Whats Your Point of Difference

Hey guys, Calvin here from Young & Wildly Successful. Thanks so much for watching another video, really pumped about this one because it’s all about finding your point of difference. It’s how do you stand out in a noisy marketplace. It’s how you differentiate yourself in what is an incredibly competitive landscape, if you’re a coach, if you’re a speaker, a network marketer, trainer, something of that nature. It’s so challenging at the moment, in fact, there’s probably two markets that are the most heavily competed in. One is the marketing industry, and the second is the personal development industry. And I know that we play in so many of those, and probably off there as well is the business industry as well, business to business services.

So how do we differentiate ourselves? How do we become the person that is the go-to person? How do we stand out when everybody is trying to appeal to every niche, when prices are getting slashed, margins are getting thin, how do we stand out in a noisy marketplace? How do we differentiate ourselves so that we can dominate and perform? Well, that’s what exactly what I’m covering on this video, and I’m going to give you a whole heap of stuff on this video, including your entrepreneurial destiny, how to find what it is your soul’s yearning for. How to allocate and identify your niche, why you should never compete on price, and a whole heap more. So let’s go ahead and jump into it.

I want to get started with a story about the last time I went to Bali, and I travel to Bali all the time. In fact, that’s how I got started in this industry. I went and had the opportunity to go and work with a guy that had done over $100 million in global sales. He was the world leader at the time in NLP training, his name’s Christopher Howard. Great guy, really fantastic man and a great mentor to me in the early days. And I helped him scale the business, and it was just me and him, and we were able to grow our business from zero to $0.5 million in six months. He went on to make $1 million, not long after I left. And he’s doing incredible things now.

But when I was with Chris, I learnt the importance of being able to understand coaching, NLP, and marketing, and networking, and all this sort of stuff. When I came back, I was blown away to realize most people didn’t understand this. But when I was in Bali, and if you’ve ever been to Bali before, or if you’ve ever been to a third-world country, like a country just getting started up, you understand that everybody hustles, because you have no choice. You don’t hustle, you don’t eat. And so when you arrive at the Balinese terminal, when you arrive in the Denpasar Airport, you rock up…and most times for me I never travel with cash, I hate cash. So what I much prefer to have, in fact, is just credit, my credit card.

So I just travel with my credit card, but of course, the taxis only take cash over there. So you go and withdraw money and there’s literally, like in the old school Bali days, there was a queue of all of these different money exchange lenders, and there was literally a woman or a guy that just stuck their head out as you were walking past, just sort of stuck your head out and said, “Hey.” And they would shout at you different prices, and they would try and barter for your attention, and do something crazy. And they had these sign boards as you went through the terminal that just had all the different currencies. So if you were getting US dollars, or Yen, or Australian Dollars, or Pounds, or Euros, whatever it was, you had all the Swiss Franks, you had all of them down there in the numbers. And of course, most nearly all the numbers were the same. Like if it was say a 1,000 or 10,000…sorry. One Australian dollar is 10,000 Rupiah, some might have 10,100 and all that, and some might have 11,000, some might have 9,997, just to try and manipulate the market.

What you found out was that after expenses, after costs of the fees and charges, you ended up getting a lot less than you expected anyway, and most people got hustled. But my point isn’t about getting hustled in Bali, my point is this. When you saw, and when you turned around as a customer, and there were literally thousands going through this airport, you saw what was literally 6, 7, maybe even 10…I can’t remember now, but 10 different stores but all selling the same product or commodity. It’s just dollar for dollar, that’s all it is, and they’re all competing on price. Unless you just happened to take a liking to how someone looked, or unless you just happened to go, “My lucky number is seven so let me count seven booths along and I’m going to pick number seven.”

How are you meant to stand out? How is one meant to differentiate themselves in that market? And you might think it’s crazy because you probably remember walking down the streets of places like Bali, or even Thailand, or even places in Phuket, or even in Europe for example, where it’s literally just like a number on a board and you go in and you get your money changed. I want you to understand that that’s what most nearly everyone does in the coaching business, that’s what nearly every network marketer does, and that’s what I’ve seen nearly every speaker do. They don’t differentiate themselves, they just think if they offer a commodity that somebody will come to them because they just happen to walk past their stall. And what you don’t realize in the world that we live in today is that people have not 10 stalls, not 100 stalls, but literally millions of stalls, because everybody could be accessed through the internet.

One Google search brings up hundreds of thousands of results, and if you’re even on Google to start with. So how do you stand out? How do you differentiate yourself? How do you become the go-to person when everyone’s selling much the same stuff in your industry? You know, if you’re a NLP practitioner, and a coach, and a trainer, and you’re trying to sell NLP programs, well then how do you differentiate from all the other people around the world that do NLP trainings? Or if you’re a network marketer and you’re in a particular health and wellness business, and you’re selling that product, how do you differentiate when everybody’s selling the same product or you’ve got other companies selling virtually the same product?

You can talk about your point of difference, but really how do you differentiate? If you’re a speaker, or a trainer, or if you want to be a motivational speaker, then how do you differentiate to the millions of other motivational speakers out there in the marketplace that’s not looking for motivation anymore? They want to be motivated, but really they want strategies, and tactics, and tools, not just a pump-me-up. How do you do that?

Well first, before we get into some of the tactics, it’s really important that you don’t just go after a niche because a lot of people will tell you to go after a niche. “What’s your niche? What’s your niche?” I don’t give a crap about your niche, because a niche is just a short way of saying, “Where can you make a quick buck?” And what happens, I see so many people do this, they’ll go and they’ll find a niche. “Oh, I’m going to work with elite athletes.” Great. They get one or two or three elite athletes, but then they don’t have a strategy, and so their clients die out, and they go, “This niche doesn’t work, so I’m going to go and try this niche. I’m going to go [inaudible 00:05:46].”

In fact, I was just roasting a guy today in one of our groups who’s doing one of our 15/15 coaching programs at the moment. He’s ticking some goals, but now he’s doing ads to personal trainers. And I messaged him, I said, “Hey bro, what are you doing?” And he’s like, “I’m part of a network marketing group.” I said, “Yeah, I know that, but what are you doing marketing to personal trainers?” I said, “Are you a PT at the moment?” He said, “No.” I said, “Have you ever done any PT work?” He said, “No.” I said, “Why the hell are you marketing to PTs then, when you’re not a PT and you’re teaching PTs how to grow a PT business?” He said, “I just thought it might be a value add, it’s another niche.” And I was like, “You got the whole message wrong here.” And I gave him the strategy. I said, “It’s not about finding a niche where you think you can make a quick buck, don’t go where everyone else is. Find your own path, carve your own path. Take the road less travelled, which is actually the most profitable road themselves, because…”

If you haven’t read this book, by the way, read the book which is called “Blue Ocean Strategy.” There’s a great concept in there, they talk about the red oceans of competition where it’s kill or be killed, and that’s the red for the blood in the ocean of everyone killing each other. And you’ve got the blue ocean, which is smooth sailing like the Caribbean, right? Where you’re just enjoying life, you want to be in the blue ocean, tread an entirely new ocean. Leave these players to mess around themselves. You want to be above the market. So how do you do that?

It’s what I refer to as the entrepreneurial destiny. So let’s talk about your entrepreneurial destiny. Your entrepreneurial destiny is made up first and foremost of what you believe that you can make money from. There’s no point starting a business today, there’s enough people out there that are doing what they love as a hobby for you to go ahead and do that. Get a full-time job and just do what you like on the side, right? If you feel like you can make money from this, and you’re passionate about making money from it, then that becomes one of the key drivers here. You’re in business to make money, you choose your industry to make a difference, or to make a contribution, but business is about is making money. Otherwise, go and volunteer your time to the homeless, if that’s what you’re really passionate about. Don’t try to make money doing that, try to make money doing what you love, but first make sure that you can make money from it.

So let’s get clear on what it is that you can actually make money from, and write a list of 10 things right now that you think you could make money from right now, five things that you’re passionate about. The next step is to look at your passion. What is the thing that you’re passionate about that you really love, that you really care about, the things that really light you up inside? So I want you to merge the two of these together, and I want you to write down a list of literally 20 or 30 things that you’re passionate about. Go ahead and write them down, 20 or 30 things that you’re passionate about right now. Pause the video if you need to, but do that now. Because I want you to understand what lights you up. There’s no point making money from something if you don’t love it, and on the same token there’s no point loving something if you can’t make money from it. So let’s find where those two intersect.

Then, once we’ve got that list, it’s now about shrinking that down into what I call the BIW Index. What can you be Best In World at? What can you be Best In World at? Not just something that you’re interested in, because if you’re passionate abut it and you can make money doing it, well, guess what? That and a couple of bucks will get you a Starbucks cup of coffee. What we need to be is the best in the world, because that’s when we start to own the market. That’s when we stand out, that’s when we differentiate ourselves. Otherwise you’re just like everybody else competing for the same slice of the pie.

So, what is it you can be best in world at? And then go away, [inaudible 00:08:47] what you’re passionate about, what you can make money enjoying, what you can be best in world at. The sweet spot in the middle is what’s called your entrepreneurial destiny. And normally there’s two, maybe three things that can come up on that list. Maybe five max if you’re highly creative. But if there’s three to four things on that list, I want you to narrow them down and focus on one. Because if you try to chase too many rabbits, you end up catching none of them.

So what can you make money from? What are you really passionate about? And what do you want to be the best in the world at? Let’s use that as the basis to then look at how do we differentiate ourselves. Because if you differentiate as something you don’t love, or you can’t make money on, or that you don’t want to be the best in the world at, there’s no point. You’re just doing it to give yourself something to do. Don’t waste your time. Find your passion. Let’s find a way to make some money and then let’s be best in the world. And then what I’m going to do is start looking at how do we differentiate ourselves.

Okay, so you understand why differentiation is important, and you now understand what you can be best in the world at, what you can make money doing, and what you really love, what your entrepreneurial destiny is. Now, let’s look at one of the many ways that people differentiate. A lot of people do it based on one thing called price, because it’s the easiest thing to manipulate. But I promise you, differentiating based on price, being the cheapest, is the road to disaster. There’s a reason for this, because you’ll always have someone that has more money than you that’s willing to ride losses.

Let’s look at somewhere like a Cole’s or a Woolworths for example. I know it might not resonate with you, because you’re a coach, or a trainer, or a network marketer, or a speaker, something like that. But if you’re an impact entrepreneur, you’ll appreciate the dominance that that company of Coles and Woolworths have. How long can they sustain a price war? Because eventually someone’s going to run out of money, and eventually it’s going to be the case where you can’t keep giving away stuff at a loss to try and drag customers in the door. You have to find a way to differentiate. And eventually what happens, in the beginning people get excited because all this is cheap, right? But over a period of time they think that the product is cheap, they think the service is cheap, they think the experience is cheap. It’s just because it’s in a position of value.

We get told in the world that we live in today that the more expensive something is, the more valuable it is. People make decisions based on if you have two items and one’s more expensive, some people will choose the cheaper options because they want a bargain, but quite a lot of people will choose the more expensive version. Why? It might not be any different, in fact, it could be the same thing, but they’ll choose a more expensive version because it has the perception of higher value. So what we want to do is make sure we’re priced competitively, absolutely, but at the same token we blow people out of the water with service, with delivery, with product features and benefits that actually really matter. Not just incremental things that don’t actually make a fundamental difference to our niche or our marketplace.

And then it’s about being able to drill down and find who is it you really want to work with? Because you might be passionate about the health and fitness industry, but who do you really want to work with? People that want to lose weight is not a niche, right? If you’re passionate about health and fitness, and you’re passionate about women that are single that have got two kids that are out there that have got 20 kilos to lose? That’s a group of people you can really own, because then it doesn’t matter if somebody else is dominating the male market, or even dominating the single 22-year-old market, because if you’re targeting women, single mums that are 40 plus, you’re trying to target that market, well then that becomes your area of expertise. You own that, you become best in the world at that one area. No one else in the world even touches it because you’re the very best at it.

Now, one of my good friends once shared a story with me. He was in Thailand, and he’s a guy that was selling banana chocolate pancakes. That’s all he sold. He didn’t sell everything else, he just sold banana chocolate pancakes. Why? Because he wanted to be the very best in the world, and people traveled all around the island to come to get banana chocolate pancakes, this is a true story, from him, from this guy. Why? Because he was the best in the world. When you’re the best in the world at something, there’s always a market for what you do.

Richard Branson was once asked, “How will you fill Virgin Island? Like, Necker Island. It’s $70,000 US a night. How do you fill it?” He said, “When you have something that’s the best in the world, there’s never a problem of demand.” Apple, who have a product that’s best in the world. Samsung have a product that’s best in the world, they don’t have any problems, they’ve got people queuing up. They can charge people whatever they like, people will still buy it. How do you differentiate yourself?

You’ve got to find what’s different, what’s unique, and what I really think this comes down to is looking at what’s your entrepreneurial destiny, and then from that, what are the results you’ve had in life? What’s your life experience? Who have you helped? Who do you want to help? Who do you want to work with? These are all powerful questions you should be writing down and answering, by the way. And then, from that, who is the person that really makes your heart sing? Who would you love to work with? If you could work for anyone and work with anyone for free who would you do it? Because then, if you get paid it’s a bonus. And in the sum of all of those questions, with a little bit of self-awareness and a sprinkling of some reasoning, you’ll be in a position to be able to go, “Look, this is who I really want to work with.”

The next step in differentiating yourself is to ask yourself the most important question, and it’s not what can you offer. It’s, what do they want? Because if you can find something in the marketplace that your current competitors are not offering, that they’re not currently delivering upon, if there’s a point of difference there that you can dominate and own, whoever gets to market first wins. I can’t tell you how many times people have tried to copy our marketing. But if we’re first, and we’re consistent, and we focus on just who we focus on, they can focus on whoever else they like. They can copy until the cows come home, because they’ll never be able to replicate what we offer and what we value.

Because, guys, when we got started, when I got started I was 22 years old trying to be a life coach and a motivational speaker, and I just knew it wasn’t going to work. I was like, “I’ve got to find a way to differentiate myself, because if I go after everybody else that everyone else goes after, I’m not going to stand up. I’m not going to stand out.” So I decided instead of targeting the market, which was 40 plus, because no one was targeting young people when I was going through personal development. When I was 22, 25, nearly 26. When I was 22 no one was doing that stuff. I had to go and find the hard way about events. I had to leave school, and travel, and do all these different things.

So I said, “I’m only going to work with people under the age of 40, in fact, I’m only going to work with people under the age of 35.” And when I got started I just went after that market. My point of difference was that I was exclusively for that industry. Why did that work for me? Well, one because I was relevant, but also two, because of the fact that I was in a position where the market had never been exposed to anybody else, so there was no competition because nobody knew about it then, because everyone in my industry discounted those people. What’s the market segment that you can tap into?

And one of the people that I know here at WA is a real estate agent, makes $3 million a year. Starting out as a rookie there was an area called Calista in WA no one wanted to go to. It was a new home development, and so no one wanted to work in that area because they didn’t think anyone was going to buy or sell property there, and he spent 18 months working that area until he owned the whole market there. And then he ended up spreading like wildfire, and he went from zero to $1 million in, I think, his second year. And then his third year he went to $2 million, and his fourth year he went to $3 million. Now he’s sustaining $3 million to $4 million a year in the industry. And he owns the whole market, he’s got incredible market share. Why? Because four years ago he decided to take a risk and go for a market that was untapped. And it’s about staying in that.

Most of the people you see today, if you’re watching this video, you see a lot of other coaches and trainers that are marketing to you right now. Other business specialists. Well guess what? Most of them have either seen the work we’ve done and copied it, or even better, we trained them because they were one of our clients that came to us and said, “I want to be a coach as well, Cal.” “Of course, come on board.” Now I don’t say that to impress you or take anything away from the good work other people are doing in the market, but I do say it to let you know that if you carve a market and you own it, then that market grows with you, because eventually you become a big deal and the people that are with you will tell more people about you.

Because I remember seeing that guys five years ago, or four years ago, when he was just getting started. Don’t be afraid to get started, but find a niche, find someone that you really want to work with. But don’t just focus on that first, focus on your core offer based on your entrepreneurial destiny, where you want to be and then offer that. That’s the best way to differentiate yourself, rather than just doing it based on a price, differentiate based on service, based on value, based on a guarantee, based on an offer. And guys, true differentiation doesn’t mean to say it’s a tactic that can be easily replicated. It comes from inside of you, it comes from your core competence, something that you offer that no one else can. They can’t take it away from you. What is it?

Micheal Jordon was differentiated, Micheal Jackson was differentiated, Beyonce’s differentiated, Jay-Z’s differentiated, Richard Branson is differentiated, Robin Child is differentiated. Everyone can try and copy their stuff, but they stand the test of time because they have something more than just a cheaper price, or a more effective marketing campaign.

So what I want you to do guys, is I want you to post below right now some of the answers to this stuff. What are you passionate about? What is your entrepreneurial destiny? How are you going to differentiate yourself in the marketplace? And post up your questions, your comments, and I’ll go through them individually, and I promise you I will respond to every single one of the people that has the courage to ask the questions on here. Because I want to get behind you and really support you.

Until another video guys, live strong and with a passion. Make today and every day a phenomenal life-changing adventure, and above all else, remember to live life on your terms.