Unique Ability Marketing: How to Stand Out Amid the Noise with Joe Polish and Dean Jackson - I Love Marketing Episode #482

We've been taking questions from the audience submitted in, in terms of marketing wins and where to go from there. We've got a really interesting one here from Chris from Clearfield Leadership. Chris is intrigued with the unique ability concept, which is a strategic coach concept that Joe and Dean both fully embrace. And so his question here is, how might we think about using unique ability to create marketing that stands out amid the noise? How does unique ability intersect with marketing?

I've had a lot of conversations with Dan Sullivan about unique ability. We are also in process of determining if we're going to actually write a book together on unique ability. First off, you know, unique ability defined from Dan Sullivan, just for when people hear that term, let's give some framing on it. The 4 activities according to Dan is there's incompetence, Competence, excellent, and unique ability. And you can be, say, excellent at public speaking, but it's hard. It doesn't give you energy and it could be very draining. Whereas unique ability is what is an activity that gives you never-ending energy and learning and it energizes you. It doesn't drain you and you find yourself really skilled at it. One of the things that Dan Sullivan has often found is that sometimes—

Yeah.

What we are best at, we place no value on because it doesn't seem like we have to work really hard at it. And so therefore, sometimes our unique abilities we give away to the marketplace for free so we can charge them for things that appear like we have to do a lot of difficult work. Now, that's just one way of looking at it. But taking your unique ability, I've done my best. My unique ability is interviewing people.

Yeah.

Curating discussions with high-level people, generating endless amounts of ideas because I'm a multiplier, not a simplifier. Dean tends to be more of a simplifier. That's why I think people often like the I Love Marketing podcast. But I'll tell you, like Dean, I will say this publicly, I think Dean is one of the best marketing minds in the world. I mean, he's a fucking genius.

Yeah.

And he's very skilled at it, but I'm a way more ambitious guy than Dean. And I think Dean would admit that too. So, if you take the I Love Marketing podcast—

Neurotic, you know. No, of course.

No, the world advances on the backs of its neurotics. It's absolutely true. I mean, who's the richest person in the world right now? You know, Elon Musk, right? Putin.

What's that?

Putin.

Well, no, Putin actually could be, but I'm talking about—

According to Elon, he is for sure.

Yeah, where you can actually trace it to a business, not underground activities and stuff. You know, there's many very wealthy people that are not on the Forbes, you know, 400 billionaire list or whatever, but which is now God knows how many billionaires. But that being said though, it depends on what your unique ability is. And when you can combine unique abilities of other people together and create something that— so, one of my things— so, first off, Dean, why don't you go ahead and respond to the question? Because those are my initial thoughts. I wanted to just define what unique ability is. But secondly, sometimes your unique ability combined with a process, combined with marketing, combined with something else is what actually makes magic. So, how would you think about it, Dean?

I, you know, I've been thinking a lot about this, that the, you know, ability is the next level in this where I talk about what's your capability that you are able to do? What's the capacity that you have for doing it? And the bridge to that cap gap is improving your ability to do whatever is necessary, whether it's reach to find the people, that you can help. And I think that this signature result ties in perfectly to your unique ability. If you look at it, if somebody has an outstanding capability to create a result for people, but they just don't have the reach to people to find the right people to be able to help, they have a capacity to take on twice as many people as they're doing right now. That cap gap paired with an ability that you may have to lead into filling that cap gap for somebody is what your business unique ability is. You know, but we're saying that your unique ability as an entrepreneur is going to lean into your ability to create a unique ability as an organization or as a business that provides a result for people. And on the back of your signature result, that's what we're really talking about, right? Being able to clearly, so people can see where their opportunity is. You know, to use your ability because you know how to do it is going to help them fill that gap.

Say your unique ability again because I'm going to reference something here.

My unique ability is connection through the form of interviews. And I want to connect people with skills and capabilities that reduce their suffering and help them find peace and joy in their own existence. So, I do that through interviews. I do that through groups and curating people. I do it through connecting other people. And ultimately, through that, it's to help connect people with themselves because it's hard to be connected with other people, which is why I have— like, everything that I do for a living, to the best of my ability, is I have connection companies. So, Genius Network is a connection network. Genius Recovery for addiction recovery is to— the opposite of addiction is connection. So, it's connection. My Ghost Town, Cleator, Arizona. If you look at all of the books that I've written, they're all about the theme of connection. And marketing, how good can you possibly be as a marketer if you don't connect with people, right? And how much will you enjoy doing marketing if you're disconnected from what it is you're selling or how you're doing it? So, part of the congruency is finding ways to actually market that that you feel very aligned with so that you can only align yourself with people that are aligned with you.

So what's interesting here is, is in your, is in your animated background where you have the link to I Love Marketing and the book, What's in It for Them, you also have a link to the Genius Network annual event. And what's funny is the best possible description of the Genius Network annual event is some derivative of how you just described your unique ability. You know, you bring people together, you do the interviews, you make the connections. I would dare say there's even some attempt at some healing and some service in this as well. And, you know, Chris asked, marketing stands out amid the noise and where unique ability intersects with marketing, unique ability becomes the offer. Unique ability becomes the marketing. And the more clarified you are on that, the more attractive you are there. You know, Dean Jackson, the guy who invented the 9-word email because he's so good at simplifying, his unique ability of simplifying is his marketing. If you want to simplify, you can take a look at Dean Jackson and go down that path. And you want to get these 2 guys together and listen to their show. It's going to be great. I'm seeing just fantastic stuff coming from the chat. I dare say some of the best thank yous and best responses we've gotten from past chat on this. But I think there's just— I think there's a true connection. Once you know who you are and once you know who you are, you know who your audience is. Once you know what your audience needs, you know what's in it for them. You can market in service to that in some ways that you just couldn't before. So, Chris, thank you.

And let me say this real quick, Paul, and this is just an exercise also for Chris too. If you just make an ELF versus HALF, you make a sheet of paper, you put easy, lucrative, and fun on one on the left side, and then put a column line down the middle. On the right, put hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. Make a list of all the activities, the people, the projects, the marketing initiatives that you're doing, which the things that you do, what is ELF and what is HALF? You know, what's easy, lucrative, and fun, and what is hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating? And if you can just make the distinction, like anything that's your unique ability is not going to be hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. It's going to be easy. It may not be lucrative in the beginning, but even in personal stuff, even if there's no money involved, you know, easy, liberating, and fun. Uh, ELF is liberating. Unique ability is liberating. It doesn't feel like freaking grunt work. And so, uh, you know, you're not gonna wake up and do things for long periods of time that you hate. Now, you know, in the beginning, in order to set up an ELF business, it actually could be very hard. And there's things that are going on in my life right now that are not— they're the furthest thing from ELF. You know, I mean, you know, I still have nonstop tinnitus ringing in my left ear since March 15th this year. I lost 70% hearing in my left ear. I might have a slight fracture in my low back right now in a transverse process. I injured my knee a couple weeks ago. I mean, there's a lot of physical pain that I'm dealing with right now that I didn't have before, and I have to learn how to navigate. But it's also metaphoric to stress that is happening in business, and we just need to navigate it. And business is hard enough in and of itself with all of the shit that we have to do. If your activities and the people around you are constantly hard, annoying, lame, frustrating, that's just life's way of saying, make a change. The first chapter in my book, What's in It for Them? is that pain is a messenger. And if I don't pay attention to things getting off track, life has this really funny way of creating a lot of pain till I wake the hell up. And pain is one of the greatest You know, teachers. Not that you want to invite it into your life. It's going to come into your life no matter what you do, no matter how well we try to figure everything out. A lot of life is going to have a lot of pain, but it's the ability to transcend that or to navigate it or to actually accept it and to deal with it. But the reason I bring up pain is that is what all of our prospects and clients are going through. And if you can be someone that, you know, wherever there's anxiety, there's opportunity. Our friend Richard Rossi says that. And if you're a pain detective and you see the pain in the world, like Robin PharmaPharmian here, I mean, if she really thought about what her business is, her business is finding pains that people have and helping to remove it, right? And a lot of you, that's what you do. You take pain away from other people. So, I'm not trying to minimize, you know, some people are in severe pain to the point where they cannot even function. And if you can actually remove your own pain and suffering to a degree, then you become more capable as an entrepreneur. But the reason most people don't run successful businesses, this shit's hard. And in order to have an easy, lucrative, and fun business, you got to set it up and it ain't going to be ELF right out of the gate. ELF is the result of setting things up in a certain way to get the condition of ELF.

Yeah.

Now, some people are really lucky and they just find exactly what their unique ability is early on in life. They're just tied into it and just everything flows. But that's not most people. You know, most people have to navigate a lot of stuff before they get to find the treasure. And some people never do. You know, a lot of humans, their lives will be nothing but suffering. And if you can be one of those people that can help remove or minimize some of it, I think you're doing a good service to the world. That's, that's my thoughts on it.

Dean, thoughts on that, or should we bring this part to a close?

I think that's good. That's a perfect summation there.

All right. You've been listening to I Love Marketing Live. This is a batch from an I Love Marketing Live event. If you want to attend an I Love Marketing event to do things like to get these final 10 minutes that we're never going to release on the podcast, head out to ilovemarketing.com, subscribe to the show, and find out what you can do there. Thank you so much. We'll chat with you next episode. All right. So now we have 10 minutes left before we close up, and I want to do a couple of things. Number one, I feel there's a groove on this episode that I haven't necessarily felt in a while. I think we're really doing well here. Dean, Joe, I think what's interesting here is we have all these episodes of I Love Marketing. We have all this history. We have Astro Polish. We have all these things. But what's fascinating is, is it really is going back. It is what is in it for them? What is the 9-word email? What is easy, lucrative, and fun? And then there was the other theme that we got today about how do I deal with social? How do I deal with AI? How do I deal with digital? How do I deal with the noise? Regardless of what happened here, this was a call to clarity. This was a call to focus. This was a call to clarity. This was a call to focus. And I want to hear a couple of thoughts on that from both.

To get good at marketing, as with anything, it's— it is a process. So what— what the way to get the most out of something like this is to give yourself perspective, uh, immerse yourself in— it's sort of like sitting in a sauna, you know. Sometimes it's, uh, you're just sweating your ass off and it's not the most enjoyable thing, but if you can endure and adapt To it, you become better and you become more conditioned. It's like eating a good meal or having a good workout, but you don't just do it once. So, this is a process. And now, it would be impossible for us to answer every possible question that happens at every point in time. But every time that we do this, it's just a little bit more learning, a little bit more progress, a little bit more understanding, a little bit honing it in. So, utilize the time that we do here just to give yourself perspective. And I would encourage everyone— After you're finished listening to this, if you're here live with us or you listen to it, is to actually then say, okay, what's the one action and what is an elegant idea that I heard today that I can actually apply, that I could do something with, and how do I deploy it? And go deep with it. And then, if you want to dialogue with astropolish.com as an example, you can do that.

Yeah.

You can listen to other episodes. I made a post someone had mentioned about the 9-word email. Me and Dean have I Love Marketing topics on almost everything. And if you've not read Breakthrough DNA, you can download it at ilovemarketing.com. It doesn't sell anything. There's— it's not, it's not buy a course or anything. It's just education. It'll teach you about the 3, you know, the 3 units, the before, during, and after, and then the 8 profit activators.

Yeah.

Which is what we have been teaching in I Love Marketing since the very beginning. And this crazy QR code above my head goes to geniusnetworkevents.com, which is our annual event for Genius Network. And that's for people that have a million-dollar-plus-a-year business. So, that's about as pitchy as I'm going to be today. But yeah, just keep coming on these. And if you found this valuable, Tell other people about it. Share the episode. One of the best ways to get good at marketing is there are so many business owners that need to learn and think about this and know it. And one of the best ways to get good at marketing is to teach it to other people. So, at some point, we're going to really have a lot of dialogue before we launch it. We're thinking about starting I Love Marketing chapters and meetup groups all all over the world. We used to have that at one point in time when we started. There were iLoveMarketing meetings everywhere, all over the world. And every day there was, you know, at least 100+ people meeting back in the early, what, 2011, 2012, 2013? Every day, over 100 people would meet every day and they would just talk about what we would talk about at iLoveMarketing. And the reason I bring that up is in this world of AI, stay connected to real humans.

Mm-hmm.

You know, go out and meet people, handwrite cards. Don't let your brain get lazy. You're going to have such an advantage because freaking humans are going to disable themselves. We got David Jackson here who's been very transformative in the educational space. And one of his biggest things to the point where it angers him is having an educational system that actually works for kids and something that he spent his life doing. And part of education is be a human, be a real human. Don't outsource. I don't want to live in a world where PsyNet is controlling the world. That's a Terminator reference, by the way. But so, yeah, those are my thoughts. I mean, there's so much more. And if you haven't read my book, I hope you do. And if you like it, I'd appreciate it if you put a review, even if you think the book sucks, go to Amazon and put a review. I would appreciate that. But those are my thoughts. And Paul, you always do a fantastic job of moderating these things. And we get a lot of comments. And Dean, I'll let Dean have the, you know, have a final say. And then if you want me to say anything else, I will.

I think the takeaway, you know, when you look at it, you mentioned, you know, reducing suffering. And in order for people to be suffering, they have to recognize that they're in pain and everybody is. And we're wired that way. Pain is what actually drives action in most cases. And if we weren't wired that way, I remember Joe Rogan said one time that, you know, although if our ancestors had access to the drugs and the, the, you know, Xanax and all these anti-anxiety medications that we have access to, we would be extinct. And the last thought in the last caveman's mind would be, wow, that bear looks pretty close. I wonder if he could get to me before I get these blueberries. It's so funny that If we weren't wired to immediately, as soon as we see a bear, to run away, that's our survival instinct, right? We're wired powerfully. That's why I think recognizing your cap gap and framing it as a loss, we're losing this amount of money. Imagine if you were— imagine if you're Gamal Aziz and you are literally Your hotel is losing literally $4 million a year because of this restaurant. You would do something about that. And I think recognizing that for yourself helps you put that in perspective and, you know, rally yourself into the right action.

I just have to call out something that happened in the chat that I think is just absolutely amazing. You were chatting about opening up I Love Marketing chapters. And Bantu responds with, I'd love to lead the South Africa chapter, immediately followed with by Ramon, who says, I would love to start a group in South Africa. So we're reaching South Africa really well. But I think this is amazing. And the 2 have been introduced and they're going to interact with each other. I did also see someone said they really appreciate this felt more like community than it did necessarily Joe and Dean monologues, which I really appreciate. And then what's really funny is Gina gave us some numbers. I'm not going to give the exact numbers, but the amount of people who signed up for this and showed up for this is a tremendously higher percentage than we normally see in these types of events. A lot of people sign up and they, if they can make it, they can make it. But the fact that the majority of you who signed up came means you know what you were looking for. And I'm really proud that we were able to provide it. I hope you like this little bit that we're not giving out to the general public. So only you get this because you were here live and we definitely want to reward that. And I think it's just been a good time. So thank everybody for attending. Content really, really solid here. Thank you so much, everybody. Bye, Dean. Bye, Joe.

Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Gina. Thank my team. Don't miss another episode of I Love Marketing. Subscribe today at ilovemarketing.com/subscribe. If you'd like access to the show notes to take action on what was discussed, Please visit ilovemarketing.com. Forward slash 482.