Franziska: Often, business owners get a little bit stuck on what is the X-factor in their business and how can they be more unique? How can they stand out a little bit more in their industry?

It‘s sometimes a little bit of an exercise where business owners just try so hard to find that X-factor. So what I‘d like to do is I‘d like to give you 3 questions that will help you define what makes you unique and that will help you get that X-factor in your business to be more talk about-able.

The first question to ask yourself is what are you really good at? What are you really, really good at? Because maybe there is something in there that you can do that your competitors don‘t do so well. I will give you an example. In our branding agency, when we looked at how can we, what is our X-factor? How can we stand out more? We asked this question. What are we really good at? What we found is that one of our core strengths in our branding agency is strategy. Not just design, but actually design + strategy. So everything we do comes with a strategy. It makes sense. So that is what we are going for as our X factor.

Another question you can ask yourself is what is the frustration in your industry? What is your market frustrated about? Because maybe there is something in there that you can do that, again, your competitors may not be offering. The example that I‘d like to use here is the plumber example. In Australia, here, a frustration that people have when working with plumbers is that they‘re often late. It‘s a big frustration here. So, what you can do as a plumber is you can maybe have a guarantee that you‘re always on time. Another one of our, actually, members here, at our Clever Bunch, a plumber, he also said a frustration is the bump cracks. He calls them the plumb cracks. So, he also has a guarantee that his plumbers never show their plumb cracks. So that‘s a little bit of an X-factor for him.

The third question you can ask yourself is what can you do that your competitors probably won‘t do because it takes too much effort? So, what is something that you can do that could give you the X factor that your competitors probably won‘t be doing because it might just be too much effort? Those are usually things that enable a better customer experience or give your customers more convenience when working with you. So think about in terms of that. Where can you do something that is a better customer experience or gives your customers more convenience and maybe that‘s your X factor in there somewhere.

Lastly, you know, X-factor doesn‘t mean it‘s just one thing. It‘s actually X-factors. That‘s what it should be. It‘s not usually just one thing. It‘s usually a combination of a few things combined that will make your business standout and then will make people talk about your business in a positive light.

So, think about these three questions and also let us know what you‘ve come up with. I always love hearing your examples and how you‘ve implemented these lessons. As always, if you know someone who would benefit from this tip or from any of our videos or podcast, feel free to share this with them. I will see you next time.