Have you ever noticed how many vitamin options there are at a drug store? If not, you should know there are hundreds. It is bloody overwhelming.

All these vitamins got us thinking about differentiation. If your product isn't that different from another, like a B-12 vitamin, how do you differentiate yourself from the competition?

Vitamin companies are not alone here. One of our listeners wrote in with a business pickle about differentiation on how to have it in an ever-competitive market. The answer lies in the experience.

But how? What does differentiation even mean? And what does B-12 do for you anyway? (It does lots of stuff, by the way; you should probably take it if you don't get enough.)

When you are too close to something, you might have a hard time seeing what your differentiation could be. Your usually helpful depth of offering knowledge can be a hinderance. The nuances of competitive improvement might be authentic but too deep in the minutiae to distinguish you.

In other words, your competitive advantage might be real, but really boring to your customers. So, instead of coming up with something that is a competitive differentiator, you come up with this minor detail, emphasizing something the customer doesn't care about or doesn't recognize they should.

Therefore, it takes an outside perspective sometimes to see what is possible regarding differentiation. And sometimes, this differentiation from the outside is disruptive and turns everything in your industry on its ear.

In this episode, we explore the ways our listener and you can differentiate yourself from the competition. As a bonus, we package it into five rules that you can use to drive your actions.

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

• 06:44 We kick off the discussion with the first rule, which tells us that different means different and not just a little different. (They do get better, we promise.)
• 10:07 We get into the discussion about how disruption is often the key to differentiation that matters; otherwise, everyone ends up chasing the same goals and having little variance from one another.
• 17:50 We introduce the third rule, which is define the Who and the How Much, two key areas for besting the competition.
• 22:49 Rule number four says what are you going to differentiate on, meaning what area of your offering will be your competitive advantage.
• 25:35 We introduce the last rule, which is shamelessly bias, that experience is the hardest thing for your competitor to copy.

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