Secrets Successful Entrepreneurs Know That Struggling Entrepreneurs Don’t

In my few  years as an entrepreneur and working with successful entrepreneurs and successful business professionals, universally I’ve discovered that they have learned to think and act like successful people. This is what has allowed them to rise to the top of their profession. Each would tell you that along the way they have learned how to think differently.

True, entrepreneurs struggle with their business opportunities for a variety of reasons. Among the most obvious are a lack of capital, lack of understanding about marketing, and personal issues. However, from my own entrepreneurial experience and knowledge of others, there are three major reasons individuals fail in entrepreneurial ventures.

1. They tie the success of their business with their own self worth.

2. They neglect to set realistic goals and plans for themselves and their business.

3. They are not prepared to pay the price of success.

True entrepreneurs with the right thinking prevail over a period of time. They have learned to understand the axiom Roles, Goals, and Tolls.

Roles

Successful entrepreneurs, in contrast to those who struggle, have learned to separate their roles in life from their self worth or self-identity. They understand that role performance or failure with their entrepreneurial venture is not a judgment of them as an individual. People who tend to equate their self-worth to their composite role identity are inherently risk-adverse and look to maintain the status quo. Being able to differentiate these two identities allows them to be risk prone vs. risk adverse, a key ingredient to success as an entrepreneur. Individuals who have risked failure, experienced it, and learned from it, have not only learned how to differentiate their role identity from their self-identity, they have learned the lessons of risking and failing. They understand that early failure in ventures is a natural part of successful startups. They are able to embrace those experiences, learn from them quickly and move on. This is critical to success as an entrepreneur. They must be willing to face and deal with early failures in order to prevail over time.

Goals

Even though much is said and written about goals and plans being necessary for success as an entrepreneur, few people learn the mechanics of successful goal setting and planning. It’s not the plan but the planning that is important, and the goal setting process allows them to develop the confidence to take risks and fail. Successful entrepreneurs are not only goal driven and goal oriented; they have learned to execute the process of strategic and tactical goal setting and planning. Visualizing goals, writing them down and putting together a detailed plan for achievement provides the confidence and motivation to prevail. More than just business or operational plans, they have goals and plans for all the important roles in their life. They have learned early that if they aren’t working their own plan they are probably part of someone else’s goals or plans. They chart their own destiny, embrace risk-taking leadership positions, make adjustments as required and prevail over a course of time.

Tolls

Finally, entrepreneurs understand that there is a toll to pay. To be successful in any role in life you must be prepared to pay full price one time. There are really no overnight successes as an entrepreneur. In fact, I’ve heard it said that overnight success generally takes 15-20 years. One of the early tolls that entrepreneurs are quite often forced to face is the “re-branding” of themselves that can include growing beyond their current circle of contacts. Since most people tend to stay within their own psychological comfort zone, they begin to lose identity with the risk taker. They are comfortable with the type of person who is more like them. Quite often the entrepreneur moves on to a different circle of associates who understand the journey. Stepping out, being your own person and venturing into the risk prone unknown is lonely by itself. Consequently, there can be a new-found stress in old relationships. It’s been said before that trailblazers get shot in the front and the back, and only through a process of differentiating role performance from self-worth, being risk prone, prevailing through adversity, sticking to your goals, and adjusting your plans will you be prepared to pay the daily toll.

An entrepreneur has much to learn in order to be successful, including the day-to-day mechanics of running a business, producing products, delivering services, making money and dealing with people. The biggest challenge of all is developing an understanding of themselves. They come to grips with what they want and what motivates them; this sustains their willingness to prevail over the long term against adversity. Successful entrepreneurs have learned to transform their thinking, allowing them to prevail where others fail along the way.

 

HOW GREAT LEADERS COMMUNICATE

You’ve just been promoted into one of your organization’s Big Jobs. Now you’ve got an impressive office, a hefty budget and vast expectations about how you will lead dozens or even thousands of people. Can you stick with the leadership style that brought you this far? Or do you need to recalibrate your approach, starting with the way you communicate?

Some fascinating rethinking is under way on exactly that topic. Scholars such as Harvard Business School’s Boris Groysberg argue that effective leadership no longer revolves around brilliant speeches and heroic exhortations. Instead, Groysberg and co-author Michael Slind argue that the higher you go in an organization, the more you must engage other people in conversations, rather than trying to shout them into submission.

I’m have traveling 70% of the way down that road that without becoming so chatty that you lose the ability to stretch people’s horizons. Over the past 25 years, as a business-book author and writer for the likes of Forbes, Fast Company and The Wall Street Journal, I’ve seen a lot of corporate leaders in action. Here are seven ways that the best leaders increase their effectiveness by the ways they communicate.

1. Bring the vision to life. Anyone can write a mission statement, full of lofty words that sound good. But you aren’t communicating that vision unless you repeatedly signal how those values translate into concrete actions. What people learn from your routine decision-making matters far more than what you pack into your speeches.

 In the same spirit, bring your bedrock values into the daily workplace. Salute other people’s actions that reinforce what you prize. Call out conduct that doesn’t. And infuse these principles into other people’s thought patterns by referencing key values as decisions are being made.

2. Ask smart questions.  Studies have shown that when you want to persuade someone, questions can be more powerful than statements. The reason: you engage another person’s heart and mind more strongly. You get him or her thinking about the ideal answer – and then all the steps necessary to get there. By being less dogmatic, you let people on your team build game plans that they believe in, rather than trapping them in a helpless state until you issue your next command.

3. Take time to read the room. Once you’re in senior leadership, you will meet a lot of outsiders that you hardly know ... but whose support or forbearance is crucial to your company's success. Do 90% of the talking, and it’s tempting to think that you carried the day with everyone standing for you, Guess what? If you don’t know what the other party really wanted, all that bluster was in vain.

Take a tip from Silicon Valley executive Meg Whitman, early in her career, when she was building eBay into a global e-commerce powerhouse. Some of her most important meetings were with eBay’s Power Sellers. These merchants booked huge amounts of business on the site, yet for a time they felt the company didn’t understand their frustrations with fees and service issues. Every few months, she would visit Power Sellers on their turf, looking for ways to fix their problems or at least offer sympathy. Her keen ear helped eBay stay ahead of its competitors.

Don’t fall prey to the belief that careful listening is only for the little people in the room. When you listen carefully, you win people’s trust – and that’s crucial to everything else you want to accomplish. There’s a maxim in the public speaking business: “The more your audience talks, the more they think they have learned from you.” Use that sly insight to your advantage.

4. Create a climate where things get done. In any organization, there's a huge gap between projects that are headed to the finish line, right now -- and ones that live indefinitely in limbo, hardly moving forward. Which do you prefer? If you're looking for results, make sure your employees and front-line managers are repeatedly aware of your top priorities. Help set interim mileposts. Get roadblocks out of the way. Walk through the areas where specific tasks are being done. Even a 10-minute visit by the boss conveys the clear and uplifting message: "This is important."

Be mindful of how many "top priorities" your organization can handle successfully. Better to win two big campaigns a year than to stumble in the midst of 20. I've seen ambitious but unfocused organizations end up with overcrowded agendas that create internal strife -- with the unpleasant consequences of missed deadlines, constant changes of directions and ugly battles for resources and recognition. The higher up you go in an organization, the more important it is for you to communicate key goals with clarity and brevity.

5. Use stories to get your points across. When you’re at the top of an organization, you can seem pretty distant from the people on the front lines. Now you’re in a job where it may be impossible to schedule enough face time with everyone you’d like to influence. One of your best ways to compensate: sharing teaching anecdotes, so that even people who hardly know you will still feel they know your human, authentic side.

You don’t need to be nearly as polished as Buffett to succeed in this domain. Just think how you would explain your week’s battles and goals to a neighbor, a spouse or a college roommate, and you’ll find the right tone.

6. Be mindful of what you don’t know. If your subordinates are any good at all, you often won’t know the fine-grain details as well as they do. Expect to be learning constantly on the job. Find ways that your in-house experts can quietly bring you up to speed on emerging issues that are catching your eye. You’ve got vital strengths that other people don’t, particularly in terms of experience, broad perspectives and judgment. As you work toward important decisions, make sure your remarks and conversations are opening the way for other people to keep augmenting your knowledge base.

7. Make people feel they work for a winner. Can you single-handedly improve your organization’s morale – in ways that genuinely translate into better performance and innovation? That’s one of the great mysteries of leadership. Some executives try smothering their employees in perks. Others praise good work, hoping that it will lead to greater doings in the future. Still others scold slackers and kick out the weakest performers, believing that some situations call for toughness.

Any of those approaches can work; yet I’ve seen executives try all three and still come up short. A memorable insight here came from John Young, who was CEO of Hewlett Packard for many years during its prime. We chatted after his retirement, and he contended that what shapes morale the most is employees’ conviction that they are working for the best company in their field. Earn that honor, he said, and you gain a level of employee commitment that cash and perks alone can’t buy.

All the other six techniques in this article point toward this final priority. If you’re conveying a clear vision, asking good questions, setting the right priorities and so on, you’re creating that winners’ aura that is the ultimate reward for great leadership communication.

 

3 Most Common Marketing Mistakes Young Entrepreneurs Make (and How to Fix Them)

 

 

You’ve heard it before: the vast majority of businesses fail within a few years.

Now… let’s think about this for second.

Why do smart, hard-working people with good intentions crash and burn? It’s often a combination of factors, from co-founder conflict, to funding issues and execution struggles…

But at the core of it, businesses fail for one fundamental reason: they can’t sell their stuff.

That’s the bottom line.

And one of the root causes is that most entrepreneurs don’t truly understand marketing. You might be super passionate about your product or service, have a tremendous work ethic, and a wonderfully designed website…If you’re not highly skilled at marketing and selling, chances are you’re going to fail. Sorry to break it to you.

Now if you’re thinking,“oh I took a few marketing classes in College, I’m good.”… Think again.

I personally have a marketing degree and an MBA from 2 reputable universities, and when I started my first business… I was in for a rude awakening.

I quickly realized that marketing in the entrepreneurial world is a whole different game than what I learned in the classroom. Business schools tend to focus on Fortune-500 type marketing, they don’t allow us to interact with real customers, and they’re years behind when it comes to online marketing. If you’re committed to building a world-class business, you have to be willing to saddle up and learn “real-world marketing”. Take online courses, read books, get out here, experiment relentlessly, and get excellent mentors to help you build your marketing skill set.

If you’re willing to do that, sky’s the limit. You’ll develop skills you can use to be successful in any business endeavor for the rest of your career.

Today, I want to share with you the 3 most common marketing mistakes you’re likely to be making right now, and how you can effectively solve them for good.

Mistake #1: Trying to Serve Everyone

The blessing and the curse of many entrepreneurs is that they’re good-hearted, and really want to make world a better place.

The blessing part is easy to figure out… but the curse? By trying to help everyone with their product or service… They often end up helping no one.

Having too broad of a target market is probably the single most common marketing mistake people make. In order to stand out in the crowd, you need to be really specific with which sub-segment of the population you’re targeting. The narrower your niche, the better.

Now you’re probably thinking… “Ahh, but what about all these other prospective customers I’ll be giving up on?” I get that.

You have to think about it the other way: get excited about how well you’re going to be able to serve the specific customers you’re going after. By focusing on a specific group, you’ll be able to serve them much better and have a more profound impact on their life.

Let’s go concrete with this. When you’re describing your ideal customer, you should be able to get highly descriptive of that person, both on a demographic and psychographic level.

For example, “Men between the age of 25 and 40” is a lousy target market. Instead, it should be something like “Professional men between 25 and 40 who live in major cities, are passionate about the outdoors, who struggle to find time for their hobbies, and are afraid that their best years are passing them by”. Now we’re talking. This is a target you can really help… and make a lot of money in the process.

Solution: Write down the main characteristics of your ideal customer. Describe their frustrations, fears, and aspirations. Get as deep and as personal as you can. You want to able to put yourself in their skin and feel what they feel, think what they think.

Mistake #2: Building Without Customer Validation

Many entrepreneurs have a weird fantasy. They envision themselves spending a few months in a basement/garage/cave, building something extraordinary, emerging from their confinement, announcing their creation to the world, and becoming a massive success.

Sounds cool pretty cool indeed… Only problem is that it’s NOT how the real world works.

It’s very hard to accurately predict what your customers want. Conversely, it’s very easy to get carried away with an idea, without seeking validation along the way…

…and then fall face first when you realize that no one actually wants it.

In business and marketing, you should take on a “scientist” mindset: always experiment and test your assumptions, and have as much contact with your test subjects (customers) as possible.

Now in order to do this, it’s important to keep your ego in check. You don’t always love the feedback you’re getting, but that’s ok. It’s only data. Don’t let your emotions get the best of you.

Here’s why: If your idea isn’t good, you’re much better off finding out about it now, instead of 6 months down the road, when you’ve already sunk thousands of dollars into the project…

Test, test, test. That’s what all successful marketers do. Because it works.

Solution: Before you even build anything, you should spend time interviewing potential customers to discover what they want (and learn their frustration, fears and aspirations). Then, build a prototype and test it to get customer feedback as fast as possible. From there, go back in the lab, incorporate the feedback, and test again. Repeat this cycle until you have something that customers reallylove, and for which they’re willing to pay money.

Mistake #3: Shouting from the Rooftop

Now that you’ve clearly established your ideal customer and that you’re building exactly what they want, the next step is to communicate with them effectively.

The key to that is to speak to each customer as though you’re talking directly to that person. One-on-one. Not one-to-many. This distinction is so critical, and so often overlooked.

When you’re writing directly to one person, you can speak to their frustrations, fears and aspirations. You can make them feel understood. Which in many ways is the magic sauce of marketing.

Eben Pagan, one of the best marketers of our time once said “the moment you make your customer feel understood, magic happens.”

When they feel like you get their problem, they will automatically assume that you have the solution. Once that happens, selling becomes easy. And fun.

Solution: Every time you create marketing material, write directly to your ideal customer. Put yourself in their shoes, and ask yourself “Does this really speak to me? Do I feel understood? Does this inspire me?” If the answer is not a resounding “YES!”, go back to the drawing board.

Conclusion

Since marketing revolves around human psychology, and the human psyche is a complex system, many nuances and subtleties that go into becoming a world-class marketer.

But to become excellent and shine in your niche is not as hard as you think. Simply by focusing on the solutions to the 3 common mistakes I’ve outlined above, you’re likely to outperform your competition within a few months.

To recap, here’s the magic recipe:

1) Get crystal clear on who your ideal customer is.

2) Regularly interact with live customers and build exactly what they want.

3) Communicate with them in a “one-on-one” way, and make them feel understood.

Apply these 3 principles and you’ll be well on your way to beating the odds, building a very successful business, and actually making the world a better place.

Create a Business and Lifestyle You Love

 

 

Your University days are over. Your cap’s flying somewhere up in the air and your degree is in your hand. Now what?

Get a job? It seems obvious considering you just donated 4 years of your life studying for a career.

But, what about that little spark of desire within you that wants to do more. You’ve been locked up in study halls and tiny dorm rooms for so long; you don’t want to transfer that limitation to a cubicle. You want to live a little, see what the world has to offer and return in a couple of years to the corporate lifestyle you feel you have to sign up for.

But do you?

What about if you took the travel and then upon return created your own dream lifestyle, businesses focused completely on what you love and are good at? You know one where YOU made the rules. For most, the fear of missing out and falling further behind the corporate ladder race is too much, so they head for the nearest job interview. This is the wrong fear to pay attention to.

The fear that you should be paying attention are global financial crisis, stock market crashes, and corporation downsizing as jobs are outsourced to those who can work from anywhere with a lap top and internet connection. It’s actually exciting, opportunistic times for you. You can create a business and lifestyle you love.

So, do you go start up any old business, go back to college to learn how, or take up that travel dream and learn how to become an entrepreneur at the same time?

15 years ago I chose the latter, without even realizing I was choosing it. Not only was the journey amazing fun, but it taught me the skills and mindset needed to create my own dream lifestyle and be successful with it. Let’s look at what travel teaches you:

 

How to live your passion everyday

When you travel long-term you have a lot of downtime to do what you love. Is it hiking in the mountains, sketching, surfing, writing, or strumming on a guitar? Travel gives you the outlet to live your passion every day. There’s no one demanding you stop the doodling and get back to work. It’s the doodling that often leads to the creative ideas. Businesses that work usually evolve from the founder’s passion.

 

How to value freedom and use it as a motivating force

Jobs don’t offer enough scope for freedom. You have set rules, schedules, meetings, policies and office hours, and limited vacation time. You hit the travel road and the only thing demanding of your time is the odd flight schedule.

Your choices are based on wants: I want to sleep in tomorrow, I want to eat lunch on the beach, I want to hike that mountain, I want to hit the local bar on a Wednesday –a school night—just.because.I.can.

Entrepreneurs are fueled by this intense desire for freedom: the ability to say where, when, why and how. Creating your own business doesn’t take away hard work; it just means you control the output to suit your lifestyle.

 

How to become aware of your strengths

Travel is an amazing journey of self-discovery.

You often only have yourself to rely on as you organize, plan, cope with loneliness, and deal with challenges that arise and leave you with no back door. You’re more often than not experiencing new things, and with that, talents you never knew you had.

You discover who you really are and where your strengths lie. Once you hone on this, and combine it with your passion, you have a business that can sky rocket you to success and change the world.

 

How to develop effective and empathetic negotiating skills

Bartering is a normal part of life in many countries. You go back and forth with a local merchant until you settle on a win-win price.

This is how businesses work. You’ll be negotiating your own prices, terms, content, contracts, marketing plans, and employees. You’ve got to know how to have a conversation that doesn’t give away too much, but gives you enough room to move so you can benefit.

With travel you are often bargaining with those who are far less privileged than you, which helps you to develop empathy. Empathy is important in negotiation as it prevents you from being cut throat. You think from the other person’s shoes, which brings sharpness to your negotiation, but also humility to ensure you both walk way smiling.

 

How to plan, implement and solve problems

Travel costs, schedules, itineraries, time, money the list goes on with what you will be planning when travelling.

How do I get from Ohio to Sierre Leone? Is it better to do five months in Africa or 3 months in Europe? What are my travel goals and how do my plans fit with them?

With travel you are continually planning, re-evaluating and learning how to be resourceful.

What do you do when the wheel of the ute you are travelling on falls off on a dusty road in the middle of Africa? Or, when you lose your passport or you arrive in Dublin with only $70 in your pocket?

Dig deep and find the solution. Travel puts your back up against the wall, a position you’ll often find yourself in in business. Lucky for you, you can rely on those skills you learned in Africa to pull yourself out of trouble.

 

How to budget, spend wisely and learn new work skills

Travellers are incredibly sharp at budgeting and stretching their dollar further. They know how to find deals, how to get more bang for their buck, and find ways to bring extra cash in. They are not afraid to get their hands dirty and try something new.

For example on my travels around the world, I have taught in elementary schools and English as a foreign language, worked in bars and restaurants, tutored a monk, done door to door sales, and did hard labour working on a pearl farm. All of these have given me skills I can now apply to my own business.

 

How to become flexible and adaptable

Travel is one constant movement where every day is different. One minute you are in Germany, the next in Thailand. You have to quickly switch your thinking to a new language, customs, climate and road map.

I know I can be dropped in the middle of Siberia and I’ll find my way around- travel has given me that level of confidence to be flexible and to adapt.

In your business, things will be always moving that you have little control over. You have to quickly adapt and move with it in order to survive. Technology rapidly changes in the business environment, travel will help you to easily and willingly let go of the old in order to master the new and improved.

 

How to improve networking skills and your ability to read people

When you are travelling you are often communicating in gestures, smiles, and funny impromptu games of charades.

Who said you needed to speak a common language?

Despite being a whole lot of fun, these interactions help you sharpen your ability to read another person. You don’t need words to understand what lies behind a person’s eyes, the way they move their body, their facial expression and energy.

What a gift in business to be able to read the other person without hearing their words. It will help you to feel who is best to work with and who should be given “Not this time but all the best.”

 

How to be courageous and confident

Travelling the world can be scary (until a few weeks in and you realize it so is NOT).

You have to learn to take risks and be confident that you can handle the outcome no matter which way it falls. And if it is not the way you want it, you have to get back up and improve.

Going out into business by yourself can be extremely scary. Think how both are so similar. It is just you and your dreams. There’s no escape plan or anyone who can catch you when you fall.

Travel first and learn how to be courageous and confident. You will need these two traits if you are going to survive in business.

 

How to open your mind and think in new ways

You can’t be a black and white thinker in business. You have to be open to learning new ways and taking on new ideas. Otherwise progression will be difficult.

Likewise, you won’t last long on the travel road if you don’t journey with a mind that is open to learning and accepting. Opportunities abound for lubricating your mind—sometimes in extreme measures.

You’ll also learn that while the new way of thinking might not be something you wish to take on, it can be something you can respect, and perhaps learn something from.

When you go into business for yourself, you will have to take on the ideas from other people, particularly those who you will be working with.

You will also have learned so much through your own travels that some of these new ideas you have been exposed to will help you to innovate and stand out from your competition.

I never realized that travelling the world for 15 years would eventually lead me to this place where I control how my life looks. I signed up for travel because I wanted the adventure. In the process I learned an incredible amount about myself, what I am capable of, and just how easy it was to turn my passion into a profitable business.

HOW TO STAND OUT WHEN YOUR COMPETITOR IS BIGGER, BADDER AND STRONGER.

Welcome to 2013 the absolute worst time in history for those looking to do something unique. Long gone are the days when to “matter” we just had to create something “pretty good” and scream at the top our lungs about it. Now there’s a sea of “us”. And they’re all doing exactly what we’re doing…or what we want to be doing.

It’s depressing. And it’s noisy.

Questions:

• What are you supposed to DO when you come up with a great idea, but your competition is bigger, badder and richer?
• Is there even a point in pouring your heart and soul into an idea that’s already been done (in some way/shape/fashion) by someone else before?

-       Should you just curl up in a ball and die?

-       Should you find another idea?

Don’t answer! Those are rhetorical Of course, rhetorical means that I’m going to answer you. But first, let’s dig a little deeper.

THE MYTH ABOUT CREATING SOMETHING “NEW”

Here is a little story i think can help out;

Nwams is a member of TAP and she’s the CEO/Co-founder of a Houston-based startup that helps women (or men?) find the best prices on hair weaves and extensions by connecting them to hundreds of sellers and comparing prices. Ever been on eBay and compared prices on two nearly identical products, then chose the one that had the best value? Easy Weave is just like that but for hair. Awesome right?

But….as usual, there’s a problem…

The main idea behind EasyWeave is not a new concept….not by a long shot. And the competition is as stiff as possible. Nwams has 4 main competitors: Alibaba, Etsy, EBay and Amazon.

Ever heard of those guys before? Yeah, they are global wrecking crews. All of them move millions and millions of dollars worth of hair weaves/ extensions every year.

At a cursory glance, it pretty much seems like EasyWeave is dead in the water. Nwams’ competitors are bigger, stronger, wealthier and much more well known. They’ve got it on lock. It’s like that crazy basketball game in Space Jam where Michael Jordan had to go up against those freaky 12-foot bodybuilder aliens. With odds like that, most people just curl up and hope for death.

“Please, just make it quick and painless.”

-       How can Nwams still give her startup a chance at succeeding? Is there even a point in continuing when EasyWeave is a mosquito in a room full of vultures?

 

-       How can Nwams even have the audacity to think that she’ll make money when there are so many bigger players out there doing the exact same thing she’s doing?

Most startup founders run into this wall and get scared. We immediately try to think of a new product we can make that will be drastically different than what’s already on the market. We don’t just want to reinvent the wheel. We want to reinvent the car, the streets and the stop signs.

We’re searching for something NEW to differentiate ourselves because we’re scared the competition will gobble us up if we don’t create something unique.

But that unique product isn’t a new product at all.

It’s your personality.

YOU: YOUR UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION (USP)

Let’s face it – when we’re first starting out, the competition will be better armed, more visible and in many cases, they will have the ability to undercut us on price point.

In Nwams’ case specifically, the first thing I noticed is that her market (hair weave) is flooded. Most people get discouraged by a saturated market. I don’t. To me, it means she made a smart move. A flooded market means that her concept is solid. People want what she’s selling.

A flooded market gives you the opportunity to rise to the top because although there’s a ton of competition, 98% of them will be doing the WRONG thing. The majority of businesses can’t really sell what they make. That’s why they go out of business.

The second thing I noticed is that EasyWeave’s market is saturated with faceless online retail giants. You don’t have a connection to an Ebay or Alibaba when you buy from them. You are just purchasing what you need – and if you can find a reason to purchase somewhere else, you will. There’s really no loyalty involved.

So we need to give people a reason to buy from EasyWeave that outweighs the blind reflex to just look for the lowest price.

Nwams has a reason: herself.

Remember this: You don’t always have to be better, or cheaper, or faster, or more high tech than your competition.

Oftentimes, just being yourself is enough.

You can create a brand around yourself, with your personality and story as the USP (unique selling proposition).

Let’s zoom in here a little bit and think about the psychology behind why we buy.

WHY WE BUY (VS WHY WE THINK WE BUY)…

When you buy a new piece of clothing, a new convertible…or even a bottle of wine, what are you really buying?

Sure, you’re buying something physical – but behind that physical object is the feeling that you’re hoping to capture by possessing the new object. Even if the feeling only lasts for a second.

-       You’re not buying the shirt. You’re buying the way you feel, and the way others percieve you, in the shirt.

-       You’re not buying the convertible. You’re buying the warm summer breeze through your hair.

-       You’re not buying the wine. You’re buying the buzz and the off chance you might get freaky with that girl you met at the restaurant last night.

Everything we buy is in an attempt to capture a feeling – and we’re hoping that the feeling will stick. Because when it’s all said and done, all we’re left with is our stories.

Human beings connect with stories. And if you’re launching a startup that caters to human beings (umm…this is probably everyone), then you can leverage considerable influence over even the most vicious competitors by creating a more compelling story than them. A story that sparks feelings and emotions in the potential customer.

In EasyWeave’s case, this is really easy because all the faceless giants we named don’t even HAVE a compelling story. They’re just…there.

People will buy from you because they like your story and want to take part in your journey. They feel like they know you. Get this: they actually ENJOY buying from you and PREFER it over somebody that they don’t feel close to. Even if your prices are a little higher.

HOW TO CREATE A COMPELLING STORY (HINT: STOP TRYING TO “COMPETE”)

The first step in creating a more compelling story than your competitors is to make the conscious decision NOT to compete in the same game everyone else is playing.

You have to actively seek out (or create) another ocean for yourself that no one else is swimming in. In order to stand out and really start differentiating yourself, try to answer these four simple questions. They are often overlooked, but if you can answer them, you’ll have no shortage of buyers who want your unique flavor

I blatantly stole these from my good friend….. He’s brilliant.

The questions are:

1. Why you? (as in, you, the seller)
2. Why me? (the prospect)
3. Why this? (your product or service)
4. Why now?

When you answer these question well, others can try to copy but it will be obvious and lame.