TRANSCRIPT

There are three types of businesses. The first type is a ‘Me Too’ business. When anything you do is the same thing that everybody else in your industry does. When you say I'm an accountant, I'm a mortgage broker, ok how are you different from thousands and tens of thousands of other accountants, mortgage brokers, and so on and on and on. If you can't answer the question of what makes you different or better than the guy next door, you got a problem. That's a ‘Me Too’ business. It's impossible to build a really successful ‘Me Too’ business.

The second type of business is a ‘Me Better’ business. It’s when somebody asks you what makes you different, what makes you better than somebody else, you’re going to come up with something a little tweak, a little feature, a little characteristic that you’re going to say “because we do this a little faster, a little better, a little cheaper, a little whatever; this is what makes us different”. This is certainly a lot better than a ‘Me Too’ business. The problem with that is when you get a certain level with this attitude, this little thing that makes you a little bit better, your competition are going to see that and they're going to copy whatever it is that makes you a little bit better, a little bit faster, a little bit cheaper. And your ‘Me Better’ part is not going to be there for a long time. It's not sustainable.

And so the third type of business is the business where you want to be. It’s a ‘Me Only’ business. It’s when you can legitimately say, “I am the only one who..” and then you finish the phrase. “I am the only one who does things a certain way. I am the only company in the world that offers something. We are the only ones who….” Okay, that’s the ‘Me Only’ business. That's where you want to be.

The interesting thing about the ‘Me Only’ business is that it's all about perception. It's not really about whether you offer something truly unique. It's whether the people to whom you offer it believe that you are for something truly unique. And the couple ways to do that, one is to have a unique process, a unique system, a unique offer. Something that nobody truly does like for example with Trademark Factory, we’re the only company in the world that offers trademarking services with a free comprehensive trademark search with a single all-inclusive flat fee, with a hundred percent money-back guarantee. Nobody else dares to do that and that makes a ‘Me Only’ business.

But, frankly, this is very hard to accomplish because everybody is copying, everybody and everybody is trying to catch up quickly. And so at some point, you realize “I can't really come up with anything truly unique” and so this comes back to the idea that it's all about perception. And so the second way to establish yourself as a ‘Me Only’ business is by having a unique brand. It’s when you say we are the only ones who use a certain ABC technology or a really proprietary XYZ method. It doesn't really matter what the technology of the method is, what matters is that they have a name that you trademark and so you can claim legitimately that you're the only one who uses those things and that creates the perception of uniqueness. That is what takes you to the ‘Me Only’ category.

If you look at ads, if you look at the marketing of really successful businesses, you will notice the pattern. They always try to show you how unique they are, what makes them unique, and often times what makes them unique is the brand. And this way really by trademarking your brand and putting it out there is the easiest and least expensive way to get yourself in the ‘Me Only’ category.