Today I want to talk to you about some of the things that I learnt when I went to see Gary Vaynerchuk a couple of weeks ago.  I think last week I was talking about Denise Duffield-Thomas, and this week I’m talking about Gary Vaynerchuk.  I have been hammered a lot of information in person over the last couple of weeks, and it has been fantastic.  I think that when we get the opportunity to go to these types of events, it’s very easy to talk about how busy you are, and how you shouldn’t be taking time out of your day, but actually it’s really refreshing to once again connect with people in real life and to witness people doing their stuff.  Even if you never have an aspiration to be standing up on stage and speaking in front of 750 people, watching someone who is able to hold the crowd and be incredibly engaging is very inspiring and provides everybody with a mini-masterclass on how it’s done.  Watch my full vlog here.

So you take what you learn, you then put your own little spin on it, and then you take it out into the world.  It’s exciting, when I do my talk in November for the Maternity Nests Association, I’m going to be taking all of the best bits that I can recall from the talks that I’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, that have inspired me.  Anyway, one of the main things that resonated with me is something that I talk about in The Baby Business School and have been talking about increasingly more with my group clients, or at least when people were replying, this was a really important factor for me.  What Gary Vaynerchuk spoke about was the fact that quite often people become sheep far too easily; i.e.

we follow the crowd.

What’s this person doing?  What’s the most famous person doing?  Everybody does that.  Of course, the success of others does leave clues, and if somebody has a proven model, it makes sense to take the best bits from that.

But actually, when it comes to standing out in the crowd and creating a unique position for yourself, if everybody is looking left, you would be doing yourself a huge favour to be looking right.  Mm-hmm (affirmative)?  You know, all he’s saying here is nothing new, but it’s such a great reminder.  What is your unique proposition?  You know, I see this a lot with hypnobirthing teachers.  So many of you guys who are pre- and postnatal specialists have so many certificates.  I always say, “No, no, no, no, no more training.  You’ve got enough training.”  But actually, for those of you who already have loads of training, use those skills to design unique packages.  So you are no longer ‘just’ a hypnobirthing teacher, you are no longer ‘just’ a baby massage instructor.  You are the hypno, reiki, nose-blowing, glitter-wearing, whatever, whatever, whatever.  You get my point.  Use the skills that you have developed over the last year to create something unique, and take that to market.

We all want to stand out.

Usually, people want to do that more quickly than normal business parameters allow.  The easiest way to get the quickest results is to create something that doesn’t sound like everybody else’s, which really feels like a different proposition.  That doesn’t mean that you should have to go out and learn a whole new load of things.  What it means is, look at the things that you are good at, look at the training that you’ve already taken, and then let’s see how you can combine this to create something really, really special and distinctive.

The same goes for your message.  Maybe the programme or the service that you’re offering is similar, but the message behind it makes you stand out.  I’m working with a lady at the moment in my group coaching programme that has some powerful messaging around nutrition for children.  I know that as she begins to unleash this into the world, whilst there will be a large number of people who push back against that message because it is so unique, because she’s going to be going out on a limb, and because she is owning the fact that she is not talking the same conventional wisdom as everybody else, that is going to have massive, massive impact.

So, my challenge for you this week is to invite yourself to have a look at your services.  If you’re not getting as much traction as you would like, have a look at your service and see, ‘where can I tweak my message?’ Or, ‘what can I potentially add into this to create a new offering?’  Then send that out to your market.  The main thing is, try not to follow the crowd,  just do you.  I hope you find this a helpful exercise.