“My Business Is Different”

Hey there Rainmaker, today’s chapter from the book I’m writing while you watch contains the single-most powerful marketing head game lesson you could ever learn…

Get this right, you have an almost unlimited ability to walk into any business, in any industry, and “make it rain” — generate leads, customers, sales, revenue, profits on demand.

But if you have this wrong, you’re actually confining yourself to a tiny little slice of the pie in terms of what works in marketing, what would work in your business, in your industry… And most importantly, what would work to multiply your business and your wealth.

This one lesson — debunking one of the most prevalent myths and assumptions in nearly every industry — is EVERYTHING.

That’s why this is the first and most important chapter in the Mental Game section of my book, Breakthrough Marketing Secrets.

I’m actually breaking it up over two days. Today, you get the main part of the chapter. Tomorrow, the more “controversial” part two, written as a sidebar or sub-chapter (but still significant in itself).

Here’s today’s chapter, “My Business Is Different.”

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I apologize. If you came looking for a book of flavor-of-the-day marketing tricks and tactics, you’re probably starting to hate me.

After all, I started you off with a friggin’ guide to using a book (like you’ve never read one before). And now I’m devoting an entire section to getting your head straight. Before I ever start to talk about what to do with your marketing.

But what’s going on inside your head is FAR more important to growing your business than any marketing trick or tactic you can use. Great marketers and business-builders embrace this stuff. Lousy marketers avoid it like the plague. Which would you rather be?

So let’s talk about one of the biggest viruses that crawls inside a business owner’s brain. And holds them back from doing what it takes to create explosive growth and profit in their business.

This is the “MY BUSINESS IS DIFFERENT” virus…

You know what I’m talking about…

“That kind of marketing may work over there, in [any business category other than your own]. But my customers are different. They’re not going to respond to that because [excuse].”

Know what? You’re right.

You might as well just ditch this book now, and go back to what you were doing.

Baloney! Here’s the thing… There are superficial things that can change from business to business, industry to industry. Specific language, jargon, images, and so on may vary. The order in which you implement can be adapted to your business. There’s no such thing as a “one-size-fits-all” approach that can be used without adapting it to your industry, your business, your market, your situation.

But on a deep level, nothing is ever different.

Every business has to find targeted prospects… Get them to pay attention to a marketing message… Convince them to try their product or service one time… Encourage them to come back and do more business with them… And to refer friends and associates, too…

This is the “skeleton” of effective marketing, selling, and business growth. It’s the universal lifecycle of a customer relationship.

Find a market. Connect with the market. Get customers and clients. Build a relationship to bring them back again. Get them to refer their friends to you.

When you understand this — and how to make each step more effective — it doesn’t matter what industry you go into, it’s all the same.

I recently got a compliment from a business owner I’d been speaking with regarding their marketing. This was in an industry where I had no experience to speak of. They told me that I was able to understand their business and their business model in a way that more than a dozen other marketers they’d spoken with hadn’t.

It was NOT because I’m intellectually superior. And it certainly was NOT because I had more experience in their field.

The reason I was able to look inside this business and get a DEEP understanding of their business model — when others couldn’t — was because I understand the universal principles of business. And how to apply them in ANY business, in ANY industry.

It’s these universal principles we’ll focus on in Breakthrough Marketing Secrets.

Let me take this completely out of the business world for a minute, to give you even greater depth of understanding…

One quick look at your house and your neighbors’ — or one across town — and there are clear and obvious differences.

They have different floor plans. Different paint colors — inside and out. Different shingles, and kitchen cabinets, and furniture.

And yet, if you look past the surface, two houses with drastic visual differences are remarkably similar. Both have foundations that are essentially the same in function and design, even if the shapes are different. And walls, built in similar ways, based on similar principles. Both have a roof, and climate control. And electricity, and running water. And kitchens, and bathrooms, and bedrooms, and living rooms.

If you’re designing a house, you’re first going to look at everything that’s the same between ALL houses. And you’re going to make sure you include everything that’s the same between all houses in your new house plans — your blueprints. Because it’s these similarities that add up to a “successful” house.

In designing a house, you always start with finding out what “works” to make something a house, and including it in yours. Even though, eventually, your house will have different paint, and different cabinets, and different furniture. Even though by the time you’re done, you will have a house that looks completely different, on a superficial level.

This is no different than taking the successful principles of marketing and selling from other businesses and other industries, and applying them to yours…

Yes, your business may be superficially different. Less so than you may think, if you’ve been infected by the “my business is different” virus. But different nonetheless.

However, those details are relatively insignificant compared to getting all the universal principles right.

Put another way: what’s different between businesses is far less important than what’s the same.

At the very least, the best thing you can do is TEST approaches that have worked in other businesses and other markets within your own…

Don’t operate on assumptions. Be willing to test anything and everything that appears to be working in different markets.

Your goal in going through this book — or learning marketing anywhere else — is NOT to come up with reasons why something will not work in your business.

Your goal is to think of how you can adapt things that work elsewhere to match the superficial details of your business.

If you want to create an exceptional business — one that is exceptionally successful, and exceptionally profitable — you must be willing to do exceptional things.

While your competitors stand by and insist, “our industry is different,” and stay stuck in a rut… You will create a revolution in the industry. You’ll always be two steps ahead of your competitors, who will constantly struggle to catch up.

You’ll be doing things to grow your business that your competitors assume would — never in a million years — actually work.

And frankly, sometimes they’ll be right. Other times, they’ll be dead wrong.

And when they’re wrong, that’s when you’ll completely trounce your competitors. Leaving them reeling — as their customers flock to your business, as sure as Canadian Geese and Monarch Butterflies migrate every year.

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Yours for bigger breakthroughs,

Roy Furr

Editor, Breakthrough Marketing Secrets