In this podcast episode, Shaun Whynacht, founder of Blue Cow Marketing, discusses how small businesses can differentiate themselves and consistently stand out in a crowded market. He emphasizes the foundational role of automation—particularly the Keap platform—in scaling his agency and freeing time for creative work. Shaun encourages listeners to define their core legacy and unique selling point (USP), suggesting that even simple, consistent actions (like prompt responses or a distinctive visual cue) can create differentiation without a full rebrand. The conversation explores practical tactics such as simplifying the customer journey, offering extra value (free resources, discounts), and choosing the most convenient communication channel for each interaction. Shaun shares his habit of continuously testing new tools, turning those trials into educational content for clients and the broader audience. When businesses feel stuck or face competitive pressure, he advises a measured approach: verify whether a real problem exists, avoid reactive bidding wars, solicit feedback from existing clients, and iterate thoughtfully. Throughout, he underscores the importance of adapting to evolving technology and market trends while staying true to a service‑first mindset.
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Hey, it's Shaun Whynacht with Blue Cow Marketing, host of this upcoming podcast. You know, automation has been the number one thing that has allowed our small marketing agency to grow and scale. And without the use of Keap, which is an automation software, I don't know where we'd be today. Even producing this podcast has been possible by using automated processes. So we are helping clients automate their business so they can get more time back to do the things that they love. If all this sounds great to you, I'd love to have a conversation with you, and so would Jody. So go to bluecowmarketing.ca/automate to book a consult today. Now let's take a listen to this episode.
I think it comes down to that core value of what do you want to be known for? Like, what's your legacy? What, you know, when you have people think of you, you know, you know, first of all, there's your business when they think of your business, but if you are your business, what, what do you want to be known for? Here we are, episode number 46, and we're talking about standing out. And if anyone has been in the office, which I'm pretty sure people listening to this have never been in the office, but on the back wall, when I built this business, I made a Dr. Seuss quote decal that says, "Why fit in when you were born to stand out?" And that was really the whole model is, is looking at every small business that we work with, every entrepreneur, and there's something about it that makes them unique and they need to stand out in that to their clients. So that's what we're going to talk about. And again, another episode that you came up with the idea for, and I'm assuming you have questions there to ask me.
Of course. I mean, just to start it off, like, you know, I think a lot of people have that perception of, you know, standing out and positioning yourself in your industry as unique, it starts and kind of ends at your startup when you start your business. But I definitely don't think that's true, and I think that you can differentiate yourself without rebranding or anything throughout the entire life of your business. So what advice do you have for people who are kind of feel like they're stuck in that box of their brand, they're well established, their business has been around for a while, but they want to start, you know, differentiating themselves a little bit. So how would you suggest they go about that?
I think it comes down to that core value of what do you want to be known for? Like, what's your legacy? What, you know, when you have people think of you, you know, first of all, there's your business when they think of your business, but if you are your business, what do you want to be known for? And it doesn't have to be something, you know, super highly complicated. It can be very simple that, you know, no matter every time I've called and left a message, they've gotten back to me, right? Those little things that like, you know, that makes you stand out if nobody else in your competition is doing that, right? So, you know, that's what it really comes down to. You know, for us, one of the things that I'd like to try to get across most times to people, and I think we're doing a good job, is we take the time to understand, you know, what it is that's important to them, right? We're not about just selling a service or making a dollar and that kind of stuff. It's really what's going to help that person, you know, wake up the next day feeling a little bit less stressed, um, you know, a little more informed about what they can do. And, and that comes down to even how, you know, I'm trying to position what we put out on social is it's all about, you know, saving people time, um, and, you know, you know, finding information out there that'd be relevant to them and posting it so they have a place to find it. Yeah, that's there, but You know, I think if you feel stuck, um, you know, whether you're in a small business where it's just you or you've got a team, it's first identifying what is causing you to feel that, right? Why do you feel stuck? What does stuck feel like to you? Now, is it the fact that you're doing the same thing every day, like you come in the office, same routine, same people are complaining, same type of stuff? You know, maybe just changing your routine will eliminate that feeling and you realize your business isn't stuck, you're stuck.
Right, right. Yeah, and I think to simplify it down as far as it can go in differentiating yourself, it comes down to a unique selling point, right? So like you mentioned at Blue Cow, it's about, you know, saving you time and also, you know, we actually, we get to know you, we get to know you and then we, you know, establish what it is that is your unique selling point, you know, that's part of our unique selling point. But something I think of a lot, it was just recently we were in a client meeting and they decided very simply to associate themselves with a number. It was the number 9. I'm sure you remember. And so, podcast, their website, the first page that you're on, the homepage, 9. That number was everywhere. And something as simple as that I think can really actually help you differentiate from your competition. Just having a very, significant association, whether it be a number or, you know, visuals, your color, that can make you stand out, your logo can make you stand out. So it's not just about the, you know, unique selling point itself, it's also about all these kind of little tiny smaller details.
Yeah, how people feel when they think about you, engage with you, experience you, that type of thing is equally as important as to what you actually sell.
Sell or provide. Yeah, and I, I think a big thing too for a lot of businesses, um, that can make you stand out is simplifying your business, you know, like making it easy to do business with you. So, you know, think about it from, you know, the customer journey side, you know, what process does your customer go through and, you know, how can you make that easiest and convenient for them. And, you know, where can you add that extra little bit of value? So, you know, when it comes to free resources or, you know, discounts or making things just a little bit easier and surprising them with going above and beyond, I think that's honestly the biggest thing that can make you stand out.
Absolutely. You know, a lot of times, you know, we've been implementing— I can't even speak—
implementing different systems like scheduling systems and online meeting systems. And just realizing that, you know, for some people in some instances, you don't need to go do a Zoom call, right? Just, you can pick up the phone and, you know, call them or send them a text. And it doesn't always have to be, you know, we've implemented this system, this is what we can only do, and this is what everybody has to do. You know, there are some instances where it does require you to do that. But if you're just doing, you know, a quick check-in, it could be done on the phone, right? If you don't need to see the person. And it might be easier for them.
They may be driving, much easier to do a call than a Zoom call, right? So how have you managed to kind of continuously stand out throughout, you know, how many years you've been in, in business with Blue Cow, the same company?
So for me, when I just looked back at that, you know, a lot of clients, if not most of the clients that we have, you know, had year over year What they enjoy is if they have an idea, a problem or something like that, and we start talking about it, I have experience in multiple different solutions, softwares, those type of things, or even ideas to give back to them. And that's what they enjoy is the fact that they didn't have the time to research all these different things, nor would they even have, I don't even imagine how they could have had the time to do it. It's hard enough for us to do it. Right. But I've just always been learning new systems. When new tools come out, you know what, I sign up for a free trial just because I want to see it in use, to see what it can do. Not with the intention that it's something we're going to use in our business. I'm going to use that opportunity that company has made for that software to educate myself on it.
Right.
So I'll do two things with it. For one, I'm retaining that knowledge, and two, I will hopefully be able to turn it into a YouTube video to show people, hey, you know, this is my first impression of this, and this is what I like about this, what I don't, um, and helping people, you know, that aren't even clients and may never be clients, but we just want to put that positive energy back out there, right, um, to be known as, you know, a company that will help first, right?
So what strategy would you kind of recommend, or the steps that people need to take if they do feel like their, their business needs a little bit of a revamp, or they need to be better at highlighting that unique selling point?
I think the first thing is identifying, is it actually a problem, right? Or is it just something that you're stuck in your, in your head? If it's like, okay, I've seen, I've seen the competition doing something better and we're not doing that, then obviously that's something that's actionable. You need to figure out what to do. I would, you know, highly tell you to stay away from just doing the same thing that they did, right? I've tried to do something better or different. From it. And the second thing is, if you want to actually, you know, move something forward, talk to your existing clients and say, hey, you know what, do you have like 10 minutes or whatever? And you reward them for their time if you want. But, um, it's like, hey, we're thinking of doing this a little bit different. How would that impact you as a customer? You know, is that something you would find valuable? Because a lot of times we're so stuck in our business, we don't have the ability to see it from the outside or that customer's perspective as easily as we would like to. So using, you know, your existing client base or, you know, other professional colleagues that would give you some, some advice on that and just asking it, because there was— there's tons of ideas out there and you're probably not going to know all of them.
So what do you recommend when, you know, there's— a business notices that there's there's another competition that's rolling out some new feature or something that differentiates them and they feel really stuck and they don't know what to do other than kind of copy exactly. Or if you've even been in the position where somebody else has copied what you're doing, how do you kind of fix that problem and what do you recommend the steps that they take?
I think the first thing is not to overreact right away. I mean, if you've, you know, let's take a car dealership, you know, if you decided that you were going to, you know, donate $100 to a local charity every time somebody does, you know, a test drive or buys a new car or whatever the case is, and then suddenly you see your competition rolls out and does like $150, right? And you're like, oh, they took the thunder away from me. You know, your natural reaction is we're going to do $200. Well, this bidding war can go back and forth until Somebody's losing too much money. It may just be, you know what, we're gonna still do our $100, but maybe we're gonna come up with another idea as well on top of that to make it a bit different. But really go into that phase of, you know, let's try to do something different, right? Let's just try to spit back and forth at the same problem that's there. But, you know, these ideas will take time. That's the biggest thing is, you know, rarely do you wake up with this brilliant idea that you have the exact plan of how to roll it out, it's gonna catch on. And go there. But also, you know, is the market actually leaving you to go there? And probably not, right? You just are hypersensitive to all your competition, right, because of the nature you're in. I guarantee, you know, Joe Smith or Mary down the road, you know, aren't watching both places and be like, well, that's the same thing, but they're doing it a little bit more or better, right? Yeah, they're not. Yeah, so you're just hypersensitive to a lot of it, right?
All right, again, that wraps up all the questions I had. Okay, any— you made it through this one?
I did, I did make it through. Um, yeah, and I, and I think, you know, I think the success to what we've been able to do, um, you know, in, you know, I guess I look back, I'm almost 20 years of being an entrepreneur, more than 20 years of being in a business, but Blue Cow's been in there for 10 years here. And if I looked at what I was doing on year 1 to year 10, completely different, right? Right. Like, we still have the same kind of goal of providing, you know, the helping service and, you know, the kind of the, the new age thinking of what's new. But the market has changed, the technology has changed, so we have always changed and adapted to try to stay ahead of the curve for our clients. And that's really what it comes down to, is is always try to provide, you know, the next step for someone.
Yes. And if you want proof of how much the market has changed, you can listen to the last episode where he talked about, um, including VHS converting. So that's just a little bit of proof there behind what you're saying.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, thinking back to even when I first started my first business at age of 17 and building a sites and, you know, using, you know, animated GIFs of like little rotating lights next to the logo. I mean, you'd never think of doing that now, but it was like, it was the coolest thing back then to be able to build your own website. Now, I mean, anybody can build a website.
