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 actually makes you different? One of the things I like to, when we do these workshops with clients, one of the things that I challenged them with, because every business I've worked with, Every business owner I've talked to, every prospect, when I asked the question, why should someone work with you?

The answer is always this, it's our team, it's our personality, we care about our clients, we're experts, we're the best in the industry, like, it's all this stuff, and I'm like, alright, but that doesn't make me, again, this isn't the best, but I will buy this over any other phone any day, so that's not your differentiation. What I like to tell them is. It's often found in something you in what you say you are. So maybe if you want to say it's your team, maybe it's in how you hire. We only hire X, Y, Z type of people. They're there. You know, we only hire X, Y, Z. PhD, I guess that wouldn't be X, but like X professors who hold PhDs that understand this and blah, blah, blah.

We only hire business consultants who have built five businesses in multiple industries. Well, now that's a differentiation. That's something that you can like hone in on and say, no one else in the industry is hiring these people. Um, that it's usually something you do looking at your deliverables, looking at your processes, looking at like your, your policies and how you structured it's a lot of differentiation is found in what you do rather than like, Oh, it's our team.

Yeah. Well, what happens when that team in 10 years, when it's a completely different team

Hmm. That's a really, really, really, really great point. And I want people to, to hold on and get that point that, uh, if you claim something about yourself that can't be proven instantly, then anyone can make that claim. Uh, so for example, if you say something like, um, we are the friendliest, um, company that there is with this, then anyone could say, well, we are the friendliest as well.

It might be true. But you can't really measure it. You can't really say that it's, it's, it's true. For example, you're, let's go back to the, what we talked about earlier and about State Farm. And you know, it's, State Farm is supposed to be like a good neighbor and you could believe that until something different happens, you know?

And, and so, and I think that's a really, really great point. Now, when people think, think about differentiation and they don't think about The intangibles will follow what you can do. So if you start in what you can do, then the intangibles will follow like service and innovation and whatever it is, 

and I think that is a really, a really strong point that we need to highlight.

Yeah. And like differentiation is something that you end up owning. So the way I like to think about it is if you, if you peel open the human brain now, that's, you know, there's different categories, like our brains are designed to categorize everything. And so it's why, when I said, Hey. I say shoes. You immediately think something because your brain has said this is a shoe.

This is the category it sits in. And this is the one I remember the most that all happens within our reptilian brain. So before you get to logic, it passes through this reptilian brain that says, Okay, this is simple enough. I can categorize it here. That's like, that's what differentiation is about. It's like you look at every other./

Like every other competitor out there and say, I want to be, I want people when they think about this solution and they think about this industry, this market, here's all my competitors. I want to be the one that stands out. Um, so one of the things that I do with my clients, that is a really easy way to tell if you actually are differentiated, pull up the websites.

Of five of your competitors and pull up your website and look at the hero section. If you're using the same language, if you're saying the same stuff, you're not differentiated.

Right.

like, like we were working with a trailer company and we did a brand audit and we pulled up their competitors websites.

No joke, they use the same three words, all of them use the same three words, strong, durable, uh, and like performance or something like that. I think the third word was different, but it was all strong and durable. They all said that and I'm like, so why should I buy your trailer when I can go to theirs and theirs is also strong and durable? If theirs is cheaper, if theirs is closer. I'm going to buy theirs and I'm not going to buy yours because you're both strong and durable. So why the hell should I buy yours? That's of the, if you're struggling to understand what makes you different, that's the easiest test to see. If you are pull up your hero section and that like, if it's, if you guys are saying kind of the same stuff.

You're not differentiated. Um, there's a flip side to this, though, too, because some people will go to the extreme and be like, we need to be so different that it ends up alienating their ideal customers. So there's this balance to be had. You have to be different enough to stand out in this category and be like, Ooh, you're familiar enough that I get what you do, but you have this differentiation. What I see a lot of, especially younger entrepreneurs doing is they want to create their own category. They want to like, you know, someone gave them the advice that be a category of one. That's way harder than you think it is, because not only do you have to market your company. Now you have to market the category as well, because it's not something that's in people's brains.

So like, um, I like to use this example when, when the first automobiles came to the market, they didn't call them automobiles. Because no one knew what the hell an automobile was. If Google existed back then, they wouldn't have typed into Google. I want to find an automobile, or I want to find a car. They wouldn't have Googled that because that terminology just, it wasn't.

It wasn't top of mind as a solution to transportation issues. It's why they called them horseless buggies.

Horseless buggies.

They, they wanted to relate to a category that people understood. They understood horse and buggy. And they said, our differentiation is you don't need the horse now. Eventually. It became its whole own category and buggies don't really exist anymore.

And I mean, unless you're obvious or whatever, buggies aren't a thing really anymore, but this is the danger. Like I'll, I'll sit on, on, uh, clarity calls with some of these younger entrepreneurs and they're like, I'll ask them, what is it? How do you define your company? What are you? And they rattle off this thing, this label, this category, like, Oh, we are a, Customer experience, entertain, like something.

And I'm like, what the hell does that mean?

What does that mean?

And if, if I have to ask that question, it means your ideal customers don't know either. Like there's this danger of being so far different that they can't relate you to something they understand. And in that case, you're also going to struggle to land clients because you're not even a consideration to them.

Um, the other thing I would say about differentiation is not. All differences matter. So I use this example in my workshops. I could show up to every workshop dressed as a clown. That's different. No other brand strategist shows up in clown makeup and a red nose to do brand strategy. That's different, but that difference doesn't matter.

And so trying to be different just to be different. is not the answer either. Your differentiation should stem from who are we attracting? What do we do? What do we do exceptionally well? And what do our competitors can't, what will our competitors can't or won't do? What can't or won't they do that kind of the intersection of those three things is where your differentiation Is found it's got to be something that your customers Care about because if you, if you come in and say, oh yeah, we do X, Y, Z, and your customers are like, I don't give a crap.

That's not something I care about. Like, I just need this. I don't care that you do that. Like, that doesn't even relate to me. They immediately write you off as you can't help me. So it's this mix of what do you do differently that matters to your ideal customers that your competitors can't or won't do.

And it's, it's. A very nuanced thing to find, like in brand strategy, the hardest component that I have seen is nailing that differentiation. Is it different enough? Is it too different? Is it something that actually matters? Like a lot of times with, with our clients, we go back and forth on this cause it's like, This might work.

This might not work. Like, um, but once you hit it and this is, this is where I know we've hit it. Once we've hit it, the client, it's like the client's eyes light up. It's like, holy crap. How did I not see this before? Because it's something usually it's something you're already doing. If you have an existing business, it's something you're probably already doing, but you don't think it's important.

Like the recruitment company, 10, 10 or 2 qualified candidates in 10 business days. That was something we were probably 45 minutes into the clarity call before he even brought that up. And I was like, dude, this is your differentiation. This is what this should be at the top of your website. This should be everything you do should be wrapped around this.

All of your policies, every, every, all of your operations, all of your marketing, every, all your content you put out there, two qualified leads in 10 business days. That is your differentiation. Own it. Don't bury it. Most, most companies, now this isn't true for everyone, but for most companies, you're already doing it.

You just have to uncover it. Now, in some cases, maybe you have like, You know, some companies are just like, well, I'm going to do content strategies. So I'm just going to like, I know that this company does this, so I'm just going to do it too, and blah, blah, blah. And maybe you don't actually have something that makes you different.

And then there's ways that we can kind of uncover some, uh, like a gap in the market for you to try to fill and come up with a differentiated idea. No, I would say 95 percent of our clients already are doing it. They just don't see it as. Spectacular of a thing that it really is.

Yeah. And I, I think that that's so true. Like people bury their differentiation all the time. It's hard. It's really, really hard because sometimes you've been doing the thing for so long that you don't recognize what's important. Uh, and it's good to get help externally to talk through it and to find the things inside of your business to be like, Oh yeah, that's it.

And I'm glad you answered the question. Cause I was going to ask, is there a way that differentiation can hurt your business? And you said there, there are extremes that you can go to. It's there's too shallow and then there's too deep. But what you want to do is hit a nice middle ground of relatability, but also this is unique to me.

Right. And, uh, what were the three things you said? You said 

it's kind of the mix of what's your customers, what matters to your customers, what you well and what your competitors can't or won't do. And that's the key. Like if I can copy it. It's not a differentiation. Now, I might be able to copy it, but maybe my business, you know, your competitor's businesses aren't big enough to do it, or it's such a different, it would require them to really pivot everything in their business.

So it's like, that's going to be too expensive. That's going to cost us too much. We won't do it. So there's a difference here between Kansas We physically aren't able to do what you're saying and won't is we can, but it goes against our values. It would require us to completely restructure the company.

It's going to be way too much. We won't even want to touch that. If you can find that sweet spot between those three things and then your competitors can't and won't, that's a differentiation that will last you for years to come. Um, and that's really what you're looking. That's really what you're looking for.

It's why when people People are like, Oh, it's our founder. It's our team. It's a, we won awards. I'm like, what happens when the founder sells the business? What happens when the team turns over? What happens when you do have a sucky customer experience just cause it was a fluke or whatever, or you hire someone and they just suck at their job and they're not a good customer service agent or things fall through your technology breaks down and now you're not a good customer service.

If that's your thing, It's gone. Like those kinds of things can disappear very easily. And let's be honest, if you say it's your team, I can just steal your team. 

is so true. So we have to find anything that those three things are the most important things when you're looking at doing that.

I'm not sure people could do that for themselves because it's harder to see from inside the 

jar. 

I, that's a point I would make is like, this typically is something you do need someone on the outside to do. And I'm not saying that just to be like, hire me and I want more money. Like I've got, I've got plenty of clients. Um, but it is very hard to see.

I do this for a living and it's very hard for me to do it for myself because you are in it. Day by day. It is like the thing that, especially if you're the founder, it's a thing you created, or, you know, even if you, you have a small or a bigger, small business that like, you've got a multiple teams, it's what they live in day to day. It's very hard to see. Well, no one else is doing this. Why aren't you focused on this often? I don't know. I don't know really any company that I've talked to has needed outside help nailing this down. Um, because you are too close to it to really see what is that uniqueness. And so hiring a strategist, even like you don't have to hire internally, but working with a strategist to really. Walk through this kind of stuff, understand your ideal customers, understand the market and say, okay, let's do a deep dive into your offer and what you guys do and see, is there something existing that's like, why the hell aren't you like making this your thing because this is no one else is doing this. Let's make that your thing that that changes businesses. Like we had one client, we finished the strategy. They hadn't even implemented it all. They implemented like some changes to their sales cycle and how they talked about their business. And then they updated their homepage. That's all the change.

They, they implemented maybe 20 percent of the strategy. They landed three new clients. Within that two month timeframe on nine month contracts and then had, well, Jason, we need to do another meeting with you because we have this new problem now where our, our, their offer was they go in for six weeks on, on site and work with their employees, get to know them and stuff.

And they're like, we started this business to be able to work where and when we want, we got three new clients. That's, that's. What 18 weeks that we are physically stuck at clients places because of the offer We don't want to do that. We can't take on more clients that way. We need like, what else can we do with our offer?

And we've trans, we're transitioning them into like a virtual, more of a virtual offer. So they can work wherever they want. They can take on more clients cause they don't have to physically be in a space. And it's like, that's. That's the power of nailing down your differentiation and having a strategy of like, how do I talk about it?

What are these touch points throughout sales, marketing and operations that are going to make people feel it? When you have that strategy, the difference for people is I'm stuck. I'm unclear. I don't know what I should be doing. I don't know why we're not landing clients. This thing should be working too. I know exactly what I need to be doing and I'm seeing results from doing it. There have been a lot of times we've told clients. You need to stop doing this because it doesn't fit your strategy anymore. And sometimes it's things they like, like we've told clients, you need to stop doing trade shows. Yeah.

I understand. Like most clients, when they have trade shows, it's like, well, everyone else is there. So we have to be there. And I'm like, if you take that money from a trade show and you do this instead, you will make more money and people, they might look at your competitors, but they're going to be like, why would I do that?

When. I want to work with you anyways. Like when you understand your brand strategy, it helps you to make those kind of minuscule decision, the micro decisions of where

should I create content? If you're asking that question, you don't have a brand strategy. Should I create on LinkedIn? I can tell you where I need to create content, not because I'm a content genius, but because I have a brand strategy where I know my ideal customers. And I know where they play. I know what they look for. So I know I don't really need to be on Instagram now. Every once in a while I'll post stuff up there, but Instagram is not. Something I'm going to invest my money in because my clients aren't there or they might have an Instagram account, but they're not thinking business when they're on Instagram.

They're thinking, you know, Oh, I want to look at DIY projects or, you know, fitness stuff, or I want to look at, you know, whatever it might be, but I'm not thinking business. And I'm not just not going to look at your stuff. If you're pushing business stuff, like understanding your ideal customers answers, all those questions. 

All right. Great. So that's, that's a really nice deep dive into differentiation as well. Jason, thanks so much for taking this, this bulk of time to share about brand strategy and about differentiation, and this is good. This is so, so, so very good.

I know some people might want to get in contact with you now that you've shared all this stuff with them. Where can the people find you? 

online. 

So the audio cut out here for a bit. What Jason was saying is that you can find him on LinkedIn. Just search for Jason Vanna, J A S O N V A N A and you'll see his beautiful bearded face. 

here, I give out all that kind of information. Um, I also have an email newsletter that goes out on Monday mornings where I take my LinkedIn content and basically put it on steroids and give you more than what you get on LinkedIn is in my email newsletter. And we have, um.

Download free downloadable guides. Like how do I find my ideal customers? I've got a guide for that. You don't even have to give me your email. You can just download it off the website. The email and all the resources are on our website. It's. So S H F T. No, I, we were trying to be cool. It was a big mistake, but S H F T dot agency, the email newsletter, the resources, like even other podcasts I've been on are on there.

Um, that's kind of where to go to get connected with me and to learn more from

me. 

Right. And sassy doodles have 

been going really well. as well. You should check out 

Sassy doodles have been known really well. I

love

Yeah. Yeah. People love them. People love the doodles that you'd literally take paper and just, just draw it out at your desk 

and, and do That 

I start on, I start on printer paper first so that I can make all the mistakes and be like, Oh wait, I just drew this out, but it. You know, I can draw it out better this way. And then I do it in the notebook and take a picture of 

it. 

Oh, so you actually do it. Oh, you just don't do it. You actually do write it all before. Ah, there we go. That's 

the secret.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, because for sometimes what'll happen is I get the initial idea out and I'm like, this is good, but I, if I add this to it, it's going to make it even better. So I don't want to waste my notebook paper, um, and have like 20 pages of the same one and be like, Oh crap. I wasted half, you know, I wasted 20 pages on this notebook. Um, so I sketch it out first to get a sense of like, Is this what I'm trying to show? And then I transfer it to the notebook. 

You can literally take that notebook, like scan all the pages and create like a handbook for someone, like a, a sassy doodle playbook type of thing. Um, just an idea. I don't know, probably a 

thought of it

already. Uh, 

Yep. 

you did, you did, coming soon, coming soon. 

Yup. 

All right, well, great. Thanks so much Jason for joining us again.

Thanks students for being part of the useful content classroom today, useful content classroom. Dismissed.