It’s the start of a new year and a new decade. You’ve been thinking of doing your own thing for a while so is this going to be the year you finally make the leap from “Job Jail”? How do you know you can make it on your own? And in this sluggish economy?
I've been advising people for 5 years on how to make their own business work and whether they’re a freelancer, consultant, coach, speaker, or internet entrepreneur, I’ve discovered one defining factor that consistently separates those that succeed from those that struggle.
The factor I’m talking about isn’t having a fancy website, or masses of web traffic, or the smartest marketing, or even the best sales skills. It’s something more fundamental than that. The distinguishing trait of those whose businesses really take off is that they sell the right thing – they have a killer offer.
Until you've got a killer offer – something a lot of people really want – all the marketing in the world won't help you. So how do you create one?
Three keys to building your killer offer
1. It must be based on something you love doing. Firstly, it takes a lot of time and effort to build a successful business so you have got to choose something that you will enjoy working on and will hold your interest. It just won't work otherwise. Secondly, if you build a business around the things you love doing a lot, you’ll already have a competitive advantage. It’s hard to compete with someone who loves what they do. You’ll be happier too and as recent research shows, happiness leads to success.
2. It must be something you have real talent for – but understand that most people's idea of talent is far too narrow. Your greatest talents might be things that never show up on a CV: the ability to connect with almost anyone, your endless supply of creative ideas, an obsession with getting the details of a project just right. Focus on those things that come easily to you. As marketing guru Seth Godin says, do what you’re best in the world at, quit everything else.
3. Your offer must meet a pressing need - it should solve a problem or address a pain that lots of people have. When you work out what this is, you’ll find you connect directly with the people you want to work with and dramatically reduce the time to win business. To find the pain you address, think about this: What’s the biggest concern for the people in the area you work in? What do they wake up in the morning stressing about? What often irritates or frustrates people that you know you can help with? Once you know what it is, and offer your solution to address it, you speak directly to what is at the forefront of your prospects’ minds.
The good news is that you can start to experiment with all this before you quit your job. Start taking opportunities to do what you really want to do in your spare time. Don’t spend all your time researching on google, get out there and try different things, see what you’re good, what you enjoy, and what people most need from you. When you start to get it right, you’ll find you gather momentum, generate word of mouth referrals, and be able to start charging proper money.
John Williams is author of Screw Work, Let’s Play: How to do what you love & get paid for it to be published by Pearson in June 2010. He is a former Senior Managing Consultant at Deloitte and has consulted independently to the BBC, Siemens and Accenture.
'Do What You Love and Make It Pay' Programme 2010
Starting on January 18th John is leading a small group of people step by step through a process to find their killer offer and tell the world about it. It’s packed with tools, tricks and blueprints to show you how to finally get paid well to do the work you love doing. If you know you want to go self-employed and have some idea of what you want to do, this will accelerate your progress way beyond what you can achieve on your own.
Learn more about the programme here
Follow us on