Ashley asks: “I’ve been trying to figure out what makes my business different from all the other investors in the market. We all sell similar properties and I don’t know what makes me different other than price. Every competitor’s website sounds exactly like mine and I hate it. How do I differentiate?”
In this episode, Scott reveals why competing on price is a race to zero and how to escape the Visibility Trap. You’ll learn why you sound like your competitors (lack of audience clarity), how to use strategic choices to differentiate, and why picking a lane and committing to it for 6 months removes the fear of making the “wrong” decision.
You’ll discover why strategy is simply “what you’ll do and what you won’t do,” how Scott used this exact approach to differentiate his podcast, and the three questions you need to answer to define your unique audience and value proposition.
The bottom line: When you don’t know who you serve, you compete on price. When you know who you serve, you compete on value.
Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask
Full Transcript
Scott Todd (00:00)
Welcome to Fix My Business, the show that helps you, the business owner, get unstuck so that you can keep growing your business. And the way that we do that is we answer your questions on this channel. So our question today comes from Ashley, and Ashley writes, I’ve been trying to figure out what makes my business different from all the other investors in the market.
We all sell similar properties and I don’t know what makes me different other than price. I know we’re different. I just can’t explain it. Every competitor’s website sounds exactly like mine and I hate it. I feel like I’m always trying to be the cheapest, but I don’t even know how I’m supposed to even begin to differentiate. Help.
Okay, so where this problem comes from is what I think about as a visibility trap. And what I mean by that is that oftentimes when you see people who are selling the exact same thing, it basically looks like, it’s like a, they call me two businesses. They lack visibility into who their customer is.
And the fact that you don’t truly know who your customer is or why they’re choosing you or why you’re unique in the marketplace goes deeper into that, well, into that visibility. When you don’t have visibility into this, well, then you sound like everybody else. And then you get into like a commodity trap. And if your product is ever a commodity, it’s a race to zero.
The pricing, as you’re saying right here, the pricing is going to zero, man. It’s your competing on price, but people are choosing you for a reason. could be you. It could be the way that you treat them. could be the way that, you know, it, it’s not always about what’s on the front end that makes you different. could be what’s on the back end. How are you different? Even on the back end, what makes you unique and
It’s not necessarily about doing different properties or doing different pricing. It could just be the way that you handle or treat the customers. Maybe it’s the way that you educate the customers is different than anybody else in the marketplace. And really what that’s doing is it’s helping you to identify you and how you’re as a person different from anybody else because we all are. I’m going to take this podcast.
For example, look, there’s lots of business podcasts out there. There are tons of them. And, you know, typically they follow the same kind of a script. They follow a monologue. And for the first 10 episodes of this show, that’s what I did is that had a monologue. And if they’re not monologues, guess what? They are interviews. They’re interviewing somebody else. And that’s fine. Okay. Like there’s lots of successful monologuing and interview podcasts out there. No problem.
So when I created this podcast to connect with you, I tried the monologue format. It wasn’t me. didn’t, I didn’t love it. It was okay. I didn’t love it. I love answering questions. love answering your questions. So I made a strategic decision to shift that.
to the Q &A format that we see today.
And I think you have to do the same thing with your business is you have to look at, Hey, what are the things that we’re going to do? What are the things that we’re not going to do? That becomes your strategy. talked to a lot of business owners. I asked them, do you have a strategy? And they’re like, no, man, I just need to make money. And I get it, right? Like, yeah, you start a business to make money.
But really what’s missing is some thought behind the strategy. And a lot of people think, oh, well, a strategy is like this big fancy document that big companies have. No, a strategy is the things that you’re going to do and you’re not going to do in your business. And that becomes part of your story that you tell to your customers. You tell them that on the website, you integrate it within your property descriptions. But here’s the problem.
A lot of times the problem that you’re feeling, the trap that you’re in with your business is amplified by a fear. Whenever you’re feeling trapped within the business, there is a fear that is amplifying or multiplying that problem. And oftentimes when we’re talking about this, being different within the marketplace, the fear is that you’re going to pick a lane
You’re going to execute on that lane and then it’s going to be the wrong lane. So we hedge our bets. We don’t go all in. So you have to find in your marketplace or in your business, what you enjoy doing, how you can pick that lane, pick the lane, commit to it.
and give yourself some assurances that says, look, we’re going to try this lane for six months. We’re going to try this. We’re going to go after this specific type of customer. This is who we’re going to serve. This is who we’re going to be a hero to. And when you do that, what happens is it really does make business simpler. And here’s why it makes it simpler. It becomes simpler because that strategy defines everything that you do.
It defines the type of properties that you go after. It defines who you’re marketing to, specific and narrow. Okay, it’s that niche. Okay, it’s that group of people that you can serve, who you relate to. And commit to that. When you go all in on that, it’s scary. That’s the fear. But then you go in and then you test it and guess what? You give yourself permission that says, hey, I’m gonna try this for three, six months.
If it doesn’t work, I’ll revert and change gears and go after another group of people or serve another audience. That’s the commitment that you have to make, but you have to give it time to work through. So how do we get out of this trap? How do we get out of this visibility trap? We have to define our audience. That’s the exit ramp out of this circle or this trap that we’re in is we have to define our audience. Okay, we got to put the fears aside, define the audience.
And when we do that, we can then create, I’ll call it a document, a vision document of, hey, this is who we’re going to serve. This is what our company looks like in a year from now. And when you do that, all of a sudden you’re going to get alignment. And as I mentioned before, you’re to get alignment on the properties that you buy, the properties that you sell, your marketing, the people who you are supposed to attract, they will come to you. They really will. There’s no, they’re out there.
There are people out there that you are supposed to serve. When you speak their language, they will come to you. And that’s how you’re going to get out of this particular trap. I want you to do that. Commit to it. Tell me how it goes. Give me an update on it, Ashley, because I really want to know. And if you have a business question you want to answer, please head over to scotttodd.net/ask, and I will answer your question on this show.
and I will see you in our next episode. And in the meantime, keep moving your feet.