Removing the Fluff from Differentiation (What it really takes to stand out) - Teacher: Jason Vana

Hello, useful content creators. This is part two of my discussion with Jason Varner on brand strategy. And in this episode, we tackle the topic of differentiation. We talk about why it's important to find something that your competitors can't or won't replicate. We talk about the two extremes people often end up in when trying to differentiate themselves and why neither of those extremes are any good. And Jason explains at the core of differentiation, why it's better to describe what you can uniquely do. as opposed to all of the things that you are. It's a fun and educational discussion. Jason and I have a very good time and you are invited along for the ride. Let's make useful content. All right. So Jason, so let's, let's talk a bit about differentiation. Uh, and I know one of the first things you probably want to do is define what differentiation is exactly. Yeah. So a lot of people, when you talk differentiation, They kind of have either two extremes different. My differentiation is my team, my personality, my founder. Like we care about our clients. Like they think it's stuff like that, which if a competitor can say the same thing, it's not a differentiation. Um, or they go to the extreme and say. Everything about us needs to be different. We need to revolutionize the category and be so different that, that like our competitors, you know, we're not even closely the same, which is a huge mistake. Um, especially for most small businesses, you want to find this balance of, I call it your onlyness, um, what do you do that your competitors can't or won't do? And it often is. A small thing. So let me, let me use that. Um, comms, the comms agency as an example, she does come strategy, any comms strategy company does comms strategy. She does the thought leadership stuff. Like they do a lot of the same stuff. Differentiation is this idea of how do I hold in someone's mind that I'm the only one in the category that does this. Even if you don't. So with this client, we found that there is another comms. Uh, strategist who calls herself a serial connector, but it's buried. It's not the main highlight. It's not what she focuses on. It's kind of like buried on the about page towards the bottom. It's not, she's not hanging her hat on that one thing to say, if you want this, I'm the person to come to. So my client is not the only one that says they can connect you. But she is the only one that has made that her thing. So it's kind of hard to, to define that because it really is taking one thing about you and making it the thing. So we worked with a, um, to give you another example, we worked with a recruitment agency and really all I did with them was an hour and a half. Clarity call. We didn't do a full brand strategy, but what we nailed down was your brand strategy is to qualify leads in 10 business states. So they guarantee that if you work with them, they will give you two qualified candidates. Within 10 business days of signing the contract, most recruitment agencies would never even dream of making that promise because they don't have the, the infrastructure to make that happen. This client does. So they came in and told me like, we've got this infrastructure where we have, like how they label candidates and all this kind of stuff, how they find candidates. It's all designed that they have a database that they can quickly turn. And get their clients candidates immediately. And I was like, But, but in all of their marketing, even when I asked him, why should people buy from you? He was like, well, you know, we're really experts in the industry and we know what we're doing. And I'm like, every business can say that, that doesn't make you different. That makes you the same. So what actu...