AJV (00:02): What is your competitive advantage? Okay, that’s the conversation for today. And this really spawned from a conversation that I had on the influential personal brand podcast with a really good close personal friend Dave Avrin. And he just wrote a book called Ridiculously Easy to Do Business with. And part of our conversation was, what makes it easy for people to do business with you? Or in other words, what’s your competitive advantage? And so this was a good enough conversation that I thought, this is the pullout of what I would like to talk about in this recap version of that conversation. So number one, let’s talk about what is not your competitive advantage. It’s not your people, right? I think we could all say we have great people. I say brain Boulder’s Group. Our people are our secret sauce. And not one of them, but all of them, they are amazing. AJV (01:00): They care, they have integrity, they have work ethic, they are smart, they are fast. But I also have like 10 entrepreneur friends who would say the exact same thing about their people. And so I would just encourage you that it’s not your people, right? Having great people should be a prerequisite for being in business. I know not all companies would say that, and there are some cultures that need work, but I would just encourage you that your competitive advantage is probably not only your team. I think it’s a part of what makes you awesome, but it may not be your competitive advantage. Okay? Second thing that it’s probably not is your high quality product. There are lots of high quality products and services. I am in three different coaching programs right now and for three different reasons, right? I’m in the EO Entrepreneurs organization and it’s a huge part of that is the business community that I have and the business education and business resources. AJV (01:59): I have a life coach Pete Wilson is my life coach, and he has a phenomenal program. It’s a high quality service. I’m in the Wellspring Mastermind, which is for Christian entrepreneurs, and it’s about how do you turn your, your business into a kingdom building empire, right? It’s say, I wanna do God’s work. I really genuinely do. I want my business to be reflection of my faith in Jesus Christ. And that is an, it’s a great quality program, but I don’t know if I would say for any of them is a quality program, a quality service, a quality product, their competitive advantage. ’cause Again, having a quality product or a quality program should be requirement for entry, right? Because if not, the market’s gonna snuff you out, right? You’re not gonna have growing customers, you’re not gonna have exceeding revenues because if you’re, if the product isn’t good, if it doesn’t work, if the program or the service, if it’s no wino, people aren’t going to keep buying it. AJV (03:00): They’re not gonna refer it. And so I would encourage, it’s also probably not a quality product. I would say low prices. It’s also probably not your competitive advantage. Tons of places have low prices. I would encourage you that it’s probably not your customer service, right? I would encourage you that it’s not a laundry list of other things, but I think what most people say is it’s our people, or they say it’s, it’s our unique program. It’s our unique service that’s our high quality product. And I would just encourage you that those probably aren’t it, right? That’s probably not your unique competitive advantage. And so how do you figure out what is your competitive advantage? Because if you would’ve asked me what our competitive advantage was before I had this conversation and before I did this work, and before I really sat down and thought about, I probably would’ve said our people, right? AJV (03:52): It’s our people. And if not that, I would’ve said it’s our community, which is also our people, right? It’s the community that we have built within Brain Builders Group. And then I started really thinking about it and I’m going, okay, maybe that’s not it. And how to rephrase that question is what makes it ridiculously easy for people to do business with you? And if you don’t know the answer to that, then I would encourage you to do a couple of quick things here. One, ask yourself, what would your customer say? And if you don’t know, go ask them. Be like, Hey, what do you like about doing business with me? What do you think are competitive advantages? And what would you say is the most easy thing about working with us? Or perhaps the question is, what’s the hardest thing about working with us? AJV (04:45): What is not easy? What do you wish was better? And perhaps there’s some gaps that you need to fill there. Second thing I would do is I go through your own processes as a consumer. So like one of the action items that I literally have here on my to-do list post this conversation is I need to go and go through our funnels as a consumer with a new email address so nobody can identify it. I need to schedule a call with their sales team. I need to request a customer care call. I need to email all of our different community listservs and check our response time. How do they respond? I need to be like, how many clicks does it take me to do this? I need to go through our funnels. I need to make sure no links are broken. AJV (05:32): I need to go through and, and experience what it’s like to be a new customer as well as a, a veteran customer, a brand builders group. And what I wanna do is I wanna go through that process and look for friction. I wanna look for all the places that there’s rub. Where is there a delay in response time? Where is it that you can’t have a human conversation? Where is it that the automation isn’t firing correctly? Or is it our calendar isn’t available enough or opportunities aren’t present enough or what is it? And I don’t know where the points of friction are, but it’s my job to find them. It’s not my customer’s job to find them. It’s my job. It’s the business owner to find those points of discomfort or challenge or, or friction. And then it’s my job to help remove those, right? AJV (06:22): And so when I was sitting here and going, okay, if I don’t know the answer to that, I’m gonna ask my team what do they think? And after that, I’m gonna ask our clients what do they think? And then I would also like to ask our affiliate partners, our referral partners prospects who never bought from us. It’s like, can you tell me why , right? Like, gotta do a little bit of this in an investigative approach here, right? I gotta put my detective hat on for a minute and go, it’s my job to ask the questions and to find the answers. I don’t have to do it all by myself, right? We, we have a team, we have people, we have customers, but I have to be asking the question. One because it matters. It matters a lot. To know what your competitive advantage is matters a lot in business today to go, this is what it’s like to do business with us. AJV (07:07): And to be able to say that with full authenticity and integrity and confidence of going, we don’t get it right a hundred percent of the time, but man, like we get it right most of the time here. And this is what you can expect. This is what makes us different. And this is what makes us unique. And I think that’s a really important thing that we all need to know, not only for us as individuals and our personal brands, but for the extension of that which is our business. And I think if you don’t know, you gotta go through the process of asking the questions to yourself, to your team, to your customers, to vendors, to prospects, to referral partners or affiliates, whoever you have, right? Whoever interacts with your business. The next is you have to go through the process of what it’s like to be a prospect for your business, to be a consumer of your business, and find those points of friction and also identify those points of ease, like what worked really well. AJV (08:01): And take all of that and go, man, if I were to boil it down and go, what is my competitive advantage? Here’s what I would say. Here’s what I would say. And so the question is, what is your competitive advantage? And if I’m telling you it’s not your people and it’s not your high quality product or service, and it’s not li it’s not likely your cost and it’s not likely your technology and it’s not likely your customer service team and it’s not likely those things, then what is it? What makes you truly unique amongst everyone else who does what you do? And I’m not talking about just your personal brand right now, because as a individual, I’m already unique, right? There is no other AJ Vaden on the planet. No one else has my unique set of brand DNA. No one has my life stories or experiences. They don’t have my AJV (08:54): Thoughts, feelings, emotions. They are not me. I am already unique. I am talking about your established business which is an extension of your personal brand, but it’s a, you know, a conglomeration of your products and your service and your team and your people and your clients. Like, what is that competitive advantage? And if you don’t know, we’ve given you several different action items to go through. And if you’re still pondering that, then I would highly encourage you pick up this new book which I’m a major advocate for by David Rin, which is ridiculously easy to do business with. And you can pick it up on Amazon. There are 28 things that it questions you on. It encourages you to investigate, it challenges you and it really gets you to ask those deeper questions that help you really uncover what is your real unique advantage in the marketplace that allows you to continue to do business, but not just do it, but do it well, do it exceptionally well in the service of other people. So what is your competitive advantage?