Make Your Business A Unicorn

1. Intro : Look around the world today, you will notice a lot of rivalries, whether it is professional sports teams or political parties or businesses competing in the same industry. But one thing you will notice when you start to really research and study those rivalries, as well as the rivalries from throughout history, is that there is one common trend between them, and that is that the winner of those rivalries nine times out of ten, one because they had a better strategy than the competition. And that strategy gave them a competitive advantage in the marketplace or on the playing field or in the polling stations or the battlefield, whatever it may have been. And so in this course, what I want to do is give you a framework and a mindset to apply to your business to help you build a strategy that gives you a competitive advantage and makes your customers choose your product or service over the competition. Hello, everybody. My name is Zachharty, and I am an entrepreneur and investor from Calgary Alberta, Canada. Currently run several different businesses, including a three D printing farm that is about to exceed $1,000,000 in annual revenue, as well as a social media business, primarily focused on my own personal brand that currently brings in over several hundred thousand dollar per year. Prior to this, I ran a manufacturing business that distributed product across Canada and the United States, as well as a rental business, that supplied tables and chairs, as well as displays for weddings, parties, and events. In this course, I am going to walk you through everything that I have learned about building a strategy and creating a strategic advantage in the marketplace. I'm going to walk you through how to protect that strategic advantage, and I'm going to walk you through how to make decisions that align with your business mission and help you build that strategy. I'm also going to walk you through different alliances, partnerships, and other techniques that you can use to help separate your business from the competition. In this course, you can expect an inside look at the strategies that I have used to build my own personal businesses. I'm also going to use real life examples to show you what other companies have done. And by the end of this course, you are going to have actionable first steps to take in building your business strategy that separates you from the competition and ensures long term prosperity and profits. In this course, I am also going to give you a course project that is a strategy questionnaire that is designed to make you think about how you build your strategy, why you build it that way, and other factors that you may want to consider in protecting your intellectual property and what you have that makes you unique. At the end of the course, I am also going to ask you for a review. I am looking for feedback to improve this course and make it better for the next student. So if there is something that you liked or something that you didn't like, please give me feedback. Please let me know what worked well and what didn't work well. And I read every single review. I read every single comment, and I will do my best to get back to you and make improvements based on your feedback. Now, if you want to learn more about my personal businesses or what I'm doing outside of this course, you can follow me on all of the social media channels. I make content primarily on YouTube and TikTok, but you can also find me on Instagram, X, or Linked in, and I would love to connect with you there. Now, without any further ado, let's get into the content. 2. What is strategic advantage: Alright, everybody, welcome to lesson one. In this video, we're just going to give an overview of the difference between strategy and strategic advantage, and I'm going to review some of the different strategic advantages that you might want to pursue as a business owner. Let's jump right in. Okay, so when it comes to the concept of strategy and strategic advantage, these are two different things. A strategy is a plan or a roadmap to achieving long term goals. A strategic advantage is the unique position or edge that allows a company to outperform competitors. The strategic advantage is what makes you better than your competitors. The strategy is a plan or a roadmap to achieving your long term goals, the goal for us as a business owner is to build a strategy that will give us a long term strategic advantage. The whole premise here is that we are trying to build a business plan or a business strategy that is going to make us a better business than our competitors, and that, in turn, is going to allow us to generate higher profits. If our company has a strategic advantage that allows us to be different and better than our competitors, and it makes our competitors very, very difficult to compete with us. That allows us to charge more higher prices and generate higher profits as a business. So the entire goal of what we are going to be looking at in this course is how do you build a strategic advantage and how do you build a strategy to get that? That's what we are talking about here. Now, when it comes to strategic advantage, I want to be very clear about the types of strategic advantages you can have. The first one is cost leadership. This is the idea of being the lowest cost producer in the industry allowing for lower pricing or higher margins. If you can produce a product for less than somebody else, it means that you can probably charge less than somebody else, and therefore, any of the customers that are price sensitive or looking for a deal are going to buy from you, allowing your company to bring in more sales and hopefully more profit. Option number two here is differentiation. This is the idea of offering unique products or services that are valued by customers. If you can develop a product or service that your customers cannot develop or cannot produce, or cannot manufacture, and that can give you a strategic advantage because you become the only place where customer can buy that product. The next one here is the focus strategy. The idea here is that you're going to target a specific market segment with tailored products or services. Generally, and in most cases, this focuses on the absolute highest end of that given market. I'm going to go through a couple of examples here. But the idea is that you want to build something that is just so customized and specific or niche to a certain audience that it wouldn't make sense for your competitors to try and compete with you. Next one here is innovation. This is the idea of developing new technologies or products or processes that give your company a competitive edge. If you can develop a piece of technology that other companies cannot compete with or cannot produce, that gives you a strategic advantage because your customers can only buy that from you. Next one here is your brand reputation. Are all aware of some of the biggest brands around the world, and those brands make people loyal to those customers. They make people decide to buy one product over the other. And so if you can build an exceptionally strong brand, that can generate more revenue, and it can retain more customers for you generating more profit over the long term again. And the last one here is operational Excellent. The idea here is that you're achieving superior efficiency, quality, or customer service, and you're doing it better than your competitors. Usually, this applies to companies with larger operations, where they're just more efficient than the other competitors, or they can stay more organized, or they can do something in a better way compared to their competitors, and it gives them an advantage in their business operations. To run through a couple different examples of this, let's talk about cost leadership. Walmart is a great example of this because they have an extremely large number of very big stores that gives them bargaining power, and this allows them to operate with low costs and pass on the savings to consumers to create a competitive advantage. Walmart will buy so much of your product that they will ask for discount so that they can buy that product at a lower cost than their competitors. That is why Walmart, in general, has some of the lowest prices in retail. It is because their strategic advantage is cost leadership. The next one here is differentiation. One great example of this is the water company called Liquid Death. They created a can and an imagery and a logo that looks so different from every other water brand on the shelf that it makes it stand out. It makes people go, Whoa, what the heck is that? And it makes people want to say, Okay, let me give that a shot. Let me try that. I'm different than the crowd that resonates with me and so they are going after a differentiation strategy where their product stands out so much from the crowd that it gets attention because of how much it stands out. The third one here is a focus strategy. This one is really, really good because Rolls Rice is probably the best example of this where they focus on providing only extremely high end luxury sedans and SUVs, and this allows them to be the best in the world at it, and it gives them a strategic advantage. There is almost no car that is more luxurious than a Rolls Royce, and it is because that is all they do. They specialize in it, and they have become some of the best in the world at the woodworking and leather craft and manufacturing of these extremely high high end sedans and SUVs. Another example of this is Dollar Shave Club, by specializing in just men's hair trimming products, they've been able to establish themselves as the brand in the space for men's hair grooming. There are also some other companies like this where they just specialize so much in one specific thing that they are able to sort of dominate that market and dominate that niche or at least build a large name for themselves, because when somebody thinks about that specific topic, they can associate it with that specific company. A focus on a very small niche, and that allows them to dominate that niche. Next one here is innovation. This is one of the most exciting ones, and there's lots of examples of this, but the idea is that you're constantly innovating to develop new and better products that can give your company an advantage. The best example of this is Apple and Samsung and Space X, for example, now launching Internet satellites around the world. They have developed technology in their rockets that allows them to reuse the rockets and get satellites into orbit for the lowest cost. That gives them a huge strategic advantage because if you want to get a satellite up and you don't want to pay an exorbitant amount for it Space X becomes one of the very, very few options for you. Another example here is Google, what they are doing with some of their technology or Open AI with Chachi BT, or three M with some of their materials or Netflix with some of the content that they're putting on their platform. So very, very exciting. There's a lot going on here, or also Netflix when they started to do the DVD thing. They were the first company to do that. They figured it out, they innovated on it, and for a long time, they were the only one. Now, number five here is brand reputation. I'm sure you're fairly aware of some of these companies. But what they have done is they've developed a desirable brand around the product, and that makes customers want to choose that product over a competitor. The best example of this is Coca Cola. There are hundreds of different cola companies out there, but Coca Cola is by far the most popular and the most well known. Because of the branding associated with that product. Another great example of this, and this is one that I absolutely love is when the product becomes the brand. What I mean by that is if you think about a tissue that you need to blow your nose, a lot of people now call it a Kleenex. A Kleenex is not actually a tissue. A Kleenex is the brand of product that is the tissue, and it has become so popular that that brand has now basically replaced the name for the product. So when somebody says, hand me a band aid or hand me a Kleenex, Those are not actual items. Those are brands, and they have become so synonymous and so popular and those brands have become so good that they're actually replacing the product. If somebody says, Let's go grab Starbucks, they actually mean let's go grab a coffee, but Starbucks has just dominated that market, and so they're referring to that. Another one is Armez. If you look at some of the products that Armez makes, like the Birkin, the reason that people want that Birkin is because of the brand and the story behind it. And branding can be extremely extremely powerful, but it takes time, it takes effort, and it takes a lot of skill to build this as your strategic advantage. Now, the last one here is operational excellence. This one is the idea that it will allow your company to provide more value than your competitors and create a strategic advantage. Again, I've talked about this before in some of my other courses, but the idea behind creating more value can only be done in three ways. You can make a product better. You can make it faster, or you can make it cheaper. Value is the difference between what you pay and what you get. If you can decrease what somebody pays, or you can improve the speed of what they get, or you can make what they get better. That is how you increase the value for your customer. Those are the only three ways to do it. Everything else falls into one of those categories. Good examples of companies that have done this. My personal favorite here is Amazon. The logistics network and the distribution capabilities of Amazon are far far better than any other company on the planet, and that is what gives them operational excellence and the ability to sell products across continents with one or two day delivery. It is absolutely amazing. It is incredible the logistics network that they have built, and it gives them a strategic advantage of being able to get their customers, the products they want faster than all of their competitors. Other examples of this are Toyota. They have some of the most reliable vehicles in the world. Another example is McDonalds. You can go almost anywhere in the world and get pretty much an identical product. It is because of their operational excellence that gives them consistency so that when you're traveling around the world, you at least know one single meal is going to be exactly what you expect. Last one here is Southwest Airlines. They buy only one style of airplane. And only one brand of airplane, and I believe they only have one class of seats on most of their planes. And what it allows them to do is be as absolutely efficient as possible. And so with Southwest Airlines, they can now offer lower fares than most of the other airlines, which is really really nice for them because a lot of people that are traveling on airfare are looking for cheaper tickets? It's not something that people are willing to usually pay a whole lot more for, unless they're getting an upgrade business class. In summary, when it comes to your strategic advantage, what you want to think about is why does somebody choose your products or service over a competitor? What is the strategic advantage that you have that makes your company different than your competitors? Why would a customer choose you over that competitor? And how can you Build a strategic advantage so that it's harder for your competitors to compete with you. That's what we are focused on, and that's what we are going to be exploring in this course. Hope this helps, and we'll see you in the next. 3. Examples of strategic advantages: Alright, everybody, welcome back to another video now that you kind of understand the concept and the premise behind what a strategic advantage is. I figured I'd give you a real life example, and we can talk about my personal business and how I actually think about this concept. So to start us off here, you should know that my business is in the three D printing industry. We design and manufacture products primarily for power tools and hand tools. Here's an example. I three D print this liner for this specific toolbox so that you can store your wrenches in here. And then it closes up and it's dust and waterproof, and it keeps all your wrenches nice and organized. And if you're a tradesman working on site, now you can take this to your site, attach it to your toolbox. Walk onto the job site. Get the job done very easily. And so I build a lot of different products along those lines here, and now I'm going to give you just kind of my mindset about how I think about my own personal strategic advantage for that specific business. So when it comes to what I am doing, my primary focus is on cost leadership. What I mean by that is when it comes to three D printing these products, I three D print them all from my house. I do it in the basement, and I hire basically one employee to come in and just pack the products. But the printers are primarily automated, and I don't have to do a whole lot of work on it. And so, in general, I do not have very much overhead. My house is paid for personally. There isn't a whole lot of utilities or anything like that associated with the business. I have to pay for all of that anyways. And so, in general, the business has almost no overhead. I also buy all of my materials in large quantities. I basically buy them in bulk. And so I'm getting the best possible deal that I can get on materials right now. What I'm referring to is that black plastic that you saw in here, that comes in in bulk to my facility, and then we start manufacturing. Now, with regards to electricity rate, I locked in my electricity rate three years ago at an extremely low price, and so I don't pay a whole lot in electricity, and my costs overall, are very low, which means I can sell these products for a lower price than almost anybody on the market. Now, my second kind of strategic advantage that I like to focus on here is operational excellence. Not only do I want to have extremely low costs, but I want my operations to be as absolutely efficient as possible. So Because of that, I only print in one material and one color, whereas a lot of my other competitors are printing in multiple materials and multiple colors. It means that they need more storage for materials. It means they have multiple suppliers. It means they're having supply chain issues, and it means they have more labor and time dedicated to changing colors over on the printer. I eliminate all of those issues by just focusing on one specific niche which is these power tools and accessories where everything just needs to be functional. It doesn't matter what color it is It just needs to work for the guy that uses it for his job, and so it allows me to do a little bit of focus and streamline my operations so that they are more efficient and more cost effective. And then on top of that, once I manufacture the product, I then use Amazon to handle all of my fulfillment and customer service. I manufacture product here at my house. I have one person that comes in and packs that product, and then ships it down to warehouses in Amazon, which means I don't have to fulfill individual orders. I don't have to manage customer service. I don't have to create shipping labels for individual trinkets or individual orders, and it just makes my life very easy because all I have to do design products, manufacture them and have my employees ship them out and so it's a very, very simple business that allows me to get extremely streamlined, keep my costs extremely low, and make sure that we are as efficient as possible. Now, my strategy moving forward, basically, my business plan and my strategy for growing that strategic advantage is to number one, continue to acquire more printers. That is one way that I can grow the business, is just get more printers. Another way that I can do that I can grow the business is to focus on increasing the output of each printer. And so I either get more printers or I make the current printers more efficient. Those are kind of the two major growth levers that I have in terms of increasing revenue. Now, in terms of decreasing my costs, my number one strategy here is to find additional suppliers for my plastic. I'm already buying in bulk. I'm getting a good price, but I think I can get a little bit better price even because I'm now starting to buy even more material. I might be able to buy half a truckload, for instance, and that should be able to bring my price down a little bit more, but I'm probably going to have to find a different supplier that can match that level of quantity my current supplier actually can't produce enough, and so I need to find more materials. I need to get more printers, and I need to increase the efficiency of each printers. That is going to allow me to again bring my cost down even more and expand my strategic advantage so that I can dominate the market. That is the goal here, and that's how I'm thinking about things. When it comes to business strategy, again, I just want to repeat this. The strategy for your business should be to build a strategic advantage that makes your product or service better than the competition. Your business plan and your business strategy are here to build a strategic advantage. That is the only thing that matters. If you have a strategic advantage so that your competitors cannot compete with you and that customers want to buy from you, that is the golden goose of business. That is what we are trying to achieve here. That's the concept that we want to have in our heads, and that is what leads to higher profit. Now, a couple of examples here that I just want to walk through. Tesla is a really good one. Their mission or their goal as a company is to accelerate the transition to renewable energy. Their strategy to achieve that goal is to build the best cars on the planet and provide the infrastructure to make them a better option than traditional cars. Their competitive advantage right now is that Tesla has the best driver assistance and self driving features in the industry, and they also have the largest charging network. What's nice about this, this gives customers a reason to choose Tesla over the competitors and traditional vehicles. If you want to buy an electric vehicle, but you're worried about charging, the absolute best answer for you is Tesla because they have the most charging stations. That is a strategic advantage for the business. If you are looking for a vehicle that has driver assistance features and maybe can drive itself at some point in the future, Tesla is the best option for you because they have the most advanced self driving features. That is a strategic advantage for the company. So that's what you need to think about. It's why do customers choose you over a competitor? And how can you build a strategy that makes that strategic advantage even bigger? That's the goal. Now, in Tesla scenario, it's kind of cool because everything also aligns with their mission. The more people that buy a Tesla Because of their strategic advantage, the closer they are to fulfilling their mission. Their mission is to accelerate the transition to renewable energy. If everybody bought their cars because of their strategic advantage, it would help them fulfill the mission. The goal is that everything needs to be connected. Their North Star is to accelerate the transition to renewable energy. To do that, they're building the best cars in the market. In order to have the best cars in the market, they're developing new technology and innovation that gives them a strategic advantage in the marketplace and gives consumers a reason to choose an electric vehicle over an internal combustion vehicle. So in summary, I'm going to say this again because I just need to hammer down this point. The goal of your business strategy or your business plan is to build a strategy that gives you a strategic advantage against your competitors and helps you to reach your mission or your company goals. Your business plan and your strategy for how you are going to run your business. The goal of it is to give you a strategic advantage that allows you to meet your goals, usually focused around generating profit or revenue or helping the environment or the accelerating the transition to renewable energy, whatever it might be, You need to have a strategic advantage to help you get there. There's no ISAs or butts about it, and that's how you need to think about your business and what you are going to do next with your time, money, and resources. Hope this helps, and we'll see you in the next. 4. How to build strategic advamtage: All right, everybody. Welcome back. Now that you kind of understand what a strategic advantage is and how I think about it, let's start talking about how to actually build that strategic advantage for your business. In this video, we're going to dive into a few examples, and I'm also going to show you what I am personally doing. Okay, so when it comes down to how to build a strategic advantage, obviously, this is going to depend not only on your business and your niche and your industry, but it's also going to depend on your own core strengths and weaknesses and what you're good at. So if I were you, what I would recommend is doing an evaluation of yourself and trying to figure out, am I really good at efficiency and optimization? Am I really good at super high quality products? Am I really good at building a brand and separating myself from the competition or am I kind of a technical person that likes to focus on innovation? I would start with that and kind of focus on wherever you are leaning to with regards to your personal skills. After that, you also need to kind of understand the marketplace and the competitive landscape. You are super focused on branding, and you're really, really good at branding, but you are selling a B to B product that is not consumer facing and requires direct sales, then unfortunately, branding may not be a competitive advantage that you want to pursue for your specific business or industry. So what you really need to do is figure out what you are good what can work for your business and try and find that crossover or that overlap, and then focus on that overlap. Now, a good kind of mindset to think about with regards to this is when you think about your business, can you say any of these things? Can you say that you are the best in the world at X Y ZE or at developing this product or at manufacturing, or at whatever it might be that your business does, can you become the best in the world at? Or can you do it better, faster, cheaper than your competitors. Can you provide more value to your competitors or to your customers, I should say, by doing it better than your competitors, faster than your competitors or cheaper than your competitors? Or can you be the only one in the industry that can do X Y Z? If you can protect yourself and make sure that you are the only one that can offer that product or service, that can give you a strategic advantage. Or in a lot of situations, your location can also be a strategic advantage. There is a reason that hotels are located next to airports. It's because there's a lot of customers and employees that need those hotels. There's a lot of reasons really expensive hotels are situated right on the beach, is because that's where people want to stay, and that can give you a strategic advantage. So let's just walk through a couple of examples. One really, really good example, and this unfortunately is a company that most people haven't heard of, but the company is called TSMC. This is the company that manufactures the machines that manufacture chips and make chips in your cell phone. So the highest end computer chips that go into the latest iPhones, they get assembled and manufactured by this machine, and TSMC is the company that makes that machine. What is really unique about TSMC is that they are the only company in the world that can make these machines. One, because nobody else knows how to. And number two, because they have patent and protections on the design and the utility and the function. Of those machines. So nobody in the world can compete with them. They are literally the only company in the world that can make the highest end chips right or that can make the machines to produce the highest end chips in the world. So they have a huge, huge strategic advantage. And because of that, they can charge very large amounts for their machines and for their products. Another example of this, I don't know if you've ever been to Las Vegas, but there is one company in Las Vegas that owns a lot of Las Vegas. It's called MGM Grand. They have kind of their flagship hotel. It's the green Hotel right on this strip here. They also own several other properties in Las Vegas. And their strategic advantage is that they own a lot of the best real estate on the Las Vegas Strip. And because people want to go and stay on the strip, because it's close to everything, they have a strategic advantage, where if you want to stay on basically half of the strip, it's going to be one of their properties. So you're kind of forced to possibly choose one of their properties over the other. Or at least depending on what hotel you want to stay at or what attraction you want to be nearby, this is probably going to be one of the main options that you have. And so because of that, they have a strategic advantage. They have some of the best locations on the strip. They have the best entertainment, they have the biggest hotels. They have some of the best features of why people go to Vegas. And so that has generated them a strategic advantage that makes it very, very difficult for other hotels and other accommodation providers to compete with MGM. How did they do this? How did these guys build their strategic advantage? Well, MGM slowly acquired more and more properties on the Las Vegas trip with good business practices and debt. They ran the business's property properly. They generated profit from those businesses, and then they took on debt when they saw an opportunity to purchase another hotel in a good location at a reasonable price. Over time, they just continually repeated that process and acquired more and more of some of the best properties on the strip. ASML actually developed their strategic advantage by developing new technologies and protecting it with patents, meaning that nobody else can use that technology. So their strategic advantage came from an investment that they made into their research and development, then they protected that investment with a patent, and now they're the only company in the world that can produce these machines, and because of that, they can charge almost whatever they want. When it comes to my business, we have talked about my strategic advantage a little bit before. It is low cost leadership as well as operational efficiency or excellency. And to build on my strategic advantage and continue to expand that strategic advantage. My plan is to keep my overhead low and continue to drive my cost down. I also plan to develop my own technology to increase the output per printer, and I plan to continue to design new products. I plan to protect them with utility and design patents. And so these are the three things that I'm doing in my business to continuously maintain and expand that strategic advantage, which is going to make customers want to buy from me and it's going to generate more profit from my business. In summary here, you need to put in the work upfront, to not only think about your strategy, but to then build and execute on that strategy and continue to expand or build your strategic advantage. Build a strategy, think of a business strategy. Think of what you can do to build on or expand your strategic advantage in the marketplace so that customers have a reason to choose you and competitors are scared to compete with you because of the barriers to entry in competing with your strategic advantage. That's what we're trying to develop. You can do it by protecting your products with patents, you can do it by acquiring real estate. You can do it by partnering with different brands, you can do it in a variety of different ways. These are just examples of how TSMC and MGM Grand, as well as myself have done it so far. But what you need to do is you need to take these principles and take what I'm telling you here and then adapt and mold it to your own business. That's the goal here, and that's what I'm trying to teach. S in the next. 5. Protecting your business: All right, everybody, welcome back. In this video, we're going to talk about a couple of strategies that you can use to protect your business and your strategic advantage. Let's jump right in. Okay, so here's a summary of the five different strategies that we're going to cover in this video. One is patents, two is trademarks, three is economies of scale, four is distribution, and five is customer loyalty. So let's dive right in. Number one is patents. There are two different types of patents. The first one is a utility patent, and that protects new and useful inventions or discoveries. The focus here is on functionality. And in general, it is going to cost you a minimum of ten to $25,000 to get that patent filed and applied for because your legal services are actually going to make up the majority of that cost. You are going to have to pay a patent lawyer or a patent agent to put together that application for you because it is not really something that the average person can do. Now, the other type of patent that you can go for is a design patent. This patent focuses on the novelty and originality of the design. It is much cheaper to get. It only ranges from the two to 3,000 range for most designs. Again, I am talking in generalities here. Your situation might be slightly different. But the design patterns focus on the novelty and originality of the design itself. It does not focus on the functionality or the usefulness of the invention. Two different types of patents, depending on your product or service, you might be able to use one of these in order to build a strategic advantage, protect your strategic advantage, and kind of give your customers a reason to choose your product over the competitors. Next one, here is trademark. Trademarks are protection for a word, phrase, symbol, design, or combination thereof. They're primarily used to protect your brand, and they typically cost $300-100. If you have a slogan or McDonald's has that ba, ba, ba, ba, I'm loving it. Those kind of things. Those are your trademarks. Those are the things that customers recognize you buy and that you would want to protect so that nobody else uses it in order to draw in your customers or to impersonate you or to try and take advantage of the brand that you have built. And so trademarks can be extremely useful and they're usually very cost effective, only ranging $300-1000 depending on the trademark and the complexity. Next one here is economies of scale. This one is really interesting because it's probably the hardest out of all of them. And what happens here is that large operations are very hard to compete with because they can usually reduce costs by becoming more efficient and ordering materials at a lower price. I can buy very cost effective materials for my three D printing business because I'm going through 800 kilograms of material per month. If you are only going through 50 or 100 kilograms of material per month, the suppliers would not give you as good pricing as they give to me, because not only am I going through a higher quantity, but I order the same amount every single month, so it's easy to plan and forecast for, and I pay upfront. So I am literally the ideal customer, and because of that, I can get better pricing, and it all has to do with just being a larger operation and having the economies of scale. That lower price allows me to sell my products at a lower price to consumers, and that gives me a strategic advantage in my operations. This can be the same thing or the same argument for Amazon, for instance. They have such great economies of scale in their logistics and distribution network, that it is extremely difficult for anybody else to compete on the same time frame or cost. So economies of scale can be very, very useful, but again, it primarily depends on the type of business that you are in. The next one here is distribution. There is a saying in the shoe game and a couple of other industries, but having a better distribution network can allow you to reach a larger audience with faster service, and that gives more value to the customer. So if you can get extremely extremely good at distribution in an industry or a niche that is typically difficult to do it, that can provide your customers with faster service more value, and it can give a strategic advantage to your business. Or for instance, let's say that you do pistachio ice cream, and you can get it delivered within 20 minutes of somebody ordering it anywhere in your city. That means that you're probably going to dominate the market for anybody in your city that wants that flavor of ice cream because it's so convenient, you have lowered the barrier to entry, and you have increased the value for your customers. So Those are the type of things that we are talking about. What can you do that is significantly better than your customers or your competitors that gives your customers a reason to buy from you instead of them. That's what we're trying to figure out here, and that's what we're trying to build and protect. Now, the last one here is customer loyalty, and there is a couple of different ways to build customer loyalty. But one company that does this really well is Starbucks. Starbucks does this within their app by rewarding customers for their purchases. And so they have a program where when you pay through the app, you get rewards. I think you get stars or points, whatever it's called. And that adds up to the point that you can get free drinks. That makes people want to keep going back to Starbucks because they are incentivized and motivated to get that free drink because they know they're getting rewards on each one that they purchase leading up to it. And so that builds customer loyalty for Starbucks. If you can create something that draws your customer back Even if it cost you a little bit of money, it can extend the lifetime value of that customer and increase it, generating you more profit in the long run. That is what you were trying to figure out when it comes to customer loyalty. And so if you can find a way to build that customer loyalty in a way that makes your customers come back to you instead of your competitors, that is a huge strategic advantage that you can build and protect, and almost any company can find a way to do this. So in summary here, what you need to do is find a way to build your strategic advantage, and then start thinking about ways to protect it from your competition, to make sure that the barrier to entry to compete with you is as high as possible, and to make sure that you are the absolute best in your class at what you are doing, whether it's distribution, or whether it's costing, or whether it's branding, whether it's logistics, whatever it might be, make sure that there is a reason a customer will choose you, because that is what your strategic advantage is and the more that you can build that reason, and the more that you can protect that reason, the more profit you are going to be able to generate as a business. 6. Decision making framework: Alright, everybody, welcome back to another video. In this one, we're going to talk about strategic decision making, and I'm going to give you a strategy to use to help you make decisions within your business. Let's jump right in. Okay, so when it comes to decision making, there's something really important you need to know, and that is that every decision you make within your business needs to align with your mission and strategy. Your decision making should be very easy if you have a strong mission and strategy. Because you should always just go with whatever option aligns best with that mission and strategy. And so if you have a very clear idea of where you're going, that makes it very simple for you to make decisions because you're just going to go with whatever option gets you there the fastest. That's what we're looking for, and that's what we're aiming for. Now, when it comes to decision making, it is your company mission that determines your strategy, and it is your strategy that determines your decision making. What I mean by that is you started this business with a goal in mind. That is your overall mission, whether it's to make profit or whether it's to change the world. Now, in order to do that, you need to come up with a strategy, and hopefully that strategy gives you a strategic advantage that helps you achieve that mission. That is what we are building here is mission, strategic advantage and strategy here. Those are all inter linked together. Your mission is what drives everything. Your strategy is how you get there, and your strategic advantage is what helps you execute on that mission. That is the cycle that we are talking about. Now, just to get this an example and a real life scenario, here is the Southwest Airlines example again. Their mission, as they describe it, is to connect people to what's important in their lives through friendly, reliable and low cost air travel. That is their mission. They want to connect the people and the customers that they serve. Their strategy to execute that mission is to use economies of scale and operational excellence to provide customers with low cost airfare. You can see it right in their strategy, the strategic advantages that they are trying to build. They're trying to use economies of scale to provide low cost airfare. That is the goal. They're trying to provide their customers with a low cost and the same result as the other airlines so that they provide their customers with more value, and they have a strategic advantage because they can charge a lower rate, which is going to drive more customers to their business and hopefully generate more profit. Now, because they have a very clear mission, and they have a clear strategy of how they're going to achieve that mission and the strategic advantages that that strategy is going to provide, now, their decision making is very, very simple. They decided that they are not going to offer a first class section because it is not low cost, and it adds complexity to operations. Complexity in operations adds expenses, And if somebody is looking to fly first class, there are tons of other competitors that offer first class. But that first class section and the training associated with it adds expenses to that flight crew, and that adds to the overall cost. And so Southwest Airlines has decided to not have a first class section on any of their flights. The entire airplane is economy, and that allows them to offer low cost fares to all of their customers at a rate that their other competitors cannot do. Now, when it comes to your decision making as the operator of the business and how you're going to figure out what your strategy is. There are a lot of decisions that you are going to have to make along the way. And what you need to think about is how you are going to make those decisions and what option best aligns with your strategy. Now, in order to do this, I have put together a framework that I've been using for years, and a lot of other people have also been using. I didn't necessarily come up with this. I've kind of adapted it for myself, but it's a fairly common one. Here are the three factors that you want to consider in any large business decision that you are making. Number one, what is the likelihood of success if I go with decision A, B, or C or option A, B or C? What are the resources required if I go with that option? And then what is the impact on the business if that option is successful? Those are the three factors that we want to consider as an operator and as an owner of the business. And ideally, the best option or the one that we want to pursue most of the time is going to be the one that has a high likelihood of success? It requires low resources It has a large impact on the business. Dally, that would be the best thing ever because it's not going to cost us a lot of money. It's going to make a big difference for us, and we're very, very likely to have success with that option. And so that ideally is the option that you want to go with. Now, if one of them has a really high likelihood, but it takes a lot of resources, and it has a low impact, and then the other has high resources, but low on the other two, and the third one is the exact same. Well, here is how you can possibly make that decision. What I would do is I would score each option on a factor of one to five. So each of those factors for each option, I would rank it on one to five. Now, if it got a five, that means that it would have a high likelihood of success. It would require low resources, which is good for us, and it would have a large impact, which is also good for us. And so I would take option A, and I would say, Okay, it has a very high likelihood of success, but it takes a lot of resources, so it's only a two on that category, and it has a medium impact, so it's a three. So that's where it would come to. And then we would add up the scores for each option, and we would put them in order. And whichever option has the highest score, that is the one that this methodology is suggesting that we start with, and as a business owner and as an operator, you can then make that decision. And so when it comes to decision making for your business, what you are looking for is one that is low cost, high impact on the business, and high likelihood of success. And if you can't make a decision based on the information that you have, maybe it is time to rank both of those options, based on those three factors on a scale of one to five, and then add those scores up together. Now, in summary, all decisions need to be compared against your strategy and mission. If that option does not align with your strategy and mission, you should not even be evaluating or considering it. If it doesn't get you closer to your ultimate goal, it is only going to set you further back and distract you from achieving that goal. And so you want to make sure that the options you are considering actually align with what you're trying to achieve as a company. The clarity of what you're trying to achieve, though, will help in that decision making, and it will make the rest of your team, I will make their decision making much easier. It will help them make better decisions because if you know exactly what you want or what the company mission is, everybody else can evaluate the options based on the likelihood of success in achieving that, how well it aligns with your company mission, the resources required and whether or not it's actually going to work, and so and the impact on the business. And so those are the things that you want to consider when you are making decisions around the strategy of your business. I hope this video helps. I hope this framework is something that you can apply to your real life, and we'll see you in the next video. 7. Partnerships and alliances: Alright, everybody, welcome back to another video. In this one, we are going to talk about partnerships and alliances and how you can use them to build your strategic advantage. Let's jump right in. Okay, so when it comes to partnerships and alliances, you need to understand that this can have a massive, massive impact on your business, but only when it's done right. Think about a lot of the major endorsement deals or partnerships that you've seen between major athletes and different brands or companies that want to promote their product. About collaborations that you've seen between different brands, particularly, for instance, in the shoe industry, or think about what you've seen with celebrities and makeup industry, where they have come out with their own deodorants or their own colognes, or their own line of makeup for women. There are a lot of different partnerships, alliances, collaborations, basically relationships that you can build within your business, with external parties that can really make a massive massive impact on your business. For instance, my example, and probably the biggest partnership that I've ever had was, I used to run a company that converted wine barrels into furniture and DCR. We partnered up with Jack Daniels, which is one of the largest whiskey producers in the United States, and we partnered with them to produce a line of barrel furniture and decor using their Jack Daniels whiskey barrels. This partnership allowed us to brand our products with the Jack Daniels brand, as well as it gave them the opportunity to generate income in the form of royalty on our sales, as well as their get their brand out there on high quality products. And so This was a win win for both parties, where Jack Daniels was earning income and getting a nice representation of their brand. And we were getting a strategic advantage because we were the only company in North America that could buy barrels directly from Jack Daniels, use their logo and their brand on the products and come up with our own line of furniture using Jack Daniels barrels. And so this was a very, very exciting time for us. It worked out extremely well, and it gave my company a huge strategic advantage in the marketplace. Now, other examples of this are Coca Cola and McDonalds, for instance, Coca cola is the exclusive drink provider of McDonald's. They pay to be the only drink provider of McDonald's. And this partnership give McDonald's a steady supply with great pricing from Coca cola, and they get a large steady customer base that is selling their products. And so this is a win win for both parties, and it allows McDonald's and Coca cola to both get a steady supply and a steady customer and it allows them to also get the product out there and supply their customers with not only a lower price, but also great value because they're getting a name brand in. So these type of partnerships can be very, very valuable. Another example of this is, if you ever used to go into the old Barnes and Noble stores or the bookstores, obviously, they're still around. But Starbucks would usually set up a location within these Barnes and Noble reading stores. And the advantage here was that Starbucks got great locations with high foot traffic for their target customer. Anybody that likes to sit down and read a book usually likes to drink coffee or tea with it. And so Starbucks is the perfect pairing with that. Now, Barnes and Nobles, they added a new amenity to their location for people that wanted to read books. Basically, it was a draw that not only brought in customers from Starbucks, but it gave their current customers an added reason to stay in the store, enjoy the store, read books in the store, and hopefully spend more money in the store as a result. And so again, just a fantastic partnership, there was a win win for both parties, and that is the ideal situation that you're looking for. Now, just to build on that, when it comes to choosing the right partner here, what you want to do is you want to find a partner where you can both provide each other value so that it's not a one sided exchange, and hopefully it's not just money that the other partner is receiving. There is some type of value that is being exchanged here that only each other can provide in the marketplace. Because that is when you get the advantage where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And what I mean by that is the fact that Barnes and Noble and Starbucks were working together, it allowed them to compound on each other and both feed off of that partnership instead of a Barnes and Noble and a Starbucks that were totally separated, and they didn't actually get to cross pollinate or cross over that customer base. And so the idea here is that the sum of those parts together should be greater than those parts on their own. That is the type of partnership that you are looking for. It is that win win scenario. Now, when it comes to finding the right partnership, you need to understand that this takes a lot of work, a lot of dedication, a lot of patience, and usually, it's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take a period of time. In most scenarios, you are going to need to reach out. It is going to be very rare that a large company reaches out to a smaller company. And so as a smaller company that hopefully is doing well by this point, you need to try and reach out to the larger companies and offer them something that only you can provide. That is the best case scenario. Start with a small project to test the waters. Like I said, when we partnered with Jack Daniels, we started with a small line of three or four products, that went really good, and then we expanded it into a full furniture line. If you can start with a small project, build some trust, execute perfectly, and then expand from there. That is usually the best way to build on that relationship. The goal here, though, is, like I said, to establish a relationship with the person on the other side of that deal. So if it's a company, if it's an individual, whoever it is, you want to build trust, you want to build a relationship. You want to build camaraderie with that person or with that company, and you want to try and make sure that you are providing as much value as they are providing to you. Next one here is you need to create a list and think about how you could work together. Ask yourself how you can provide them value and how you can provide them or how they can provide you value. The goal here is to have a list of a couple of different companies that you might be able to do this with so that, ideally, you can kind of shop around the deal and figure out which one is going to be the best fit for you. Now, in summary here, what you need to think about is that these type of partnerships and these alliances can make a huge difference in your business, but they're going to take time, energy, and money. So they're going to use their resources, and they may not always pan out. It may take you two or three attempts to get this to work, but when it does work, it can be an absolute game changer. When you do find a partner that you think works with you, make sure that you compliment them and they compliment you and that the sum of those parts is greater than the parts on their own. That is the goal here. You want to find a win win deal for everybody, and you want to try and find something that actually fits with your business. I hope this helps, and we'll see you in the next. 8. Conclusion : Alright, everybody. Welcome to the last video in this course. I sincerely appreciate you sticking with me until the end. One of the things I want to do in this video is just give you a quick recap of some of the most important topics that we covered, so let's jump right in. Number one, here, focus on building a strategy that gives you a strategic advantage. You need something that is unique to your business that makes your customers want to choose you over the competition, and that is difficult for your competition to emulate or copy. You need to protect that strategic advantage, possibly through a trademark, a patent, intellectual property, a trade secret, whatever it might be, but you need to do it as much as possible to insulate that advantage from your competition. You also need to build a framework for decision making that aligns with your strategy. You need to figure out as a group, as a team or as the solopreneur, how are you going to make decisions in a way that align with your strategy in order to help you meet your ultimate mission or goal. I also recommend that you work on building alliances and partnerships that help your business separate from the competition. If you can partner with the right people and the right companies, it can act as a huge strategic advantage that gives you a unique place in the market that your competitors cannot get to. Now, if you got any value out of this course, or you thought I missed something or something you really, really liked, please consider leaving a review. I sincerely appreciate it, and I use that feedback to try and make these courses better. I read every single comment. I try to respond as much as I can, and I take every single one to heart, and I try to do the best I can to improve the product over time. I have also put together a class project that I would love for you to fill out. And if you don't feel like submitting that class project or submitting your answers, please consider leaving your company website or a link to your products or a link to your social media. We would love to follow along and buy your product or like your videos or comment or subscribe or follow or support you in any way that we can. I'm trying to build a community of students that have gone through the course, are going through the course now, and we'll go through it in the future in order to build each other up, help each other, and hopefully learn from each other as well. Now, if you're interested in learning more about business, personal finance, or investing, I have several courses here on the Skillshare platform that you can find that once you have a subscription, you can get unlimited content, so you can take all of my courses if you want, and I promise you it will be a great resource for any topic that you want to cover. Now, when it comes to my personal business and what I'm doing online, I post most of my content on YouTube and TikTok, but you can find me on pretty much every platform, and I would also ask that you follow me here on Skillshare. If you are also running a business that is doing well. You've got good cash flow, you've got good marketing, you've found product market fit, and you think you've got a strategy that's going to work. I would love to hear from you. I am interested in investing. I am actively investing into small companies in order to help them grow and scale. So I will write a check into your business, that your business can use that money to grow the business, and I will take a small percentage of your business in return. If that sounds like something you're interested in, please write me an e mail to info at zachrtley.com, and I would love to hear from do not write me an e mail, though, unless you are happy with the position you are in. You think you've found good product market fit, and you are not desperate for the money. If you can do that, I would love to hear from you and I would love to talk to you. In summary, though, your goal as a business owner is to build a strategy that creates a strategic advantage for your business. Once you have built that strategy, then your only goal is to execute on that strategy. That is your only job is to execute on the strategy so that your company, your business, has a strategic advantage in the marketplace that you can then use to attract more customers, generate more revenue, and generate more profit. Hope this video helped. I hope this course helped. And if you have any questions, please leave a comment down below. I'll try and get back to you as soon as I can. Thank you guys so much for watching till the end. Please remember to follow me on all of the other social media platforms. I look forward to connecting with you there and hearing from you soon. Good luck with your business, and we'll talk to you.