What’s your X Factor?

Here’s something to think about over the weekend…

I’m going to pose you a question

Do with it what you will…

– think about it

– discard it

– change your life with it

…totally your call 🙂

And what is the question?

It’s “What’s your X Factor”?

I’ve used the same question twice this week to transform two other businesses, so thought I’d share it with you too…

I’ll quickly cover:

– what it means,

– why it could change what happens next for you, and also

– how to do it…

Let’s start first with what it is about, so you don’t start thinking about dancing dogs on a stage…

What’s an X Factor??

There’s a growing movement of really smart business owners who are spending time working on their own X factor.

“What’s an X factor and why should you care???”

That’s why I like you so much – you ask all the right questions ?

An X Factor is something that will give you an unfair competitive advantage, and allow you to 10X your business.

Sounds pretty fancy doesn’t it?

Just Imagine

But just imagine:

If every time you spoke to a potential client and say:

“We do “X””

they next said:

“I want that, when can we start?”

How would that change things for you?

You don’t hear:

erm, maybe?

erm, can i think about it?

ok, that sounds really clever!?

Instead you hear:

“I want that!!!”

It’s right in front of you!

And what i’ve found so far is usually in plain sight.

And that’s not a surprise.

Even for me, a chunk of the time I’m in the thick of my own business, so it’s hard to see the wood for the trees…

Which is why you want someone to help you

To ask you the questions, to draw it out of you…

…and what i’ve seen so far is if you:

– changed a few words,

– tweaked the name of your product or

– streamlined a bit more of your business,…

…you’d be able to 10X your business…

 

Just pause

 

Think about it

 

Take a moment to ponder the question…

“What’s my X Factor?”

“What do my clients REALLY want, that I do every day anyway, I’m just not saying it the right way, or offering it the smartest way”

I’ve got 2 real world examples for you, and the process of how you’d do it

Let’s start process first, so you can walk through with me how it works…

The Process

I had a session earlier in the week with my weekly accountability buddy

He’s one of the top Gazelles coaches in the US – he’s a smart cookie – and we were reviewing his business, asking the exact same question

(He does this same thing for his clients, and we turned the tables to look at this for his own business, because he’s ready to scale more)

And do you know what we figured out together?

There’s a process to doing this.

Funny that ?

And we started working on building an “X Factor Factory”

The X Factor Factory

It looks a bit like this:

1. LENSES – Look at your business from 3-5 different perspectives (aka through different lenses) & identify patterns and opportunities for identifying your X Factor (my smart cookie friend has some very clever lenses to use for this) – aka sifting for gold…
2. PRIORITISE – Review the list, and mentally figure out which you can scale – use my MSD structure (Marketing, Sales and Delivery) & apply simple yes/no to each on the list (for each of MSD) to get the ‘best’ order for your focus (not many will have three yes’s)
3. RESEARCH – With your shortlist of opportunities from #2 – Do market research to prioritise the shortlist (using Google Adwords/Trends/Search) – apply extra weighting to add in the market research (i.e. are people looking for ‘this’?)
4. MVP – Create the minimum viable product (MVP) for #1 in the list and offer it to the market (if you’ve not heard of MVP, its from the Lean Startup book, it basically means ‘what’s the smallest thing i can do to have it ready to sell, to prove someone is willing to pay for it’)
5. TEST & SCALE (or STOP) – if it sells, work on scaling it – if it doesn’t, either tweak it and re-test, or go to the next on the list

It is that simple.

Those 5 steps.

2 Live eXamples

And here’s 2 examples just from today of what fell out of that process:

1. In 30 minutes together this morning, we identified 8 potential opportunities in my friends business (including one where he’s the “X factor guy”), and we’re working through the research steps together for this own opportunities
2. As I thought through my own question of “what is it my clients want”, this single answer popped out: “Guaranteed Lead Generation for your business (or your money back)” – i think that’s got a nice ring to it ?

So let me ask you this:

1. If you don’t have an X factor for your business today, would you like one?
2. Would you be interested in me sharing more about X factor as I progress, and potentially loop you into the process so you can do this for yourself?

If yes, just drop me a note via my contact page – here

Nothing more for today, unless you want to keep thinking about your own X factor ?

Enjoy the rest of your day

Jamie

p.s. spent most of the day yesterday test driving cars – Lucy (my wife)’s car needs replacing – it’d be nice if there was a service out there that took all that hassle away – maybe it could be called “Concierge Cars” – they look after your car, take it for services, clean it, and when you’re ready, bring you test cars to your place, and then do the deals for you.

A bit like the franchise that charges a monthly flat fee, and has a handyman visit your house once a month to fix anything that’s needed, replace bulbs, empty gutters, and so on…

Or the barber franchise i met who was talking with me about selling barber visits via monthly subscriptions…

I bet you your X factor is very, very close…

p.p.s. for the “Guaranteed Lead Generation for your business (or your money back)” – I would wager some money, that if i helped you find your X factor, your lead gen would take care of itself…

just sayin’ 🙂

Contact Jamie