Evan Carmichael explains why competing on price kills your business. Instead, find a specific niche or unique angle—like restaurant expertise or a proprietary service—so you can charge premium rates. He charged $2,500 for a blog post because he understood entrepreneurs better than anyone else.
Chapters
You have to have a unique value proposition for your business, a unique angle that makes you different, that makes people want to pay attention to you. Otherwise you're going to fail. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael, your friend in all things entrepreneurship, and today I'm answering a question from one of my YouTube viewers, Joseph, who wrote in saying he wants to start a credit card processing company to help small and medium-sized companies Do you have any tips? Congrats, Joseph, you want to start this business. That's awesome, but you gotta tell me more. You have to have something to help you stand out because the logical question is, so what? There's tons of these guys. You're going up against huge competition. What makes you different? And you might even already know, and if you know You gotta explain that in all your materials. If you're writing a question to me, or if you're creating a website, whatever it is, you gotta write down how you're different. You're gonna get lost otherwise. You're going up against big companies with big dollars, and you're not gonna be able to get through. You're not gonna get your message heard amongst all the noise. So how do you come up with your unique value proposition? Maybe it's a specific industry. You know, maybe you're gonna help restaurants and you have knowledge about restaurants that other companies don't, and you can go in and really help those companies out, and you're known as the restaurant guy. Or maybe you have some extra features that no other company has. You gotta find a way to stand out, and it can't be on price. If it's just on price alone, it's a race to the bottom, and it's gonna be really hard to build a successful business. You want to have something unique and special about you that you can justify charging not only market rates but even a premium. Why would people pay more to work with you than somebody else? That's the question to ask. If you can figure that out, you are on to a pot of gold. Here's a quick example of something that I do. I work with brands. I work with companies who are trying to reach the the entrepreneur community and understand them, because a lot of brands have no idea how to reach entrepreneurs. And I'll charge a premium for that service. If they want me to write a blog post for their website, I'm charging them $2,500, where otherwise you can get somebody for $100 or he'll do it for free. I'm way above market rate, but they do it because I understand the entrepreneur community and I have a network of my own entrepreneurs. That's what I'm known as. I built up that reputation and I love doing it. You gotta find your own thing. Why would people pay more to work with you than somebody else? That's your unique value proposition you gotta figure out. And if you can, again, you're on your way to pot of gold and having a lot of fun too. Hopefully that helps. For those of you guys watching, if you like the video, please give it a thumbs up. I'd also love to hear what you have to think. If you have a comment, leave it underneath the video. I always read those and I always respond. So thank you, and I'll see you soon.
