Howdy Reader,

Last week's email (if you missed it - you can see it HERE) called out how a lot of the advice personal branding gurus give is kinda lame.

It's where I introduced the concept of a belief - the thing you believe about your industry that's kinda unique(ish) to you. We're talking about the kind of stuff that will get you into arguments with other people in your industry, but also the kind of stuff that will make the right people give you a bit of attention.

We're not finished yet though. While a belief can get you attention and make someone think "yeah this person gets it," it's not enough to get you chosen. If you want to stand above all the other shmucks in your space (jk, I'm sure they're not that bad), you need to take it a little bit further.

The problem is that while having a belief is cool, it doesn't really tell people what that means for them. How does your belief affect the way you approach your work?

The approach maketh the.. money?

See, that belief you came up with.... if it doesn't change the work you do, then you've just got an easily compared deliverable. It's a commodity. And in the commodity game, there's always someone cheaper.

We want to stand out, which means we need people to understand how our belief changes our approach to the work. The downside to this is... you kinda need to actually do something differently. RIP.

As an example, I've got the core belief that looking too professional turns you into a commodity. The way that impacts my approach is that I build websites that embrace the personality of the business (well... unless that personality is dusty old fart - then I have to get a bit more creative).

If you're an accountant who believes traditional bookkeeping is too backward-looking, your approach might be focusing more of your effort onto forward-looking forecasts. If you were a ghostwriter that had similar beliefs to my own, you might take the approach of writing more "unhinged" style stories or about the human stuff.

So... WTF do I do about the approach

First up, you need to figure out what yours actually is. You've got the belief, which is awesome. Scary, but awesome. So the question to ask yourself now is: how do I prove this belief in my work? Or, what should I do if I wanted to prove it in my work?

And you can't be talking about "real results" or how you "care" more than competitors, or how you do quality work, because no one is saying the opposite. You're not getting a competitor going around telling people how they don't deliver results, or they don't care, or their quality sucks.

Making your belief public was hard cause it alienated some people. Making your approach public takes it even further. Some people might ignore your belief if you offer a service they could use, but now you're putting a line in the sand and actually saying "this is how I work" - and if they don't like that, there's no ignoring it.

But there's a pay off here. The payoff is this: for the right people, you'll be WAY MORE appealing. You've stated a belief that they share, you've demonstrated how you approach the work that is aligned with that problem.

You're already ahead of pretty much everyone. Job done, right?

Wrong!

What problem do you f**king solve?!

Imagine this. You've got your belief and approach on your website. You post about it on LinkedIn or wherever you choose to spend your time. But you still aren't getting the right people. Totally unfair!

That's cause we haven't really aligned all this with a problem that you solve. And not just any problem, we're talking about the problem that's keeping them up at night. The stuff that makes them wake up at 3am cause they had to pee but then they can't get back to sleep cause they thought about it and now they're wired. And once it hits 4am they give up on sleep and decide they may as well get up now even though their day is already ruined.

Yeah that problem. At least that's what I've heard.

Look, you've been in business more than 5 minutes. You've heard more than one smart person talk about how you need to "address your ideal customers problem" or some shit like that. Maybe your website says something about how you get them more leads, make them more money, or it doesn't work.

It's the same trap as being "quality" or "results driven" cause every single one of your competitors is saying the same thing. There's no marketing person out there claiming to get people less leads. There's no writer saying their posts will get less engagement. There's no accountant saying they will deliver less accurate accounts, slower.

Everyone says the same shit cause it's easy. You don't have to have any particular insight, or talk to any actual clients, to know that they generally want more money (or leads, or whatever it is you do). So everyone latches onto that and boom, welcome to genericville.

Solving your problem problem
​Come onnnn, that was clever

We need to go deeper. I said before about how I build websites with personality. I could go with the fairly generic "to get more leads" problem being solved. But that's not really right. The problem isn't that they need more leads. The problem is that they look interchangable with everyone else, so they get price shopped. So really the problem I solve is "stop getting price shopped."

You need to find yours.

The funny/annoying part is you probably already know. You've heard it on sales calls. Read it in the emails new leads send you. They've told you what's frustrating them. So why isn't it on your website? It's not like you forgot about it. It's not like you don't have the time to change some words on your website. It's cause this is scary too! What if you list that problem but someone who could be a good client, doesn't have that problem.

But think about it this way: what do you think the people who DO have that problem will think? How much stronger of an option will you be if you had specifically spoken to their problem. You can either try to appeal to everyone and not stand out to anyone, or you can appeal to someone specific and accept that it means some people won't like it - but for those specific people, you're going to be their first choice.

So go back through sales calls and emails. Find the words your clients use to describe their frustrations and fears. Does your approach solve that? Put that on your website! Update it across your LinkedIn! That's how you'll get them picking you.

Final bits

There's two piles in every prospects head, a compare pile and the choose pile.

Telling your personal stories all over LinkedIn could get you into the compare pile, which is better than not being compared at all. But you'll still lose out to someone else in the pile that's got more features, or a lower price, or some other tickbox on the shopping list.

If you want to end up on the choose pile, you need to give them a reason to do it! That reason could be your more features, or your lower price, or whatever - but who wants to do that? That's being a commodity, being comparable and ultimately interchangable.

The easier (and better) way to move from compared to chosen is owning a belief, making it visible in your approach, and naming the exact problem the right person is living with that your approach fixes. If you do this: congrats, you're no longer a commodity.

If this email (and last week's) helped you come up with a belief, approach, and a problem, please reply to this email and tell me. I'm happy to give feedback if you want it, or just straight up applause if you don't.

Either way, catch ya next time.

Cowabunga,
Nick Gulic