Thank you, first of all, for all the input and everything I’ve gotten from folks, the support, the rankings and reviews that I’m getting on iTunes and Stitcher, particularly iTunes where I can see the rankings. We’re number seven. To me, that’s absolutely awesome to be ranked at number seven in “What’s Hot” on iTunes. Again, I just thank you all, to all my supporters; I really appreciate it. Those rankings help us get more coverage.

Today what I want to discuss is just the opposite of what we did last time. Last time, we were talking about branding and how to position our brand, your company, product, or service. Today, wherever you are, whatever you have, how not to lose or how you might lose your advantage. That is, lose your image and lose your status with those customers. To put it a certain other way, think in terms of all the companies you’ve seen that have made a change and they almost destroy themselves in the market.

Think in terms of Coke when they came out with New Coke. Think in terms of what McDonald’s did, where it changed things quite a bit. Although they’re so big and prevalent, and they have such a long-term reputation, it does make them a little bit more vulnerable. Because remember years ago they had Ronald McDonald, and they had all kinds of things oriented around kids, and somebody would drive by with the kids in the car and the kids would be screaming: “I want to go to McDonald’s! I want to go to McDonald’s!” That’s not going to happen as much anymore, because they don’t have some of that same association. They gave up something, and it certainly does and is going to have an impact.

As we said with branding before, when a company gets itself, stands out, and owns a territory or owns a concept or an idea, it’s very difficult to penetrate it once they’re in a dominant position. Right now, for example, Verizon is well-known for having excellent coverage all over the country. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed it, but if you go to different places and you go to someplace where there are other representatives, you go into Best Buy or you go into Costco and you might see a T-Mobile person standing at the booth – that person will start telling you things like (it could be another company), and I’ve heard this from T-Mobile, I’ve heard it from AT&T, etc.: “We’ve all of a sudden invested a lot of money in towers around, so now we really have good coverage, too.” It doesn’t ring with the credibility of something that you already know. It’s somebody that’s claiming to have something “as good” as something that you’re sure of. It doesn’t work as well.

What you have to do is you have to come up with something a little bit different in order to have that credibility. What if T-Mobile or somebody, and actually there are a couple of companies out there, that target more certain cities or certain locales? Keep in mind that there are a lot of people, a tremendous number of people that never leave their own city. If they never leave their own city, they don’t need Verizon’s coverage all over the place. Verizon has a position to it that you can get it wherever you are. They don’t have to worry about that, and they could have a discount for something. How does that change Verizon’s position? If they’re selling it a little bit cheaper for a particular city because of the locality, of course, Verizon would probably not match that price because that would be subject to having to give that price to everybody in that area that would be the travelers, etc., and they’re more nationwide. There’s lots of different things, and that’s an example of a niche that can occur, and what you might not want to do to counteract that.