Have You Become A Commodity?

It has become a classic scenario: You pull into Costco or Sam’s. You walk in flashing your membership card and grab the over-sized shopping cart or flat bed cart. You grab mass quantities of toilet paper, paper towels, canned goods and other commodities. You even remembered to bring your discount coupon book that gives you even deeper discounts than normal. You wait to check out and then commandeer your over-packed cart through the parking lot and stuff your car full of boxes and containers that were never meant to fit into a car in the first place. As you settle into the driver’s seat, a rush of satisfaction comes over you as you think, “I saved so much money!” As you bask in your victory on the drive out of the parking lot, the thought suddenly flashes through your mind, “I deserve a reward!” You drive a few short blocks, pull into Starbucks, and pay $5 for a cup of coffee!

What is a commodity? It is the kind of stuff you buy at Costco and Sam’s. By definition it is a raw material or product that is widely available, and the quality is perceived as being basically the same from brand to brand. Since there is no differentiating factor that sets one brand apart from another, you are left to shop based on one thing and one thing alone: PRICE!

Think of the commodities exchange in Chicago. Every day, millions of tons of “commodities” are traded based on PRICE. Go to Costco. They stack it deep and sell it cheep because most of what they sell are commodities. It is a price driven game.

Unfortunately, some products, services, and people for that matter have unknowingly become commodities. They become so widely available and indistinguishable one from another that there is nothing left by which to distinguish them but PRICE. Toilet paper, paper towels, computer chips, dentists and some PEOPLE.

Dentists. Our work at the Total Patient Service Institute (www.TotalPatientService.com) has shown us that most consumers think a dentist is just a dentist and there is really not much difference. And they are right if that has been their experience. If all they have known is the run of the mill dentist who does nothing more than walk in, diagnose, treatment plan and treat, then the patient thinks all dentists are about the same so it only makes sense to price shop them to find the cheapest one.

Our society has a way of trying to make people into commodities. That’s what a job application and a resume do. They standardize all applicants so that they all present the same. It is easier for the employer to make a decision that way. And job applicants fall for it. That’s why we work hard each year at our LEAP seminars for high school and college students (www.LEAPfoundation.com) to show them proven ways to separate themselves from the commoditized masses so they rise to the top and get positions, scholarships, and opportunities that they may have thought were only available to people older and more experienced. As we repeatedly say, “If you do what everyone else does, you’ll get what everyone else gets.” Most people become a commodity. But remember, being a commodity is a choice, not a circumstance.

Take coffee for example. Coffee is a commodity. It is traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and other commodity exchanges around the world. You can get a cheep cup of coffee at the local donut shop for fifty cents. But when you go to Starbucks, you pay 10X that amount. Why are you willing to do that? Because Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, simply turned a commodity, coffee, into something a whole lot more. There is a great lesson here for anyone who wants to keep their product, service or themselves from becoming a "commodity casualty."

Here are 4 proven ways to keep your product, service or person from becoming a commodity:

Create different kind of EXPERIENCE. Most of us have become lulled into a world of the mediocre. It all just becomes a blur of average, every day, transactions that never make a mark in our memory. But every once-in-a-while something comes along that wakes us up. It WOWs us with a memorable experience that draws us back over and over again. Take Disney, Starbucks, and Southwest Airlines as well-known examples to name a few. They create an experience that moves people emotionally and makes them want to come back.

Personal Service. Most commodities are so cheep that the provider cannot afford to give any type of service. Just try to find someone at Costco who can help you beyond the people at check out. Contrast that to the team at Enterprise Rent-a-Car, in an otherwise commoditized industry, Enterprise goes out of its way with professional dress, frequent use of your name, escort to your car, and plenty of choices. It is a different kind of car rental experience because of the personal service.

Customization. Many products and services have left the commodity ranks by becoming customized products to fit specific consumers. Take Levi’s for example when it started making custom fit jeans, or my local men’s clothing store. Everyone there knows my name, my style, the brands I like the most, and everything that I have bought in the past. The store fits me instead of expecting me to fit whatever they decide that I should buy!

Specialization. There are so many niches today around the world that it is relatively easy to provide products and services to specialized niches that need what they need in a different way than the masses. Take my friend Troy VanBiezen, a chiropractor, who has specialized in helping professional athletes cut their injury recovery time in half. (www.chirosportspecialists.com) He’s not a chiropractor in people’s minds. He is a celebrity sports performance specialist. As a result, he has an amazing following among professional athletes and executives that wish they were athletes! Or Crown Council (www.CrownCouncil.com) dentist, Dr. Brian McKay who has made a specialty of being the dentist for people with eating disorders. (www.acid.com) As a result, people come to him from all over the world and around the country. (For a special Crown Council recorded interview with Dr. McKay entitled “Bulemia is a Dental Disorder” call us at 1-877-399-8677.)

There are as many ways to keep your product, service, or yourself from becoming a commodity as there are people. It all comes down to differentiation. What can you do to make yourself unique and different from the masses so you don’t end up being exchanged strictly on price because no one has any other way to tell you apart from the competition.

Success for Our Youth

Nearly 20 years ago, we launched our first youth seminar at a summer camp in Hunt, Texas with the goal of giving high school and college students a 7-year “leap” ahead in their career and their life. Like most things I have experienced in my life, I have learned more from these programs than I think people have learned from me! As one example, The 13 Biggest Mistakes Parents Make and How to Avoid Them (www.MistakesParentsMake.com) was the book produced after nearly 14 years of working with youth in our seminars. It contains 13 “mistakes” prevalent in the lives of many youth that can easily be avoided or prevented early in life by parents and other positive influences in a young person’s life.

Today, the ideas, techniques, and systems we have taught young people to use to get ahead in life are taught in the LEAP Foundation program (www.LEAPfondation.com)

Dr. Bill Dorfman (www.BillDorfman.com) and I established the LEAP Foundation just a few years ago as a non-profit education foundation to provide a unique, 6-day experience for young people who are eager to get ahead in life.

Part of the mission of the foundation is to provide sponsorships and scholarships to deserving youth around the country who desire to attend the program. Through the generous donations of Crown Council members (www.CrownCouncil.com), donations from James Malinchak (www.Malinchak.com) and his seminar participants and many others, youth can attend the LEAP program on partial or full merit-based or need-based scholarships. Scholarship applications can be found on the LEAP Foundation website.

Whether you have a young person in your life that could benefit, you would like to sponsor a deserving young person, or make a donation to benefit a deserving youth, the LEAP Foundation and its programs are changing lives.

This summer’s LEAP program will be held at the UCLA campus August 9-14, 2010. Hundreds of youth from all over the country will attend for 6 action-packed days of learning from mentors who will show them how to:
• Dramatically increase their study effectiveness, study less and make better grades.
• Set goals that become reality.
• Find successful mentors in any field who will share how they did it.
• The secret of the top 20 percent in any field.
• Become a top communicator to get results.
• How to land the best job in any field without using a resume.
• A secret tool that will get you in any door for a scholarship, job, or any key position.
And much, much more.

My favorite part of the LEAP program is the Mentor Roundtable where we assemble over 50 successful mentors from different professions and disciplines that sit around a large ballroom where the students can go and interview them to learn from their experience. Based on the idea that it is “easier to copy genius than it is to create mediocrity,” students learn how to ask the best questions in order to gain from the experience of others so they don’t have to take as many years learning from their own trials and errors!

So, consider this an invitation to spread the word about LEAP. We are looking forward to a great program this summer with outstanding youth and mentors who will come to share the best of what they have done for the benefit of the next generation.

Just go to www.LEAPfoundation.com for enrollment, sponsor and scholarship applications and we’ll look forward to seeing your youth this summer for a LEAP ahead in life.

LEAP

We’ve just finished an amazing week with 170 high school and college age young people from all over the U.S., Canada and South Africa who attended the LEAP Youth Leadership Program. (www.LEAPfoundation.com) Founded by Dr. Bill Dorfman and myself over a year ago, LEAP’s mission is to expose young people to ideas, techniques and systems of success that will help them get a significant lead in life. (Pictured from the left: Leeto Khoza - South Africa, Steve Anderson, Kevin Carroll - speaker, Bill Dorfman, Kim Fineberg - Tomorrow Trust South Africa, Kim Palelo - South Africa.)

For 6 days, we enjoyed introducing these young people to successful mentors and success ideas they can use in school, their future careers, and in life to get ahead. Consider it a success university.

My two favorite highlights of the week happen near the end. Friday afternoon, we introduced all the students to 52 mentors who came in for the afternoon to answer any questions the students had about their respective professions and what has made them successful. Based on the concept that it is a lot easier to copy genius than it is to create mediocrity, this mentor session was stunning. So impressive were the group of mentors that attended that the mentors themselves decided that they had been slighted because they did not have the same opportunity the students had to “work the room” and get to know all the other mentors! What a thrill to watch the light bulbs go on in the student’s minds as they applied the principles they learned all week as they met face-to-face with people who had done it and asked them relevant questions so they could learn from their experience. In the words of one student, Tanner Roeller, a recent high school grad from Texas, “I always thought that success was out of reach and too difficult to attain. Now that I know the secrets of success, I know it is attainable for me.”

Early Saturday morning, the students gathered for the LEAP speech contest where each student presented a prepared speech in front of a group of 8 to 10 other students. The students then voted the best speech to be presented in front of all the LEAP participants, mentors and many parents. What a thrill to listen to the discoveries that had been made during the week, the commitments that had been made, and the life changes that these students made this week. After listening to these students, it was easy to conclude that LEAP is a game changer for these young people. It gives them principles to live by that will take them to the top.

My thanks to the many charitable donors who make this program possible and to the parents and other sponsors who send their students. LEAP is a non-profit education foundation made possible by the generous donations of so many people who want to make a difference in the lives of youth. Thanks for making this week possible.

LEAP 2010 is already scheduled for August 9-14 at the UCLA campus in Los Angeles. Details can be found at www.LEAPfoundation.com or by calling 877-855-5327.