3 ways to stand out from your competition in business.

Welcome to The Empowered Edupreneur Podcast. My name is Michelle Smit, and I am an ex-teacher turned online business coach for Edupreneurs. The owner of Digiteach and a six-figure entrepreneur. I am in love with empowering educators. Just like you to create freedom filled online businesses and lives they love.

If you are looking to up level your skills, your finances, your mindset, and change the trajectory of your life as an educator in business, then you are in the right place. Think of this podcast as your weekly dose of business and mindset development to help unlock the infinite potential within you. To play bigger with your life and go after your dreams. 

We are going to have so much fun together. So thank you so much for pushing play today. Now let's dive in. 

Hello. Hello. I hope you are doing fabulously. So good to be chatting to you today. So exciting news. I have the Digiteachers Biz Academy open with a special offer at the moment where you can get 300 euros off. And, if you are someone who's been waiting for the right moment to dive into DBA, if you've heard about it for a long time and you've just been sitting on the fence waiting for that moment, this moment might be now.

And you might be at the perfect time in your life. To dive in and to start creating your irresistible asset, your course, your group program and launching it into the world. And yeah, I think pushing it later and later and later might not be in service of you and maybe you are listening right now and you're like, yeah, maybe this is my time.

So I'm inviting you in to join us. And it's been so great to welcome in new students and just, I love, love, love, love, love having new, amazing educators and teaching business owners come in. And I just love seeing the results and the transformations they make in their life that goes far beyond just launching a course.

It's just so many shifts and just internal growth and development and just Magic, I like to call it magic, happens when you say yes to yourself and you dive in and you create magic in your life. If you need the link to that, feel free to email me or DM me, or just hit the link underneath this episode.

Now, today, what I'm going to be talking to you about is three ways to stand out from your competition in business, because you Let's be honest. We're not idiots. We all know that more and more people are starting online businesses and more and more people are creating courses and offers to sell. And what that means is markets are getting more and more saturated.

There are more people that you are going directly against. You're selling similar things. And that does make it harder. And to be honest, it's only going to become harder because the world is moving online and I really do believe in I don't know, 10 years time, everyone's going to know about online business and it's just going to be the norm to have an online business.

Because currently right now, when I speak to people, it's not the norm. Like most people are in like jobs and stuff, but I believe in the future, it's going to be very normal to have an online business, very normal to have a personal brand. And Yeah, very common. So that means it's giving me more competition.

So how does one stand out? And that is a very important question to ask because we do need to stand out. We do need to somehow differentiate ourselves. So there are three ways that I'm going to dive into. how you can do that. Just three ways that I'll dive into today. So the first way to do that is to develop a unique framework, a unique methodology a unique process that you create yourself, that you coin yourself, like the name of it, the steps of it, all of it. You want to create something that it's like a recipe, almost a unique little recipe for doing something.

And it doesn't have to be completely brand new, but the way in which you package that recipe should be unique to you. So the way that you title it, the name of it, the way that you teach the recipe should be unique to you. And typically what you want is three to five. Steps in this methodology and in this system or process that you create, that you take someone, your student, your client through from a, where they are now to be where they want to be.

They have to go through these three to five steps. And I think the sweet spot is about four steps. But if you wanted to do five, that's fine, whatever works for you. So an example is a system. For example, I have my four step launch success system. I've got four steps that form the fundamentals of how to launch a course and sell something online, a launch, anything online, really.

It's these four phases that are key to successfully filling your course or group program with students. And after many, many years of launching and doing things, I have figured out and seen that these are phases that need to happen and I've titled them my own way and I've developed my own little unique way of doing things in them.

So that is my methodology. And I stand by that methodology and I bring it into my signature program, Digiteachers Biz Academy and I teach it in my masterclasses and it's something that I rely on and it is something that works and it's tried and tested and works really well.

And that just having your own methodology, your own framework, your own recipe already helps you differentiate because people want to see how they get to a certain result. How do they get to the transformation? And it needs to be clear to them, simple to them. So they can almost visualize it happening for them.

And when you have a system, like a four step system that you can show people, this is the way in which you go from here to here, it helps people see, okay, maybe I can do this too, and also it helps you. Differentiate yourself from the other person because they have something else that they are going to teach on.

So it's the way in which you package and position your transformation to your students and your methodology. And so you want to get creative on it. You want to think about the method that you generally take your course Your students through to get them to result. And then you want to systemize it into three to five steps and give it a good title, give it a visual, package it into something that they can literally see it's like an umbrella that hangs your entire.

Teaching on and make it simplified. And that's the other thing about the method is it simplifies it to take something that quite can be quite complex and it just simplifies it down into steps. And that is also very valuable. So building out your own framework is definitely something that I recommend everyone to do if you are selling something online.

Online because that will help you show people what, how you teach differently, how you take them from A to B differently to maybe that other person over there. And then that person your potential students will resonate with that process and be like, cool. I really get that. I really understand that.

That makes sense to me. I'm going to go with that. And that's really important. So that's one thing. The next thing that you want to be doing is niching down. Okay. Niching down. So being a generalist and being broad never wins in business, but it's definitely going to become a bigger problem moving forward.

So because of all the competition. You cannot be a generalist. You can't be just an English teacher who helps people learn English to travel. That is super general and maybe it never worked a few years ago, but it may be a work back in the day to do that. Before all the competition and all the courses and stuff, but moving forward, it's not going to work.  

So you're going to just blend into the background. If that's how you're going to show up as just like someone who helps everyone do everything, you're just going to completely blend in. You're not going to stand out. And so in order to stand out, you need to become hyper specific on who you help and how you help them.

And I'm talking like a subset of people who all share a collective pain and struggle and all share a collective desire and goal. And you have a very specific way in which you help them reach that particular goal. You need to just be as specific as you can. 

And it really helps because that then will inform the next thing, which I will dive into now, but your next step is your messaging. An example is I was talking about being an English teacher, and you want to grow your English teaching business. Instead of teaching English to everyone in all types of English, you could become let's see what has worked like an English IELTS coach, right?

So you help people pass their IELTS exam, but then you can help Spanish people pass their IELTS exam. So do you see how instead of just helping everyone pass their IELTS exam, you are now niching down into Spanish people passing their IELTS exam. And then you could be like, cool, I want to work with women, so I help Spanish women pass their IELTS exam.

And then you can go even further and you say, I help Spanish women pass their IELTS exam with a band score of 7 or up. And do you see how you went from being a generalist English teacher who teaches everyone to someone who teaches a very particular type of person and gets them a very particular type of result.

And that's the kind of thing you want to be doing. Like you want to niche down further and you want to really speak to those people. And now you know, okay, my avatar is a Spanish woman they work and they want to, move countries or get a better job.

And now you can craft all your products and all the messaging that goes into it to suit that person. So that's key. You really want to niche down. And I know you might be thinking, oh, but by only helping Spanish woman. I'm going to be closing down the doors on so many other people. But ultimately that's what you need to do.

You need to be so hyper specific that you do actually close the doors on anyone else. And you need to be clear about that. And the reason this works is because your marketing should repel and attract. So you want to be repelling people who are not your ideal client. And you want to be attracting and magnetizing your ideal client to you. 

And really when there's so much competition out there and everyone's, selling similar things to similar people, you have to get so much better at your messaging and your, all of that to stand out because what's going to stop someone on your content versus that someone else. And it's really going to be how you speak to them and how well you know them and how well you know their pains and their struggles and how well you know what they want to create in their life and their dreams and like the intimacy of you knowing that of your ideal client is going to be it's essential.

It was essential years ago, but it's going to become much more essential moving forward. Intimately knowing your ideal client and niching down and getting specific with them. Who do you help? How do you help them in specificity? And then that will inform your next step, which is the third way in which you stand out from competition is your messaging.

The way you speak to people. Your unique framework is like the way in which you teach. The way in how you get people from A to B, your method, right, your process. But what you say, how you say it and what the message is that you're pulling through.

What are the core messages that you pull through? And how you say it to your dream client and your messaging will get better when you know who it is you are serving deeply on an intimate level, you understand them, and then you pull that through in your messaging. And that's going to be key and also pulling in your brand into your messaging.

So standing for something and standing against something, becoming known as someone who has these values, someone who completely detests these things, someone who believes these certain things. Building your brand as well and infusing your brand into your messaging and speaking directly to your dream client in specificity.

So if you're just saying, I'm going to help you create more freedom, how could you be more specific with that. How could you really speak to that? You could say something like, I'm going to help you wake up on a Monday morning and lie in bed and have a cup of coffee with your kids whilst having, students buy from you.

You see it vividly in your mind. And you can feel that freedom. So that's what good messaging does. It paints a picture and it gets intimate into the micro moments. Instead of just saying, I'm going to give you freedom, what does that even mean? Get specific on that and paint that picture.

What does freedom actually mean? I'm going to let you take the day off on a Friday. Head to the beach, go hang out with your children while still serving your students, while students are still learning from you, whatever it is that you help people do, I'm going to help you pass your IELTS exam so that you can book a flight to your dream country.

Go get a job that pays you way more and lets you, do whatever, whatever, whatever. Get specific in what you help people to in your messaging, paint a picture of that and speak directly to them. You want someone to be reading your stuff and literally being like, wow, this person really gets me.

You want them to resonate and identify, but you also want them to just feel heard, seen, understood all of those things, and that's what your messaging will do. So it's going to become really important in terms of a skill set moving forward. As online business becomes more of a thing and the world becomes more saturated with people selling courses, it's going to be more important, to really build up a brand, and infuse your brand into your messaging. 

It's going to be really important for you to have your own unique methods and ways in which you help people get results. It's going to be really important for you to niche down and get specific. If you don't do these things, it's going to be very hard to make things work.

It's going to be a lot harder. The other thing that I'm actually, you know, I said three things, but now I'm literally going to add a fourth one as a bonus is your offer. So the offer you create needs to be amazing. It needs to be like a hell yes offer, meaning when your dream client lands on that thing and they see it, they're like, hell yes, I want that.

And it needs to be different to your competitors offers and the packaging of your offer needs to look different. So although you might be teaching the same things inside the offer, the way that you package and position your offer, the wrapping paper, so to speak, that you wrap it in, it needs to stand out.

And you use that with messaging, the way that you name things, the way you talk about it, the program promise that you have, the transformation that you're offering. It needs to stand out. It needs to be hyper specific, like super specific and clear and stand out so that when someone lands on it, they're not like, oh, this is just like everything else I see.

Back in the day people would create mindset courses and it would just be like, learn how to improve your mindset so that you feel better kind of thing. And it maybe would have worked like five, 10 years ago. It won't work, moving forward. It's too general, it literally blends into everything else.

So what core thing of mindset what does that even mean? Like you can get hyper specific on it. And articulate that in your offer is going to be a big thing. And just having a really good offer is really important. So focus on building out something that you truly believe in that gets people results that feels like an alignment when you run it, that you love doing it.

And that's already going to help you. If you have a good offer, it's a lot easier to sell it. If you don't have a good offer, it's very hard to sell. And especially with your competition. So really working on your offer, making sure it's a hell yes is going to be also important in order to stand out from your competition.

All right. So those couple of things, it was unique framework and methodology niche down further, getting hyper specific and then having better messaging, more specific messaging, vivid messaging. Detailed messaging that actually hits home and speaks to your dream client and attracts them and then repels the other people.

And also your branding that you infuse into your messaging and into everything you create into your, all your content just infusing your brand, who you are, what you stand for, what you don't like, all of that stuff. And then having a very good offer. So actually it was more than three ways. I probably should change the title to five ways. I might do that actually. 

Anyways, I hope this was helpful. If you want help and you want a mentor and a coach to help you do all of these things. Because this is all the stuff that I dive into in the Digiteachers Biz Academy. If you want someone to walk this journey with you and just have step by step how to do with each of these things and also just how to launch your course, how to sell it, how to map out a great offer, how to create your unique framework, how to niche down further, how to find a viable niche how to build your email list how to do all of these things, then I Invite you to join me in the Digiteachers Biz Academy.

This is my flagship signature program. It's my baby. It's absolutely amazing. And so much magic can happen inside of it. If you are ready, ready for change and ready to create it, right? You have to be hungry for it as well. So if you're hungry, you're looking for a mentor, you're looking for a coach to take you all the way there.

I would love to be that person for you. So you can just click the link below to join us and I will chat to you again next week. Have a good day. 

Bye.

 Thank you for choosing to listen to The Empowered Edupreneur Podcast today. I have such exciting news. The doors to the Digiteachers Biz Academy are officially open.

These group cohorts only happen a few times a year. So if you want mentorship with me in growing your business and launching your courses or group programs online so that you can increase your income and impact without having to keep trading your time for money. Then DBA is for you. 

The doors are open now for a very limited time. So join us before it is too late by clicking the link in the show notes. 

I appreciate you so much and can't wait to connect with you in the next episode. In the meantime, go create a business and life you love.