Evan Carmichael explains how to distill your business to a single core value. He walks through Tony's car-rental company, which stopped competing on price and rebuilt around "confidence" instead, changing hiring, marketing, and customer interactions to match that one word.
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How to apply your one word to your business. I believe that everybody has one word that defines them. You have a one-word biography, and if you look across the movies you like to watch, the friends that you have, the music you listen to, the companies you've started or work for, there's a common theme across all of them. And when you can find that, then you can figure out how to be more successful and live happier. So for me, it's belief. Right? And so I like books that are about believe, people who believe in themselves. I like movies that are about that, the companies I've started about believing in people. Now I believe in entrepreneurs, and having found that word, it's easy for me to apply it to my business and help me grow because all the decisions I make are about belief, right? If I'm bringing on a new staff member, they have to believe in entrepreneurs. If I'm launching a new project and working with a new corporate client, they have to believe in entrepreneurs, right? It's so much easier when you have that word. So this video comes out of a frustration with a newsletter reader. So I have a newsletter reader named Tony, and we've been going back and forth for a week, maybe 2 weeks, and I feel for Tony. So Tony has a car rental place. You know, if you're visiting his town, you want to go on a trip, you can rent his car. And the problem with Tony is he's going up against huge players, right? You're going against Hertz, Alamo, Budget, Enterprise, all of those guys, big companies who are just knocking on the price. And Tony's like, I'm struggling to stand out, I'm struggling to compete, I don't know how to bring in more clients. And so we're going back and forth in email trying to help him, trying to figure out, well, Tony, what makes you different? And he's talking about, well, I have a lower price and I'm open 24 hours a day, and, you know, a few benefits. First of all, you never want to compete on price. As an entrepreneur, you never want to compete on price. It's going to be a race to the bottom, it's going to squeeze your margins. Don't compete on price. Finally, we got to the point where I said, "Tony, what's your one word? What's your one-word biography?" And he comes back to me with confidence. Now we're talking. Now we have something that we can build a marketing platform around and an entire business around. So Tony is about confidence. Tony likes to make his customers feel confident. He likes to make the people in his life feel confident. He can't help it because that's who he is. That's his one word: confidence. So the marketing has to be around getting your customers to feel confident in your company. And Tony probably already does a great job of this when he's talking to people one-on-one. He can't help it, it's who he is. Confidence is his word. He can't help but be confident and make people feel confident. It's like me, believe. I can't help but believe in people. I can't help it, it's not a marketing thing. I just can't help because it's who I am. And the same thing is going to be for your one word. So Tony's probably really good at this when he's talking to people. The problem is it's not being reflected in his marketing material. So you look at Tony's website, Tony's website doesn't make me feel confident. It looks a little bit amateurish and it'd be the opposite. I feel like maybe this guy is too small and, you know, he doesn't give me confidence. It's the complete opposite of the feeling he wants. So he's got to get on there and tell his story. Tell him why confidence is so important to him and tell me all the ways you're going to make me feel confident. So how can you— so Tony, this is your marketing right now— how can you make a buyer, make a customer feel confident to go with you over a big name brand? Because you're open 24 hours a day, because you service your cars and you care for them like nobody else does, because the car is always going to be there when you say it's going to be there, because what? Think of all the reasons, right? Like, why will I feel confident working with you? You have to put that down. You have to exude that in everything that you do. It's not about just dropping flyers off and saying, I have the lowest cost business. So in all of your marketing, you have to make people feel confident. And when you do that, it does two things. Okay, does two things. One, it makes it easy to understand what you do. It makes it easy. Some people value confidence, some people don't. Some people are just looking for the cheapest deal. Some people are just looking to go with Avis because they have a membership there and they get their points. People look for different things, but the people who look for confidence will know this is the guy that I need. This is the guy. And the second thing it does, it makes it easy for people to talk about you. Right? If I'm going to go, you know, send my friend to your city and I know that they value confidence, then you got to talk to Tony. He's the guy. He's the confidence guy. You need confidence in your car rental? You got to talk to Tony. Because right now I don't know how to talk about you besides saying, hey, Tony's the guy on my newsletter list, right? You need to make it easy for people to understand what you do and and to talk about you. So you're giving them the word, you're giving them the feeling. And when you do that and you apply it to everything that you do, you apply it to your marketing, you apply it to your website, you apply it to your brochures, you apply it to the people who you bring on your team, you start making decisions based on confidence and not only on money, then your business is going to take off. Belief. For those of you watching the video, please give it a thumbs up below. It always makes me want to do more. Let me know what you think, leave a comment below, ask a question in the comments, I'll make a video response, and subscribe to the channel by clicking on my face if you want to see more videos like this. And Tony, I hope that helped. Let me know, I want to fix this for you, I want your business to take off. I will see everybody soon. Cheers.
