How to Avoid Becoming a Commodity by Defining Your Distinct Difference
In this episode, I’m going to talk about your distinct difference and seven ways you can break through the noise to ensure your business won’t be one of those lost among the heap.
Now more than ever, your business needs to be different. Distractions and competition are everywhere online, on TV, on billboards, on the sides of buildings and buses, and even coming soon to currently ad-free streaming services you watch. With all that and a looming recession on the horizon, avoiding becoming a commodity is a must!
1:11 - How I learned about being a commodity the hard way
3:46 - What happens when you don’t have a distinct difference
7:13 - The seven ways to differentiate yourself and how I use one of them in my business
10:24 - Another example of how you can differentiate yourself
13:23 - Where to look for your business motivation and direction during difficult times
Find me on Instagram or email me at hello@lesliedlyons.com.
Discover what your distinct difference is by booking a Soulful Values Session with me for $333. Discounted price good until June 30, 2022!
Mentioned In How to Avoid Becoming a Commodity by Defining Your Distinct Difference
Transcript for How to Avoid Becoming a Commodity by Defining Your Distinct Difference
Hey boss, it's Leslie. Your six figure sales coach. This podcast is created for central movements to be owners who are looking to scale their studios to multiple six figures or maybe even seven figures. I'm going to share with you bad and ugly of running a six figure studio. We all know that business isn't all about booty shorts and stilettoes. Let's get to today's episode.
Hey, party people. It's Leslie. Welcome to this week's episode. This is episode number 40, and today, we're going to be talking about your distinct difference. That's what I'm titling. This is what we're going to be talking about. And why does this matter? Well, as we head into a recession, now, more than ever, you are going to have to avoid becoming a commodity at all cause. I've talked about this before, but I need to bring it back to the surface because some of you all just don't get it. I know I didn't get it. So let me start off by sharing you story, in full transparency about how I learned about being a commodity the hard way. So, back in the day, so over 25 years ago, some of you may not know this, some of you may, I used to sell sex toys. whoo-hoo, Things that go buzzing the night. Baby, I was all about that life. I did it via in home parties, so like Mary Kay would dildos.
I would go from home to home with my wares showing women, how did have the most powerful orgasms of their life? And I would do all the things, I had games, I had great hostess gifts, I carried inventory. So you can get your stuff that night like I went above and beyond in terms of making sure that my hostesses had a great experience. And after I would do all of that, tap dance, tell all my jokes, do all the things, it would break my heart. When months later, I'll run into someone who was at a party and I'll go, oh my gosh, you're the sex toy lady. And I [laughs] Yes. This is literally how people would run up to me in the grocery store. Like, you're the sex toy lady. And I'm like yes, that's me. And it's like I could not find your business card and I had a party last month and it was terrible, but none of us could remember your name. So, we just went on the internet and typed in sex toy parties and they came up with pure romance and we went with one of their reps. Oh my gosh. So, you can imagine how I felt, I've done all of this to make sure that my clients have an excellent experience but because I had not done enough to differentiate myself from all the other sex toy party people out there.
They thought a sex toy party is a sex toy party. Dildos are dildos.
What's the difference? The difference they found out unfortunately, a lot of those clients was that they aren't the same. Then I did bring tremendous value to their entertainment and their education. I called it edutainment and they found out the hard way. But that's what happens though. When people start thinking, you're the same. It also can happen in something more everyday use. Like Kleenex is a great example. When you need Kleenex, when you need facial tissue to blow your nose, many of us aren't looking for a specific brand. We might be looking for, it needs to be three ply and have lotion. But you're not really loyal to a specific brand. Even worse for these other brands of facial tissue. What do you call facial tissue? When you go into the store and you would walk up to the clerk and say, hey, I'm looking for facial tissue. No. Nine times out of ten, you say, hey, I'm looking for Kleenex.
That is death. That is death to a business when you got your own brand of facial tissues but they're actually calling your product by your competitors name. This is what happens when you don't show up with a distinct difference. And when you become a commodity where people in the market can't tell the difference and everybody thinks you're the same, I call it the curse of sameness. People think everybody's the same.
They then start to look at things like price and proximity, how cheaper you and how close are you to me. And trust me as a successful business, you do not want to play the price game with people. That is not where you want to go. It's not sustainable. You are going to work so hard. I tell my clients all the time, we're going to make money, and we're going to work hard, but we're not going to grind. We're not going to be hustling. We're not going to just out here doing whatever, we're going to be strategic. Our hard work is going to be a concerted effort of focus effort and we're going to rest just as hard. So we're not just going to be because once you're on that price wheel, there's always somebody willing to go lower, always somebody willing to go lower and you will be too exhausted to deliver your product or service, to your clients because you spent all your energy on a race to the bottom. That is not what we're trying to do, at least not over in these parts.
So I really want to talk to you about seven ways to break through the noise, seven ways to stand out in your marketing, seven ways to call in your absolute dream clients. Okay? So there are seven distinct voices or languages or marketing messages that I believe that all companies have. This is based off the work of Sally Hogshead. She does fascinate. I'm certified in her method. So I want to give credit to this, it isn't something that I set up and thought about but even more so, Sally has a work with some of the top National Fortune 100 brands to help them get solidified in their brand voice. So I'm not just bringing the knowledge of working with small business owners that we're bringing in some knowledge of people whose marketing budget is probably what some of us make in a year.
Okay, so there's these seven ways. So think of it, these are seven ways to differentiate yourself. Innovation which is the language of creativity. Then there's passion which is the language of relationships. Power which is the language of confidence. Prestige, the language of excellence. Trust is the language of stability. Mystique is the language of listening. And Alert is the language of details. Now, depending upon which of these are your natural propensity. And as you guys know, I really specialize with working with small business owners and so, often time who we are, we can't help. But for that to show up in our brand. We also get the most personal satisfaction when our business is aligned with who we are. Now, it's not who we are. Notice I said it's aligned with who we are. So that means that it's aligned with our personality and our values. Not it is who we are.
So this will make your business a lot more enjoyable to run, even during tough times. Like a recession. It's when you're doing things and calling in people in the natural way that you do it. So let me explain, use my advantage as an example. So my advantage is power which is the language of confidence and how that shows up in my business is I don't ask for permission. I am not a follower. I lead the way. I speak heart truce with ease. [laughs] I am very comfortable and being decisive. I'm very self-assured. And so in my businesses, I seek to call in people who want that same energy, who want to be clear, who want to be able to take the lead, who wants to stand on their values, who want to stand on the things they believe. I energetically project that. So I attract it.
In your business when you think about someone who has a power advantage like myself, you'll see them calling people higher. You'll see me talking about how you can own your voice, how you can become more confident in what you do. It doesn't matter if I'm marketing textbooks or pole dance classes or sex toys. [laughs] I am always going to be talking about standing in your power, being an authority, having ownership, sovereignty. These are words that just flow out of me like water because it is the very fiber of what I believe.
But lets use somebody else just to give you another example. Let's say, that your primary language is innovation. The way you differentiate yourself is through language. Of the language of creativity. Like, who is getting late here? You all , bear with me. But it's the language of creativity, right? When you think about creativity, these are people who are visionaries, right? You seek adventure, you an experimenter right? Like you don't have to wait. You're somebody who is like a first adapter. Isn't that what they call it intact. Like when a new cell phone comes out, or new technology comes out. You don't wait. You are in the beta group, or you buy right away. You don't wait for things to go through rounds and for kinks and things to be worked out. You're like, no, that's cool. That's new. You're the first to adapt that. You're always brainstorming, You're always coming up with a new idea. When I think about it, you can see innovation at work.
Let's pick a different industry. Let's pick a restaurant for example, you can see innovation at work and how you would market this? Let's say your restaurant, you could have your chef. A chef who wins, heavy into innovation. They can create a new menu every single week with exotic ingredients or with ingredients that nobody would have ever thought to use. That's their innovation at work. And that becomes the marketing message, right? Because now you're going to call in people who are like, I don't want the same old, same old. I don't want to go to the same old steakhouse. I don't want to go to the same old vegan place. I want to go somewhere where they're doing things different. I think a great example of this is slutty vegan that was based out of Atlanta. She's quick late expanding. But she took something that was very popular and commoditized as vegan food but made it innovative by bringing in creative names, creative recipes and her success speaks for herself.
So if you're wondering how do you break free from all the noise, how do you break free from playing the price game, you know, the race to the bottom. Because in the recession, when purses get tight, the death of your business could be, you being seen the same. You've got to lean into your voice and these seven languages you have one of them, okay? When you lean into it you got a clear path. You're going to open up opportunities for yourself. You are going to be sought after. When things get tough in business, when things when things get tight, when things seem uncertain as a business owner, we need a North star. I know especially because I work with a lot of women folk. A lot of us are conditioned to look outside of ourselves for the motivation and the direction that we need in our business. I am always going to be the type of coach that says, no, the answer is in you and not only is it in you, I believe it's in you at a cellular level like this is your freaking soul DNA that comes up. So when you're looking for a North star, as opposed to looking up at the sky, I want you to look at your personality. I want you to look at the person who's been with you, the longest. You, your entire life.
How does your personality and your values align? That's the way forward when you can say, this is my personality. What I was designed to do. What I was designed to be in the world so not just in my business but in the world. This is what I value when you could marry those two things, you will win. Don't look outside of yourself. Look inside and if you need help with that, that's why I'm here baby.
Hit me up. This is actually, the thing that I enjoyed the most. One of my clients is Crimson. She is the CEO of Minx amused. She is someone who has innovation as a very high part of what she does, without a doubt. When I was talking to her about and just talking to my coaching group as a whole. But she said this to me, she was like, I really think the thing that you do amazingly well as a coach is helping people find their unique voice, helping people find the special secret sauce and what they do and more importantly why they do it. She's like, I hope you do more of that in the world. And I'm like God, dog it. Fucking high five. That's what I need to do. I agree with that totally, because at the foundation of things before, you can get more clients. You must understand what makes you different.
This is your distinct difference. You need help with that. Hit me up, you know how to find me. Instagram Leslie Delians. You can email me and I'm like you can E me, what's an E me? You can email me at hello@LeslieDelians. Let's figure this out before we get too deep in this recession and while everybody else is running around, like a chicken with their head cut off, as my mother would say, trying to figure it out, I'd really like for you to be sure-footed and calm and sober minded through this process. Knowing the value that your product brings and more importantly, the value that you bring your distinct difference. Until next week. I will talk to you soon. Grace and peace.
Hey, you all, speaking of distinct differences I want to tell you guys about an offer that I'm bringing back that will only be around until June 31, 2022. I'm bringing back what I call my soulful value session. At the end of the session, you will walk away with what your distinct difference is. If you're trying to figure it out, if you can't figure it out and you're like, how do I do this? But, you know, you need to pull yourself away from all of the noise and the clutter and the competition in your business. I can help you do that. So from now until June 31, 2022, I'm offering this at a discounted price, special price of 333 dollars and again it's like Cinderella and the Pumpkin at midnight, you go back to a pumpkin. If you don't get it, [laughs] if you don't take advantage of me before the 31st, I may not be offering this again for a while. So if you're struggling to figure out how to come up with your distinct difference, how to break away from the pack. Go ahead hit me up, you can do that right on my website. Leslie delians.com. And if you have any questions my inbox is always open to you. Alright. Talk to you soon.