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JANUARY 28, 2021 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
Mind Y
ur Business
Mark Levy: “You Need to Be Amazing in One Area” By Yitzchok Saftlas
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his column features business insights from a recent “Mind Your Business with Yitzchok Saftlas” radio show. The weekly “Mind Your Business” show – broadcasting since 2015 – features interviews with Fortune 500 executives, business leaders and marketing gurus. Prominent guests include: John Sculley, former CEO of Apple and Pepsi; Dick Schulze, founder and Chairman Emeritus of Best Buy; and Beth Comstock, former Vice Chair of GE; among over 300+ senior-level executives and business celebrities. Yitzchok Saftlas, president of Bottom Line Marketing Group, hosts the weekly “Mind Your Business” show, which airs at 10 p.m. every Sunday night on 710WOR and throughout America on the iHeartRadio Network.
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n a recent 77WABC “Mind Your Business” broadcast, Yitzchok Saftlas (YS) spoke with guest Mark Levy (ML), founder of Levy Innovation LLC, a positioning and branding firm that helps consultants and other thought leaders increase their fees by up to two thousand percent. * * * YS: You’re a differentiation expert, one of the leading differentiation experts out there in the world. Can you describe what you do? ML: I help people find what I call the big idea of their business, the thing that their business is going to be known for, that’s going to be elevated at the fore of their business, on their website, in their products, in their pitches. It’s going to be their front and center, and anyone in the marketplace who falls in love with that idea will seek them out because they embody that idea. That’s the
idea of differentiation. Sometimes people come to me, and they want to differentiate themselves – they’re a speaker, a consultant, a coach, or something like that. They get very confused because their lives, their business, are about so many different things. They can do so many different things and so many different concepts are important to them. When they come to me, they’re apologizing for all the cool stuff that they know how to do and all the cool stuff that they’ve done in their life. I tell them: don’t apologize to me for being this amazing human being who knows a lot about everything and can do so many different things – that’s what makes you great. You need to be amazing in one area. But I believe that you should be great in countless areas because our minds are not precision instruments. We draw from all kinds of different models and all kinds of different ideas in life. So, to me, the more things that you understand
about the world and the more things that excite you and you can draw upon, the more robust your business and your solutions will be. How would you package the type of individual that is a perfect fit to be your client? I deal with thought leaders and I deal with organizations, and it’s usually about people who are super-smart at what it is they do. They want to be known for one big irresistible idea, but they’re not necessarily known for that yet. Or it could be that the idea that they’re known for needs a refresh because the public has acclimated to that idea, so, it doesn’t stand out as special as it should. So, we come up with something brand new. What is that idea and how do you write and speak about it so that people get excited about it? Something I really should specify is that the best people or the best organizations to differentiate are daring brands. They’re daring, and
they’re willing to stand out. Sometimes, people come to me and they say, I want you to position me, I want you to differentiate me and I want to stand out. And I say to them, you know, if we differentiate you properly, you will stand out, so understand that people will love you. But you’re also going to be very visible. Are you OK with that? Are you comfortable with that? Because you can’t be about something lukewarm. You have to go all in about a specific idea. You really have to be that; it has to be a cause in your life. You have to really support that idea. And everything you do has to be around that idea. So, you can’t really take half-measures if you truly want to differentiate in a way that’s going to make a big change in your business and in people’s lives. If you’re not comfortable in that skin, then there’s no way you’re going to be able to live with it and make it work. I’ve heard you tell people that one elevator pitch is not
