How To Develop A USP From Your Experience

Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie, and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories, it's about the grit it takes to get there. Hey everyone, Julie here, and I would love to take you behind the scenes on a messy brainstorm with a private client who who's trying to figure out what it is that she does differently. This is a huge problem for most of us. We do things, we want to teach those things, we want to sell that expertise, but then someone comes along like me, a business coach, and says, okay, well, what's your USP, which stands for unique selling proposition, or some people might call it the UVP. What's your unique value proposition? And then you're like, uh, I have no idea. And you feel really like, I have no— yeah, I have no idea. So I was helping this woman. She's very successful in the e-commerce space, so she sells color your own tablecloths e-commerce, and she wants to add an additional revenue stream to her business and help other e-commerce folk get their business up and running. And so I, I took her through an offer brief, and we were kind of working through what her coaching package would look like, and I said, you know, we're really struggling here with the big idea. I don't see a big idea. The thing is, she couldn't see a big idea either. And so I asked her, I said, first, and this is step 1, I would like you to journal out your process and timeline. By the way, she gave me permission to share this. So she told me, she took me on a journey, and she said, well, it started because I was making crayons as a homeschool project. The kids had all these cool toy-shaped crayons in mind. It was cool, and it made her think that maybe other people would want them too. So then she went on Facebook Marketplace, she sold the crayons, and a teacher bought a bunch for her students. And then she went to a local craft, like, festival, and she set up a little booth, and that's where a store owner approached her and said, hey, can I buy these wholesale and can I sell them in my shop? And so she continued to sell at local markets and then eventually brought it online. And as she was growing, she realized, hmm, scaling this business is going to be a little tricky just because homemade crayons are not the easiest thing in the world to scale, right? So she transitioned into a brand, uh, and then she decided, you know what, I am going to look at what is kind of around coloring and maybe what could we sell. And that's when she landed on the coloring tablecloth. And this had scalability because she could design it once and then she could print it endlessly. And so this expanded and then eventually she got on Good Morning America and trade shows and this is how she built her business. So she sent this to me and as you're listening, you might think, okay, well that's a great story. What does that have to do with unique selling proposition? Well, here she is trying to figure out how to become a coach. And, or who to target. It's not that she knows exactly how to build an e-commerce brand because she's done it, but she's trying to figure out how do I carve my market out, right? So I took her journal and I turned it into 5 steps. And what I did was I observed the patterns in her story. And then I started to think, can I generate a theory or a rule of thumb that could be replicated by other moms. So I said to her, I said, you know, the first thing is you tested your idea with your ideal customer, which was kids. You know, you got buy-in from them first. Then in the step, in the second step, step 2, you tested out your theory and you tested out your product in a low-risk environment like a Facebook Marketplace, right? The marketplace is already built. You just kind of throw it out there, see what happens. Then you went to a little bit of a bigger risk. This is step 3, and you tried it at a craft fair. Now you had validation at each step with your kids, with Facebook Marketplace, and with a fair. Then step 4 is where you actually brought it online. Then you turned your handmade hobby and you turned it into something online. And then step 5 is you scaled the idea with a brand and some scalable product that that could be sold en masse. And so then what I do is I want to test and see if my framework or my sort of theories or rules of thumb that I'm coming up with can actually be replicated. Now, here is where most people get it wrong. Shannon could go out into the world and say, I'm an e-commerce coach and I help women build their e-commerce shops. And maybe she's going to stumble upon someone who wants to do their own Oh gosh, I don't even know. They, they want to sell iPhone cases. Okay. Now the issue here is that if we take her steps of testing it with your customer, testing it on Facebook Marketplace, testing it at a craft fair, that's not going to work great for someone who wants to sell iPhone cases because I mean, I suppose if they're like handmade iPhone cases, they would be test-worthy at a craft fair, but it's more techie. So what are we starting to bump up against? Well, maybe she isn't going to actually focus on all moms who want to do e-commerce. Maybe she's going to narrow in and she's going to go after crafty homeschool moms who want to start a business, right? An e-commerce business. So if we take a mom, let's say, who is working on making handmade bows for hair or possibly like homemade lip gloss, or, you know, I'm just coming up with ideas on the fly, she could follow the 5 steps that I outlined, right? She could first make the bows or the gloss and make sure her daughter wears them. Then she could go to the Facebook Marketplace and she could see if there were any local moms that would buy the bows or buy the gloss. Then she might be able to set up a booth at a craft fair selling these items. Then she might be able to build a brand online. And then in step 5, she could expand by either getting a manufacturer to make the bows or, you know, expanding out the lip gloss into a scalable product. And then she would have her e-commerce brand. So you can see that the framework is forming, right? Because in this case, now Shannon has 5 steps that she can take moms through. And now it means that she has to go after a very particular unique person, crafty homeschool moms, and she can take them through the 5-step process of coming up with an idea all the way to a scalable product. And the beautiful part about this is that she can actually go deep in each of those 5 steps, right? So in step 1, step 1 is the, the crayons that she made. Like, how did she come up with that idea? Maybe she has some brainstorming exercises about how she came up with colored crayons, homemade crayons. In step 2, there might be a whole framework on how she writes up the description on Facebook Marketplace and how she positions it and how she takes the photos. In step 3, there might be a lot, a bunch of frameworks and patterns around how she set up her booth and what she brought to the booth and how she spoke to customers as they came around. And then step 4, there's definitely a bunch of frameworks going on there, right? Because what tool did she use? She set up Shopify, 5, how many products did she start with? And then in step 5, when she expanded her revenue stream with the tablecloths, there's a lot of strategy and tactic there on how she chose that product. Those 5 steps are something unique that she did that now she has really a foundation on which to build an entire coaching business on top of, right? Now, the last piece about the USP is that you want to make sure that once you understand who it is you're targeting, there are 4 pieces. There's the problem, there's the big idea, there's the solution, and then there's the offer. Okay, so the problem that we're gonna target for her is homeschool crafty moms really want to have a creative outlet to make some extra money. Okay, that's the problem. I don't want to give up homeschooling. I love my crafting, but I need some more money. Okay, that's the problem. The big idea is the second step. This is where everybody gets stuck because it's hard to come up with big ideas. And so I came up with this idea that we could say crafty mamas make great e-commerce brands, right? And that's her thing. Like, I believe that crafty mamas make great e-com store owners or crafty, you know, Crafty homemade items from moms make great e-com brands. That's her big idea that she just repeats over and over and over again. So what's the solution? If that's the big idea, what's the solution? Well, we're going to take that 5-step process and we're going to call it bootstrapping your craft to e-com, whatever. And it's those 5 pieces that I outlined. That's the solution. Notice the solution is not her coaching. The solution is her unique way of doing things. The fourth is the offer, and the offer is work with Shannon and I will help you craft your e-commerce brand. Okay. That is how we take her from, hey, I want to help e-commerce people grow their business, and I'm targeting basically any e-commerce business, any mom. There's really not anything that makes me stand out. And how we go to crafty homeschool mamas, teaching them that they are some of the best e-com brands ready to be discovered. We have a 5-step bootstrapping process that I coach you through, and there's lots of frameworks and tactics built into that 5 steps. And then we create that coaching offer, which probably can also become a course later. This is what I did with her journal entry, and this is very hard work. It's difficult work to do. It's a lot of right-brain work. And if you listen to my last podcast about objectivity and how hard it is for us to see things for ourselves, this might be another reason why you need a coach. So if this is resonating with you at all and you need someone to kind of step in and see your genius there, please go to my website juliechenell.com and you can apply to work with me one-on-one. I hope this was helpful. Talk to you soon. And there you have it, folks. Another dose of Million Dollar Grit. I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped, and ready to face your own entrepreneurial journey with resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle, harness your grit, and keep pushing forward. You're stronger than any challenge you face. I'm Julie Chenell, and this has been Million Dollar Grit.