Innovations that Leave Your Competition in the Dust

Her voice choked up as her lips quivered. I’ll never forget the words she was struggling to get out.  After spending days on and off going through brown paper bags of receipts, the final results were in.  

My wife told me I would have made more money flipping burgers at McDonald’s.

Instead, I was slaving away for 60+ hours a week, without vacations, no retirement, and zero benefits. I was spending every waking moment I had on a failed business.

I’ll never forget the humiliation and pain of failing my family. 

See, I had two different businesses. While one was racking up profits, the other one was bleeding money and sucked all the profits from the thriving business to prop up the failing one.

I was following the advice of some of the best marketing gurus in that niche.   

I couldn’t understand how my second business became a poster child for just another failed business statistic.   

Meanwhile, my other business broke every rule and was thriving.

Just 1 year earlier I had a SCORE executive review my first business and they couldn’t even comprehend it. They were totally confused as I explained it.

Yet they gave my second business two thumbs up and assured me it would  be a success.

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks.

You can follow the best marketing and sales advice and still fail. 

Winning in business is about redefining the rules, innovating, and engineering growth.

See, my first business sold digital PDF plans for sheds and barns.  It totally violated the norms for how my competitors did business, yet it was a smashing success.

On the other hand, my home design business was modeled after other successful home designers.  The problem was I couldn’t win playing by the rules the industry had already created.

I was following the norms of what was acceptable marketing based on the rules my competitors had already created. 

Looking back I realize my website, messaging and marketing we’re just like my competitors.  

All that did was box me in and make me another homogenized white milk commodity to be price shopped and discarded at a moment’s notice.

Think about it. 

The same person with the same skills playing by 2 different sets of rules created wildly different results. 

The difference was 1 business was successful while the other failed.

I struggled around 60 hours a week with my home design business while I probably spent 5 hours a week on my digital PDF plans business.

The same person was running both businesses.

Yet I created radically different results.  

Instead of having two wildly profitable businesses, I settled for far less than I should have.

Let me ask you a few questions:

• Are you playing the game of business with rules you did not create?

• Are you settling for “normal” growth results where you get only a fraction of what’s possible?

• Are you comparing your growth to your competitors or your true potential?