0:14 um hi can you hear me mom yeah okay [Music] welcome i wasn't sure if it was a scam or it was really you no no it's it's really me so i i'm doing this every um every wednesday so last wednesday i interviewed my friend uh jeff morgan who has uh covenant wines
0:49 up in berkeley and he talked about his story of going from being a jazz musician and the orchestra leader for the prince of monaco to uh being a kosher winemaker so um and i'm doing this one uh i don't have a guest this week i'm going to be talking about uh um an idea from my book um and then next week i don't remember who my guest is next week but uh um i know i have guests for the next uh
1:24 three weeks booked and more people after that so um let's see i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to go ahead and get started and so i'm going to be recording this so for all of you who may be watching live streaming on facebook or linkedin or twitter or youtube welcome welcome to the way to wow people
2:00 making money so this time each week we talk about effective and remarkable ways that you can make a living so that may be in a particular job or it may be starting a business either way and um although typically i will have a guest like i did last week um if you if you logged in uh right on time you heard me talking to uh my mom is is on the is online with me today um
2:36 you heard me talking about my guest last week uh um jeff morgan who's the uh founder and uh owner of uh with his wife jody of covenant wines um so this week i'm gonna do a solo session because i realized in in talking with jeff that there's a fundamental concept underlying the idea of um not only just making money which there's lots of ways to make money but making money in a way that uh will be satisfying that will be
3:11 enjoyable um and that also will i think do more for you than uh merely putting dollars in the bank i think especially um so for those of you who um are in the military i i saw this quite a bit when i uh coached uh folks coming off of active duty who were going into civilian life and military service for many many people is a very meaningful job to have um over and above whatever you know financial compensation there is
3:46 and when when um military when service members come to civilian life oftentimes what they find they miss most is that part of of what they were doing that sense that there's there's something bigger going on than merely making money so um i think that's a an important aspect of the whole idea of people making money so like i said at the beginning there's lots of ways to do that but we i think it's best if we can do it in a you know i know this is a word we hear bandied
4:21 about a lot but a sustainable way meaning in a way that that you can embrace that we can embrace and really have it be a meaningful part of our lives so um back in 2017 i wrote a book called uh the eight deadly sins of job hunting it was it was uh for the military people that i was coaching at the time um it was subtitled uh five steps to finding a job you'll love and it was a uh step-by-step task by task process
4:58 to help people get a job and because what i again what i found through my coaching was people knew certain parts or they could do certain parts well but there were other parts they were leaving out and oftentimes the things they were leaving out were the most important parts so things like understanding the culture of a company before you decide that's where you want to work so i have a friend who very badly wants to go to work for one of the big tech companies apple or facebook or whatever and um i was talking to her about that
5:34 and i said do you really think the culture of these companies is something you're going to like and funny enough she said no but i want to work there anyway it's like okay i mean look each of us are going to have our goals they're going to have we're going to have what we want to do i think i understand why she wants to pursue a job at a company she doesn't like uh or at a company whose culture she's pretty sure she's not gonna like you know what do you what are you gonna do you know there's different motivations but i think that you know understanding the environment in which we're going to be working is is very very important to
6:11 finding um a way for us to make money that that that you know that will that we'll enjoy and it will be meaningful so another area that i find um people often overlook is is the whole idea of networking of making contacts so um you know you might have gone to a networking event at some point in your life and and it seems like the idea of a networking event is to collect as many business cards as you possibly can right um and there are people who who advocate uh that particular process uh i i do not
6:46 i think that the most important thing you can do at a networking event it because especially if it's a face-to-face networking event which is really the best kind is to make some kind of substantial connection with the person with people that you're meeting so that they will want to continue to get to know you so the problem with collecting a lot of business cards is you have no idea whether any of those people are are ones who are going to want to keep in touch with you and build a relationship with you afterwards so you know are you better off collecting you know 50 business cards
7:21 um and finding out that you know four people maybe at best uh want to establish a relationship with you and having to sift through all those 50 potential contacts to find those for or are you better off taking your time at the event to really connect with five to ten people that you know as you leave the event with their business card in your hand or you know with your virtual business card on your phone that when you call them they're going to take your call and want to speak to you and i would suggest that the latter is is is much better so those
7:57 those are the kind of things that i talk about in my book what we're going to talk about today is something i call your unique value proposition so i mentioned this a little bit uh last week when i was talking to jeff and while i i don't think that you know jeff had um intentionally uh developed his unique value proposition um what i what i do think is that um he understood maybe intuitively
8:32 what the different aspects of it are and and and he combined them effectively so that he's always able to do what he really wants to do what he's really enjoyed has been passionate about and i think that that really is the key to jeff's success so i'm gonna um um screen share with you here so you can see the graphic that i developed for this uh well or maybe i'm not uh let's see let's see if this is gonna come up
9:12 no well hmm let's see nope don't worry about that you know this always was a simple thing to do before but maybe not let's let's just let's just try this okay see technology is a great thing when it
9:47 works and when it doesn't it is not so great let's see what this is going to do here [Music] let's try this once more um whiteboard well you know what let's try let's just try and do a whiteboard i don't still doesn't want to do it
10:23 something about privacy okay um security and privacy probably could not okay preference okay well you know what rather than um fool around with that and waste a lot of time um i'm i'm gonna unfortunately i can't i the graphic won't come up but hopefully you can visualize it in your mind um it's actually a pretty simple graphic so when we talk about a unique value
10:59 proposition really what it comes down to is understanding three aspects of what it is you want to do and what it is you may be able to do okay so it starts out typically with understanding your your skills your experience and your knowledge or your your your knowledge experience and and and sorry your skills knowledge and experience is probably a better better order for things okay so
11:36 um whether you're just starting out in in your professional life whether you've had a long career whether you're getting toward the end of it all of us have skills knowledge and experience that has value in the job marketplace or in the in an entrepreneurial setting okay so the key though is to understand how you find what those are okay and i'm going to talk about that in a couple of minutes after i review each of the three
12:11 elements briefly okay so the first one is understanding your skills knowledge and experience the second one is you want to understand what it is you like to do you enjoy doing or you know you have passion about or you love doing look sometimes getting to the level of love doing it or being passionate about doing it like i love to eat chocolate okay i have not found the job yet right where people will pay me to eat chocolate although i know those jobs do
12:46 exist i've read about people whose entire professional career is getting paid to eat chocolate um so it may not be something exactly that we're passionate about but it hopefully it will be something actually that we actually like doing okay so that's kind of i would say that's kind of the minimum level we want to get you on that second element something you like doing okay and the third one is something for which there is demand in the marketplace okay so in other words there are companies individuals
13:24 out there that will pay you for what it is you want to do okay so if you think about it and i'm gonna i'm gonna look at the graphic even though you can see it so if you've got the skills knowledge and experience to do something and you have passion for it but there's no market demand you have a really great hobby right right and that's what chocolate is for me chocolate is is my probably my biggest hobby these days okay if you have um skills
14:01 and and knowledge and experience to do something and there's market demand for it but you don't enjoy doing it or you don't have passion for it you've got a job you're not gonna like you're gonna be bored or you're you're you're just going to end up really disliking the job it's going to be drudgery going and doing the job or running that business every day okay and if you have if there's market demand for it and you really enjoy or you think you really will enjoy doing something a particular job or having a particular kind of business but you don't have the skills knowledge and
14:37 experience so you're unqualified and and you're probably really going to struggle to be successful in your chosen field right so we need we need to have all three of those skills knowledge and experience is one the second is an enjoyment of or a passion for whatever it is we want to do and third is market demand so if you think of each of those as a circle overlapping where all three overlap is sort of a triangle with rounded sides
15:14 that is your unique value proposition that's the point where you can say to a potential employer look i can do this job i know i'm going to really enjoy doing this job and you need someone to do the job that's why it's a job opening right it has all three elements and so you know i'm the person for you to fill this job that's that's what you're looking to be able to do all right so now having sketched the broad um strokes of of a of a unique value proposition
15:49 let's go let's go back now and look at each of those elements in greater detail okay so first of all let's talk about uh skills experience skills knowledge and experience right so perhaps you are a recent college graduate you say well i i i've got some knowledge okay i got knowledge in college oh gosh that that's that's a terrible rhyme anyway um so i i got some knowledge from my classes um you know
16:24 maybe let's say you maybe you have a business degree right so you got some knowledge there okay good good but the reality is you almost for sure have other knowledge that has value in the marketplace so um did you babysit when you were a teenager and you say well yeah but what kind of knowledge did i get there well i don't know if your babysitting experience was like mine you got knowledge in how to manage difficult people because let's face it tired hungry children are difficult
17:01 people to manage okay and so you know if you did a lot of babysitting and you with a wide variety of children okay so you have significant knowledge about how to manage those you know those difficult people right and and while i don't want to say that your co-workers are you know are going to be children i don't mean it like that but you know what even when adults are you know tired and hungry we can be a little bit cranky so that kind of knowledge how did you deal
17:37 with you know children can that be adapted to how you might deal with your co-workers if you were in some kind of supervisory role or some kind of management role okay so i would i would think you know think as broadly as you can so if you babysat for three or four years you've got three or four years of knowledge under your belt on how to deal with challenging people okay so your knowledge is more broad-based than just formal education you've you've learned in other arenas and i would encourage you to think about all the
18:13 other places where you may have gained knowledge that you can then use as as as proof that you can do a particular job okay so so that's that's kind of the knowledge portion of it now let's look at this the skills portion again we tend to think of skills as okay well i went to a training program so uh you know maybe i i took a you you took a program in um i don't know woodworking right and you really you know you're interested in getting into carpentry or cabinetry or something like that okay well so good so you've got to do you
18:48 know you got trained in the skills for that and it's there but the reality is too you have probably gained skills from a lot of other things that you've done that are that are um valuable in the marketplace so um were you in some kind of um youth group um as a young person um the boy scouts girl scouts um uh 4-h all of these kinds of organizations they teach a wide variety
19:26 of skills and those skills oftentimes have value in the marketplace and let me give you an example of where that's recognized so if you are an eagle scout okay you you got that top rank in the boy scouts and you join the united states military you're as an enlisted person you don't have to join as an e1 which is the lowest enlisted rate that exists i believe they take you in as an e3 right so you're jumping
20:02 two levels merely not merely because it's a lot of hard work to become an eagle scout but because you're an eagle scout the military recognizes that you have a certain skill level and knowledge level as well that's valuable in the military okay and depending on who the employer is the same may be true for a private employer as well so you may you know now for the for an employer who doesn't particularly value you know your being an eagle scout just an eagle scout
20:38 you can still break down the kind of skills that you learned in scouting that could potentially be valuable to that particular employer okay let's say you played in some kind of youth sports league same thing maybe you played football baseball lacrosse tennis all of these sports taught you a lot of skills okay and when i say skills by the way i mean that very broadly in the sense of not just skills but also um sort of character traits so for example
21:15 um if you were a competitive tennis player you you probably have learned to be very self-disciplined so you say well self-discipline isn't a skill well that's that's true but it's a character trait and and in today's job market a very valuable character trait okay especially on a first job where frankly you know expectations can be pretty low for entry-level jobs like showing up on time right so if you were on a profession i'm not a professional if you were on a a school sports team or a youth league sports team
21:51 you had to learn just basic skills of showing up on time being prepared working hard understanding teamwork okay maybe not on a tennis tennis obviously is a solo sport so maybe that doesn't contribute to teamwork or maybe it does maybe you played on a tennis team i played on tennis team when i was in junior high school right and um believe me what i learned was teamwork because mostly i had to sit out the matches because i was a horrible tennis player right so those kinds of activities
22:26 also have helped you build skills now by the way you may have done some of those kind of activities as an adult or as you know as a young adult same thing goes you may have hobbies sports leagues you've been involved with all of those kind of things you may have done volunteer work okay that you didn't get paid for but you may have worked with a non-profit maybe you were on a non-profit board or you were a volunteer for a non-profit all of these experiences taught you or helped you gain skills that may have value in the marketplace
23:03 they may have value for a an employer that you're talking to and it may help you get get a job or or even start a business at a level higher than you might have thought you otherwise could right so maybe as an adult maybe you coached a youth a team in a youth sport league well that's that's tremendous you you have coaching ability team team building ability right um organizational ability all of those things maybe you didn't have to use those so much in a job you
23:38 had but if you've been coaching a a youth team for maybe three four years you've got a lot of experience in those fields and you can transfer that over to your to your job hunt or to your desire to start a business so again as you look at your skills i encourage you to be as broad thinking about them as you possibly can be when you do what's called a skills assessment okay and there are people out there who you know help people do that um if you choose to work with such a person great
24:14 um i i honestly can't make any recommendations for that um and i i will um i'll hopefully remember to mention this um again at the end of the the broadcast today but um i'm happy to give anybody who who watches this show a free pdf copy of my book and in my book it explains how to do a skills assessment and it talks in even in even greater depth than than i'm doing right now on how you can do that it also has forms that you can use to make it easier
24:49 to to put all this down in writing because in the end that's the best way to do it is to put it down in writing so you can see it you can look at it and and and really get a good sense of what are my skills okay what what is my knowledge what are my skills okay so then finally you want to look at experience okay and all the things that i've said over the last few minutes about knowledge and skills applies to experience as well so obviously any paid job you have that's that's job experience okay i think we all understand that
25:24 relationships so you also um have um you also have experience um you may also gain experience have gained experience through other kinds of things again working with a non-profit or working for a non-profit uh you know coaching a a a team or being a part of a team um you know you may have even gained some experience while you were in school so were you uh um uh an aide to a professor when you were in when you were in school
26:00 so um you gained experience in um organization in evaluation all of those kinds of things can add up to your experience maybe you did some volunteer teaching or some volunteer training okay well that's that's very valuable because again once you once we get out of sort of the the sort of low lowest tier entry-level jobs and into jobs that require us to to supervise or manage other people's one of the most valuable skills we can have
26:35 is the the ability to train and coach other people right so while you may not have done that professionally yet you may have done it in some other context and then so you can take that experience and transfer it over into your professional life so let me give you an example one of the military people i coached was um an information technology specialist in the navy and when we started talking what he really wanted to do was get a job at um one of the big tech companies
27:10 um and and he was looking at very very entry-level positions despite the fact that he was at a pretty uh a sort of upper mid-level position enlisted position in the navy so i asked why why are you going for such junior positions when you're at a much higher position in the navy they said well but i mean i wasn't an officer and i i wasn't a chief petty officer i said well that's true but you were a petty officer first class you were you know one step away from being a chief petty officer i said you must have
27:46 supervised somebody and he said well i mean not officially i said well okay but what about unofficially he said well yeah of course i was the first class so he he supervised people all the time right and i said i said you must have trained people he said well i was i was never a designated trainer it's like gotcha in in the military for those of you who don't know like everything there's designations for this and that it's all very very you know formalized situation but the reality is a lot of informal things go on as well
28:22 and he had a tremendous experience training people right that's as a first-class petty officer more of your time is spent training and teaching uh sailors that are junior to you than it is actually doing the work because you're being prepared to become a chief petty officer where that's essentially all you do right so after we talked about those kind of things for a while he was able to redo his his resume and more importantly reframe his perspective on himself and he ended up getting a job at one of
28:58 the big tech companies and i think he started at low six figures like 110 000 a year i think it was he was just blown away that that he was able to take the experiences he had had working even though they weren't formal from his standpoint and used that to get not just a you know a job at the company that he would really like to they really like working for but at much higher level than he thought right and and the point of the story is not oh well you know kevin coats this guy to you blah blah blah no no it was all i
29:33 did was help him open up his eyes a little bit you can do this for yourself right it just it just takes kind of really digging in what did i actually do forget what you were called or whatever title you might have had that's not nearly as important as the activities that you actually did in whatever jobs you've had in whatever volunteer positions you've had in whatever you know academic experiences you've had what you've done that's the key and and i would encourage you to focus
30:08 on that and write those things down okay so that's that's the first part of your um unique value proposition your knowledge skills and experience and they all come down to doing this sort of skills assessment and again i use that word skills in in a very broad way so i would start there that's the most concrete thing that you can develop and and therefore it's something you can dig into right away and and get yourself thinking in this unique value prop is a unique value uh proposition mode okay so
30:45 that that's the first thing all right now the second thing we i talked about is finding something that you like okay and i i you know i kind of joked around i like to eat chocolate right um i mean for anyone who knows me i really like to eat chocolate right i mean it's it's it's really is a deep deep passion of mine if you were to look in my kitchen you would see a cart with uh four or five of those slide out baskets in it and they're all filled with chocolates that i've gotten um in my quest to try you know every type of kosher chocolate that exists in the world
31:20 right so i mean honestly i would i would love to get a job um working in in chocolate it's it's a deep passion of mine and i'm still trying to figure out how to do that so one of the things i'm looking at is maybe working with some chocolatiers taking my knowledge skills and experience to help them expand their businesses right and then they'll give me free chocolate that seems like a good trade-off to me for sure right so when i when we but when we think about well what is it i really like to do
31:58 i would i wouldn't hesitate to be a little bit fanciful to be a little bit sort of dreamy almost um i mean do you another one of my passions is reading i love to read right it's all rainy out here in in los angeles right now there's nothing better on a rainy day than to light a fire in the fireplace have a nice glass of wine and a good book right and but again you know i i don't know of any job that will pay me to do that but um but but i'm definitely passionate about reading so what are you passionate about what do you really like to do like do you like to drive
32:35 right there's lots of jobs out there that involve driving right so long-haul truckers are in huge demand right now you say i can't be a long-haul trucker well i don't know if you love to drive why not they make really good money right and for the most part you don't have someone looking over your shoulder while you're driving a big rig coast to coast or something like that right so um i so again i would encourage you to really broaden your perspective think about the experiences that you've had in your life that were most
33:12 fulfilling most enjoyable that you you know when when you think about you know happy times you've had in your life these are the kinds of things that you did okay and make a list of them um one good way to do this is is is go somewhere away from all the you know family responsibilities all of the you know craziness of everyday life maybe some place quiet maybe out in nature bring yourself a notebook maybe you know bring your your headphones you can
33:47 listen to some music that you find inspiring and just let you know maybe walk and let your mind kind of free flow i mean i do this when i run i just sort of turn my mind onto you know just automatic and just let the thoughts come okay and oftentimes that's when i get some of my you know best ideas or deepest insights into whatever it is i'm i'm working on so i would encourage you to figure that out maybe go take a bike ride something like that um oftentimes movement gets us thinking in a different way than when
34:22 we're you know sitting at a desk or sitting at a table or something okay talk to people who know you well and ask them what is it you think i really like to do right because one of the things that we do about things we like is we tend to talk about them but since we talk about them all the time we don't necessarily perceive it that that's what it's what it's about but the people we talk to especially if it's something they hear about from us all the time that's what they remember about us right so i just going back to my whole example about chaga you talk to any of
34:58 my friends what is kevin like chocolate they'll say like right off the top there chocolate or or whiskey those will be the two things they say right um so talk to people who know you well ask them what what do you find really kind of turns me on you know what what are the kind of things that i like what do i like to do what do i like to be involved with okay and get them to be as specific as you can the more detailed you can be the better okay so um maybe you're you know i don't want to make this a political thing maybe you're
35:33 passionate about politics well okay great but let's dig below the surface of that what is it about politics that you're passionate about is it the issues is it the the sort of press and and give and take and push and pull of of the negotiations of politics is it the opportunity to help other people is it the opportunity to create a legacy really what is it about that about politics that that really you know that really kind of sparks your interest
36:08 right and it could be more than one thing of course okay so rather than staying on the surface and saying well this you know this is what interests me so i'll i'll use chocolate what interests me about chocolate well obviously the taste right chocolate is delicious to eat but but it's a there's a whole gestalt to chocolate where it's grown how it's grown um the people involved in growing it what their lives are like how it gets from where it's grown to where it's manufactured why it's typically manufactured someplace different than
36:43 where than where the cacao is grown and then how that manufacturing process works the different steps of it and how that yields chocolate that tastes different feels different on the tongue all of these things i find fascinating so it's it's it's more than just i have a fascination for chocolate it's it's all these little things that go into it okay so for whatever your interests are once you've figured out what they are then start breaking them down if you can into components and figure out what are the components i really that that really
37:19 fascinate me okay and then because the components may apply to another type of job or a different type of business that you'll find that you like a lot that may more readily have the third element we're going to talk about okay so you know um in the case of uh politics right so maybe one of the things that most that most interests interesting about politics is um the sort of you know give and take
37:54 and push and pull of the negotiations and trying to get you know a particular uh piece of legislation passed or something like that right so there's lots of other areas lots of other jobs lots of other businesses that have that same sort of negotiating aspect to them right so if that's really what turns you on about politics so you can you know look making a living in politics can be very very difficult right and and the reality is most politicians spend a large part of their time fundraising and you may that may just not be something you like to do
38:31 right so so becoming a politician may not be the right path for you but there are other places where you can get that push and pull and that negotiation thing where that skill is where that skill and that desire to be involved with it is very very valuable that doesn't require you to do some other things that you don't like to do at all right so that's the value in figuring out what you like or what you have passion for and then breaking it down into components if you can it'll give you a wider range of choices or at least give you some alternative choices
39:07 that may be more practical okay so the last component of this so we we've we've done the first component is again uh knowledge skills and experience the second component is something you like to do or are passionate about okay so the third component is market demand okay in the end if people or businesses won't pay you for what it is you want to do like i said a while ago all you've got is you've got a great hobby but you don't have a way to make money right so
39:45 this can because this involves going outside of ourselves now this may be a little bit more challenging to figure out and this is where your ability to or not your ability but your the need to talk to other people is going to be very important okay so um let's let's just sort of you know follow along um my my myself example of loving chocolate right so how have i examined whether there's a demand for you know a passion for chocolate in the marketplace
40:21 right well so what i've done is first of all i i've read a lot of books i have a whole library of books on chocolate in my kitchen that's one thing i've done every opportunity i i have i talk to people who are already making a living in the chocolate business so there's a fantastic chocolate manufacturer um actually just not even 10 minutes from where i live it's called letterpress and they're a bean to bar chocolate maker meaning they start with the cacao beans and they met and they manufacture chocolate bars they're exquisite they're
40:58 one of the best literally in the world right so um i've i've talked to it's a husband and wife who own the company or and run it and i've talked to them about how how they've done it how did they get started um how do they keep their business going how they expanded it right um i uh a couple weeks ago i had ordered some chocolates from a company in new york and i thought there was a mistake and so lo and behold the owner of the company called and left me a message saying you know she wanted to help me make sure that mistake got corrected we ended up spending an hour and a half on the phone
41:33 talking about the chocolate business i got a lot of great insights from her on how i could potentially you know make a living in chocolate right so what you what i would encourage you to do is seek out other people who are involved in the area that you're thinking about being involved with and talk to them do what are called informationals or informational interviews i don't like the term interview because it sounds like you're you're asking for something that that is is uh you know a burden on other
42:10 people it's not a burden on other people to talk to them about what they're doing and especially what they like to do in many in many ways it's it's it's a kindness to them because they get to talk about something that's important to them so that's why i just call them informationals right and and um you can go on linkedin to find people like this ask among your friends do you know someone who's involved with you know whatever would you refer me to them would you introduce me to them and and tell them look i'm not looking for a job i'm i'm not asking you for anything other than to tell me about your experience
42:45 working in this field or working in this area or looking for a job in this area or maybe they're not professionally employed in it maybe it's it is a hobby for them tell me about your hobby doing this thing have you ever thought about doing it professionally have you looked into that what have you found right and and this is what i found people like to tell you about themselves and i don't mean that in any egotistical way but but but look if if i'm if i'm excited about something i i want to share that with other people
43:20 hopefully it will help them out and i think that's how most people are right and if someone doesn't want to share with you okay so move on to the next one no big deal for whatever reason maybe they don't have time or look there's lots of reasons it's almost for sure not a reflection on you but reach out to as many people as you can find as many people as you can connect with if you can meet them face to face i know that's a challenge these days with covet and all that kind of stuff but if you can meet with them face to face that's best because you have the best shot at establishing a relationship that you can build on okay but if not you know talk
43:57 to them on the phone do a zoom meeting or do a google hangouts meeting or you know whatever you've got um there's all kinds of communication tools out there today whether it's whatsapp and all all these things okay um and i mean we you can communicate with anybody in the world essentially for free these days it's just it's just astonishing what you can do and so don't limit yourself you know just because someone maybe doesn't live in the same country you live in in some ways that may be even better because they're not going to be hemmed in by assumptions that you know
44:32 maybe we have here in the united states that maybe in india they don't have those assumptions there right there they have a completely different perspective that's really really valuable so i would encourage you to look as far beyond your local area as you possibly can and again because communication is is so easy these days um it really um you know gives you a tremendous ability to um engage with resources far beyond where you could have even just just you know a few years ago okay
45:08 so the idea behind this third one is to find out are there people or companies who would pay me to do this thing that i really would like to do okay now a lot of people especially this i find this especially true of people who are thinking about starting a business so they'll they'll say to me no one is doing this this has got to be a great business idea because no one i'm going to be the first one in that's not necessarily true
45:45 there may be a reason why no one is doing it and it may be because other people have tried it and there was no market for it oftentimes the best business ideas are ones where there are other people doing it they just haven't cornered the market yet right so even if you're if especially if you're investigating a business idea i i i would caution you about kind of catching yourself in the trap of thinking oh nobody's doing this great i've got a wide open market i would encourage you to look more
46:20 deeply is there a reason why no one is doing this so reach out to people who might have tried doing it did you try doing this what was your experience how come you're not doing it now right um and then and there may be a real simple reason why they're not doing it now and that's because they couldn't make any money about now i wouldn't necessarily stop there they may not have been able to make money ask them what do you think was preventing you from making a go of this from from being able to make money well you know
46:55 x y and z hmm okay if you had done a b and c do you think that might have changed the picture i don't know and you might say i don't want to share my ideas with them they'll steal them look don't worry about that the best thing that could possibly happen in many cases is that other people will try and do what you're doing and that will create excitement about it in the marketplace and and that will expand that will increase the likelihood that you'll be successful let me just give you a quick example about how how this
47:31 this has worked in actual practice so when starbucks first started becoming a thing small individual coffee shops coffee places they were everyone was thinking they're going to get wiped out because starbucks is going to move in take all the business and they're going to close that's not what happened starbucks would move into a location there could be another coffee place you know caddy corner across the street and they both increased and that's because starbucks was putting
48:07 so much time so much effort so much money into the promoting the idea of of serving premium coffee great coffee it benefited almost all businesses that were committed to doing that now for businesses that were serving a crummy product yeah it drove them out of business but you know what if an individual coffee shop that was serving really great coffee that wasn't starbucks just an individual place open across the street from them probably would have shut them as well right but a lot of these the reason a
48:43 lot of these small coffee places were so successful is they were already doing what starbucks was doing before there was such a thing as a starbucks and so they benefited from all of the you know kind of publicity if you will that starbucks brought to the marketplace right so you know i would keep those kinds of ideas in mind especially as you pursue a particular you know the the feasibility of particular business idea um you know in general if other people aren't doing it that that prob may not necessarily be a good sign on the other
49:18 hand if you can find out why people aren't doing it and and and you think you've got something that will overcome that problem well so then maybe you do have a viable idea okay you do have something for which there will it will turn out there'll be market demand okay and and and again i know i'm repeating myself but i think some of these points um you know deserve emphasis don't be afraid that people are going to steal ideas from you rarely does is is that an an issue and if you're really excited about an idea and you're really intent on moving forward you're
49:54 going to do so and and your success is not going to hinge on whether someone else is trying to do it as well it's it's more going to hinge on whether you're seeing all the potential um all the potential and all the potential pitfalls and are able to navigate both of those lanes if you will successfully okay and the best way to figure that out is to be talking to other knowledgeable people who can who can help you identify where opportunity is where pitfalls are you know go in the up with the opportunity avoid the pitfalls okay
50:31 because none of us is able to come up with everything on our own right um not you know this is a knock on him i i i've never met him but i suspect if you spoke to elon musk he would tell you that a lot of the best ideas for either tesla or spacex came from other people they didn't all come from him maybe the initial ins well presumably the initial inspiration for them came from him but he's he's a brilliant enough guy to realize the best thing he can do is surround himself with more brilliant people right because
51:06 together that's that'll make the best shot at really being successful and you can do the same thing they don't have to be working for you but they can have an interest in helping you um even if at some point they decide wow you know what what what what uh kevin is doing is so interesting and and and i i know a lot about it myself i'm gonna jump in and do it too great come on let's let's let's build it together right so let's let's let's take a review here because we're we're coming up uh uh on our almost uh almost on an hour so your unique value proposition has
51:41 three parts to it your knowledge skills and experience that's one you want to do a skills assessment two what do you like what do you have passion for and you're gonna have to do some soul searching talking to friends and people who know you well family members maybe what is what do i really like to do thinking to yourself about that what really turns me on and three what is their market demand for what will people or companies pay me to do okay that's true of a job it's true of a business
52:16 either way and and in these days a lot of jobs are really almost like being in a business right a lot of jobs are are you know uh contractor jobs if you will where you're working for a company but you're actually kind of an independent contractor so you know the some of these lines have gotten kind of blurry especially over the last couple of years so as we you know each week we talk to a new guest about um how they make money how they found this remarkable um you know job or started this remarkable
52:52 business i i hope you'll keep those three things in mind and and i'm gonna have them in the back of my head and and work to help them help the guests bring them out so that we can better understand how we might be able to replicate their success because in the end that's what this this is all about that's why i'm doing this is to help give you ideas on how you can pursue your own professional
53:27 iterative success is fine but it's more time consuming we can advance more quickly if we can learn from other people especially from other people's missteps right um and you know i i've mentioned it a couple of times now i encourage you if you didn't see last week's episode with jeff morgan jeff is such a an intelligent thinker he he speaks so well i really encourage you even if you have no interest in wine although if you're a friend of mine i can't believe that that would possibly be the case but go back uh to last week's episode it's
54:03 it's it's on the youtube channel for the way to wow and and check out what jeff has to say i think you will find it very very interesting feel free to leave a comment there if you have a question especially leave a question and either jeff or i will answer it we'll respond to it okay okay so we i just have a couple minutes left here so i i want to reiterate this um my book the eight deadly sins of job hunting now it is targeting military people but the reality is even if you've never been in the military i think you
54:38 will find it very useful as if if you are pursuing a job hunt especially if you want to get a job doing something you really like at maybe a higher level than you thought might be possible for you so if you would like a car a free pdf copy of my book um all you have to do is send an email to the way to wow show at bemmel.com okay i'll put it in the the notes for this episode um and when it posts on youtube but again the way to wow show at bemmel.com devil is just like my name
55:15 b-e-m-e-l.com send me an email saying kevin would you please send me a copy of your book okay and i'm gonna do two things i am gonna add you to my email list if you're not already on it okay so you'll you'll learn about future broadcasts of the show and other things that i'm doing and then i'm to send you a link to my google drive where you'll be able to download a pdf copy of the book and once you have that now it is a step-by-step process but you don't have to follow you know you have to start it you know number one and go all the way through you know 45 or whatever it is
55:51 you can look at the table of contents and see well gee i really need help with networking or i really need help figuring out my uvp my unique value proposition so you know just kind of use it as a you can use it as a resource in that sense to shore up maybe you just need some help writing your resume okay so i have a whole section on how to write a resume and cover letters okay so you know use it for for what it is or maybe you really need a process that will get you from the very beginning of a job hunt to finding that job okay so start at the beginning and work through each task
56:26 each exercise one by one and then if you have questions or you get stuck shoot me an email okay i'll be happy to respond and hopefully i can help you get unstuck right so um gosh we're coming up here on 59 minutes uh i guess it shouldn't be a surprise that a rabbi can talk for an hour without stopping um although you know i never think of myself as being quite that uh talkative but anyway um i thank you very very much for joining me um if you have any questions
57:01 um all of the um this this uh uh you know this broadcast will automatically upload to uh linkedin facebook twitter and uh youtube and so on any of if you're on any of those social media platforms feel free to leave a a a question if it was something came up during the broadcast and i didn't answer it um and i i'll be happy to answer it and um next week oh gosh who's my guest next week um i think my guest is kyra storagev a long
57:38 long standing friend of mine a really dynamic businesswoman um her most recent venture is into the cryptocurrency world um cara was telling me a little bit about that i'm really fast i'm really looking forward to talking to her about that so i think that's next week which that'll be uh january i want to say let's see one two three four i think it's january 5th next wednesday january 5th she'll be my guest i'm pretty sure um and if not it'll be somebody else who's equally as interesting and i hope you'll tune in and thank you so so much for watching
58:13 have a great week have a happy new year should be healthy successful for you and together we will hopefully help you find your way to wow thanks folks there you go [Laughter] so can you talk
58:48 oops oop there hold on i'm i i muted you um a little while ago because somebody was talking in the background i'm trying to unmute you so i can hear you i don't know why it's not unmuting can you unmute yourself on your end oh there it is okay yeah i can hear you now okay um it's saying your network bandwidth is low yeah i mean unfortunately for some
59:24 reason my internet isn't as strong today as as it normally is so you know hopefully it worked yeah it's very you're moving um so much it's like every you're not it's not according in other words your facial expressions and your mouth aren't coordinating with you know what i'm saying oh it's very yeah yeah they're out of sync yeah yeah it's all totally out of sync but it's it's the limits of the technology you know there's just nothing unfortunately there's nothing i can do about that um sure it's expensive to get high
60:01 quality uh stuff like that because i see it happening on show you know professional shows i watched well right so i mean one thing you don't get out of sync or some guests they're um interviewing will be jumping all over the place so then they have to do something to it yeah i mean i'm not going to go back and read it those are huge stations that have a lot of money yeah yeah um i mean one of the things i want to do is is get a broader bandwidth uh internet service um which i could which we have available here now i you know look there's only so many hours in
60:37 the day and so many days in the week so i just haven't done that yet you know rome wasn't built in a day and so you know each each week i'm adding another element making money off of this i mean i've only this only the second week i've done it so um i thought you were doing what were you doing before well so before i was doing a pre-recorded show oh yeah so now i'm doing it live this is i mean it's it's it's part of the same project but it's a different format so yeah
61:12 you do have um people you send out to yeah yeah um 1400 people yeah um i sent the email to 1400 people um at least 70 of them saw it before the show started because i i got the i got an email from my uh email uh you know whatever it's called letting me know how many people had opened the email i actually got a call from someone i'd known for many many years that i had lost touch with when he got the email he called to see how he was doing so um you know that's the that's where um business will come from is connecting
61:48 with people yeah well because one person logged in and then went off yeah that was um