How To Stand Out From Your Competition

Why should someone choose you? Not your product, not your service. Why you specifically over every other single alternative that's out there in the world? Because here's the reality in 2026. Your customer has options. More options than any point in history. They can find 10 businesses that do what you do on their phone in the next 30 seconds. That quickly. They have similar features, similar prices, similar promises that you're making. And when everything looks the same, The customer defaults to the cheapest option. And when that happens, it's a race to the bottom. It's a race that you do not want to run. And the way out of that race is what I'm going to share with you today, is being yourself, being unique, being different. And don't worry, I promise you that your difference already exists. You just have to uncover it. You have to just realize it. And I'm going to show you how to do that today. Full transparency, I consider myself a bit of an expert in this area because I struggled with this tremendously. In my journey in entrepreneurship until I realized that the things I've been hiding, the things that I kind of try to soften and not show the world is really what makes me different and allows me to stand out and be better than the competition.

Let's get into it.

Step 1, I just alluded to, and it's stop hiding the thing that makes you different. Here's one of the biggest mistakes I see business owners make, and that is they try to soften the edges. They don't want to show the things that make them a little bit different or make them a little bit unique from the competition. A lot of people hear the word unique and they think it's positive always, and they don't think about unique just being different, maybe just a little bit outside the norm. Most people, when they start out in business, they look at all the successful people out there, the people they look up to, and they just copy them. They try to look like them. They try to sound like them. And what happens is that you get ignored because you just look very generic. And the problem is, is that when you When you hide the things that make you different, you make yourself easily forgettable, right? You're not very memorable when you don't stand out, when you don't have anything unique about you versus somebody else. Take me, for example. For a very long time, I hid the fact that I grew up poor in a poor family. My parents were immigrants from Egypt. They came over to the U.S. They tried their best, but we really didn't have a lot of money. And for a very long time, I thought this was a weakness. I thought that I shouldn't share that with the world because—

Why?

I want to not have that stigma of where I grew up poor. I also hid the fact that I didn't come out of the womb as an entrepreneur, right? I was a teacher for 10 years. I had a career, I had a job, and then I left my teaching career to become a business owner. So I kind of started late in life in business. But after a few years of struggling and having no real identity or brand in my business, I started to embrace my difference. I started to share a little bit about my story, about how I grew up and how my parents immigrated to America from Egypt and how we didn't grow up with much. I also shared, you know, my career as a teacher and realized, hey, my experience in teaching actually is my advantage. I actually have a lot of experience in education, how to break down complex ideas and explain them in an easy way. That was my job for a decade. Once I started embracing these things in my life and started just owning them, I really started to differentiate myself and people started to see me in a different way. I used to look A little bit different from the competition. Even when I ran my software company, Webinar Ninja, I'm not a typical software engineer that's a genius, right? I know very little about software engineering, just enough so that I could start the company. But then I had to hire some really good experts. But what I am good at is I'm good at teaching. And so that when I was selling the product or service, I ran webinars to sell Webinar Ninja, the software, and I used that to my advantage. And a lot of people love the software because I built it for me. Which is somebody who's not super techie. And I built something that's easy to use because that's what I wanted to have. So my ideal customer resonated with that. The other thing about embracing your difference and embracing the things that make you different from the competition is that it enriches your brand, enriches your story. One of the things that make me a little bit different is that I'm neither very young, I'm not some sort of young whiz kid. I'm also not super old, right? I'm not in my 60s or 70s. I'm middle. Age, so to speak. I'm in my 40s, so I resonate with a lot of people that are my age as well. Also, to enrich your story, you should share some of the things that you enjoy in life outside of business, inside of whatever you do. Like, I share a lot that I love to play poker, I love playing basketball, I love teaching. In a lot of ways, these things are characters in my story and create a bigger or better picture about who I am and what my brand is all about. And when I hide these things, if I don't talk about these things, I become very dull, right? You don't really become very memorable. You don't— really remember anything about me if I don't share anything about me. Now, going back to you, you have your own unique story, you have your own background, you have your own experiences, and that really shapes who you are as a business. People buy from people, not just from brands, or they don't just buy products. A lot of people, they want to know the story behind why you built the thing that you built so that they can resonate to see, hey, do I want to work with this person or not? I could tell you firsthand, when I was selling webinar ninja software, there are a lot of competitors out there. There's a lot of choices out there. And the reason why a lot of people chose us is because of us, because they resonated with the fact that, hey, this person taught for a living for 10 years. And I shared the fact that I was a teacher and I wrote curriculum and all that kind of stuff. And they like the fact that, hey, somebody that understands teaching and learning is building a webinar software rather than some big corporate entity that has nothing to do with teaching. So you have to understand that people will buy from you because of who you are. So I'm here to tell you to stop Stop hiding your story. Stop hiding who you are, your uniqueness. So what I want you to do so that you can implement this and actually take action is to do this exercise. I want you to write down the 5 things about you, your story, your background, your perspective, your experiences that make you different than the typical person or typical company in your industry. I want you to dig deep. I want you to really look at the things that you've been downplaying in your life. And list as many as you can and then choose the top 5 that you want to start sharing. It doesn't have to be dramatic. It doesn't have to be some sort of rags-to-riches story. It could be something as simple as that you've been working in this industry for X amount of years and understand the pains that the customer goes through. Now, step 2, we're going to leverage all those experiences, our own story, our uniqueness to find a gap your competition is ignoring. And that is step 2. You want to find a gap that your competition is really not working on. And I'm going to give you a perfect example. When I was running my software company, Webinar Ninja, we were competing against some huge companies. GoToWebinar, Zoom, you might have heard of them, right? They basically ruled the world during the pandemic and they have hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, right? We were a bootstrapped, self-funded company. They had literally thousands of employees. We had a team of 30, but we were still competing. Despite the fact that we could not outspend them, we could not outbrand them. So what we did is we decided to work in an area that they're not working on. We wanted to solve some problems that they were not solving, problems that they would never solve because it just wouldn't work for the size of their company. So we focused on giving superior customer support. We noticed from our customers that have migrated from other companies like Zoom to us, they would complain about the support that they were getting back in Zoom. They would say that the average response time for a support ticket from Zoom was like 48 hours. Like, that's not good enough when you have to run a live webinar right now. So Nicole and I dedicated ourselves to building an incredible customer support team so that we were available 24/7 and our response time was under 30 seconds. Again, under 30 seconds, 24 hours a day, 365, we never took a day off when it came to customer support. Somebody was there to help somebody out, even jump on their webinar to help them during a live webinar. And that single difference became the reason customers chose us, stayed with us, and even came back to us after leaving and maybe trying to shop around and see other competitors. And they say, nope, Webinar Ninja is better. Their customer support is amazing. Notice that we did not compete on features or innovation in technology in In the features or the product itself. What we did is we leaned on our experience of knowing how to deal with people, work with people, how to create a system for our company so people are supported 24/7. And that had nothing to do with being a tech genius or being a huge company. We could do this with our small team. We used what we can use to differentiate ourselves. And we had countless customers that would email us and tell us that our support alone was worth the monthly subscription. So here's the takeaway. Here's the lesson for you. Every industry has a gap, including the industry that you're in, something that the established players are neglecting because of their size, because of the way they're incentivized to perform, because of the assumptions they've made over the years. You can come in and disrupt your industry by filling that gap. For us, it was customer support and response time. For you, it could be something else. But your job as the founder of your company is to find that gap. And to fill it in the best way possible so that you can differentiate yourself from the competition. And the gap is rarely glamorous, right? It's probably some grunt work that no one wants to do, but you'll do it and you'll benefit from that fulfillment of that gap of actually fulfilling that need for your customer. So here's an exercise for you so that you can implement this step. Talk to your customers, whether you get on a phone call, a Zoom call, even if you communicate over email or over chat on WhatsApp or whatever it might be. Talk to your customers because you want to find out what are the 3 most common complaints your customers say over and over again, right? If you are starting out and you have no customers, go to your competitors' reviews online, whether it's Google Reviews or some sort of industry reviews. Go find out what people are complaining about. What are they frustrated about? Look at the 3-star reviews because those are a little bit more fair than 1-star or 5-stars. And Look at all these problems and ask yourself, which one of these problems can you genuinely solve better than anyone else? And that's your gap. Step 3, niche down until you are the obvious choice. Niching down is one of the biggest challenges a lot of businesses have because they feel like if they niche down, they won't serve enough customers to be viable. And it's actually the opposite. When you narrow your market, the easier it is for you to get customers because you're talking directly to somebody. As they say, if you're trying to talk to everybody, you talk to nobody. You just become white noise. Okay? When you niche down, you actually are talking directly to the pains and the problems of a specific customer. At Webinar Ninja, I could have easily just said, hey, we are webinar software for everybody, right? We're just like Zoom. You know, you could choose Zoom or you could choose us. That's the easy way to go out of business. Okay? I couldn't afford to do that because I can't serve everybody. I need to serve a specific group of people. So we really niche down. It took us a while to get to that niche, but we eventually got there. And what we did is we went after creators, small business owners, teams of 5 people or less, right? People that are going to be running the webinars themselves. They're the ones that are actually gonna be paying for the software. They're not like a big company where, you know, the person that's making the decision to buy the product is not the person that's using the product. We wanted to make sure that we know exactly who we're serving, so we made it very specific. So for us, it was teams of 5 or less. The decision maker, the person that's choosing to buy the software, is the person running the webinar. And that was kind of our criteria to niche down. The great thing about niching down is that it relieves you of having to cater for every need. You know, specifically, it meant that we didn't have to build every feature for every different type of customer. We only had to build the features that were important to this type of customer designed for this type of user. So any time that we had an idea for a new feature, we would ask ourselves, would this feature be helpful to this avatar, to this type of specific customer? And often the answer was no. Like they don't actually need this. It's not really part of their work cycle. It's not part of the, the way they actually run webinars. It's not something they actually need. But sometimes we realize, hey, if somebody's running the webinar by themselves, they need an easy way to be able to manage the chat while running the webinar. So if we can make an interface that makes it easy to do that, to tab from one thing to another, then that would make sense. That would be useful for our user, and then we would build those features because that would add value to the product and they'd be willing to pay for this product. And we attract new customers because this is what they were looking for. But it's hard to know what to build. It's hard to know how to market. It's hard to know who to hire when you don't know who you're building for. This is why niching down is so important, because once you do that, things get a lot easier in your company. I also found that when you niche down, you get raving fans.

Why?

Because they feel like you built something for them. They felt like, oh, this is exactly what I've been looking for. You built something that's specifically for my needs. And that's exactly what you did because you know exactly who you're serving. But when you try to serve everybody, everybody's kind of like, oh, it's kind of good, but it doesn't do exactly what I want. So you don't want that kind of lukewarm feeling. You want people to be raving fans that absolutely love you. Why? Because they'll tell other people just like them to bring in more customers into your company. So here's an exercise so that you can implement this step. Complete this sentence with ruthless specificity.

Okay.

I am the obvious choice for Blank. What type of person, what type of needs, what type of outcome are they looking for? Because the more specific, the better. So I'm for this person that does this type of job or does this type of work that is looking for this type of outcome, right? So for example, we were for small business owners that had a team of 5 or less that's looking to run a webinar smoothly by themselves. So you have to be very specific about who you're serving and how you're going to serve them. A good way to check if your one sentence is specific enough is if your answer could describe any of your competitors. OK? If that sentence would also apply to your competitors, then you know you're not specific enough. You need to rework that.

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Step 4, turn your difference into your message. Once you find your difference, once you start owning who you are and your story, you have to start sharing it, right? That's what's really going to make people know what you're all about. Even if it's uncomfortable to share the truth, At first, it's going to be uncomfortable because you're not used to sharing it. You're not used to telling that story. But once you start doing it, you're going to start seeing it's going to resonate with people. People are going to say, hey, I'm just like you. I had the same experience. I can really resonate with what you just said, and I'm more receptive to what you have to offer. Whatever is an, you know, you're selling a product, whether you're posting on social media, even if it's just one-on-one in person. Like, for example, I was driving to basketball practice with some of my friends that are on my team. And one of them in the back made just a comment to say, hey, not all of us can drive Porsches. You know, my car is a Porsche. I drive a Porsche. And in that moment, I took the opportunity to share my story. I said to my friend, his name is Noon. Noon, shout out to you.

Hey.

I said, hey, Noon, I know that's just a joke, but, you know, I didn't come from a lot of money. I actually didn't grow up with much. My parents were very poor. And I shared a few of my stories of How we struggled financially, and I said to him, "It took me a very long time to get to this point, but that's why I'm not ashamed to drive a Porsche. I'm not ashamed to share these stories with you because I had to work for it." And in that moment, you know, he shared with me like, "Hey, I didn't know that. That's really inspirational." And he actually asked me, "What's your podcast again?" And I told him what my podcast was, and he subscribed in that moment. So I share this story because it's uncomfortable in that moment when we're driving to practice to kind of you know I could have just ignored it and said, "Yeah, it's true. Haha, I drive a Porsche." But I decided to share why that is important to me. What's the story behind that? Why that is a milestone in my life to actually drive this car and why I wanted to really express to him that I earned that right to be able to drive this car and not just something that was given to me. And he resonated with that because he didn't grow up with money either. So it's okay for you to share your story, but you have to recognize the fact that it's going to be uncomfortable. It's not going to be easy. It's not going to come natural to you. But the more you do it, the more you're gonna own it, the more it's gonna be easier to share with other people. And by the way, I shared these stories with my customers when I was running webinars for Webinar Ninja. I didn't have some cheesy taglines, you know, hoping that people would resonate with that and say like, oh, we're a quality service that you could trust. No, that's not what we did. I actually shared the stories like, hey, the reason why I built this company, the reason why I built the software is because I know the power of webinars can help you make more sales. and help you grow your business, that can help you become more financially independent. And that's important to me because financial independence is something that I was striving for all my life because I didn't have that as a child. My parents didn't have that. My parents struggled, and I didn't want anybody to struggle like my parents did. You know, I shared some stories about how, you know, they were behind on their bills and how as kids we felt the tension around the house and all that kind of stuff. And people really resonated with these stories and started to say, hey, I'd rather work with this company, and I'm going to do webinars, I'm going to do webinars. I might as well sign up with this company because I can resonate with the story, I can resonate with this person. There's a bigger why. There's a reason why I'm building this company beyond than just making money is to help other people become financially independent. So as much as possible, infuse it in your marketing, infuse it in your sales, infuse it in what you do in your content, in your videos, in your reels, in your, you know, stage presence or, you know, your speeches online, whatever it might be. But the point is that you have to get in the habit of sharing it. Now, I mentioned the, you know, the cheesy tagline, right? Whatever, like we're number one in service or whatever it might be. The reason why that doesn't work is it's very vague, right? And the reason why stories are better, sharing stories and the reasons why you're doing what you're doing, is because it's specific. People remember stories because there's a specific order to the story. There's memorable parts to it. There's characters to the story. There's emotions in stories. And these things really resonate with people. You have to understand that at the end of the day, when people make decisions, they're making decisions based on how they feel. Okay? Not all our decisions are super logical. I would say most of our decisions are made based on how we feel in the moment and how we feel about somebody or how we feel about a company. What I found is that the moment that you accept that standing out means being right for people, but also wrong for people, you start to unlock the ability to be able to resonate with the right customers. You have to understand, if you're going to be right for people, you're also going to be wrong for people. OK? People are going to say, oh, I don't like that. I don't like this person. This person's too much, or this person's extra or whatever. And that's OK. They're not the person you're meant to serve. And if you're not getting any kind of haters or people saying no to you or that they're resisting you, that means you're not really resonating with anybody. You're not really striking any kind of emotion. I'd rather have somebody say, I strongly disagree with you, or like, I completely don't like what you do. I don't like your style at all. That to me is better than somebody saying, oh, you're right. You know, I'd rather have any kind of strong emotion because it means that I will resonate with the opposite types of people. So it's okay. Just be okay with the fact that you will be disliked by certain people. You will not be their cup of tea, but it means that you will be strongly favored by the people that actually like what you do, that resonate with you. So as an exercise for this step, I want you to go to the homepage of your website where people most frequently visit is your homepage, right? And I want you to take a look at what it says. What, what is the headline? What do people read? What do people see? Are you sharing a little bit of your story? Are you sharing what you're all about? Could your competitor just swap your name with their name and it would seem the same? It would seem like the same type of generic kind of advice or kind of marketing. Same thing with your social media. You can go to your social media, take a look at what you're saying. What, what are you actually sharing with the rest of the world? If you want an example, go to our website, 100mba.net. We've tested our headlines and our copy on our website over and over again. And we have found that this is what really resonates with our audience because it's true to who we are. But don't spend too much time on our website. You want to work on your website. Okay, so that's your exercise. Make sure that you're sending the right message out to your customers. You're showing them who you are. You're differentiating yourselves through the copy, through the headlines, through the images, and showing people why they should choose you over the competition because of your unique value. Step 5 is what brings us all home, and that's consistency. You need to be consistent or this does not work. Okay? You have to be consistent with everything we talked about today. You can't just do it for a week. You can't just do it for a few days. You have to do it day after day, year after year.

Why?

Because a lot of people in the world are busy. People are busy. Okay? They have a lot of distractions. They get a lot of messages, a lot of marketing messages everywhere, and they're going to have to hear it more than once. They're going to have to hear every time they interact with you. They have to hear every time they see a video of you. They're going to have to see every time they see your website or anything, a business card, whatever it might be, right? You have to constantly reiterate your branding, your messaging. Why? Because your difference becomes your reputation through repetition, right? Over and over, one piece of content at a time. Every single time you are sending out any kind of message, an email, a newsletter, whatever it might be, Make sure that you're infusing who you are and what makes you different. I'm talking about within your business, outside your business. Like, for example, when I was running webinars at Webinar Ninja and we would talk about our support was amazing and we had an incredible response time, we didn't just say it on the webinar. I actually say, hey, I want you to go ahead, go to our website, click on the support bubble, that little chat bubble that's on the website, and try to reach a customer support agent. Ask a question, see how fast you get a response, and let me know inside the webinar right now in the chat how fast you got a response. And people will be like, I got a response in 15 seconds. So we walk the walk. We make sure that people see that, hey, when we say something, we mean it, and I want you to go ahead and experience it. So you have to constantly reiterate it, and it almost sounds like you're like spoon-feeding people, but you have to do that because otherwise they just won't understand. They won't believe it. They won't see it. One of the reasons why I really am a strong believer in consistency is because it's one of the things that can differentiate yourself in itself. Okay, most people flake out. Most people do not actually follow through. They quit too early. And a lot of people ask me, hey, Omar, how have you had all this success with this podcast? I say to them, I've been running this podcast for almost 12 years. If I wasn't successful, there'd be something seriously wrong with me.

Okay?

So I use consistency as a strength by just being consistent, by showing up every single day, by publishing 2,800 episodes, you know, week after week, every single time we publish and make sure that everything is publishing on time and everybody gets the content they're looking for. And it's not just on the podcast, it's also on social media. It's also on our newsletter. It's also in our programs, whatever it might be. By being consistent, it becomes our reputation. Oh, these people have been around for a very long time and they've been doing this for a very long time. I must trust them because they actually walk the walk. They talk, they talk, they actually do what they say they're going to do. And by doing that, you build trust with your audience. You know, it's quite easy for me to tell somebody, hey, we're going to deliver a workshop. It's gonna be this day. This is how much it costs. Just show up. It's easy to sell this program because I have a track record of delivering over and over and over. And I'm telling you right now from experience, most of your competitors will not sustain that consistency. When we launched our podcast in 2014, I have a screenshot of all the shows that launched the same week. I would say about 90% of 'em do not publish anymore. They just don't have the consistency. They just got distracted. They decided that something else is more important. So just by out-surviving them, just by outlasting them, I'm able to compete and have a larger show. So as an exercise to implement this step, I want you to choose one expression of your difference, a story, the gap that you're filling in the market, your niche message, and I want you to commit to expressing it consistently For ninety days, even if it feels forced, even if it means like I have to share a story on Instagram this week, then next week I got to include it in my newsletter. Manufacture it somehow, but make sure you're consistent for the next ninety days. Every day, you need to express this message to your audience. Same message, every channel that you are exposed to. Don't waver. Don't feel like I've already said this in some way. People are busy, right? People are getting bombarded with messages left and right. I can't tell you how many times I mentioned something in a newsletter and somebody. Reply to me and say, hey, I never knew that about you. I never knew this story about you. And it's like, I shared the story like a dozen times over the last 12 years. But hey, not everybody's going to listen or consume every piece of content that you put out there. So be consistent for at least 90 days and see how much it impacts your business. See how much it resonates. See how many people actually reply to your messages or make comments on your posts on social media or like your posts. See how many views it generates. You will see a difference. I'm telling you, because of that consistency, you'll start to feel like a consistent brand. You'll feel proud of what you are and what you stand for. So there you have it. That's my complete framework for standing out from your competition. You need to stop hiding the thing that makes you different. OK? Start embracing it. Your story, your background, your assets, your liabilities even. OK? The things that— the mistakes you made. They say make your mess your message. Right. I've heard of this saying before, and it's a good saying because people resonate with mess. People resonate with mistakes. Hey, I made that mistake before. I've been in that jam before. I've been in that situation before. Right? Find the gap that your competition is ignoring. Fill it in the best way that you can that makes you who you are. Niche down until you are the obvious choice for the customer that you're serving.

Right?

Resist the feeling of, oh, I can't niche down or I won't have customers. No, you will resonate with more customers because of niching down. Turn your difference into your message. Okay? Broadcast it as much as possible everywhere, every channel that you are exposed to, and stay consistent over and over and over. Even if it sounds like you're talking to yourself, even if it sounds like you said this a million times, it doesn't matter. Keep doing it. Here's a truth that I discovered after 20 years of doing business. You do not stand out by becoming someone else, by becoming something that you're not. You stand out by becoming more of yourself, by revealing your true self. And a part of that is just accepting that you are fine the way you are, flaws and all, mistakes in the past. It's okay, right? Share those mistakes. Share what you learned through those mistakes. Share those experiences. People will thank you for that because most people don't have the courage to do that. You need to share the version of yourself that's true. The one that only you can share, your unique story. And that unique story is going to power why you are the choice to go with, with your product or service. If this episode helped you find your edge, here's the next episode I would love you to consume, 'cause I think it's gonna help you tremendously. It's an episode that we recently published called How to Compete Against Massive Companies and Win as a Bootstrap Business, as a self-funded business. This is my story. We've been running self-funded and bootstrap businesses for the last 20 years, and I show you how to find your edge when you're competing with giants. Go ahead and check it out. Thank you so much for checking out today's episode. Keep working on yourself. Keep working on your business. Stay consistent. Keep your eye on the mission. Keep your eye on why you're doing this in the first place and your motivation for starting this whole journey in entrepreneurship. Because by having that feeling of, hey, I must make this happen, it's what's going to drive you to keep showing up every single day, being yourself, broadcasting out to the world, and just being proud of who you are. Thanks so much. I'll check you in the next one.