In most industries, there’s no shortage of providers. Quite the opposite. There’s a surplus.

There’s way too much choice. And that’s why it’s so competitive.

Imagine this

Tomorrow morning at 9am, all your competitors decide to quit. They literally cease trading. Leaving their clients with no option, but to hire you.

As a business owner, this would present you with a huge opportunity. With no more competition, you would be able to cherry-pick the very best clients. You could choose to only work with clients who are happy to pay a premium fee for a high quality service. You could decide to only work with clients, who gave you the freedom to do your best work.

You’d be free to do things your way.

Now imagine this

Tomorrow morning at 9am, all of your competitors carry on as usual.

If you still decide to cherry-pick the very best clients. To offer a premium service for a premium fee. To only work with clients who give you the freedom to do your best work. To do things your way… you will still have no competition (or very, very little).

Competition is a mindset.

Today, I’d like to save you time, money, energy and stress. I want to help you avoid making the extremely costly mistake of using someone’s title as a decision-making shortcut.

Whilst some titles are defined by meaningful, proven attainment (like the title Doctor or Professor), others are way too vague. They tell us almost nothing. They can be misleading, too. Here are some examples of titles, which sound like one thing, but often mean something completely different.

The CEO

Anyone can be the CEO of nothing. Think of it like this: Bob and Mark are both CEO’s. That title tells us they are both the head of a company. However, it tells us nothing about their company or their achievements. Bob could be CEO of a 3 month old business that’s in the process of going bankrupt. Mark could be the CEO of Facebook.

If you are thinking of giving your money, time or attention to someone, just because they have the CEO title, dig a little deeper first.

The Internet Start-up founders

I get emails most days, from people calling themselves the founder of an Internet Start-up. Some Internet start-ups are funded by millions of dollars worth of investment. Some are run by people with a proven track record of success. Some are built around a great idea and amazing people.

Others are 2 weeks old, unfunded, with no business model, trying to be the next Amazon.com… only better.

Their title, by itself, means nothing.

Best-selling: From Gladwell to Godin to minimum wage

Then there are best-selling authors. Malcolm Gladwell and Seth Godin can rightly claim to be best-selling, non-fiction authors.

Because they are.

However, they are also a world apart in the wide, 3 tiers of best-selling authors.

Top tier: Gladwell sells millions of copies of each book. His advance for one book alone was over one and a half million dollars. He’s big news and is interviewed on major TV networks, worldwide, when each new book is launched. His name is widely known within the general population. He can (and does) commanded $40,000 for a single speaking engagement! One of his book titles “tipping point” has become and everyday part of the English language.

Middle tier: Godin is successful, but sells a fraction as many books as Gladwell. Godin appears on affiliate marketing blogs, podcasts and in marketing publications to promote his books. Whilst a pole away from Gladwell, Godin’s influence is considerable within his niche.

Bottom tier: These are the best-selling authors, who sell surprisingly few books (as few as three or four thousand) and make very little money. Just search Google for “how much does a best-selling author earn”. You will see it can be as little as $15,000, over a period of 2 years. Often less. That’s for a year spent writing the book and maybe another year promoting it. So, these best-selling authors earn less than minimum wage.

There is a huge difference between Gladwell at the top and the people at the bottom. So, if you’re approached by someone who calls themselves a best-selling author in their marketing, do some research.

The top 10 rated experts in the world

Then there are those, who title themselves as a world top 10 (or top 50) expert because they appear on a top 10 list from a well-known magazine or website.

Some of these lists are endorsed. They’re 100% legit. They’re compiled by staff writers — people who work for (and are paid by) the online publication or magazine. The publication puts these lists prominently in the main body of the main website.

However, a version of this is also a very commonly used tactic to create fake credibility. Today, lots of very well-known publications use unpaid and unknown bloggers to provide free “content” for them.

And here’s why!

The publication gets content. These publications need lots of content to maintain their search engine rankings. (Google rewards frequently updated websites). Most big publishers are cutting back on staff, so getting all that content is increasingly difficult.

This is where unknown, and unpaid bloggers come in. They provide a cheap way, in every sense, for the publication to keep Google happy.

A popular form of this free content are so-called “top X lists”. The blogger lists people, who they happen to know, as one of the top 10 (whatever) in the world. These lists are not voted for. They are just the opinion of a blogger who’s trying to gain exposure with free content. Anyhow, these lists get linked to and shared a lot… by the people who are included on them. Those links and shares are SEO ranking factors for Google. This is why the well-known publications allow them.

The unknown blogger gets exposure. The blogger gets to claim they write for the well-known publication, even though these posts are not endorsed, not paid for and not part of the main body of the website.

If you look deeper, you’ll see there’s usually a small disclaimer on the page where these lists appear. It is also VERY common to find the blogger’s friends added to these lists. The friend will then add the blogger to THEIR top 10 list. As such, the people on these lists are not part of the top 10 in the world. And they’re not endorsed by the magazine / website, which they claim in their marketing. Literally anyone can be number 1 on these not-what-they-seem-lists. It looks impressive. It means nothing.

In short, titles can be extremely misleading. Sometimes by accident. Sometimes by design.

Because of this, using titles as a decision-making shortcut can lead us to make bad decisions. So, always credential people, before you give them your attention, time or money.

Over the years, I’ve worked with thousands of business owners. Some of them are massively successful. I soon noticed that these super-successful people shared certain habits. They did things, which the average business owner didn’t do.

I decided to learn from them… to acquire their habits, to see if it would help me. It did. It really did. In big, meaningful, measurable ways. Today, I’m going to share some of what I learned from them with you.

Let’s go.

1. They personalize their business, so it’s uniquely theirs. One of a kind. Rare and valuable. This is true, regardless of their industry or profession.
2. They are driven by a passion to do something big. Something that motivates them AND those around them.
3. They know success is about more than money. Because if you’re rich and unhappy, you’re still broke.
4. They show people, rather than tell people. Anyone can claim anything, so they walk the walk.
5. They out-care their competitors. And it shines through everything they do.
6. They out-smart their competitors too.
7. They set standards, extremely high, self-imposed standards. Then, they achieve them.
8. They throw away the manual and write their own rules.
9. They focus on what they want, not what they fear. Sounds obvious, yet it’s the polar opposite of what small business owners do.
10. They are excellent decision makers. They get the information required, study it, request advice if needed, then decide. This is one of the master skills for success in every area of life, not just business.
11. They avoid those costly detours, which come disguised as shortcuts to success. Warren Buffett often says a key reason for his amazing results, is his commitment to get rich slowly.
12. They do all the work required. You can’t sleepwalk your way to the top. Or even the middle.
13. They also relax. If you work smart during work time, you can relax when it’s family and friends time. In fact, it’s essential.
14. They seldom watch TV. None (zero) of the most successful people I know, bother with much TV.
15. They are extremely selective who they associate with and who they recommend. Your associates have a huge impact on what you think and your expectations.
16. They lead. The world already has enough followers and the followers need leaders.
17. They manage their time extremely well.
18. They deliberately build a valuable network of people — before they need them.
19. They are willing to stand out. They know it’s the only way to be outstanding.
20. They summon the courage to do what’s required, rather than what feels comfortable.
21. They make promises and keep them. They know it’s a superb way to build trust and earn a great reputation.
22. They look for opportunities to over-deliver. I call this approach radical contribution. I’ll cover it in detail, in a future post.

I hope you find those observations useful. More importantly, I hope you decide to turn at least one of them into a habit.

If a wonderful opportunity came your way today, how prepared would you be?

I was prompted to write about this after speaking with a friend. Amy told me that she had been invited to appear on a national radio show. She’s an architect and the show was a perfect fit for her. Plus, the audience is huge.

As I was about to congratulate her, she explained that she refused the offer.

“I just couldn’t do it Jim. I’d be too nervous”.

It happens to us all

I’m sure all of us have, at some point, refused an opportunity because it took us a little too far from our comfort zone. I know I have. The thing is, everything is difficult, before it becomes easy. To get to the point where things are easy, we need to push through the difficult part.

The problem with avoiding opportunities like that, is that we fail to give ourselves the experience required, to overcome the fear. We need that experience, for example, to become comfortable and confident on radio, TV or public speaking. Then, when an opportunity comes our way we can eagerly snap it up.

Justin Timberlake and 200 million viewers

It reminds me of something I saw a couple of years ago. It was a very brief conversation, between Justin Timberlake and one of the hosts of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest. The host was deliberately trying to make Timberlake feel nervous, ahead of a live performance.

The show’s presenter asked him if he knew how many viewers were about to watch his performance. He replied, “No”. The presenter said, “Around 200 million people”. Timberlake replied, “Ha. That’s cool”. He then got on stage and sang as if he were performing in front of a dozen close friends, rather than almost twice as many TV viewers as the Super Bowl!

It turns out that Timberlake has been performing to millions on TV since he was just 11 years old. So, he pushed through the hard part years ago. Today, he’s comfortable with the TV cameras and the thought of millions of viewers tuning in. His performance was fantastic.

Creating unstoppable momentum

Opportunities come in different sizes. Smaller opportunities come with very little upside, but they’re usually within our reach. However, the best opportunities almost always require you to stretch. To push yourself.

Every time you embrace a great, challenging opportunity, you become more prepared for the next one. The more prepared you are, the easier it gets. The more opportunities you accept, the more opportunities you attract.

You create momentum. Unstoppable momentum.

This momentum leads you to an increasing number of bigger and better opportunities. And that’s exactly what you need, for your business to reach its full potential.

As a business owner, there are 2 ways you can choose to market your services. One works extremely well. One doesn’t. And most people are choosing the wrong option. I don’t want that to happen to you.

Here are both options, along with how to make the right choice for you and your business.

1. Try and appeal to as many people as possible.
2. Intentionally choose the type of customers or clients you want to service. And ignore the rest.

The first option seems to make sense

The thinking looks like this: If we try and appeal to as wide a range of people as possible, we’ll have more prospective customers. This should mean we’ll make more sales (or attract more clients).

The reality is different. Very, very different.

By trying to be relevant to almost anyone who could have a need for your services, you end up being directly relevant to no one.

Here’s the problem: Only a directly relevant message has the power to motivate a prospective customer to take action.

Vague, diluted, semi-relevant messages are ignored.

Here’s a far better approach

The most successful business owners get specific. They decide exactly who they want to serve. They then intentionally focus on communicating with this section of their marketplace. They learn what matters most to this group. They uncover their main challenges. They then connect with them in a way that’s directly relevant and therefore exceptionally powerful.

That kind of specific, directly relevant marketing is what’s required, to inspire people to buy from you or hire you.

A reader emailed me with some great news. He used the advice from one of my blog posts and it’s worked extremely well. There’s a powerful idea behind what he did, which I’m going to share with you. It can help you achieve similar (or even better) results.

Here’s what happened.

Danny is a partner in a medium-sized accountancy firm. After reading this, he decided to open for business 20 minutes earlier than his competitors. So, instead of 9:00am, he and around half the team are there from 8:40am. He then emailed all his clients to let them know.

The response was immediate.

He said, “I had replies back in minutes Jim. Clients loved that they could call us before their own businesses opened. They also said it was really useful, that they could pop in on their way to work. It created a wave of good feeling toward us. In the 3 months since we started, client recommendations have increased by 87% on the same period last year.”

Why it worked

Danny increased the value of his service, in a meaningful way.

Clients were immediately able to see the benefit. Most of his clients are in retail. They could now speak with an accountant, not a call-handling company, before the client’s own business opened its doors. It was a story worth sharing. So his clients told fellow retailers, knowing they’d find it useful too. Some of these retailers switched. Danny’s team bought into it too. They appreciated the flexibility of being able to start and finish work, 20 minutes earlier.

That’s an 87% increase. For the sake of 20 minutes. Think about that for a moment.

How to make it work for you

The real lesson from Danny’s story is NOT about opening 20 minutes earlier. That’s just a tactic.

No.

It’s about understanding the importance of constantly looking for opportunities to make your service remarkable. Remarkable enough to get people’s attention. Remarkable enough to talk about. Remarkable enough for your clients to truly value the extra something you provide.

The end result is massively more referrals, far better client retention and never having to sell based on your fee again.

Here’s the post, which gave Danny his idea.