Happy Independence Day – What's your inspiration?

Happy belated 4th of July / Independence Day! This is a holiday that always gets me to thinking about things – what a great country we have and about all of the people that have sacrificed themselves over the last 233 years so that we can enjoy the freedoms we enjoy (and often take for granted).

I find it all very inspirational and inspiration is such an important part of what makes us tick. In fact why we do things, why we’re inspired can be every bit as important as what we do.

One of my Peer Group Advisory Boards is having a discussion on Michael Port’s Book Yourself Solid – it’s an excellent book that covers marketing with a practical approach, but also challenges you to shoot higher and do more than just make money.

Chapter 3 covers the idea of your Personal Brand – not the touchy feely personal branding that some people talk about, but a very practical tangible view of a personal brand, kind of a foundation for everything else. Specifically he boils it down to two key points:

Your Who and Do What Statement and
Your Why You Do It statement

Both of them are important, but in my experience the ‘Why you do it statement’ tends to get overlooked and it may be the more important of the two.

Your Who and Do What Statement

You’re probably familiar with the idea of a Who and Do What Statement – it’s really the basis for most elevator pitches or 30 second commercials. The idea is to simply let people know who you work with and what it is that you can help them with.

The purpose of the ‘Who’ is to clearly indicate your best target market and to narrow down the focus as much as possible – ultimately you want to attract the attention of prospects that you really want to work with, not just people that you could work with.

The ‘Do What’ portion of the statement is a clear summary of the benefit that you can provide to people. What would they get if they worked with you. As an example, here’s a variation of my Who and Do What statement:

I work with small business owners that have hit a ceiling and I help them figure out how to grow their business.

Hopefully that’s appealing to business owners that are doing well but feel like they’ve hit a plateau and they need to find a way to keep growing their business. Notice it’s not about How and I don’t use labels (business coach) – the focus must be on your client.

Your Why You Do It Statement

As Michael Port points out in the book, it’s likely that you’ll run into a lot of people that share your Who and Do What statement – which makes the ‘Why’ statement an important opportunity to differentiate yourself.

We all probably know someone that’s in a business primarily because it’s a good way to make money. Their ‘Why’ is because they know there are a lot of opportunities for making money in their industry.

However contrast that with someone that’s doing something because they enjoy helping people learn…or they genuinely are driven to help other people succeed…or they get excited about the opportunity to learn new things and help their clients put them into play.

Would you rather work with someone that’s strictly motivated by the money they can make or someone that’s genuinely excited and motivated by something…bigger? It’s not much of a choice is it?

So what’s your inspiration? Why do you do what you do? Do you share that information when you’re talking to people? Share your thoughts below.

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach