“Say cheese,” says the person behind the camera.

And you say cheese. Your facial muscles are frozen. You have a dumb, goofy look. And under your breath you're muttering, “C'mon, take the picture, take the picture, c'monnnn!”

Click! You blink. The picture's been taken.

And then the photographer runs across to you, all excited to show the nice digital photo. You take a look, you roll your eyes. You cringe. Because you just detest the photo. It looks artificial. It looks posed. It's not you. It looks like all those cheesy pictures you've seen before.

It's not unique.

How can it be unique? You weren't yourself!

And that's the whole problem with uniqueness. You've tried too hard. In your business, you've tried to your darndest to get your own uniqueness. And you've failed miserably. Because you froze.

And the uniqueness you sought to find looked like that cheesy picture. When asked about your uniqueness, you mumble something like “service or quality,” which means nothing to most people.

The funny thing is that Sarah had the same problem

You see, Sarah has a yoga class. And a yoga class is a yoga class, right? Sarah twisted her brain like a pretzel, but she just couldn't come up with a form of uniqueness.

So she did what all the experts recommended.

She asked her clients. And some of them shrugged. Some of them gave her mixed answers. And that left Sarah more confused than ever before.

Then she did what most businesses do. She gave up. She figured her business would just remain a commodity. To hell with uniqueness. Trying to find what was unique was too hard.

You see, Sarah was asking the wrong question

She was trying to look inward. Because the question isn't “What's unique about my business?” but, rather, “What do I want to do in my business that's different from everyone else?”

Let me explain.

I asked Sarah what she'd want to achieve for her students most of all? Her response was lightning quick, and I backed up two steps at the speed and ferocity of the answer.

“Injury,” she said. “You can really hurt yourself in a yoga class if you're doing the wrong thing. I want every student to have Injury-Free Yoga.”

Tada! Can you see it? Sarah couldn't see it. Her uniqueness was Injury-Free Yoga. Plain and simple.

What do I want to do in my business that's different from every one else? What do you want to do that's different in your business? What's your dream for your customer?

Ask Tom Monaghan, founder of Dominos Pizza

Today you take quick pizza delivery for granted. But if you zapped your way back to the swinging, hey-groovy seventies, you'd grow old just waiting for a pizza.

You'd call a pizza place. You'd ask, “Can you deliver?” And about seventy-nine hours later, you'd be still tapping your fingers waiting for the pizza guy to arrive.

Tom Monaghan did what Sarah did. He couldn't find anything unique about his business, so he invented his uniqueness.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sean D'Souza uses age-old psychology, marrying it to modern technology, on his Web site, psychotactics.com. Can "psychological tactics" make a difference? Go there and find out.

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