Justin Welsh explains why claiming to be the best or cheapest doesn't work. Instead, understand your ideal customer's objections and aspirations, then use their language in your messaging. The gap between their current problem and desired future is where you find what makes you the obvious choice.
Chapters
Looking at the comments and we're getting a lot of questions in regards to just you in general. What camera are you using? Like, what kind of cup is that? So on and so forth. So a lot of questions, but I'm wondering, what question do you almost never get asked by people who are aspiring to be solopreneurs, but they should ask you because the answer is so important?
Yeah, it's a really good question.
I'm going to steal that.
That's a really, really good question. I think I don't know how to, how to translate this into a question. If you can't articulate why out of a crowded field of people who are similar to you, you're the person that people should trust their time, money, and energy with, you're going to struggle. I often see people say things like, I'm the best, I can do it the fastest, I'm the cheapest, I have the most experience. All of those things can be true until someone can do it faster, cheaper, better, and with more experience.
Then what?
Those are not unique. Those are not unique identifiers of your business. And so people often ask about what tools, you know, how can I write better on LinkedIn or Twitter? And all those things are important. I get it. But you really need to focus. How do I make myself the absolute obvious choice to my most ideal customers? And that's— I built a whole module in the Creator MBA about this. I think it's one of the longest modules because if you don't understand your customer's objections, if you don't understand their aspirations, if you don't know how to go deeper on firmographics, psychographics, demographics, you can never come up with a true statement that encapsulates why your ideal customer should choose you and why you're the absolute obvious choice. I just don't think people spend enough time thinking about that. Candidly, like that for my business, that became more evident over time. Um, as I became more comfortable, as I talked to more of my audience members, it became really clear. And some words that stick out to me are, it's not experience, it's not fast. It's like, it's a lot around tactical. It's a lot around being a tactician. It's around logic. It's around systems. It's around automation. It's making the complex simple. These are all words that I hear from my audience that I put onto my landing pages or my website or my email copy or my content so that people are reminded why I'm the right person to choose to solve their pressing problems. And so I don't think people think about that enough or, or as frequently as they should.
I feel like we could have a whole conversation just about that. Last statement for the next, for the next hour, because it may be something to tag onto with it, like making the connection between something that you said at the beginning of write for yourself, do it for yourself, be yourself, but also make sure, like, how do you, how do you combine those two ideas and concepts? So like, yes, it should be like for me and my, I want to do it my way in a way that's unique to me, but also making sure that I'm positioning it in a way that reflects the type of person that I want to serve in the way that I want to do it.
And there's a lot of great questions you can do. Like, there's something I always talk about, which is like negative present and positive future, which is like all of your ideal prospects are in what I call the negative present, which means they have a problem, they have a challenge they don't know how to solve. Therefore, their present is negative. And in the future, the future of that person after having solved that problem is the positive future, the positive future version of themself with that challenge having been overcome. There's a gap between those two things. Inside of that gap are a lot of things. There are objections to overcome. There are aspirations they might have up in their head, words and things they might use to describe what that future successful person looks like, feels like, sounds like. You got to suss all of those things out of your prospects and customers to really get that language. And then you also talk about like, if you worked with me or you went through my program, like how, if it was a 10 out of 10, how would you describe it?
Right?
Oh, it might be fast, it might be easy. Those are, those are some real simple words, but you're gonna get a lot of real freeform text, really good conversation. All that stuff you hear from your audience is part of your unique value proposition. It's all of the stuff your audience will tell you why they chose you. And like, you have to be listening and like have a place where you're sharing that stuff. You're really ruminating on it and you're using it to separate yourself more and more as you learn more and more about why people choose you. But I always kind of picture negative present, positive future. There's a gap. Like, what are the words? What are the objections? What are the aspirations I need to get people over that gap to their positive future?
