Business Building Phase 4: Interior Trims and Finishes
What makes your business unique?
A simple Google search elicits 6,390,000,000 hits on this simple question. As I dove down the rabbit, every article and resource largely said the same thing: what makes your business unique is not your product or service, but rather all the other elements of your business.
As I think about this in the context of the house construction example we’ve been exploring the last few weeks (Foundations, Structure, and Systems), the interior trims and finishes are what set one home apart from another. The molding, the paint colors, the materials you use to make your home feel a certain way, the knobs on your cabinets… all those features create a certain vibe and experience for you as the homeowner and for guests that walk through your front door.
Today, we’re going to dive into 6 ways you can think about what this looks like for your business. This is your secret sauce, and it’s an incredibly powerful (and fun!) piece of defining your business’s unique selling proposition in a very crowded marketplace.
1. Plan for real life – Your business should mesh with the life you want to build for yourself and your family. In interior design, planning always factors in how people will use the space in their homes. The same is true for business. In fact, one of my favorite authors, Michael Gerber (E-Myth Revisited) wrote: “Once you recognize that the purpose of your life is not to serve your business, but that the primary purpose of your business is to serve your life, you can then go to work on your business, rather than in it, with a full understanding of why it is absolutely necessary for you to do so.”
What is the purpose of your business? How do you want it to fit into your life? How do YOU want to show up in your business? Many of these questions are part of that initial foundation we talked about in Week 1 of this blog series, but it’s worth re-evaluating this on a regular basis. Is your business serving you and the life you want?
2. Design The Experience - Once you know how you want your business to fit into your life, you can begin to bring the elements you developed in the early foundational days – clients, offers, and pricing strategy – to life.
How will you serve your clients?
What will their experience working with your business be like from start to finish?
How will they feel before they say yes to your offer? While they’re doing the work? After the work is over?
There are no rules here. Design the experience you think will bring your clients the most value and create the biggest impact while ensuring it fits with your plan for life.
3. Juxtapose and Layer – This portion of business design is one of my favorites because it’s truly rooted in what you as the business owner want to create for the business. The concept of juxtaposition in interior design is needed so that people can appreciate differences. In homes, this looks like leveraging different patterns, textures, and materials to enhance the look and feel of space. In some cases, this means using big bold patterns and softer accents or using different shapes and scale to highlight critical elements. The same is true for your business.
What do you want to highlight in your business? For a lot of us, this comes down to messaging layers.
Layer 1: What is your business known for? Who do you do this work for? Why? How do you teach or share your work?
Layer 2: What’s impact do you want to have? What’s important to you on a personal and professional level? What do you care about? What are you passionate about? What change do you want to see in your industry? What do people know you for that is separate from your business?
Layer 3: What sets you apart? What are some of the quirky things about you that people only associate with you? What are some of the fun, non-business things you talk about? What phrases do you use on the regular?
Let me give you a practical example of what this looks like for me and my business:
Layer 1: Jessica Sato Consulting is about helping women-owned business build profitable service-based businesses without complicated technology or expensive ads. We do this through 1:1 and group coaching, workshops, and speaking.
Layer 2: I’m passionate about making sure women have the freedom to make decisions that positively impact their lives. Entrepreneurship uniquely affords women opportunities for increased autonomy, to make more money, and opens doors they may not otherwise have.
Other things people might associate with me: helping women in developing countries, menstrual equity, integrity in business, taking action, the importance of consistency and having a strategy. I want to see more online marketers and coaches being transparent about who they can really help instead of just trying to sell their product or service to anyone willing to give them a buck.
Layer 3: I love boybands and pop music. I talk about Harry Styles a lot. Rock climbing, being a mom to two elite athletes, Outlander, and reading lots and lots of books (I’m currently sitting at 52 books so far this year). I’m gluten free, vegetarian, and like to hike. “You’ve got this!” and “Crush it!” are some of my favorite phrases.
These messaging layers all shape the aesthetic of your business and help set you apart from others who may be delivering similar services. Just like a home built using a similar floor plan may seem identical on the outside, it’s these unique trims and finishes that really set them apart from each other.
4. Be authentic – This probably seems obvious, but have you ever been inside a home that just felt… off? Like a designer clearly picked out furniture and paint colors without really knowing a single thing about the owner?
This is the opposite of what you want as a business owner. Your business should be personalized for you and your clients. Authenticity, originality, and uniqueness are powerful differentiators in the business. A lot of this will link back to your messaging layers and other important things you want to stand out about your business.
5. Find the balance – It’s easy to get sucked into the process of business-building and get overwhelmed by all the choices that you need to make. Building and growing are a process, and you’ll be challenged at every turn to find the right balance of service and boundaries when working with clients, managing your time, and taking on new opportunities.
Again, there’s no right or wrong here. It’s based on you, your values, and the way in which you want your business to look and feel both internally and externally.
6. Be open to edits – I often say there are no wrong answers in business because you can go back and make choices, course correct, revamp, re-niche, and make new offers. You are the designer of the business. There will be times when you want to eliminate something that’s no longer serving you or that you no longer like. There will be times when you’ll want to try out something new. You get to add or subtract elements to meet your desired vision.
This is where being strategic with your downtime, leveraging the wisdom, support, and challenge of your Personal Board of Directors, and coaches and mentors can be incredibly helpful.
We’re in an era where there’s a lot of noise and opportunity in the online marketplace. Being unique matters. So, take the time to really think about those unique elements of your business, how you want certain things to shine, and the feeling you want your clients to have when they come in contact with your business.
When you define the things that your business does and the way in which you do them, it helps people see why they should choose you over others. This is YOUR secret sauce.
Read the other articles in The Phases of Business Building Series:
