Why We Make it So Hard and How to Simplify It Once and For All

At this point we’ve covered a fair amount of ground on this map and so now you probably know why most people never get very far in this business of differentiation. If you’re becoming a little less enamored of push-button solutions that only give the sensation of making progress, you’re making real progress.

Thus far we’ve looked at how 4 of the elements of good video conspire to either drive you mad with frustration or give you the consistent satisfaction of a job well done, as proven by the engagement your videos bring about.

I’ve saved the most overriding one for last. And that’s uniqueness. Uniqueness is where everything comes together in a format that makes you smile while you’re creating it, shooting it, editing it and releasing it into the wild. It brings about a profound sense of satisfaction, and for some a feeling of true success.

In fact, uniqueness is so important that tomorrow I’m going to send you some information that will be unique to you, based on an analysis of your Video DNA report.

I would go so far as to say that without a strong presence of uniqueness in your videos, your business will never really stand out in an obvious way. Today that is job #1 because everyone considers themselves a content creator. This alone makes standing out more challenging.

Fortunately for you, everyone is so enamored now with A.I. doing their thinking for them that that anyone still doing their own is ahead of the game.

There are unexpected benefits from doing that. It’s certainly true for the people I work with.

By technology I mean both your video and web tools. 

If your Video DNA suggests that your videos are best shot on the go, investing a ton of time in a green screen studio makes little sense. It’s a fair amount of work and expense to build something that probably won’t make you happy. And the more you do it, the further away from your uniqueness you travel, until it becomes quite a chore to get back to being you.

I would also say never say never. As you master your tools you may find that taking on a more technically challenging way of making video is where you are supposed to be headed next.

As far as your online technology goes, the only caveat I have is not to choose web tools that lock you into a presentation format that makes you look like everyone else except for the accent colors. It seems like everyone is being drawn to tools like Kajabi for the very reason I would warn them against it. It makes it easy for Kajabi to stand out, obviously, since all their websites look roughly the same, but how exactly does that help you stand out?

Understand that all these online tools are designed for CONVENIENCE, not ATTRACTION. So choose the tools that allow you or your designer to overcome the internal roadblocks that keep you from standing out. There’s no need to have to overcome the tool’s automatic squashing of your uniqueness.

Personally I’ve always used generic WordPress tools like OptimizePress, that allow you to either build a page from scratch or use highly adaptable templates. I usually go the second route for simple landing pages, taking the former route for more complex pages.

The point is there are lots of page builders out there that will do similar things. I wouldn’t tie my future to becoming a sharecropper on someone else’s platform. If they go away, so do most of your online assets.

So as far as your video tools go, the rule of thumb is to not buy more than you need to do the kinds of videos you want to do. The rest of that rule is to buy the tools that give you the straightest line to results you can afford.

For instance, say green screen is your go-to format. It has a lot of elements to get right. But all things being equal, the best way to get there is with the camera.

When you’ve lit it well, you don’t want to spend hours fiddling with software to get rid of that last bit of green fringe going down the side of your body. That will be your fate if you use a DSLR, iPhone or older prosumer camera.

But if you use a cinema camera like one of the Blackmagic Pocket series of cameras, one even with a super 35mm sensor, it’s practically plug and play. You could spend a lot more and get no better results.

That’s just one example among the hundreds that might be relevant to you. Your own uniqueness can help you unlock the door to your ideal technology.

Feeling at one with your words

So how does your writing affect uniqueness?

If what you’re writing about forces you to look to an outside source for proof, then believe it or not, while establishing that you should be believed, you’ve done it as a lawyer proving a case, thrusting yourself right back into the matrix of external control.

So rather than going outside yourself for proof, I prefer using case studies that show how your way has been used successfully by others. That way you don’t sell your uniqueness to the highest bidder.

If you decide to write about something that doesn’t interest you, just for the money, or just because a keyword search turned up a possible niche that no one has exploited, should you go that route just because you can?

To me, that feels like approaching the value proposition backwards.

For the people I work with, success means serving clients who want what they have because of who they are. Engineering that kind of a circumstance is a very different feeling than trying to find anyone who will buy your stuff because you think it’s what the keywords told you people want.

I have a client who now makes videos that attract major corporate players and project managers because of the way he shows up in his videos. Before that, he was basically invisible and his space was owned by giant competitors.

Now he’s seriously thinking about buying them. That work is based on his uniqueness.

Uniqueness does a good job of catching attention, and it seems to make everything about your business clearer. And clarity is really something of a superpower, if such a thing exists.

Nope. There just isn't anyone like you.

What about your on-camera performance? How does that affect uniqueness? Well, it can become a double-edged sword. You can become so magnetic on camera that it becomes the only expression of uniqueness that people notice.

For an entertainer that’s enough. But if you’re in business, job #1 in these videos is to build trust. And if you have too much charisma, people happily go away thinking they’ve watched a performance, forgetting why they clicked on you in the first place.

In building trust, there may actually be nothing so dangerous as putting yourself on camera. It is so easy to be misunderstood. 

But guess what? In some ways that's the whole point. It's actually a good thing!

Being who you are you are naturally going to attract the right people. You should also repel the people not right for you or you for them. We can't be all things to all people. That way lies madness and sadness and grief and ruin.

No. We get on camera to find out tribe; pure and simple. They for you and you for them, all headed in the same direction with you as leader.

As I mentioned earlier, adopting a persona that doesn’t suit you can backfire in all kinds of unpleasant ways.

But it can also enhance it like nothing else. We naturally play a variety of roles in life. In one day we might be teacher, boss, friend, evangelist, parent, and the list goes on. Each of these roles are a part of what makes us unique.

One or more of these roles are well-suited to go on camera with because it will help you build trust while making your uniqueness more clear.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that when you’re in the right role for you, you don’t really have to think about uniqueness at all. It’s just there on display for the whole world to enjoy.

Finding the right role for you then becomes a worthwhile pursuit, and we have a pretty foolproof way for you to do that if and when the time comes.

Selling Energy On-Camera is Rarely What it Looks like!

I think nowhere does uniqueness come into play more in all these trust-building activities than when it’s time to sell. And as you’ve already perhaps come to suspect, selling is not an event. It’s a never-ending process of building trust that leads someone to sell themselves on you when the opportunity presents itself.

Perhaps the best way to fit this piece into your flight plan is to imagine a train schedule. You look up the schedule to see when it’s going to be near you and make plans to be on the platform when it arrives. You wait for the doors to open and get on. Then the train impassively moves on. It doesn’t stop with everyone on it, go into reverse and try to get one more person to step on.

And yet isn’t that what marketers do everyday in every way? They don’t think like a train. They think like a highwayman hiding behind a rock, waiting for you to pass by with your wallet bulging with dollar bills looking for a new home. (Theirs!) What fun it is trying to stay out of their grasp.

It would have been much better for those highwaymen to engineer the processes necessary to bring about the situation where those travelers sold themselves. But that takes patience. And highwaymen aren’t known for their patience. They need it now. And they need lots of it. Endless amounts. That puts us all in danger.

Engineering this process is all about using your uniqueness to make it happen naturally. For example, if you’re drawn to sailing, you could shoot some videos that relate sailing to your value proposition. I use flying not infrequently. Flying grounds me in my bliss. It’s fun to create those videos, and they’re fun for others to watch. They don’t sell in the sense of a direct response video sales letter, but they do point to the value proposition and give someone a way to access it.

One client, an owner of an engineering firm, loves tinkering with home projects. He sometimes makes little videos of that and puts them on LinkedIn. People get a huge kick out of watching him have fun, like watching Einstein do a Rubik’s cube.

That’s one of the things about uniqueness. It really should be fun for you. No fun means you’ve kind of lost your way. 

And well, that might be the simplest course-correction guidance you’ll ever get. 🙂

Everything you’ve read here is about what this could look like when you get it together. In the near future I’ll be glad to tell you how I would get there and about the resources I have for helping those who want to go that way, but you can start just by asking yourself about the kind of world you want to create.

What makes your heart sing? 

If you’re a Generator, what makes your gut say “Yeah!”, or what gives you a feeling of “Success” as a Projector, or a sense of peace as a Manifestor? These are the kinds of things that origin stories come from. And people really do enjoy origin stories.

If you could do a direct transfer from your heart and brain to someone else’s, what would that be? What would the transformation look like for that person?

If you could design your ideal day, what would that look like, sound like, feel like?

How do you naturally work with others? Do you enjoy the excitement of the one-to-many model or do you prefer to go deep with just a few people at time?

Trust yourself to find the right answers for you. You already know what they are. You probably at least know the direction you want to go at this point.

Maybe I can help. If you’d like to find out what that might look like, here’s a link.

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