How to find and own what makes your business unique

Executive overview

Most businesses try to compete on the same terms as everyone else. The sharper path is to identify what you already do differently — through strengths, client feedback, and the things that get you into trouble.

This episode is a live coaching call using three diagnostic lenses: what you're great at, what you do to fit in, and what gets you into trouble. Combined with a three-question client survey, these reveal your authentic differentiators and brand promises.

The fastest route to differentiation is asking your best clients why they chose you, what you're actually good at, and what's odd or annoying about you.

What you're great at

• Map strengths across three time horizons: school/early life, first jobs, and today
• Personal strengths often mirror business strengths — the founder shapes the culture
• Delegation is a late-developing skill for many founders; resisting it early is common
• Owning mistakes fully — fixing the problem, compensating the client, and doing root cause analysis — is a rare and powerful differentiator
• Gallup StrengthsFinder (34 strengths) reveals what to develop and who to hire to complement you

What you do to fit in

• Where you resist fitting in is often where your distinctiveness lives
• Military or structured environments can teach followership even for natural leaders
• Growing businesses face pressure to adopt corporate processes that feel inauthentic — the challenge is importing structure without losing culture
• Look for the places where you feel most out of place; those tensions reveal your actual values

What gets you into trouble

• Outspokenness and difficulty holding back opinions is a recurring theme for founders who later become strong leaders
• The same trait that causes friction early often becomes a leadership asset when channelled deliberately
• Blind optimism ("everything will work out") can create operational blind spots — e.g. ignoring claim frequency data until it becomes a $200k premium increase
• Self-awareness about recurring patterns is more valuable than fixing individual incidents

The three client questions

Ask your best current and former clients three questions:

1. Why did you choose us — what stood out the first time?
2. What are we actually good at — now that you've worked with us for a while?
3. What's odd, unusual, or even annoying about us?

• Initial choice reasons often differ from ongoing value — both matter
• The "odd or annoying" answer sometimes reveals a barrier to competitors or a pricing opportunity
• Gather enough responses to see patterns, not individual opinions

Applying the three-question findings

• Distil responses into 2–3 repeatable themes — these become your brand promises
• Look for one thing in the "odd/annoying" column that could be leveraged rather than eliminated
• Define the characteristics of clients who respond best to your style — that's your core customer profile
• Openness to coaching, hunger to grow, and fit with your personality are valid filters for who you take on

Recommended tools and resources

• Freak Factor — Dave Rendall: reframes weaknesses as the source of your uniqueness
• The Inside Advantage — Bob Bloom: framework for identifying what makes you irreplaceable
• Gallup StrengthsFinder: use with leadership team, optionally the whole company