is not your goods or services!

Sometimes your company's unique value is not about what it seems!

 Ray was McDonald’s founder.  And I was fortunate enough to have an amazing conversation about McDonald’s Unique Value with Ray just before he retired.

Even today I’m still embarrassed at how lame-brained I was in those days.  I had the nerve to walk up to the founder of one of the greatest food service companies in history and ask him my version of “What do you do?”

It went something like this: “Mr. Kroc, to build a business like this, you must really have an incredible passion for burgers and fries.”

Kroc looked at me like the imbecile I was.

“This business is not about burgers and fries, son,” he said.  “This business is about my passion to give entrepreneurs like you the perfect, no-fail business.”

He could see I still didn’t get it.  “You’re an entrepreneur, right?  They tell me you started your own ad agency, right?” I nodded.

“Do you know that 80% of all entrepreneurs fail after 2 years?”

I nodded again, although I hadn’t checked the numbers.  “Well,” he continued, “I’m building a business where 99% of all entrepreneurs succeed beyond their wildest dreams.  But they must follow my detailed directions to the letter.”

As proof, he directed me to a list of McDonald’s 6,500 franchisees whose documented success stories (they were all millionaires) more than proved his case.

Today, of course, McDonald’s has created over 35,000 millionaire franchisees worldwide.  They still hold their 99% success rate.

Now that’s a “What do you do?” story told with passion, unique value, and proof!

Unique value is the key to McDonald’s business success and it’s the key to your business success as well.  McDonald’s has discovered its “special sauce” and you can discover yours.

Your Unique Value is not your goods or services.

Would you like to discover exactly how we Mad Men on Madison Avenue help companies like McDonald’s, Coke, Nike, and others discover their unique value?

Because unlike what you may have heard, great brands are not based on logos, color schemes, or name recognition.  It’s something deep inside you, like your DNA.  It’s your special talent or gift.

Great brands are built on Unique Value.   Your business will be built on your unique value, special to you and one one else.   Remember, people buy from people, not from companies.

Then we show you exactly how to communicate your own unique value directly to your target audience.  That is what attracts not just any clients – but perfect clients to your business.

And perfect client attraction is how you build a perfect business!   It all begins when your Unique Value owns a little piece of real estate inside the minds of your target audience.

If your life depended on it,

could you pick your own thumbprint

out of a lineup of 25 other thumbprints?

The FBI could in a heartbeat.

Why can’t you?

Why can’t you identify your own thumbprint?  Probably because you never thought it was that important. Even though, like your DNA and several other of your unique characteristics, there’s never been another one like it in the entire universe, and there will never be another one like it again, ever.

Like your thumbprint and DNA, you also have a singular, unique talent and message unlike anyone else who has ever lived.

Can’t identify it either?  Don’t think it’s that important, either?

 Don’t you believe it!  They’re all part of your personal brand!

You may not believe you have a significant talent. You may not recognize it, even if you have one.  But it’s there, buried deep within you.  And your unique talent – if you can recognize it and broadcast it to your target audience – has a huge payoff!

Just a quick aside: when my clients first come to me they often say, “I don’t have a special, unique talent,” or “I have so many, I don’t know which one to choose.”  I tell them each answer is a cop-out.

Just one

To be highly successful, you must single out one specific, unique talent.  Granted, it’s not easy.  It takes time and effort.  Working with a good coach saves both.

But when you choose to identify and share your unique talent and message, that talent can make a profound and very profitable difference in your life and the lives of others.

The big difference

That’s the difference between wildly successful people like millionaires, billionaires, and the average person.  Successful people take time to identify their unique talent, instantly communicate it to their target audience, and make that profound and very profitable difference in their life and the lives of others – from Steve Jobs to Mother Theresa.

Let’s start decoding your Millionaire’s Thumbprint NOW!  Click on “Talk with AL” for a 20-minute FREE consultation that can begin to transform your business and your life.

There’s nothing new about the Unique Selling Proposition concept. It instantly defines what makes your brand both special and superior to the competition..

 Creating an exciting, compelling Unique Selling Proposition for a small business may sound like a near-impossible job, at first. We’re talking Coke’s “secret formula” here. Or McDonald’s “special sauce”. Big corporations pay millions to brand consultant to create award-winning USPs for their brands. (I should know – I was one of them.)

Here’s the good news: You’ve already got your “secret formula”; your “secret sauce”!  You were born with it!

Now all you have to  do is: Discover it; Refine it; Communicate it to your Target Audience.

You’ve heard the old expression, “There will never be another you.” And it’s true: psychologically, scientifically, mathematically, anyway you want to look at it.

You are as unique as your thumbprint!

Personal Branding Gold is all about uncovering your Unique Selling Proposition, (that lies buried in your DNA),  setting your business high above your competition, and communicating your unique value to your target audience.  A great USP can put your personal brand on the map fast.

 That’s why I urge you to grab a FREE copy of my Power of the Ring Kit now and see:

• The 3 simple steps you need to uncover and magnify your unique USP.
• How to instantly communicate your unique value to your target audience.
• How Personal Branding Gold attracts only “perfect clients”.
• How your unique value frees you from the one-on-one income ceiling.
• How your Personal Brand allows you to dominate your niche.

PS: Please don’t spend another day spinning your wheels trying to figure out your unique value and how to instantly communicate that to your target market. Get your FREE Report and MP3 and get started on your path to solid success.

(just get your name out there)

Is a Dumb, Expensive Idea.

Couldn’t agree more with Greg Habstritt’s latest blog Why Building Your Brand Is A Dumb Idea.

If you don’t have a lot to spend (and if that seems an obvious observation to you at first, stay with me) Greg may be on to something even more important, I think.  Unfortunately, many solo-preneurs are unclear about what a “brand” is, let alone their Personal Brand.  More important, they don’t appreciate the huge attraction power of Personal Branding wealth.

First, the Reason for Personal Branding Wealth

The whole point of Personal Branding wealth is to create in the mind of your Target Audience the perception that there is no other coach, consultant or solo-preneur like you in the entire world.

Branding is all about Singularity

Other cornflakes may look the same, but only Tony the Tiger is Grreat!  Other sodas may come in red cans too, but Coke is the Real Thing!  You also need to rise above (way above) your competition.  Your Personal Brand will accomplish that – and more!

What is Your Special Sauce?

McDonald’s has theirs.  What’s yours?  Everyone was born with a unique talent that they can share with the world – something they may not value for themselves, but could make a profound difference in the lives of others.  That’s exactly what a good Personal Branding wealth coach can unleash in the “talent” (that’s what I call my clients).

Second, Your Personal Brand will Attract “Perfect” Clients

People are attracted to people more than products or services.  Of course you offer a fine product or service, but you are your brand – you are the Real Thing.  And that’s what a good Personal Branding coach will help you develop.

Personal Branding Identifies Your Target Market

As you uncover more and more of your core values, you simultaneously identify the basic needs of your Target Audience.  This becomes invaluable, gut-level market research not only for great copy-writing, keyword research, blogs, video presentations, new products, and more.

That’s how a great Personal Branding leads directly to Personal Branding wealth.  And most important of all – a joyful, completely congruent business in tune with your talents, loves and inspirations.   It doesn’t get any better than that!

Begins with a mental image

Planted deep in the minds of its target audience.

What’s yours?

 So what’s your mental image?

You probably know the old quote: “We become what we think about most.”  Or maybe, “Like attracts like.”  Or, “Birds of a feather.”  Or even, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”

They all refer to the age-old  “Law of Attraction”…

Personal Banding Tip #1: Or what I call, “Your Emotional-Guidance System” or “YES!” (for short).  “YES!” automatically attracts to you whatever you think about♠ most – whether it’s good for you or not!  The Law (like your Genie) just says, “YES!”   It guides you to success or failure (or a combination of both) on every life-level you can imagine: financial, health and wellness, relational, academic –  you name it.  

Personal Branding Tip #2: Your “YES!” Guidance System is one of the first things you’ll learn to precisely fine-tune to your own profit and advantage in Personal Branding Gold coaching.

“YES!” does not pre-judge your thoughts! 

Personal Branding Tip #3: “YES!” simply takes your thoughts as you conceive them and attracts to you whatever you think about most.  “YES!” is designed to attract total success or failure (or a combination of both) to you in every area you can imagine – either by you creating a more positive, better-feeling story about your life and the things that matter to you – or by you creating the opposite.   With Personal Branding Gold coaching, you quickly learn how to focus on only your most successful life choices.

No tricks.  No exceptions.  No fooling. 

As someone who’s gone from driving a NYC cab to running a multimillion-dollar ad agency, I’ve tested this “YES!” Guidance System out to 10 decimal places – and it’s astonishing how accurately  works.

Top solo-entrepreneurs have learned exactly how to use it to maximum effect regardless of what business they’re in: from accountants and real estate developers, to MLMers and financial planners — and everything in-between!

Personal Branding Tip #4: You’ve had your own fail-safe “YES!” Guidance System fully installed deep inside your mind since you were born.  What Personal Branding Gold coaching does is show you how to consciously and deliberately read and understand your Owner’s Manual!

Sound too simple to believe? 

I completely understand.  If you’re struggling in one of those areas mentioned above, as I was once, it may even sound a little patronizing, even insulting.  But hang with me. 

Personal Branding Tip #5: Personal Branding Gold coaching can prove – with measurable results – your “YES! Guidance System is very real and ready to  attract good things to you and your business NOW.

Let’s talk!

Perfect presenters and Perfect attendees.

Plus: We got the “perfect” Halloween storm!

John Balbach, Crystal Curtis, and me at Richard Goutal's Collaboration Live! event

In the beginning, it all seemed “perfectly” normal.

It was “Perfect” for a lot of reasons. 

Perfect attendees, because their needs to build a perfect business fit precisely with the special information and unique gifts of the presenters.

Perfect presenters, because they are experts in their fields and can dig deeply into the targeted areas our attendees care about.

And a Perfect Live Event because we felt it was time we had a gathering in the Northeast where many of our good friends and clients wouldn’t have so many travel expenses.

And not least, “perfect”, because for weeks we had eagerly awaited a line-up of great presenters from Richard “Mr. Collaboration” himself to Crystal Curtis (“Facebook Gone Wild”); John Balbach (“Entrepreneurial Profits”); Dr. Bob Clarke (“Productivity”); and Your Most Humble Servant (“Attract Perfect Clients”).

Then Saturday afternoon delivered the first warning.

Heavy, wet snow started slowly at first, creating a huge Christmas card scene beyond our giant conference room windows.   We felt peaceful and profitable, at one with nature, until the lights, heat, and PowerPoints flickered and went dead.  Then hotel management announced they had no generators, no back-up plans, not even a flashlight.

Within minutes it seemed the snow accumulation rose to over 14 inches.  Trees were falling over power lines and traffic was closed everywhere in the Northeast.

“So what?” our intrepid “perfect” attendees sang out.  “We have our notebooks!  We have the hotel battery backup for 2 more hours.  We have our overcoats! We’re entrepreneurs! New Englanders!”

And at dinner, an open bar!

“Perfect” presenters and “perfect” attendees alike felt their way along the maze of corridors to the dining room where the chef delivered overstuffed turkey sandwiches mixed in with a salad. (The chef had no light in his powerless kitchen.)  Plus anyone who felt the evening chill was warmed by as much of his favorite brew as he could hold.

Later, we felt our way up the stairwells to our rooms, carrying the flickering table candles.

Sunday, after digging out our cars, our “perfect” group resumed our adventures with cold coffee and donuts.  Several were already discussing collaboration ideas, another, a JV partnership.  Ka-ching! Kaching!

This is why it’s important to gather only “perfect” solo-preneurs together.  People who really fit, have common interests, and whose gifts and needs are like hand and glove.

What with other folks could have been a weekend from hell – with “perfect” coaches, consultants and online professionals becomes a joyous, productive, Weekend from Halloween!

 Insist on a Perfect Business for yourself!

Begin building that perfect business for yourself right now, today!  Learn why you should accept nothing less than perfect clients – and exactly how perfect clients make a perfect business.  Send for my FREE success kit, The Power of the Ring.  Take time and read it carefully.  Many successful people have build extremely profitable businesses following  the Ring’s outline.

Then, when you’re ready to really get serious about moving your career into high gear, go to my coaching page and click on Talk with Al.  Don’t you think it’s time you transformed your business?

your most powerful answer is your

Personal Branding Statement!

Because a compelling Personal Branding Statement is the most effective (and disarming) marketing device known to attract perfect clients to your business.

“What do you do?” or “WDYD?” is the question you get all the time: at conferences, dinner parties, on airplanes, webinars, just about everywhere.

But don’t treat it as an idle question.  Chances are, the person who’s asking it may be your next perfect client.  And if you respond with a thoughtful Personal Branding Statement, your chances improve from fair to excellent that they’ll ask for your card.

But before you construct a truly magnetic Personal Branding Statement, you have to construct it piece by piece.  To do that, you’ll need to establish four things:

• Who the heck are you (and what’s your “Special Sauce”)?

• Who is your Target Audience and what’s their problem, their need, their pain?

• How do you use your “Special Sauce” or gift to solve it?

• Give an example that proves it.

Personal Branding Statement Part 1: Who are you?  What are your unique talents?  Just as McDonald’s claims to have a “Special Sauce” and Coke claims to have a secret formula buried in a vault under Atlanta, you have a secret formula (your God-given gift) buried deep in your DNA.

What do you stand for?  Your values lie at the heart of your Personal Branding Statement. Those acquired core values, personality traits, and a host of other characteristics make you distinctive, notable, and authentically “you.”

Don’t think you have a special gift, talent, or unique trait to offer the world?  Or have  so many gifts your can’t single one out?  That’s why talent like you needs coaches to really help them shine.  Contact me or another fine personal branding coach and start your career transformation now!

Personal Branding Statement Part 2: Who do you work with or what kind of clients should I refer to you?  In other words, who’s your Target Audience?  See their faces, hear their voices, know their smells!  Be specific.  Walk their walk.  Get down and dirty.

Your Personal Branding Statement may focus on owners with unruly pets; busy moms trying to lose weight; frustrated business owners with less than $3 million in revenues.  Here’s where you want to be as specific as possible.  Know their problems; feel their pain (as a former president used to say).

Personal Branding Statement Part 3: Review clients you’ve helped and envision into the future how you will discover more of them desperately awaiting your help.

Personal Branding Statement Part 4: Proof of your  success!  Begin with a one-sentence description of your client and her problem.  Follow with how you helped (skip the details). End with the results and a happy ending!

 Next time, let me teach you how to use that golden marketing opportunity to attract a “perfect” client!

 

How?  By answering with your “What Do You Do?” Statement. Your “WDYD?” Statement is a well-constructed response that is almost guaranteed to end up producing a new client for your business!

 

Why does it work so well?

For many reasons, but primarily because it’s not an “elevator pitch”.   It’s interactive and improvisational.  More important, it tells your prospective client (1) why you are unique, (2) why your business is different from all the others, (3) who your target market is (3)  how you solve their biggest problems,  (4) proof that you do exactly what you say you do.

Now that’s a lot for a 30 seconds of their time!

Okay, so do you have a “What Do You Do?” Statement?

Sure.  Here’s my own version.

Al’s “WDYD?”(also known as my Personal Branding) Statement

Question: What do you do?

"What Do You Do?"

We rescue deeply frustrated coaches, consultants, and entrepreneurs who may offer great products or services, but are struggling to attract ideal clients.

Gosh, that sounds like a common problem!  How do you help them?

We empower each business owner to discover their own “special sauce” – their own unique value, multiply that value through personal branding, and instantly communicate that unique value to their target audience.

As a result they attract ideal clients who resonate to their unique gift,  allow them to charge more, and send them a steady stream of referrals.

 Amazing!  Tell me more …

One of my clients, Susan, reluctantly walked away from her very successful health foods MLM because, as a former RN, she knew the company wasn’t delivering the best product to her clients.

When Susan uncovered her unique gift for food supplement research and aligned it with her vision and mission, Susan was able to reshape her business model into her own powerful, congruent brand.

As a result, Susan began to attract “perfect” clients (including her old MLM!), increased revenues, rose above her competition, and experienced renewed joy and energy in her business and personal life.

Are you clueless about your brand’s value?

In the dark about whether you even have a personal branding value? If so, you’re leaving major $$ on the table!

What made her choose the green box?

According to a March 20011 survey of leading online coaches, consultants and solo professionals, less than 10% of participants have any clue what their personal branding value is worth – or worse yet – whether they could compellingly describe their personal branding value’s benefits in a couple of sentences!

 Personal Branding Value – A Top brand  adds billions to it’s company’s net worth

According to Interbrand (the top brand ranking service) here’s a short list of the best global brands of 2010 and what the brand alone added to its company’s total market value:

Branding Value alone: Coca-Cola: $70 billion;  IBM: $64 billion;  Microsoft: $60 billion;  Google: $43 billion;  GE: $42 billion;  McDonald’s: $33 billion;  Intel: 32 billion;  Disney: $28 billion.

Those billions are not what the above companies are worth – that’s what the their brand alone has contributed to their total net worth.  In some cases (like Coke), more than 50%.

Now maybe you see why you might be interest in what your personal branding value is contributing to your business’s net worth.   But no wonder the Coke brand is worth billions,  you say. It’s the “Real Thing!”   They even have a secret formula hidden deep underground in Atlanta!  My business doesn’t have anything as special as that.

Your Personal Branding DNA is your most valuable business asset

If you think that, you’re wrong.  Your business has something just as unique as Coke’s formula – if you know what to do with it!  It’s your brand DNA.  It’s you!  You are your company’s brand – not your goods or services.  But you’ve got to learn the Laws of Branding and how to package yourself as a winning brand that delivers outstanding value to your clients before the power of your brand can be truly unleashed.

As a long-time branding veteran of Madison Avenue, I can tell you that none of my Fortune 500 clients would ever launch a new product or service without a well-thought out brand strategy to back it up.

Go to market without a brand?  Unthinkable!

Yet many of the online professional who contact me do it all the time.  And when they end up with less than ideal clients, drowned out by their competition, and never getting paid close to what their worth, they wonder why.

Answer is simple: their brand (or non-existent brand) isn’t working for them.

Download my FREE book, The Power of the Ring, and, together, we can immediately start to change all that.

Politically, that rather cynical advice means: use the chaos raised by social upheaval as cover to push through otherwise unpopular agendas.

But that same advice (Never waste a crisis!) properly used, can have a profound effect on your personal and professional life.  As a successful Personal Branding coach and someone who worked with many Fortune 500 brands for many years, let me give you a prime example.

My temporary Mantannan midnight office

Years ago, while gathering new accounts for my (then) start-up ad agency, I drove a NYC cab at night.  My investors had covered office expenses and staff, but not my salary.  Had an ill wife, five school-age kids, and a NY apartment.  But I believed in myself and knew what I had to do.

But that’s not why I’m telling you this story.  I’m telling you this because when my fares would slide into my hack, they would often poke their heads through the Plexiglas window and say, “Hey, pal, you don’t sound like a cabbie.”

And I’d answer, “You’re right, I’m not.  I’m a big Madison Avenue ad executive, doing market research.  Would you mind answering a few questions?”

Then I would ask them where they were from, what they thought of our quaint native customs, restaurants, shows, mating habits, and more.   Whatever crossed my mind.  I kept it all organized in a little notebook.  I still have that diary in my desk.

There are a million stories buried in that research!  More important, this whole hack-driving incident helped me dig down and uncover one small part of my “voice” for my Self Brand.  You never know what so-called disasters from your past you can turn into a goldmine.

Like the President’s Chief-of-Staff said, “Never waste a crisis!”