TES 019 - Creating Value So People Buy Your Stuff

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience Live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey there. I'm Mel Abraham, the author of the brand new number one best selling book the Entrepreneur Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy where we teach you how to design a business and create a life. A life of financial freedom and peace of mind. And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur's Solution show. And in this episode we're going to talk a bit about creating value. We're still in the phases of what I talk about the three phases of business life and everything, if you will, the think up phase, the get up phase and the reach up phase. We're still in the think up phase. We're in the ideation phase. And I'm going to go a little deeper in ideation. We're going to talk more about how do you take that idea and create value with your customers, with your team and with yourself. As we start to move forward on this, we're going to start right after this short introduction. Just remember that every episode comes with a guidebook or some sort of tool or some sort of template and that you need to go to melabraham.com session019 for this episode so you can get access to that. And if you happen to not be at your computer right now or you're at the gym listening to this, which I know a lot of my community does that at the gym or they're on the run. You can turn around and you can text, text mylegacy, one word, no spaces 38470 and you'll get the download link directly to your phone. So you don't forget getting access to all those tools and the things that we have going for you. And so I'm looking forward to it. We've had a tremendous amount of feedback, a tremendous amount of questions and dialogue with many of the community out there. And it's just been a joyous journey. So right after this introduction, we'll be right back. See you. See you soon.

Welcome to the Entrepreneur's Solution where Highly successful entrepreneur Mel Abraham becomes your entrepreneurial mentor. Here, Mel reveals his business building strategies and even gets a chance to answer your questions. Mel Abraham, a CPA by education, but an entrepreneur by exhilaration and a true believer in the entrepreneurial way of life. It's through entrepreneurship that we create community, support society and live our dreams.

It's where possibility meets reality again and you can have the life and lifestyle you want. One of freedom and peace of mind. Welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur's Solution where it's time for you to be bold, dream big and live life your way.

Hey there. Welcome back. I'm Mel Abraham, the author of the brand new one best selling book the Entrepreneur's Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy. And welcome back to this episode, episode 19 of the Entrepreneur's Solution show. And in this episode we're going to actually talk about, we're going to continue going down the path of three phases of business life. We are going to get through this whole framework. We're in the second stage of phase one, ideation. And remember it's three phases. Think up, which is really the development of the plan and the thought process and the analysis and all the things that go into it. Then the get up. This is how the structure and getting things in place, getting the actual plan in place, starting to execute and implement, how do you finance it? And then there's the reach up phase. This is where we scale, this is where we grow. This is where we bring all of the things together in a way that allows us to expand beyond ourselves, that allows us to expand the impact, allows us to expand the difference. And remember that this whole process is all about satisfying the customer promise. And so that's what we're dealing with. And in episode 14, episode 14, we actually talked about evaluating a selection of an idea. And I gave you the framework of how to evaluate an idea. Idea evaluation that kind of talked about what are the inputs, what are the markets, what's the outcomes and what are the obstacles that exist in there? How do you take the idea from idea stage to business stage? And so this is going to build on that, it's going to build on that. And we're probably going to do this in two different episodes. This creating value, it is so important to your business, to your success and to your future, this concept of creating value. And so I'm going to spend a little time just talking about it in general in the first episode and then we'll come back in another episode to talk about more specifically about the Frameworks, what I call the value sectoring framework that you may see on the screen here, or at least a portion of it, and then the value focus framework and the kinds of dynamics that come into play. So here's the thing to think about. When we're talking about ideas, when we're talking about customers, when we're talking about business, when we're talking about anything that is commercially viable, that is something that we intend to sell, make money from, create revenue from. The only way, the only way that's going to happen is if you're creating value in someone else's life. And that's it. I mean, business is that simple. Create value in someone else's life, they'll be willing to pay for it, and you will receive value in return. That's it. Unfortunately, we live in a time, and I don't want to get in a soapbox, but let me just jump on it for a moment. We live in a time for some reason that one, people don't want to work hard, and two, people feel like they're entitled. Well, I get news for you. You may be entitled, but you think you're entitled to the wrong things sometimes. And what they're thinking is that they're entitled to handouts and things like that. And I'm not saying that you are, because you wouldn't be with me on this program doing the work that you're doing if you were of that nature. And so I totally know that I'm preaching to the choir here. But understanding the dynamics and the foundation of where we're at I think becomes important. But to realize that we get paid for the value we create, and the entitlement that we should have is the entitlement to the opportunities to create value. And that's it. And I think that we are living in a tremendous time of opportunity today to create value in other people's lives so we can create commercial success. And so that's what this is about. When you talk about ideation. When I talked about ideation in episode 14, we talked a little bit about this, but now I want to kind of really dig into this concept of value creation, because that's where we really need to drill down on it. Because initially we get this idea comes in our head. This is the entrepreneurial journey, if you will. We get an idea, we think it's valuable, we evaluate it, we select it, and then we got to look at how do we create value. Once we create value, we typically are going to look at the market that we can create value. To, and then we're going to look at what the market feedback is when we take it out there. And then we're going to resign ourselves to some changes, some design, some redesign, and then really truly launch it. And I think that's the process we're going through. And we'll get to the market selection, the resign and redesign process in later episodes. What I want to focus on right now is this value creation piece. And so when we talk about value creation, there's value. Now, a lot of people will think of value in terms of dollars, and that's probably the easiest, most common way to understand it in the context of dollars and cents or the currency, whether it's in British pounds or euros or anything like that in a currency perspective. But here' I'd invite you to think about. We can create value in different ways. For instance, we can create value in the context of what I call utility based value. Utility based value is that it serves a need, that there's a function to what we're doing. So it could be anything from a paper towel or a sponge that's there to mop up a mess that you created, or maybe I created that type of a thing. There's utility to.

Serves a purpose, it serves a function that is a need. But is it a high value need? Maybe, maybe not. This is typically where you're going to find commodity based types of products, services and things of that nature. But one of the things we ought to ask ourselves with our idea, with our product, with our service, with our offering, with anything we're trying to do, is what utility does it serve? What function does it serve in someone's life? At the base? At the base level? At the base level, then there's another way to look at value, and that is service based value. Service based value. Are we giving them something more than just a product, a commodity that necessarily works? Is there some service attached to it? Is there some connection attached to it? Is there a relationship attached to it? Is there a community attached to it? And now we have value creation at a different level because we've attached to it some level of service beyond just handing them a product or something of that nature. And then from service based value we go to what I call experience based value. Are we creating an experience for our customers, for our team, for ourselves in the process of delivering this product or service? And, and I would submit to you here that we want to strive in every circumstance to create an experience, to create an environment, to create something that's memorable, to create something that Touches their heart. That creates a connection that's experiential in perspective. A very good friend of mine, Scott McCain, he wrote a book called.

Oh Gosh, All Businesses Show Business. And he talks about this whole concept of creating experiences for your customer. I mean, if you think about just in your life, I'm sure that you could probably think back in the last week or two weeks, something that happened when you were out in the world that created an experience that was truly meaningful, that you sit back and say, that was memorable. I might do that again. I just. In fact, last night was just at an event where a friend of mine was speaking. And.

The way they greeted us from the very beginning when we parked our car, valet parked it, the way they moved us into the room to deliver it, there was a process that created an experience from the very beginning to when we left. And that was, that was a wonderful process that made it really easy, really efficient, but really something that is memorable because of the way it was done. So experience based. And then I think the higher level, where I believe where businesses really, really thrive, really expand, really grow, is what I call a value based creation. How do you take, how do you take what your product or service is or your offering or what you're doing and not only create an experience.

For your customers, but create an experience for your team. Create an experience for you, but make sure that it speaks to their values at the same time? How can you do that? Can you do that? Can you find a way to go in and say by using this product, we're speaking to values. For instance, that the whole green movement in construction and business and that type of thing, the whole lead certification or the green movement in Jessica Alba's got her company that is dealing with organic and clean products for babies. And that type of thing that you're speaking, that product is serving at a utility level, the base need, it's providing some service to it. It's creating experience as it relates to it, but it's speaking more at the values level that the people that are buying and working with that company or buying their products and using their products are coming from a place of values. They value the green perspective, they value the organic nature, they value those things. So by using it, we're satisfying their values. That is the highest level of dedication when we can speak to someone's values.

Now, now we've got a relationship that is based on something beyond some transactional.

Situation, a transactional moment where they, they give me cash and I give them a product or service. It's actually transition and transcended the transactional to the relational at a values level. And so what I invite you to do is in the guidebook.

That you get with this is go through some of the questions, go through some of the aspects, look at your products and services and say how do these things serve people's needs and values? What are the values that I'm serving in this process? And because that becomes marketing gold when you start to speak to their values. When you think about this, what I, you know, we always talk about this concept of.

Marketing and.

Buying and selling and transactions and say they say oh, people will buy with their emotions and justify with logic. And so we want to consider that here's the thing that I don't think we necessarily give, give a lot of due to and this is, this is how I want you to kind of think this through is if I look at something, I put down a center, something called the satisfaction line, there are words that show up in your customer's mind and your customers heart in what you are presenting that will move them down the satisfaction line. Or on the other side of the satisfaction line, on one side you're eroding the value, on the other side you're enhancing the value. And we always want to enhance the value. We want the perception of enhanced value, we want to grow the value. When we are successful at doing that. You'll see when we start talking about the value focus and value sectoring frameworks, how that transitions your customers from a commodity base to a values based customer, how it then allows you to transcend this concept of price and cost. Because we're not focused on price or cost when we're focused on dealing with our values. So just out of kind of fun to look at these things and say let's think about some of those things that your customers might be saying that when you hear these, you know that they're moving you away from the satisfaction line, down, away from the satisfaction line into a less satisfied customer, which is eroding the customer relationship and the connection. We're going to look at those, we'll look at some of the words that you might see when you're enhancing that relationship. And the idea here is to raise your awareness with respect to the language that should be used by yourself, but more importantly the language that's going on in the hearts and the minds of your customers and making sure that what we're doing is going to try to use more value enhancing language. Bring that to bear versus value writing language. Let me give you an Example, so obviously I'm going to put some of these up pretty quickly because if I've got a client or a customer that is feeling dissatisfied, obviously that's eroding value. That's eroding anything that erodes value, erodes the relationship and takes that relationship away. And as we start to reduce value, we start to reduce connection with the customer. And sooner or later, if we do nothing to fix it, we lose the customer. Because someone's going to come along and take care of the customer needs. At the value level. At the value level. You may have heard me speak before that when we talk about customer needs, we can deal with it at the expectation level, which is a satisfied customer, at the desires level, which is a happy customer, or at the unexpected needs level, which is where we want to really, truly operate. That's at the values level, at the unexpected needs. That's where loyalty comes in. That's where they become evangelists for your mission, for your business and for your cause, for your products, for your services. We need to always, always think that way as we move forward. So you know, if you've got a customer that's dissatisfied, how are we going to fix that? How are we going to move them across the satisfaction line and beyond by dealing with that dissatisfaction? Disappointed. You've got stressed. I'm just going to put some of these up. Neglected. Confused. Hurried. Frustrated. Unhappy. You know, when, when this is the kind of language that you're hearing from your customers or that's going on in their minds or their, or their hearts or their minds, this is the things that's going to destroy your business. And this is what we need to, to counteract. What we really want to do is start to understand how.

How come they might be dissatisfied, how come using our products or services might be stressful. I mean think about getting a new software, getting new hardware and it's to use the stress that comes into play with that and if we can make that transition easier on them so it's seamless, that, that makes. I'll give you a for example. And why I'm such an Apple fanatic is because I had a problem with, with an Apple computer once and they literally, they literally said, you know, I was in the middle of getting ready for a presentation, I was going to do a presentation the next day and, and next thing you know, I know I'm preparing for it and the hard drive crashes and I go to the Apple Store and here I am at 8 o' clock at night with a hard drive, with my presentation on it, and I don't have the stuff I need on it because I was working on it. And I go to the Apple store, to the Genius bar, and one of the guys says, when do you need this? I said, I got a presentation in the morning.

And he sat down, he says, I'll get it fixed for you and we'll recover all the data and we'll make sure that this thing works. Then if I have to, I'll drive it over to your hotel. Which is what he did. By 10:30 at night, he drove to the hotel with my computer in hand with it working. So I had the opportunity to do that presentation in the morning. You know, had he turned around and said, not my problem, we'll get it to you in a day or so, I would have been dissatisfied, I would have been disappointed, I would have been stressed, I would have felt neglected, I would have been confused, I would have been hurried because I would have had to buy a new computer, I would have frustrated, and I certainly would have been unhappy. And in all likelihood, I probably wouldn't have done a whole lot more business with Apple. But now they've got a loyal customer because they, they focused on value enhancing versus value eroding. So what is value enhancing? What is the language that we want to put in? What are the things that we want to portray in our, in our messaging? What are the things that we want to create through our products? And that one that's safe to work with us, that they feel safe, they feel comfortable, they feel at ease working with us, that they feel valued. Certainly I felt valued in that moment where he said, I got this and you're in good hands. I felt safe in that moment. I mean, certainly still was uncertain because I didn't know if he was going to recover. And I was sitting there trying to figure out what was I going to do.

Feeling energized. And think about, think about talking with your customers and saying, you know, working with us and working with our systems, our services, our products are going to energize you. They're gonna, they're gonna boost you as you move forward. Feeling cared for. This is something that we used at the karate school. In fact, I said to the instructors, we talked through what it is we were really selling, and this was the actual product I wanted them to focus on. Was, was that through the martial arts. We wanted the children and the families to feel cared about versus just teaching martial arts. It's easy to teach martial arts. I could teach you the techniques and we're. And we could be all said and done, but when you approach it from the perspective of saying, I'm going to teach you the martial arts, but in the process, I want to make sure you feel cared about. Now, we've dealt again at the unexpected needs level. We've dealt again at their values level. We've created loyalty, we've created connection. Our customer retention went way up and the word of mouth went way up. So thinking about how that that plays in trusting, bringing trust into that relationship and doing what you can to make sure that they trust what it is that you're providing for them, then excitement. I mean, something new. You've got something that is exciting or they get excited about it, that kind of energy, that kind of contagiousness that your customers will have is really, really contagious. So are they excited about your product? Are they confident that it's going to serve their needs? Can you give them that confidence in what it is that you're doing? And then last is, can you surprise them pleasantly? I mean, we can all get surprised unpleasantly, but can you surprise them pleasantly? Can you do something where.

You surprise them totally unexpectedly? I just had a moment just this week where I saw someone that was posting something, had some questions, and they were unsure about something, and I literally just picked up the phone and called them totally out of the blue. They didn't expect me to, but I just picked up the phone and called them and had a conversation with them. And. And so can you do something that is totally off the grid, that's totally unexpected, that surprises them in a pleasant way, that creates that connection? So what I want you to do in this piece is really to start to think about where you create value. And we'll get into the frameworks in the next segment. But right now, when you download this guidebook, it's going to ask you some questions and it's going to help you start to define what some people might call it a value proposition. But where do you create value? How do you deliver value? What is the value that creates? Is the market really looking for that? Is it utility based? Is it experience based? Is it service based? Is it values based? How can you take the value that you're creating and move it to a values level? Now, one of the ways is to make sure that you understand what your customer's values are. If you don't understand that, then it makes it difficult to speak to their values. So download the guide. Download the guide here. Work through that. Through the guidebook, we'll revisit some of the concepts in the next episode where I'm going to take you through the frameworks, the couple of frameworks that I want to teach you. That is my value Sectoring framework and my value focus framework. So you start to understand why some of this is important, how to transition it and to move from there. Remember, to get the guidebook. Here's what you need to do. Go to melabraham.com session019 or if you're not in front of the computer and you can't write it down, just text text 38470 text mylegacy to 384701 word, no spaces. You'll get the download link there. And if you're out there and you haven't had a chance to subscribe, go ahead and subscribe because this is the way that I get a chance to become your entrepreneurial mentor. We're going to be spending a lot of time talking about business success, wealth and life because I don't separate the two. And I'd love to have you on board. You'll get notified every time I post a video, every time I post new free training, which I'm doing regularly. And if you have a question, if you have a question that you're unsure about, uncertain about, or you need help with, go ahead and go to askmelnow.com leave me your question. You'll get a chance to record your question. Record it there. Leave me your question. I'll make sure that we get it answered in one of the future episodes as we move forward. And if you get a chance, share this with a friend. I know many of us have friends out there that are struggling or looking for a way to transition into their own business, to transition their lives into a new way of life, to look at things, to bring their dreams out of the darkness again. And I'd love to be part of that journey. And let's share the gift of bringing their dreams to life. So go ahead and share this with a friend until we get a chance to see each other in the next episode. May your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant. Thanks again. See you in the next episode. Have a great one. Bye.

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