The other day I met someone who told me she was a health coach and that she was selling a product that was going to help people lose weight. I asked her how she was different from the other health coaches out there who had competing systems. She gave me the same arguments those health coaches gave me, in terms of being a coaching, and the science of the product she was selling. I came away with the impression that she was just the same as all the other health coaches I know. I doubt that was the impression she wanted me to have, but it was one she presented because she couldn’t show me how she was distinctly different from her competition.

This is an issue faced by anyone who owns a business: “How can I make what I do distinct from what my competition does?” Making yourself distinct involves discovering how you can describe what you do in a way that is fairly unique. For example, one of the services I offer is social media coaching. There are a fair number of other social media coaches and consultants. What I’ve done is chosen to employ skills as a social scientist to social media. My academic background gives me the credibility and training I need to do that, and it also provides me a distinction most other social media consultants won’t have.

Think about your previous training and experiences. How does that training and experience contribute to your current services or products? What can you do to tell people about your distinctiveness? Write down your answers and then look at your website and see if you are stating anything along those lines. Also start telling people how you are distinct and different, based on your background and experiences. The reason this is important is because while many people can do the same thing, the experiences and training that each person has, may not be the same.

Part of making yourself distinct involves necessarily understanding what your competition is saying and doing when it comes to presenting their own explanation about the services you and they offer. Pay close attention and ask yourself if you sound similar to them. If you do, it’s time to look at what you can do to make your message more distinct. Ask yourself what they aren’t saying, that you might say, and then start saying it!

People liked the name of the bread and were able to connect with it as a brand. More importantly, on some level, they also felt they could connect with Dave the person. What really sells something isn’t a slick marketing campaign or good PR…those are tools. What really sells something is personality and Dave has that in spades. People connect with his personality through the bread and the fact that the story is told on the bread wrapper. The bread also tastes really good. Perhaps what’s most important is that people love stories, especially stories where someone changes for the better. Why didn’t the marketing/pr company recognize this? They wanted to be “Safe”.

Sometimes safe works, but sometimes you have to take a risk, and if you recognize that what makes a business is personality and the relationships that people feel they have with that business or with the brand, you quickly realize that what makes people loyal is not even the product, but rather a sense of intimate connection to someone that they either identify with or look up to. In Dave’s case, he’s someone who turned his life around for the better and in the process showed people that it is possible to have a successful life, even when you’ve made some mistakes.

Business is built on trust and relationships, something which marketing and PR can’t and won’t always get. The message is important, but what’s even more important are the people on either end of the message, and the relationship that arises as when a message is crafted to not just present a product, but also present an intimate feeling of connection.

It’s all to easy to not follow your own advice. You’ve got a client who needs you, a project that needs to be attended to, or something else you need to accomplish for your business and in the process you forget to put time toward doing the very activity you would advocate your client to do. So how do you stop and find time?

First, keep a pad of paper on hand that’s just for you. If you find yourself saying to yourself, that’s something I should do, scribble a note down for yourself.

Second, put aside fifteen to thirty minutes to review any notes you made. By putting aside that time you can then review the notes and determine what activities you will follow through on. Use that time to not just review, but also follow through on activities you feel you should be doing for your business.

Third, do it every day. Make notes, review them and follow through every day. Think of the 15 to 30 minutes as a time to reflect and review what you’re doing with your business to make it successful. And remember you can’t really take care of anyone else, until you take care of yourself. This applies to your business as well, so making that time to follow up on your internal business activities can make a big difference in the work you do for your clients and also in attracting new prospects.

What do you think? What would you add that I haven’t?

I’ve always found Hall’s books to be interesting and relevant to my life from business to spirituality and this book has lived up to that same expectation. In this book Hall, discusses inter-cultural communication patterns and raises up concerns about the tendency to focus toward using external resources as opposed to examining and utilizing internal, behavior skills. I find this relevant in an age where more than ever the focus is on using technology to communicate, with all the inherent problems that brings, especially when relying on text only to interact. This is a useful book for exploring cross cultural communication and examining the increasing role of technology in communication.

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5 out of 5

Never be the Same (Link to author’s website) by Mark LeBlanc

If you’ve had the privilege of working with Mark LeBlanc, you know that he is a dynamic person who is always on the go with business. Never be the Same, an autobiography and business book presents a different side of Mark, but one no less compelling than him as a professional speaker. In this book he is candid about his ups and downs as a business owner and as a human being. I found his description of his pilgrimage on the Camino in Spain to be particularly moving and engrossing. But most of all as I read this book, I came away with a better understanding of how I can learn from Mark on yet another level and also never be the same. I highly recommend this book as one that will give you insights into your business process, while also reminding you of the value of also being more than just your business.

Note: You can only currently order this book from the author’s website

10 out of 5, because 5 stars wouldn’t be enough

The truth is that a business succeeds in part due to how it stands out in the minds of other people, and in part on the quality of its products and services. A business that combines the quality of what it does with how it stands out has a definite edge over the competition. So studying your competition can tell you what they are doing and also what they aren’t doing.

Sometimes you will co-opt and improve on what they are doing because you recognize they are onto something, and you also know you can do it better than they can. And sometimes you will look at what they aren’t doing and recognize that there is a gap and you can take advantage of that gap. If a business isn’t doing something, look carefully at what it’s not doing and see how you can use that to your advantage. If that means passing out flyers on the streets, give it a try, and see what happens.

It’s easy to do what other people are doing, but think of what they aren’t doing and ask yourself if you could do it. If you can, then try it. It might cost you a bit of money and time and effort, but it could also pay off, and will payoff at least in terms of the experience you get in doing something other people won’t do.

S/he constantly complains about the price, constantly has questions or problems, constantly complains about business, and otherwise makes your life miserable, because nothing you do is ever enough for that client. There’s only one thing you can do with a client like that:

Fire your client. That’s right: fire your client. If you find yourself spending more time on that client and his/her issues, business and personal, then it’s time to fire him/her. You might lose some money, but you’ll be surprised at how much time and energy you free up and how much happier you will be. In fact, you just might find you get more clients, better clients, because you’re no longer invested in trying to make that problem client happy.

Not all clients are good clients. Some are toxic…and you can recognize them by how much they complain and how much they bring down you mood. If you feel depressed or unhappy about working with a client, it’s time to let go and get focused on clients who will appreciate you, even as you appreciate them.

What do you think?

I realized immediately I needed to reach out to my network, both personal and professional. I need to reach out to my personal network for comfort and talking about how I felt, and I needed to reach out to my professional network to get advice on what I could both about the divorce and also about finding a way to stay self-employed full time, especially when my business isn’t currently bringing in enough income to enable that.

Reaching out to my network involved telling them what was going on, and being vulnerable. Admitting that my business was not as solvent as I would like it to be wasn’t easy, but I realized that if I wanted their help I needed to be upfront about my circumstances so that I could get the best possible advice from them.

It’s important to reach out to your network in times of trouble, and to do that you need to be open and vulnerable. That’s not easy to do, because culturally we are told to keep our feelings to ourselves, to put on a stiff upper lip, but I found that being so open was helpful and I realized that if someone came to me in a similar situation, I’d want to know what was going on, so that I could really help the person. The advice I got definitely helped me start to put a plan together that I could use to help me deal not only with a difficult emotional situation, but also a difficult financial situation.

When you go through a difficult time, don’t pull away from your network. It might seem that’s the best way to handle the situation, especially if you are hurting, but reaching out to your network can help you find the strength to deal with a difficult situation and develop a strategy for moving forward, while still being able to do something you love.

I’m featured in an article on 21 areas of self-improvement for small business owners and entrepreneurs.

I think of communication as formal, as marketing, and as a way to convey policies. Communication is about providing information and instilling guidelines.

Conversation, on the other hand, is intimate, sharing information, but also sharing a lot more. It’s a closer kind of relationship, about a wide variety of subjects, without an agenda.

This blog is about communication. I communicate with my readers. If my readers comment and I comment back it can start to move toward conversation, depending on the length of the engagement.

When I tweet out my status I’m communicating, but when I reply I’m possibly conversing…again I think its dependent on whether there’s a response as well as the context of the response.

And perhaps what also needs to be considered is just how personal a site such as twitter or Facebook can really be. Social media is a public forum, which ultimately can make it impersonal in terms of what people will share. How intimate can someone really be on a social media site? How intimate does a person want to be? Conversation can and still does occur, but how different is it really from communication?

Something I’ve always found important with anything I do professionally is the value of getting additional training on what you are doing. The truth is you can never really be an expert on a subject, if you’re really serious about that subject. And I say that because if you feel that way about the subject, you’ll always be trying to learn something new about it, or experimenting with it, or getting training on it, because you want to see what other people have to say.

Something I do on a fairly regular basis is attend seminars other people offer on the subjects I teach about. I want to see what they have to say about the subject, and I always learn something I didn’t know about the subject that I can take back to my clients to help them, as well as continuing to develop myself as a professional.

Getting additional training is the mark of a true professional. It says this person believes in the value of getting more education about the subject s/he is an “expert” in. It shows that s/he is willing to go the extra mile to learn new information and keep updated and informed about the topics and subjects important to his/her profession.

At the very least I think it’s important to be reading up on the subjects you teach on, or offer services and products in. I’m always reading at least one book on a subject related to business at a given time, so that I can learn more about what I’m teaching others. I don’t feel this makes me less genuine. If anything it shows that I want to provide the best information possible to my clients and recognize to do that I need to learn more.

When you start thinking of yourself as an expert, do a humbleness check on yourself and take a class, read a book, or do something where you learn from someone else about your field of study. Challenge yourself to learn at least three things from the class, book, etc. Doing that will keep you humble and also help you learn something new about what you love doing.

Communicating with your audience or community involves doing more than just sending out promotional tweets about your latest service or product. While an occasional tweet with a link to your website is acceptable, it’s important to offer something more substantial than just that to the people who are following you. Using services such as klout or twitalyzer can help you analyze what you are doing or not doing effectively, but it also helps to simply engage people. Following people you know and communicating with them about news they post is a great way of showing interest and developing a genuine conversation.

Equally importantly is knowing what your audience needs. Spending some time finding out what the conversation is around can help you understand what it is they are looking for as well as how to engage them effectively. The contribution you make can greatly enhance the interactions you have, while also allowing you to move beyond being a spammer to being an influencer and contributor to your online and offline community. Truly communicating with your audience means doing more than tweeting once a day or posting just about your services or products. It means you share and learn and converse and otherwise do what you would with people you’d meet in any other situation.