy with the aspiration of unleashing your creativity? Will any any art class or online program Thio dig into creating art or writing? Um, e I think you have an idea in your head that I'm not Well, I mean, I'm not ready your mind here. That's OK. So what popped into my mind was actually, um, the A product or a brand that markets itself on getting people to think differently and create differently is apple. And so even like a product like the IPhone, like we're in San Francisco right now. Have you guys noticed all the billboards that are around that say shot with the 95 6? Brilliant. But I Honestly, I think I wouldn't say obviously that there are competing with you, but the market is a very, very similar. The conversation is similar. How can I unleash my creativity? How can you know what can I buy that's going to instigate my creativity? Right? And I would say, the IPhone or a Mac book or, you know, any number of products like that a camera is going to fall into that category. A swell. Yeah. So, um, kind of going back a little bit to the personality brands because it's probably easier to see in there. How do you do what you do differently? Well, uh, I was just thinking about that. So let's take like Daniel Report and I was talking with Kate about That's, uh When I look at everything she does, it's extremely polished, and I am not Polish, okay, I'm kind of the opposite of I'm like, tell you the story of my worst business experience and how that was, you know, my major breakdown like I am totally open like I'm an open book. So that's one way that I'm sort of I can point to. That is how I do things differently. How about process? Uh, I'm feeling like I don't know enough thio. No. How I do things differently than other people do. Okay, so that would be actually something that I'd encourage you to think about is how is your process different than, say, Danielle's or Starks or Leonis on DSO? That kind of that could be the experience that you create with your customers. It could be the actual here. It's the 1234 step process, Um, that you work them through and think about how that's different. And it may come back to exactly what you just said, which is that you're not polish. Your goal isn't polish. Your goal is connection and transparency. That's what I hear from you. Almost that say someone like Danielle's positioning in the market is very aspirational. Very red velvet rope policy Thio, quote Michael Port. Where is yours is going to be much more. Let's sit down and talk And I'm going to share with you what I've been through what I see you going through and how we can work together on that to break through your blocks and get you where you wanna be, Right? Eyes, They're part of your story. Do you think that influences that? Yeah. Okay. You have to tell me a little. Well, my story is of, uh, being a creative person as of course we all are, and having that completely blocked even while I was making my living from my art feeling completely disconnected from my creativity and not creating even while I was making my living as an artist from my art and then figuring out from that terrible experience that I told you about in a previous lesson previous lesson, uh, figuring out how to get past those blocks and now, like that story is that informs everything that I dio, um, when I'm thinking of one of your products right now or one of your ideas right now, which is the creative sandbox and the sand sand box in it of itself. Like I actually hate sandboxes because they're so messy. Yeah, I don't let my kid playing sandboxes because I do not want to deal with the sandbox mess. Oh, my gosh, e don't. It's not that bad, but so that s so that's part of your process. And it goes back to this idea of being messy and the story of being in a mess and having that mess kind of be blocking you and feeling frustrating to you. Uh, you know, working through that, experimenting with a lot of different things and coming out on the other side ableto coach other people through that process. Okay, I think we've covered a lot of different angles. I'd love to know from you. What do you guys think? Melissa's unfair advantages. Well, one's experience. Experience? Yeah, hurt the experience like that Actual story Or that The stories. Stories? Yeah, where you are today to help others that are going through that now? Yeah. And that you're an artist helping other art like that. That was solely what you did first. Before coming into a coaching thing. You're not just a creative right now. I'm doing it a creative cheerleader. You're actually living at doing it? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's a really great point. It definitely ties into what Shelley said as well is that your experience as an artist is what you bring very uniquely thio this work that you do with other people on Ben, I think to color that a little bit mawr and separate it from, um you know, Leonie or Sark. Uh, that messiness, that experimentation that willingness to just dive in and see what happens and know that just because you're creating it doesn't mean that you're creating something that you're gonna sell or something that you're going to hang in a gallery. That creating in and of itself is, um is worth it, right? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So let's come up with kind of in a statement or an understanding of your unfair advantage. So it's that you're an artist working, working to help other artists or people claim their inner artist. Maybe on that that that that you being an artist draws on this vast experience of unstick ing yourself breaking through those blockages and doing it with a process that's messy and transparent and kind of, um, inherently creative, I suppose. Does that sound good? Does that feel like you're unfair advantage? You feel like you could use that to leverage and position yourself in the market. Yeah. I mean, that seems kind of easy. It should be. It should be. It should be easy. Cool. Any questions about that? No, that was great. Thank you. Thank you, Melissa. Alright. I'd actually I'd like to bring another person up, and Cathy, I think I'd actually like to bring you up. Is that all right? Okay. Yeah, Absolutely. Just because you mentioned that stuffy corporate culture earlier, and I'd like to unpack that a little. That would be great, because I e I feel like I'm struggling with that stuff. So who are you? What do you do? And where can we find you online? I'm Kathy Bork, and I have a business called Rock Your Culture. And what I do is work with small businesses on company culture, and that looks a whole different than, like, big business culture. It's like a lot of people get into business to find their passion. And then all of a sudden, they have employees or they have contractors. They're working with that sort of thing and don't know how to deal with that. Yeah. So something that we have talked about previously is that a lot of people don't know what to think about when you say company culture, right? So there is a problem that you're addressing or a need that you're addressing that you happen to address with company culture. So what is that need or problem? Um, but it's how they do business. How they go about business so many times. The business thinks that they need better marketing or more advertising. Slap more promotions at it, whatever, and you get the customer to the door in the door. But what are they doing on the backside of that? To keep them happy and keep them coming back? Eso that is where I'm struggling is what is the language that those people are looking for or talking because culture isn't it. Absolutely, absolutely. Let's start there. What are they buying instead? What? What solutions are they purchasing or pursuing? You mentioned marketing, but let's get a little bit more specific. What? What are they looking for? That's not company culture. To solve that same problem, they usually are looking for something to help with customer service issues. Okay, great customer service seems to be the biggest thing that I get asked about. Um, but also employee turnover, Yeah, yeah, a lot of employee turnover. Yeah, and I think employee turnover leads to bad customer service to right. And it also leads to stagnation in terms of marketing and product development, too, that employee turnover is a horrible, horrible, horrible problem. It's horrible it's time consuming it. It costs a lot of months. It's frustrating. I mean, it's very frustrating. And I've been there so again, talking about experience. I've been there, so I know what it's like. Okay, so we know that people there are other people in your market selling customer service, training or customer service solutions. We know there's other people in your market selling HR training, um, employee trainings, something or others. We also know that people are pursuing marketing instead of addressing internal issues. So they're kind of trying to address external issues instead of looking inside and seeing what the problems are there eso What's the opportunity that you see in the market? In other words, um, what's the whole What are people not getting the whole is that they're not making the connection from almost good leadership development to where it connects down here to the employees. So what I'm finding is a lot of times, like when I have given talks, they send their employees, and then the employees come and they say, Well, I wish my boss was here s so the I I don't know what that whole looks like specifically. Is it you know, organizational or yeah, I mean, obviously, I think And maybe it was a It was a bad question because I think the opportunity is this idea of culture. It's this unique insight that you have in this market, right? Um, that other people are addressing customer service, marketing HR other kinds of training. But your you're looking at it a different way and saying I've got a different solution for this problem that we all face right? And that's a really unique opportunity s So I guess that opportunity is what I'm looking at is for one making it enjoyable because a lot of people don't want to deal with this stuff. So making it enjoyable and then that I don't know how else to say it. Not stuffy. A lot of HR consultants air just very by the book. You have to do this, You have to do that. And it it does. It goes nowhere. Yeah, great. Okay. So making it enjoyable. Making it enjoyable, making it easy, making it easy. Um, anything else as quick as possible. And it's not a quick thing, but people just think it's going to consume a lot of time How about efficient? Efficient? Does that work? Good word. Okay, because quick. Yeah, culture and quicker. Yeah. No, no, that's bad. But I think you could be efficient at figuring out where your internal opportunities are in building systems that support that and then understand that transformational change happens over time. Right? Right. So fun, efficient and easy. Easy. Okay, uh, maybe easy is not a good word either, but not complicated. He's full. Full? Yes. Not complicated. Simple. Yes. Yeah. Nice simplicity. Okay, So, um, is that her unfair advantage? Do you guys see anything else? Holistic. Oh, let's go. That is a really Thank you, Shelley. It's holistic. That's a great way to put it. Um, Plus, I think that really speaks to your potentially to a big customer segment that you have to write where we There are lots of small businesses where the executives, the people in charge, are going to be interested in a holistic experience of anything or a holistic solution to anything. And this is one more place where they can pull in that multifaceted, integrated, holistic solution for a core problem to their business. And so you can say that I have somebody's catching all of this because I'm, like, way record things, Terry Creativelive. I thank you, right? So you can say, Whereas all the other solutions on the market are looking at small facets of your business, I'm gonna come in and work with you on company culture, which is the holistic way to address problems like company turnover. Uh, customer service issues, marketing that just doesn't land people. Not really identifying the story behind your company. I can fix all of those different pieces with this holistic solution. I just wanna kiss you both. A holistic thing makes sense, because I that's one thing I'm really good at is seeing the whole big picture where you get in some of these businesses and they can't get out of their silos. Yes s Oh, absolutely. That Z Yeah. True. Very true. Yeah, that's your unfair advantage. Yeah. E o, thank you. Alright, Tiffany, I wanna I wanna do one more. Um, mostly because we need to get a product up in here. Yeah, All right. So who are you? What do you dio And where can we find you online? I'm Tiffany whips. I'm a jewelry designer. Metal smith and I'm at Tiffany and studios dot com. Beautiful. Yes, you've changed. You are You are else. Since last we spoke on the stage, I didn't realize it was the old year or else. Yes, alright. Eso Who else is operating in your market? Ah, lot of people. Story is huge. Oh my goodness. So there's Nordstrom. There's small independent designers. There's local small, independent designers. There's designers in San Francisco. There's big box. There's target. If you really wanna throw that out there to cool, there's China. Yeah, there's so many. So many different, huge. What do you see is your opportunity. So, obviously, obviously, the artisan crafted is part of my unique selling proposition and the way I make it and my process. Yeah, I'm actually Can I pause you there? I am really tired of artisan and handcrafted being part of people's unique selling propositions, because if I brought up, I could bring up her shell and she would say the same thing. It's a large, too. Thank you shells paying attention. Not that you have it, but yeah, so there's so many people like you could just look at the artists in hand crafted jewelry market and have a whole market analysis from bottom end to top end and all the places in between and around in circles, right? There's nothing unique about that. It's valuable. I'm not saying it's not valuable, but there's nothing unique or unfair about it, right? Does that make sense? Okay, so what about that? I know you know that. What else? My process. Okay, tell me about your process. There's a part in that where I'm able to manipulate very fine metal into a durable, wearable piece that you could wear everyday. And so my thin lightweight groups, which are my most popular seller, are because I hammer them and I do them in a certain way. And then I tumbled them and finish them so that you get this whisper thin hoop. But it's still very durable and well made. Excellent. And in a previous lesson, you were talking about how you have ah, personal value for connection connection. Yes. So how do you think that plays into your market? So right now, the way I've been utilizing connection or where I feel most connected when I'm selling and when I'm interacting with my customers is in person and having my studio space in Oakland, connected to the Oakland art scene and in the Oakland heart murmur area, and having people actually coming into my space and sort of utilizing that community connection is where I'm feeling very connected where I feel a little disconnect is online. My product goes out and then I don't necessarily get I get the customer interaction again and again. But maybe over via email or things like that, and I'd like to enhance my online connection with people. Okay, so this is This is a fun thing to talk about, because one I think there might be lots of jewelry artists that say Sure, my product helps ah woman connect to her sense of self or to her family or toe to her beauty, internal, external, whatever. Um, but not every jewelry artist would say that first and foremost right like you, You decided in that previous lesson that that was that was the top of mind value that you had was connection. And I think this is a really interesting opportunity. Thio lean into that because so much of positioning, um, is not just end of standing out is not just knowing these things or being aware of them. It's about kind of reverse engineering them into every single thing that you dio eso. One thing you could consider is I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit here, but this is important. So to incorporate connection as a big part of your unfair advantage, um would be maybe to insert Facebook comments on the bottom of every product page, right, So that people could leave a comment they could talk about. It could almost be like a like a live stream of testimonials. I would love to do that on INSTAGRAM. Yeah, you know, with a hashtag and then have people you can stream that onto your site and have people wearing the jewelry and how they're connecting and how they're utilizing it. Yes, brilliant. Do that go with it. And then images. Yeah, so, to me personally, And, uh, you know, having known you for a while, I think that, um this idea of connection is a big part of your unfair advantage. And yeah, I think that you know the durability of your goods and the unique process that you put into them. That's super important, Thio. But in terms of crafting your message and the ways that you communicate about your product, especially online connection, is a huge opportunity for you. And I'd like to feature riel women to I. I don't want it just to be I'm not super fashioning my jewelry. Congar with anything. I am personally stylish, and I enjoy it, but but I'm not the one to throw up a style blawg post for you. Or here's 50 ways to wear a necklace. But I would love women, too, maybe tell and express their story with it. So I made these cancer awareness hoops, and my mom works at a cancer center, and I made them to give to all of the nurses who don't fully take care of themselves because they're so busy working so hard. So like having somebody tell their story. I don't wanna be depressing. I just want everyday women sharing how they're utilizing jewelry, why it makes them feel the way it makes them feel and how it makes them feel good. I think that you're all your social media should revolve around that. Yeah, I think it's brilliant less me and more bless you, everyone, everyone and more of everyone else. Just get everybody else to start sharing. Yes, Well, what hashtag should we be using? I need a hashtag e need to catch a report back on that Tiffany and studios is too long enough. Know it needs to be a catchy and I need to be about them and not about about connection somehow. And so yeah, absolutely. You want to create a community with this, So you're unfair. Advantage could not only be this value for for connection, but the community that forms around that connection with your product as well. Yes. That's what I want. Yes, beautiful. Alright. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Okay. So you saw three different ways to turn your opportunity that place, that hole in the market that you saw while you were doing your market analysis and turn it into an unfair advantage. You guys feel like you could do that for yourselves. Yes. Good. So you're unfair. Advantage is part of your standout style. So we've got those style guides that we're working on. This is a big piece in that because just like Tiffany and I were just talking about, you could take that one piece that unfair advantage that you have and work it into every steamy, tiny detail of your business. My unfair advantage is that I like to go deep. There's a lot of other business people out there that will that will share the hot new tactic. The hot new strategy, the hot new formula on. You know, they'll give you the 123 and it's wonderful. I love paying attention to that stuff, but my head is always asking Why, Why does that work? And how can I figure out how every piece builds on top of that? And so if you look around my brand, my website, the products that I offer the programs that I coach, you'll see that unfair advantage of depth reflected in every little piece. And it helps me charge a higher price than a lot of other people on the market. It helps build my community. It helps get people talking. It helps people ask me more questions, and it helps my business stand out