Aaron Hoos

I am secretly addicted to the Food Network. (Okay, not so secretly anymore).

I love cooking competitions and restaurant makeover shows. My PVR is set up to automatically record shows like “Opening Soon”, “Kitchen Nightmares”, and “Restaurant Impossible”.

Many of these shows have one thing in common: A celebrity chef who seems to be equal parts chef and diva.

You don’t really see this level of celebrity in other niches. (Well, there are some celebrity real estate agents and celebrity home renovation people but we don’t attach the word “celebrity” to their title in the same way that we throw around the word “celebrity chef”.)

I was thinking about this the other day while watching some cooking show or another. I wondered: “Why don’t we see more celebrity real estate agents or celebrity real estate investors or celebrity financial advisors or celebrity accountants?”

That idea sort of seems strange. After all, “celebrity accountant” or “celebrity actuary” or “celebrity insurance broker” doesn’t seem to have the same ring as “celebrity chef”… but why not?

Why can’t YOU be the celebrity in your niche? There is plenty of room for celebrities in a number of niches – real estate, investing, insurance, accounting, even collections.

The benefit is there: As a celebrity, you attract people to you who want to orbit your shining star and your constant cross-promotion helps to increase your income.

So what does it take to be a celebrity? Well, let’s look at the six factors that put the “celebrity” into “celebrity chef” and see if we can identify some lessons for you to apply to your practice:

6 FACTORS TO HELP YOU BECOME A CELEBRITY IN YOUR NICHE

1. You need to be skilled. No hacks allowed. We may not always like the celebrity personality of a celebrity chef but the chef-skills always deliver. Great cooking every time. And it’s not just skill, I think, but also mastery, and a dedication to exacting excellence. How can you become a skilled master who is dedicated to exacting excellence in your market? You need to be able to rise above and consistently out-shine your peers. So what skills can you hone to consistently out-shine your peers? For a related post, check out: What the drunk uncle from Family Ties can teach us about success.
2. Success. Some celebrity chefs seem to come out of nowhere to skyrocket to fame and fortune. But “nowhere” usually means that they were slogging it out in a hot kitchen, working their way up from lowly dishwasher to become the head chef at top-name restaurants. In your practice, don’t expect celebrity to suddenly appear out of nowhere. You need to put in the time, grind it out, and build a portfolio of success. (Fortunately, you can do this as the same time as you develop your skills).
3. You need to have some flair. I don’t think there is such a thing as a bland celebrity chef. All celebrity chefs bring something extra to the equation. They’re skilled (see above) but they are more than just skilled. For some, it’s a personality – funny, obnoxious, in-your-face. For others, it’s a particular style or approach – hands-on, innovative, social. (For celebrity chefs it might be fast meals for families or Italian peasant food). To develop your own flair, consider what aspects of your personality are the strongest, or think about your interests and how other people connect with them. This flair or unique approach really becomes the crux of your brand. (Think: Gordon Ramsay’s In-Your-Face approach or Jamie Oliver’s casual approach to delicious, healthy food). I’ve talked a bit about this in the past but I’ve only scratched the surface. For a related post, check out: What is your brand’s personality.
4. A book. Every celebrity chef seems to have at least one book. Probably a cookbook. Probably a dozen cookbooks. A book on its own isn’t the answer but it’s part of the celebrity equation. The good news is, you don’t need to sit down and write a huge novel. What you need is something that you can highlight as an accomplishment and that readers will find helpful. Start with a 100 to 200 page book. They aren’t that hard to write! (Hey, give me a call if you want to talk about writing a book). If you’re really not sure where to start, why not think about an ebook – something smallish at around 50 pages – and test it in the marketplace. Expanding it will be easy and it’s simple to turn into a print book (which still carries plenty of credibility).
5. TV show. Every celebrity chef has a TV show. Or three. They have a cooking show and guest appearances, an I’m-starting-a-restaurant show, and a traveling-the-world-to-taste-food show. Why don’t you have a show? You can. It’s easier than you probably think it is. Start with your own YouTube channel and instead of just filming random thoughts into the camera (as I do from time to time on my YouTube channel), actually treat it like your own show. I think this is a cool idea that is under-used (especially in the financial or real estate space). There are plenty of ideas to draw from (and I’ll give you some ideas in a future blog post).
6. PR Campaign. Celebrity chefs seem to be magnets for fans. Sure, it’s their charisma and great dishes but don’t overlook the fact that they are a brand and they probably have a serious PR engine chugging away in the background. When they are not cooking they are promoting, promoting, promoting, promoting, promoting. For most of you, you’re already doing some promoting already (good!) but if you want to achieve celebrity status, you need to tie together several things (a book, a show, etc.) and promote the heck out of it.

Notice something about these six things? Chefs who move out of the kitchen and into the limelight do so by leveraging their skills into a brand and then leveraging that brand into a media empire.

You can do the same! Celebrity doesn’t have to be limited to chefs. There is A LOT of room for celebrities in your market. You already have the skills and you probably have a brand (or the makings of one). Next, build a media empire to skyrocket your practice to celebrity status.

When I was in high school, my friend’s family owned the very first computer store in town. I was always sort of impressed that they had a lock on that market. I imagined a business without competition to be the highest level of business achievement – a sort of entrepreneurial nirvana.

Then, to my surprise, I learned that they were helping someone else start a computer store in the same town. In other words, they were helping to create their own competition! I didn’t understand it at all. When I asked my friend’s dad about it, he said that competition is good for business. Although he didn’t go into detail, it was a lesson I never forgot (I even remember the exact moment when he told me – it was in the kitchen of their house – it was a watershed moment for me).

It took me years to learn why competition is a good thing, but I now realize that it is essential to a strong, prosperous business. Here are my top 6 reasons why I embrace competition:

REASON #1: COMPETITORS DEFINE YOUR BUSINESS

Competitors help you to figure out what you do. If you are starting a business and you examine how your competitors define themselves, you can identify a point of difference that they are not addressing.

It’s like being lost and using a couple of fixed objects to help you figure out where you are. Your competitors are those fixed objects and you can easily find your way in the marketplace when you compare yourself to your competition.

Creating a business that has too much identical competition (everyone sells exactly the same thing at exactly the same price – real estate agents are a good example) will eventually result in a price war with your competitors. But if you look at your competitors as a starting point and then you define yourself carefully, strategically, and in a different way from the rest of the pack, you’ll help to attract the right people to your business (people who might not be attracted to your competitor). You won’t have to compete on price because your competitors are different from you.

For more information about differentiation and competition, read my blog posts: Equal is not good enough and Mine is bigger than yours — competitiveness and marketing content.

REASON #2: COMPETITORS KEEP YOU HUNGRY

A couple of years ago, I met someone who owned a business that was in-demand and the only kind like it in the entire state. The guy charged insanely high prices and 100% interest on unpaid debts. He could make his own schedule and he didn’t need to provide good customer service. Sounds awesome, at first – you can do what you want and you basically have a licence to print money. But eventually, some other entrepreneur will spot the opportunity in that market and see that he or she could make a financial killing while charging less AND providing exemplary service… and suddenly the first guy’s business is in trouble.

When I was a freelance writer, I would sometimes get frustrated at the low-priced freelancer writers who would charge next-to-nothing, undercutting my prices. On more than one occasion, it caused me to look at my prices and sometimes consider lowering them. (Fortunately, I never did). I realize now that those low-priced competitors kept me hungry and I worked harder to out-work and out-earn those competitors. I’m glad for them now.

REASON #3: COMPETITORS COMPEL INNOVATION

In economics, inflation is kind of like a swarm of termites. You don’t see them but they eat away at the stuff you own. Inflation causes upward pressure on prices so that $1.00 tomorrow is worth less than $1.00 today. In other words, if you’re standing still in your finances, you’re actually going backwards.

It’s the same in business. If you want to create a product or service, build a sales funnel, automate it, and then go sip margaritas on a beach, think again. Your business is “standing still” (not innovating) and your competition will outpace you with newer, faster, shinier products and services. While you’re asking the lifeguard to put sunscreen on the places where you can’t reach, your competitors will be inventing a better mousetrap. Before you know it, your business will sputter and die because no one wants your clumsy old offering.

Your competitors are innovating, so you need to as well. Their very existence forces you to get creative, invest in your business, and reach for more. That’s great for your customers and for your business’ longevity. Read more about innovation at my blog post: My best advice on innovation. And this blog post provides an interesting take on innovation: Want a competitive advantage? Offer the same products as everyone else!

REASON #4: COMPETITORS BECOME CASE STUDIES

In your own business, every interaction in your sales funnel is a piece of data that you can analyze to make your business better. You watch for patterns, for sudden changes, and for opportunities. You put all of these pieces together, you compare it with your metrics, and you can make huge, positive changes in your business.

But if you raise your head out of your sales funnel for a moment and glance across the street at your competition, you’ll learn quite a bit, too. Yes, you won’t have all of the facts or metrics, but you can put together an awful lot just by looking in their windows, browsing their website, mystery shopping them, and listening to both happy and disaffected customers.

Watch for competitors’ marketing campaigns that have a huge impact. Analyze the types of people going through your competitors’ doors. Find patterns among the disaffected customers who decide to switch providers and buy from you instead. By simply watching your competitor, you can learn so much from them to benefit your own business. They become a living, breathing MBA case study to make you a smarter entrepreneur.

Want a place to start? Why not do some really simple competitive research to figure out how to price your products or services. Learn more about it at this blog post: How to easily discover the best price for your product or service.

REASON #5: COMPETITORS RAISE MARKET AWARENESS

Imagine a town in which there are only two companies providing window cleaning services. They both market their services aggressively and have their own point of difference. Simply by advertising the benefit of cleaner windows, they highlight the problem of dirty windows in the market’s mind and the market will search for a window cleaning company – even if it’s not the one whose advertising initially prompted their awareness.

It’s the principle of 1+1=3. Competitors’ marketing will attract new Leads (and sometimes YOUR Leads) to the competitor, but it will also alert the general marketplace to the general problem or need. People from the marketplace will look for a solution or fulfillment and may end up in your sales funnel as a result (all because they became aware of the problem or need from your competitor’s ad). Note: I’m not suggesting that you don’t leave all of the marketing to your competition. However, I think that competitors who advertise in the same market will have a greater cumulative effect than if they each advertised in their own market).

REASON #6: COMPETITORS CAN BECOME COOPERATORS

I love motorsports, especially NASCAR. One of the things that makes the sport great is when two competitors will work together to push ahead of everyone else. Overall, they are still ruthless competitors, but for a brief moment they can put aside their differences to eliminate the rest of the competition.

The same thing can happen in business, too. You can work together with a few carefully chosen competitors to win more customers and outpace other competitors. Now, please note: There are laws about collusion and I’m not suggesting you circumvent those laws – you’re not doing this to raise prices across the board or to destroy a few competitors. There are ways to legally cooperate with your competitors for mutual benefit. For example, you can share the costs of joint advertising to reach different markets through the same channels. Or, you can send each other potential customers who may be a better fit for the other than for you. When I was a freelance writer, I competed against other freelance writers, of course. But when a Prospect wanted to buy from me and I discovered that they were not a good fit (perhaps I didn’t have the bandwidth to help them, or maybe they were in an industry I knew nothing about), I had a few carefully chosen competitors who I felt comfortable recommending them to. And the relationship worked both ways – those competitors knew who I was interested in working with and they would send people to me.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU

First, welcome competition. If there are no competitors in your marketplace, be wary. Dare to invite competitors to your marketplace! Get to know your competition as individuals, but also get to know their businesses. Use competitive analysis to learn as much as you can about them. Find out how you can help them (and take the first step to do so) and you may see some reciprocation. And always keep an eye on your competition to motivate you to stay hungry and stay innovative!

Hey, this blog post gives another reason to love competitors: 4 ways to insert yourself into your competitor’s sales funnel and steal their customers.