While traveling once, I visited a nearby Chinese restaurant. I love Chinese food and I was looking to get a warm plate of beef and broccoli over rice. That’s a pretty common dish at a Chinese restaurant, right?
Well not here.
I opened the menu and about 75% of the menu was fast food! Hamburgers, hot dogs, french fries… they even had a completely separate dessert menu with pies and ice cream!
There were a few Chinese dishes listed, but no beef and broccoli. Was this a Chinese restaurant or a diner? The entire experience was strange and extremely disappointing. I didn’t even get a fortune cookie when I finished!
And while my experience may seem isolated, the truth is that a lot of businesses are run just like that Chinese restaurant. They don’t quite know who they are, so they offer lots of things that don’t really go together. The customer ends up confused and likely won’t return.
And your customers certainly won’t offer a recommendation if they can’t determine if your business is a Chinese restaurant or a diner. Businesses like this do not last very long.
As you can see from my experience, it’s critical that a business knows who they are and what they do best.
Who are you?
This may sound like an easy question, but sometimes you’ve got to dig a few layers deep to really find the answer.
The answer we’re looking for is more than a simple statement like “I’m a wellness coach” or “We’re a Chinese restaurant”.
You need to really dive into why you exist. What brought you to the point of creating your business? What is the driving force behind your business?
What you really need to understand is your “why”. Why did you start this business? Why do you do what you do?
Knowing what makes you tick is a big step in the discovery process and it’s a foundational piece of our GET CLEAR™ Workshop.
Sometimes the answer to your why is easy and sometimes you can’t quite put your finger on it. That’s ok. You may need to take some time to think about this and jot down your thoughts until you can formulate a simple, one sentence answer.
For example, at Left Right Labs, we help nutrition and wellness coaches, make more money, grow their following, and get their time back.
That statement is easy to understand and shows HOW we help our clients. Being able to help wellness entrepreneurs change the world through online education is WHY our company exists. We’ve both seen the impact on ourselves and our loved ones when our health falls by the wayside. There is far too much education to let that happen anymore and we want to help empower the public through the teaching that YOU provide!
For additional research on finding your why, we recommend the book “It Starts with Why” by Simon Sinek.
Once you have the answer to your “why”, everything else falls into place.
What do you do best?
Once you know why you do what you do, the next step is to determine what you do best. What is that ONE THING that your business is known for?
In other words… What is your superpower?
Every successful business has a superpower. It’s what sets you apart from your competition. What do your customers come to you for? Is it a product or a service you deliver? Is it a talent or skill that you possess?
You may be able to identify more than one superpower. If you can, that’s great. Write them all down and circle the one you think is your strongest offering.
Choose ONE and only ONE!
Your business may have a lot of things to offer, which is awesome and we’ll get to all of those things eventually. But, in order to have the biggest impact, you need to focus on just ONE superpower.
Starbucks has a lot of things on their menu… breakfast sandwiches, muffins, flavored waters and green teas. But when you hear the name “Starbucks”, the first thing you think about is coffee. Even if you can’t stand coffee (like me) and you only go to Starbucks to get green tea, you still associate Starbucks with “coffee”. That’s because coffee is their superpower.
What should your customers associate with your business? What image should they conjure up in their mind when they hear your business name?
Need help? Phone a friend.
If you struggle with this task, ask your customers or phone a few friends. An outside perspective will likely give you some insight. And if they can’t immediately come up with an answer, then you REALLY need to dive deep and figure it out. We know this step can be really challenging, so we’ve designed the GET CLEAR Workshop to help our clients get unstuck and build their own personalized Wellness Business Blueprint to help them scale their online business.
Remember this… you can’t be everything to everyone. Focus on the one problem that you solve for your customer. You may be able to solve other problems, too, but focus on the main one for now.
Starbucks started with coffee first and THEN they added complementary items to their menu. Be like Starbucks and stick with one main offering.
And don’t serve fries with your beef and broccoli.
