I’ve started a few companies over the years. Some have been successful and one was a miserable failure, but what I gained from each one was experience and wisdom that I could never have found in any book.

As a result, a question I get asked a lot is “Do you have any advice for the average entrepreneur?”

And my answer is an emphatic “Yes, don’t be average!”

The failure that I mentioned earlier was a publishing company I started when I was much younger. One of my biggest mistakes was neglecting to differentiate my brand new publishing company from my competitors, so there was really no incentive for my potential clients to end their existing relationships to work with my company. It didn’t take long for it to fold. I lost a lot of money, but learned a lot in the process.

No matter what industry your business is in, you have to set yourself apart from your competitors. You have to find or create something that make you unique and gives you a major competitive advantage. Tuck away your own personal biases and self interests for a moment and put yourself in your prospect’s shoes; why should they choose your company over another? What advantages can you offer that others can’t?

Most people think the easiest way is to be the cheapest. The problem is there will always be someone else willing to offer the same product or service for less, so you’ll be perceived as nothing more than a commodity. Besides, you don’t want to attract the type of customers who will jump ship when your competitors offers to beat your price by a few dollars. We have a client in the wholesale seafood industry who regularly faces this challenge. Even though his company enjoys a loyal customer base and doesn’t compete on price, about 40% of his customers will try a new vendor to save a few cents per pound of seafood. Most end up coming back because of his commitment to quality, but this creates a lot of fluctuation in his income.

Here are a few ideas for the above-average entrepreneur:

1. Provide customer service that blows peoples’ minds the way Zappos does.
2. Turn an industry upside down. Think of what Redbox did to the movie rental industry.
3. Target an extremely specific niche with laser focus. Instead of targeting women who exercise, target expectant mothers who practice Yoga.
4. Provide the fastest turn around time in your industry. The option to get an order out the door in 24 hours can mean a lot to certain customers.
5. Offer the widest variety of products possible; think of Walmart or Amazon.
6. Provide an unconditional lifetime replacement guarantee—and actually follow through on it. Sears does this with their Craftsman line of hand tools.

Your goal isn’t just to be different than your competitors. It’s not even just to stand out from them. Your goal is to make them irrelevant and make your company the only logical choice. Ignore what doesn’t matter to your customers and focus on exactly what does. Give them that and you’ll be light years ahead of the average entrepreneur.

I know. It sounds counter-intuitive, doesn’t it?

After all, the mindset of most people is that when we want to make more money, we need to find more customers. This almost always leads to more sales calls, broader and more expensive marketing efforts, and of course, lots of extra work and frustration.

Sometimes it pays off. Usually it doesn’t.

Is finding more customers really the answer to making more money?

For most businesses, the answer is usually a big, loud and booming no. More customers means more work, more headaches, more staff and of course, more overhead. Sure, you may generate more revenue than before, but do you really want those new customers if, after the additional expenses, you’re still bringing home the same amount of money? The only thing you’re really gaining in that scenario is stress, and I think we all have enough of that already!

No, what you want is more of the right customers. This means focusing on a niche; the tighter, the better. Then, only target customers who fit that niche.

I know your gut reaction is something like “If I focus on a niche, I’ll leave a lot of potential customers (and money) out there for my competitors and I won’t make enough money.”

Yes, you will leave potential customers out there, but you will still make enough money. In reality, you’ll make more money with less effort and stress.

It will be scary as hell. You’ll use every excuse you can come up with to put it off. You’ll continue doing what you’ve always done until one day, something just just clicks and you realize it’s not working the way you want. Maybe you realize you’re spending far too much time catering to the whims of a few customers who, coincidentally, are your least profitable accounts. Or maybe you finally see that your close ratio is horrendous. It could be anything, but somewhere down the road, you’re going to see that some, if not most, of your clients just aren’t the right fit for your company.

What do you do once your eyes are open?

Figure out exactly who you want to work with. Who are you most profitable customers? What traits do they have in common? Who can you truly help the most right now? Those are the type of customers you want to need to focus on.

Now, start going after these type of customers while weaning yourself off of the wrong ones as quickly as possible.

That’s right, you’re going to have to fire some of your customers! It can be scary, awkward and liberating all at the same time. The key is to treat it just like a break up. Be tactful, yet firm. Don’t place blame or say negative things about them. You can just say that your company is shifting focus and they just aren’t the right fit for you anymore. It’s the business version of “It’s not you, it’s me.” You can even point them to a few companies who might be a better fit.

Getting rid of the dead wood allows you to develop better relationships with your profitable customers and find new customers who fit your company better.

As you begin to focus on a specific niche, you’ll see your sales process improve too. Similar prospects will have a lot of the same questions, and as you develop the right answers, it will almost be like following a road map. I used to work at a software company that targeted people looking for IT certifications. They had the process so well refined that when you would ask a prospect a question, you could be assured you’d receive one of two or three answers. If you followed the process properly, twenty minutes or so was all it took to close the deal on a $2,500 software training package.

Focusing on a niche usually means that people who know and respect each other will talk about your company and the products or services you provide. If you do things right, it won’t take long before you have an almost cult-like following. It’s a hell of a lot easier to sell to people who have heard about you through a trusted source.

Remember, you started a business to make money, but not sell your soul. If you spend your days doing work you love for clients who respect and value you, you’re going to perform better, feel better, have more free time and probably live longer too!

Far too often, a website redesign starts off focused on appearance instead of measurable goals. If appearance is your first priority, you’re on the fast-track to failure, so before you jump into the fun stuff, grab a pad and a pen and spend some time figuring out the answers to these 4 questions:

1. What are your goals? Before you change a single line of code, before you even start thinking about what your new website will look like, you need to know exactly what you want it to accomplish. Do you want your new website to present a particular image? Do you want it to generate more leads/sales or do a better job of converting the traffic you’re already getting? Figure this out and you’ll get a lot more from your new website, plus, the entire process will move more smoothly and quickly.
2. What is and isn’t working? You need to know how your current website impacts your goals. This means spending some time analyzing your website traffic, leads and sales. You’ll probably notice that a small handful of sources drive most of your traffic, leads and sales, but a little more digging will often turn up some low-hanging fruit that you’re missing out on. Maybe you’ll realize that 70% of your revenue comes from one or two products, which would be an indication that you should focus on developing more similar products. Or perhaps you have a #1 ranking for a particular keyword but don’t rank at all for a few other variations that may drive reasonable traffic with lower competition. The more you dig, the more opportunities you’ll find.
3. What are you up against? Potential customers will be looking at your competitors, so you need to as well. The idea isn’t to copy, or even emulate them. The idea is to make sure that your website covers the same bases they do while filling in the gaps they’ve missed. For example, if all of your competitors offer online ordering, you damn sure better offer it too, but also offer what they don’t. Perhaps you sell a complex product that people often call you about before ordering online. You could launch a blog or forum that lets your visitors learn more about it. This helps present you as an industry leader and will often help to shorten your sales process too.
4. Where are you now? Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither was Apple, Starbucks or any other large, successful company. Take a cold and emotionless look at where you stand today; traffic, exposure, brand recognition, budget, etc. If you’re running a small mom-and-pop store with little website traffic, spending thousands of dollars to add the newest web 2.0 social-media this and that to your website is a really bad idea. You need to invest for the future, but rather than adding features, focus on driving traffic and building a brand. Before you add any special functionality, you should determine how it’s going to help you reach your goals.

Each of us faces a unique set of circumstances while working towards our own goals, but the one thing we all have in common is the number of hours we have available.

Are you trading or investing those precious hours?

What I mean is, are you trading your time by doing busy work such as sorting emails, calling dead leads or holding meeting, or are you investing your time into projects that will produce reliable, recurring income and free up your time?

With either choice, you will probably put in about the same amount of work today, but over the next few months or years, the time that you’ve invested will multiply your free time and income dramatically while the time you’ve traded will simply be gone.

Want some examples? Aaron Wall stopped selling products or services years ago and turned SEOBook.com into a subscription-based website that produces income month after month. Nicole Deal could have promoted her services as a copywriter, but she chose to make better use of her time by promoting PLR articles that she can sell over and over. Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr decided to develop Digging into WordPress a book on one of the most widely-used blog/CMS systems available, instead of selling their time as consultants.

All of these experts used their knowledge to create something that could produce income over and over, even when they aren’t actually working. That means more income and more free time! What are you doing to emulate their formula?

If you’re like most people, you’ve probably put off creating your own informational products to sell because you don’t think you qualify as an “expert.” You might have your doubts about whether anyone would be willing to part with their hard-earned money in exchange for your knowledge. Or maybe you just think there are already enough “experts” in your industry and you won’t be able to differentiate yourself.

It’s time to put your doubts and fears behind you because I’m going to let you in on a little secret – you don’t need to be the top authority on a subject. You just need to know more than the other people who want to learn about it. The problem is that you underestimate what you know because you already know it. What may seem basic to you is brand new and valuable information to someone else. Information that they will often be more than happy to invest in!

Here is a quick little exercise to show you just how much you really know:

1. Find three people who want to learn about your area of expertise, and give them each a free, private one-on-one consultation where they can ask you anything
2. Record the call
3. Listen to the call. Did you notice how you were able to quickly give them the answers they needed with little effort? (note: there are a lot more people like them than people like you)
4. Use their questions and your answers to create your own informational product to sell.
5. Repeat steps 1-4

It’s as simple as that.