We don’t all suit the same vehicle

Now, your Thing might well lend itself perfectly to you being the boss of a business. Or, it might not. It might be that the best use of your Thing is as part of someone else’s business–or in partnership with someone else (and their Thing) that adds up to a better result that you on your own. Or you can just hire a ‘boss’ to take care of business while you do your Thing.

What time is the right time to start being a business celebrity? What time is the best time to launch a new product or service? What time is it?

I was reminded again at the weekend (I am being Masterminded by Jonathan Jay) how important is it to be unique in business. We were talking about USPs, and why a business owner must know what their USP is before they can market their business with success.

USP stands for Unique Selling Point, or Unique Sales Proposition. I was reminded how hard it is to define these — to really make them totally unique.

It is quite easy to come up with a USP only to realise under scrutiny that it’s not, in fact, unique and could easily be applied to other businesses. So it was good to have the Mastermind group of business owners challenging each other to be unique.

Today I went for my first ‘proper’ run in a long time (that’s running for the sake of running, not because I’m cutting it fine to catch my train). I’m married to a ‘proper runner’ who ‘pops out for a 10k’ 2 or 3 times a week, so it’s a little intimidating when I know my ‘run’ could be outpaced by a walk at times. But when you decide on something you want to do, it’s a good idea to just do it–any way you can.

Here’s how you use your signature system to work out your products, services and programs.

You don’t use the entire cupboard of ingredients—you play like “Ready Steady Cook” and use the 5 (or 3 or 7) key favourite ingredients your clients need that you have in your signature system.

Sometimes (and if you’re doing this entrepreneurial thing properly—most of the time!) you will have a ‘crazy idea’ and someone will respond with “Really? Are you sure?”

Of course you’re not sure?! But are you certain?—yes!

You can be unsure that something is going to work, unsure that it’s going to be easy, unsure it’s exactly what people will want it, but you can be absolutely certain that you’re going to do it anyway!