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One of the biggest challenges as a portfolio career professional or a business owner is how do you differentiate yourself? It's really noisy out there, it's super competitive, and everyone's fighting for attention. So, how do you stand out? And I think one of the interesting things we can do is we can lean more into our personal values to create a point of differentiation. And that's what we're going to be exploring in today's episode. So, welcome to the Values Lab, a podcast series for founders, portfolio career professionals, seeking ideas and inspiration for living a more values-led life. I'm your host, Viran Tukra, and I'm founder of In the Game and Values Map. And the inspiration for today's episode was based on my conversation with Sasha. And I found it really interesting how Sasha had infused his personal values into the business to create differentiation. So I thought it's an interesting concept to explore. So when we talk about competitive advantage and differentiation, essentially what we're trying to do is not be vanilla. And the problem with being vanilla and not standing out, and we're kind of trying to please everyone, is that we kind of end up being for no one. We don't create any magnetism or gravity for our services. So we want to avoid this issue by differentiating. So a lot of professionals in this space will talk a lot about, especially if you're in an earlier stage business, it's kind of niching down is a useful strategy in terms of becoming a little bit more specific. And I think often people get afraid of this concept of niching down because we assume we're going to kind of eliminate lots of businesses that might want to want to work with us. But I think often that's quite a little bit of a narrow view of niching. And I think if I if we start thinking a little bit about well, how can we differentiate ourselves? What are the different ways? And you know, we can differentiate in a number of ways. So we can differentiate by the expertise and knowledge we have. So we might have very speed specific and deep expertise in one particular area and we can choose to differentiate in on that axis. We might service one particular geography or one particular industry sector, and so we can differentiate or niche on that axis. We might have some particularly unique products or services that we can offer that no one else does, so we can go on that axis. And in fact, we can combine many of these axes to form our point of niching. So it doesn't have to just be one of these areas. The one I'd like to explore today is differentiation by focusing in on our values. And one of the reasons I really like focusing on values when we're talking about differentiation is because the combination of values that we have are very unique to us. And this applies both if you've got a portfolio career or you're running a business. That combination is unique to us. And often we're told when we're running a business is we need to build some kind of moat, which makes it hard to copy what we do. And and values is because inherently because they're personal and they're ours, they're impossible to copy. It's it's us, we're not copying ourselves. So it's almost one of the most unique things you can do, and one of the most unique ways to build your business is by looking at the combination of values you've got. Now, what I find when we lean into our values is it it gives uh makes us really memorable. So people, when we do this really well, we become really memorable. We end up developing a very strong point of view in kind of how we communicate. I find this is one of the things we'll talk about in a moment, we can also infuse it into things like creating content. All social media channels are very noisy, they're very busy, but again, if we lean into our values, we create some differentiation, we stand out a little bit. And the thing I ultimately like, and this is the thing I found most benefits in, is we end up attracting the right clients, the clients that are a really good fit for us. And when we really kind of lean into it, really lean into our values, we end up drawing in the clients that also value those similar things. But we also then repel the wrong clients and the wrong opportunities. And that's a really good thing. So this concern we have around niching is that we're going to miss out on stuff. Well, what I've actually found in my own experience is I've ended up just attracting more and more I'm attracting the right type of clients. And I very rarely will get a wrong client, even just reach out to chat. It's the filtering process kind of happens, and clients pre-qualify themselves almost by pushing and leaning into the values as much as possible. So I'm going to go through a couple of examples. Uh, one, if you're kind of running a business, how you can kind of infuse your personal values into the business. And then I'll also talk a little bit about if you're a portfolio career professional, how you can think about your personal values in that sense. So we'll start with the, you know, if you've got a business and you're running a business and you want to put your own personal imprint on that. And when I'm talking about kind of a business in this sense, I'm talking about if you're a very like, either you're a one one-person business or maybe you're a small business and you're like as as founders, you're basically it. So you're kind of at the early stages of your business journey. I'm gonna go into a little bit of an example here. Now, the the step I recommend if you've got a business is that you take your personal values and you translate them into your business values. Now, I think it's really important to do this because I think your clients that you're working with, your customers that you're working with, they don't really care about your values. They care about what it means for them. So you kind of need to do the heavy lifting for them. You need to do this translation for them rather than trying to rather than hoping they kind of figure it out. So we need to convert our own values into something that's kind of more business focused. And what I'll do is I'll walk you through my example so you can kind of see how this pans out. So my personal values are freedom, fun, growth, achievement, and creativity. And I'll show you kind of how I've translated these into business values. So we'll start with the first one, which is fun. And when I sat down to think about this, is what does fun mean for the businesses that I work with? What is the thing here for them that's most important for them? And what I kind of essentially landed on is when we get fun wrong, it's we're kind of introducing stuff that's irrelevant. So I have a lot of friends that go to these kind of team offsites, they go to these events and they complain a lot about bad icebreakers, bad team days. And ultimately it comes down to they're just doing random stuff that's kind of purposeless. So for me, it's like, well, what is it about fun that we can use to like why is it useful and when is it useful? And for me, it's fun is useful when it's used in a deliberate, intentional, and meaningful way. So my business value has become have meaningful fun. So that's a a way of looking at fun, but I've kind of given it the business focused lens. And I find when we have meaningful fun, there's a whole bunch of reasons why I think it's um useful. Um, but a lot of it is I find when we're having meaningful fun, we're having conversations different from the norm, but they're very important conversations. So next, if I take my value of freedom. Freedom, for me, when I kind of talked a little bit about freedom, well, what does freedom mean to me? And then what does it mean for a business? And I've and I if I look at the industry space I'm in, one of the big issues I have about consultancy is creating a reliance on the consultant. They come in, do some work, and then there's a dependency there that really doesn't sit well with my value of freedom. So actually, when I convert that to something that's a bit more business focused, well, actually, something I want to do is build self-sufficiency. So often that's a focus for me is if I come in and work with my clients, when I finish up the project, do they have everything they need to continue on getting value and impact from the piece of work that we've done? They're not just reliant on me. So build self-sufficiency is the business version of freedom. Then I have a value about achievement, which is a lot about impact. And again, when I unpack this in a business context, I really believe the best way to get that kind of impact is by tapping into diversity of thought and through teams. And so the the value of imp achievement, which is about impact and getting results, uh, is winning win as a team. That's the that's the business version of that. And then lastly, you know, if I look at the values of creativity and growth and again apply that to the industry sector I'm in, so much of the people and culture space the thinking's been around for like we're using stuff from like 30, 40, 50 years ago. It's old thinking. And I think there's so much new stuff we can incorporate, new things that we can look at, and actually thinking from other industry sectors we can bring in. And Asasha actually mentioned this in the chat we had where he's a real look at real estate, but he looks at ASOP for inspiration. So for me, the creativity and growth, like constantly innovating and involving what we're doing, has turned into the business value of keep it fresh. So essentially, my business values of have meaningful fun, keep it fresh, win as a team, and build self-sufficiency are all an extension of my individual values, but they're translated into client-facing language. And now what I've when I've got these now, I can look at everything I deliver through that lens of how do I give my service delivery this unique fingerprint by leaning into those values. Now, if I just take change tact a little bit and think a little bit about well, if you are a portfolio career professional, what what do you do with your kind of personal values? And I think the what I like to consider here is in that portfolio space, you're probably competing with people that have very similar skills and experiences to you on paper. They've probably done it. That's that's your competition set. When a client's looking to work with you on a contract or fractional basis, they're probably looking at someone that's got a similar set of experiences. So your CVs are probably looking quite similar. So we need to differentiate based on what is the experience like of working with me? And that I think that's where the values question is really important. What we want to do is think a little bit about what if I've got my values, how does this influence how I solve problems with my clients? How do I communicate with them? What can they expect in the working experience with you because of your values? That's different to someone that's got a similar set of experiences. So the differentiation here from a portfolio career perspective is your values are giving you the fingerprint on this. The experience of working with you is quite distinctive, and it's going to be different to how other people do things. And so, what I'd encourage encourage you to do from a portfolio career perspective is have your values and go, how can I really double down on these from a client delivery perspective? What would it really look like? So if I was kind of going through this perspective myself, and let's say I was in a more of a portfolio career back bracket, I'd be looking at, well, how can I make the experience fun of working with me? What are some of the things they're going to see and feel that give them that sense of novelty and fun? If I look at the values of creativity, how can I make the process more creative? And ultimately, actually, you see some of these things in the work that I do. So I do a lot of work in the kind of facilitation space. Um, so if I was more of a portfolio career professional and looking more at like those specific skills like facilitation, I'd be looking at, well, how do I bring fun in? And I bring fun in through a number of different mediums, like using uh creative play-based techniques like Lego, Play-Doh, like fun exercises. I bring a lot of creativity in, actually, even just in the initial design of the workshops. I sit down together with the client and we co-create stuff using mirror. We build a mirror board of all the different ideas of things we could include in the workshop. It's different to how other facilitators do things, and that's what creates the difference. It's how you work with me. And so when it comes to then selling my work, these are things I can talk to very specifically to go, hey, when we work, it's a creative process. We'll sit down together, we'll open up a mirror board, we'll get all the ideas down. So we're coming up with something really creative. The workshop experience is really different. We use player-based techniques, we bring in fun. So you can see how our values, if we really lean into them, create a point of difference in terms of the experience of working together with us. And so similar principles apply here. We're not trying to be for everyone. What we're really trying to do is attract the right projects and clients. And we want clients that come to us, you know, if they're choosing between A and B, they'll the right clients will gravitate towards us when we have clearly kind of articulated what the experience is like working with us, and it's a really good fit for them. And so the last thing I'll kind of talk about is a lot of a lot of what we're doing is trying to market ourselves, and content creation is one way in which we're doing that. And I think if we lean into our values, we can be really sharp, really different in crowded spaces. So social media is very busy. Um we we want to stand out in that space when we're creating content, we want our content to stand out, and so by leaning into our values, we can do this really effectively. So for myself, so when I'm creating content, I'm really trying to push my push myself to is there a way of making this more fun? Um, is can I show more kind of personality in this? Can I make it more interesting? Is there a way for me to give people a sense of self-sufficiency in this? Can they walk away with this? And is it something they can actually use themselves? From a growth creativity lens, am I pushing people to look at things differently and think differently and think in more modern ways? I'm really trying to inject those things in as much as possible. And so often, you know, if I take the fun one, for example, I find videos are really fun format. So I try and use a video a lot to show more fun and personality in my content. I like trying to create illustrations and graphics and bring that creative element to things. I'll try and put, I do like to put in more effort into my content because I actually find the process and putting the effort in is fun. I don't just want to churn out the same thing as everyone else. I'm constantly trying to go if I infuse it into my values. How can I create something different that someone else couldn't create? So that's almost the thing I'm striving for. Because they'd tell it's written by me without actually seeing my name on it. Um, and often I find that's happens when we kind of really lean into our values. So, really, the values will shape how we show up in those spaces as well. And it kind of helps us make our content a little bit more recognizable and memorable. So, three lenses here. So, if you're a business owner, take your personal values and go, how can I translate these into language that's relevant to the other customers and clients that I work with, in language that's relevant for them, that talks through the benefits for them. And then once you've got that, how does that shape how you deliver your services and products? If you're a portfolio career professional, take your values and go, well, what does this mean when someone is working with me? How does this value sharp in how I approach projects, how I communicate, and how I solve problems? And think about how could you make this clear in your proposals? How could you make it clear in your conversations with potential clients so that you've got this kind of distinctive edge? And lastly, think about your content and think a little bit about if I really lean into my values, how would this differentiate what my content looks like so that I am more memorable and I do stand out in a crowded social media landscape? So this piece about competitive advantage, differentiation. I think values give us a really interesting lens to look at it. I'd love to know if you give any of this a go or if it's kind of sparked a thought for you. What have you what what insights did you get? What did you try doing? What did you end up landing on? Uh I'd love to know more. And if you do decide to infuse it into your content, uh tag me in. I'd love to see some examples of people really going all in on their values when they're posting stuff on social media. Um, until next time.