You are unique. So why not DO unique?

So, you have this itch, no, it’s more than that, it’s a desire, no, it’s more than that, it’s a craving, nope, that doesn’t explain it either. Ambition, no, too 9 to 5. A dream, yeah, that’s a good start but not quite it.

OK, you have an all consuming, ferocious, gut wrenching, eye blinding, ball tingling, manicanical bordering on murderous obsession to start your own business. A feeling that I have always thought is what Vampires must feel like when they are just so ravenous and thirsty for blood. It feels like you are drowning.

This burning in your heart is eating you up, that pain in your soul, it’s suffocating you, and it will drown you SLOWLY in a sea of REGRET if you do not realise that one thing you want more than anything else in the world.

You want to be an Entrepreneur. 

To go it alone, to shove it to The Man, to realise your dreams, to make your stand, to fulfill your passions, to make a difference, to find your purpose in life. 

Hell, maybe you WANT. TO. CHANGE. THE. FUCKING. WORLD! 

Sound about right? RIGHT?

Well, if you have had those feelings and are in business and those feelings haven't been kicked out of you by now, by the sheer cold reality of actually being ‘in business’. Then good for you brother and sister. 

You are are my type of human being. 

If you don’t feel those things passions and are in business, I feel bad for you son. 

Sounds like somewhere’s along the tracks you fell off them, or got pushed off them. Maybe you are just jaded. Maybe you have lost that spark. Or maybe you were just playing around at this thing called Entrepreneurship in the first place. 

Either ways, my advice is to go back and re-evaluate your life and your reasoning.

Go find your ONE THING. Go find that PURPOSE. 

If you feel all of those immense yearnings and are still undecided, still a little too afraid about starting up a business and changing your life forever. Still procrastinating and finding excuses not to do it…….

CLICK on my article HERE called - WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

So, you go for it. You start a business doing what you love. You have purpose in your heart. You bring all of your fire and your passion. You bring your A-Game (every single day), you bring your skills, your experience, your view of the world, your connections, your character. 

All of it. And here is THE EARTH SHATTERING NEWS.

ALL OF IT IS COMPLETELY UNIQUE TO YOU. 

No person in this whole wide world has that particular set of assets that you have. 

JUST THINK ABOUT THAT. 

That’s how special and unique you are and how massively, amazingly, stupefyingly special and unique a product, service, experience, you can bring to the world that will solve so many problems and make so many people happy and grateful.

WOW.  

AND THEN....Yet, then you go and be so dull, so formulaic, so generic, so lame, so line-towing, so afraid, even so lazy, that you cast away your uniqueness and settle for the utter mundane and for want of a better phrase;

VERY FECKING SAMEY. 

BACKGROUND. When I was doing my SWOT analysis before launching my own business, STEEL RIVER DRINKS. I looked at the websites, the backstories, the products, the designs of my competitors. Also, very important for me, I looked at their following online. What they put out. Who were my competitors. Not in a business sense, I mean, who were they in a person sense. As Butch said to Sundance “Who ARE those guys?”

Who was this person, who had started this business I was going up against in my particular field, in my area, in our selling the same things in our respective niche field of expertise and offerings. 

I use the word ‘expertise’ lightly in some cases. 

What I found did not scare me off. In fact, it inspired me to go on and start up. Because I knew that I was unique and special, not in the way my mam used to pat me on the head and say I was, you know, special. 

I just knew what I had a bag of tricks that was unlike anything my competitors had. And I WOULD BRING THAT. 

I had, in a way, an UNFAIR ADVANTAGE over them. I was me. And I WOULD SHOW THAT. I would not do samey. I would not do generic, formulaic and would certainly not do anything my competitors were doing. 

I would bring my uniqueness into every facet of what I did in this business. From the design of my products; GINS, to what I put in my gins, what I put on my website, to telling my backstory (and being brutally honest about it) and most importantly, the way I interacted with my customers and online followers.

I’ve kept that up every single day that I have been in business. 

TASK. Have an internal stocktake. Are You being true to your uniqueness in what you do in your business and how you do it? Only you will know the answer. Your heart will tell you. 

I would say this though. 

If you copy your competitors. If you do the lazy or the formulaic in your output. If your story sucks. Or you are too afraid to tell it honestly. If you don’t engage intimately with your customers. If you copy and paste and bolt and half-arse many aspects of what you do. Well, you are just not doing your uniqueness justice. 

It’s not about being the only kid in the playground with the ball. Every industry has plenty of players, that on the face of it are all playing the same business game as you.

BUT IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME that counts. 

CALL TO ARMS. Start with one aspect of your business. It could be a label, a design piece, a paragraph in a brochure, your logo, the about section of your website, the first paragraph of your Facebook page, the last reply you made (or maybe didn't) to an interaction online, it could be the way you started and ended that last email you sent. 

And just ask some friends and if you are lucky enough to have them, a mentor, to read it, look at it, feel it and then look at you. And if YOU ARE NOT ALL OVER THAT THING - If that thing doesn’t CRY YOUR NAME…..you have settled for;

VERY FECKING SAMEY. So go change it. 

CONCLUSION. Always remember; YOU ARE UNIQUE. YOU ARE SPECIAL. Go show it! 

Like this? CLICK HERE for my article JUST US BEING UNIQUE: PART 1

To see Steel River Drinks UNIQUENESS in action.