Business Growth Architect Show

Ep #136: Daniel Den: How to Find Your X Factor

• Beate Chelette • Episode 136

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Discover the 7 Marketing Strategies that make you uncopyable, actionable tips from Daniel Den to discover your X factor and make your business stand out and be unforgettable to your customers.

In this episode of the Business Growth Architect Show, I talk to marketing strategist Daniel Den, co-creator of the X Factor Effect and author of Ideas That Influence. Daniel’s story is not just one of success but of resilience, innovation, but his mission -  the pursuit of creating something uncopyable. He shares a candid recount of his early triumph in 2009 when he hit the jackpot with a website that was raking in $1,000 a day, setting him on the path to early retirement—or so he thought. But just as quickly as his success soared, it was nearly dismantled by a flood of copycat competitors who ripped off his winning formula. This painful experience led Daniel to a pivotal realization: to survive and thrive in the business world, you must differentiate yourself to the point where you become uncopyable.

Daniel’s journey didn’t end with his website being copied. Instead, it ignited a fire in him to explore the art of differentiation at a much deeper level. Over the past 12 years, he has honed his craft, helping over 20,000 students and clients across various industries carve out a niche that is entirely their own. Through his X Factor Effect methodology, Daniel has guided businesses in becoming market leaders, or as he likes to call them, "category kings and queens." 

One of the core themes of our conversation is the idea of being deliberately different. Daniel argues that every successful brand has an X factor—something that sets it apart and makes it memorable. He breaks down the process of identifying and cultivating this X factor, emphasizing that it’s not just about being creative; it’s about being strategically creative. He shares examples from his book, *Ideas That Influence,* like the story of Listerine’s genius marketing move in the early 1900s when they owned the word "halitosis" and became synonymous with curing bad breath. 

A significant portion of our conversation also dives into the emotional and spiritual aspects of branding. Daniel and I explore how authentic storytelling, rooted in vulnerability and genuine purpose, can elevate a brand from simply selling a product to making a meaningful connection with customers. 

Daniel talks about how spiritual alignment and emotional authenticity are not just buzzwords, but essential components of a brand that stands out. We discuss how brands that tap into a deeper purpose and resonate on an emotional level with their audience are the ones that leave a lasting legacy. 

I invite you to dive deeper into Daniel Den’s world by visiting his website and checking out his book, Ideas That Influence. And if you found this episode valuable, please share it with your network. Let’s spread the word and help more people discover the power of the X Factor Effect.

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Daniel Den:

Hey. This is Daniel Den, author of the new book,"Ideas That Influence" that helps you discover wildly successful marketing ideas. And I am the co-creator of what we call the "X Factor Effect" with this which is all about helping people like you break through the noise in a big way. And in the episode that I did with Beate for the Business Growth Architect Show, I will reveal secret seven elements for wildly successful marketing messages that break through the noise, which is super important in 2024 because we're all exposed to way too many ads and marketing messages. But with these seven elements, I guarantee that your marketing message is gonna pack a much bigger punch. Go there and listen to the full show now.

BEATE CHELETTE:

And hello, fabulous person! Beate Chelette here. I am the host of the Business Growth Architect Show, and I want to welcome you to today's episode where we discuss how to navigate strategy and spirituality to achieve time and financial freedom. Truly successful people have learned how to master both a clear intention and a strategy to execute that in a spiritual practice that will help them to stay in alignment and on purpose. Please enjoy the show and listen to what our guest today has to say about this very topic. Welcome back, everyone. This is Beate your host for the Business Growth Architect Show. Today, we're talking about marketing and how to stand out, exactly how to figure out what is an X factor, how you can get an X factor, and how can you be so memorable that all your prospects and clients remember you 24/7 and with me, the person is going to answer all these questions and tell you how to is Daniel Den who is a rainmaker. Daniel, I'm so excited to have you on the show. Welcome.

Daniel Den:

Thank you so much, Beate and Beate Chelette, you as well are a rainmaker. I know that you are going to have lots of really cool things to share with this, because you are all about helping people with their ran messaging and differentiating as well. People

BEATE CHELETTE:

call it all kinds of things, and I'd love to hear what you know, what you call it, but we call it authority platform building. We call it the differentiation factor. We call it the unapologetic value proposition, the USP or UVP, because we feel, unless you give people a reason to remember you, they just won't. So Daniel, for somebody who's not familiar with you, what you do or your work, tell them, what do you do? What problem do you solve for your clients? We

Daniel Den:

call it the X Factor Effect. That's our way of saying, Yeah, you got to do things different. My short story is so back in 2009 I hit a home run with the website, and I started on multiple days. I started making as much as $1,000 a day. And I was, you know, I was ready to start planning my retirement. I was like, Yes, I did it. I did it. And long story short, after about six months, I had one copycat competitor who completely ripped off my website, and that one turned into two, that turned into five, it turned into 10, when all of a sudden, done. I estimate I had close to 100 or maybe more people who pretty much completely ripped off my winning website. It was a website that helped sell car insurance, and it worked like gangbusters, but, um, people just copied it. And so I started going down this path of, how do we differentiate to the point where we we become uncopyable, and for the past 12 years, we have been helping over 20,000 students and clients differentiate their businesses to the point where they become uncopyable and they are able to position themselves as market leaders and category kings or category queens in their niche markets. I

BEATE CHELETTE:

find this a really fascinating idea to say there is an X factor, right? We know it when we see it. You are saying that you can deliberately design an X factor. Now you gotta have to tell us more about that, because people oftentimes say things like this, right? Well, that's easy for you, Daniel, you just got it, right?

Daniel Den:

We're creative people, and I've always been creative, and I just thought that everybody had this creative spark. Well, it just so. Happens to turn out that people don't, and for the people that don't, they need processes that help them, differentiate and help them, or sometimes it's just uncover their X factors. Classic example comes from Listerine. I shared this in the ideas that influence book that we'll get to maybe here in a few minutes. But the story of Listerine in the early 1900s Listerine became Listerine because they started marketing that their mouthwash was the cure for what was known as halitosis. If you've heard the hook term halitosis. Listerine basically owned that word in the minds of consumers. It was a word that basically meant, you know, the medical term for bad breath, and they found it in a journal one day. But now nobody was talking about halitosis. So Listerine says, Ah, this is cool. Let's start to, you know, put out advertisements that say that we are the cure for halitosis, aka bad breath. And it got to the point that Listerine owned the positioning so much in the minds of their dream customers that they were the cure for bad breath, aka halitosis, that when any other mouthwash company and the early 1900s would say that they also were the cure for bad breath. Then what would happen? Would they they would inadvertently start creating more sales for Listerine, because in the minds of the consumers, Listerine was the cure for bad breath. And so the whole point of this is, in the case of Listerine, Listerine already knew that they were helping people with bad breath. They just started marketing it as their USP before everybody else, and they did it so well that they solidified their positioning and became known as the cure for bad breath. So half the time, we're helping our our clients simply uncover USPS that they can be sharing with their dream customers that help them close more sales and help more people be attracted to them inside of their business.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Another great example is Kleenex. I mean, that's a tissue, a paper tissue, right? But people say, Do you have a Kleenex? That's actually the brand name. So, so, so every time you said you have a Kleenex, you're reinforcing a brand message that they I don't even know how many decades ago that they've invented. So these examples are, are widely available, if you really look. So you say there's a way for us to determine what our x factor is. And while we may not be Kleenex or Listerine, but I know that you wrote a book, and in a book, in the book that you wrote, you talk about seven elements. So can we talk about this a little bit? Are you willing to share this? Oh, yeah,

Daniel Den:

of course. Let's talk about

BEATE CHELETTE:

let's talk about the book, and let's talk about the seven elements you talk about in the book.

Daniel Den:

So ideas that influence the whole book was written because out of everything that we teach you having a unique brand message is one of the ways you can differentiate yourself. We teach with our X Factor effect methodology, let's stack those differences that make a difference, and let's have so many differences that make a difference inside of what we do that it's we become a unicorn. So the question is, how can we break through the noise and be that one message that people remember today, and we say, include these seven elements and you can get there. So as promised, what are seven

BEATE CHELETTE:

elements? You have me at the edge of my seat. Nice. Lead in now everybody like, get their pen out. We what are the seven elements? Tell me, tell me, tell me. We

Daniel Den:

have a fun little social experiment, which I think is will help people with this concept. Pretty easily, I throw you one ball, you're going to catch that one ball, especially from 10 feet away. Okay, easy, toss. You got it? If I throw you two balls at the exact same time, then it's possible that you catch both, but you're probably going to catch one and drop the other. That's we've actually run this experiment multiple times, and we've seen that that's what happens. Usually, you catch one and drop the other. So you catch them all. If I throw three balls at you at the same time from 10 feet away, all three, usually you're going to catch one or drop all three. If I throw six balls, yeah, you're gonna maybe catch one, but probably drop all six.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Daniel, so we are diving deep into your book ideas that influence and X Factor how to stand out. So let's go through the seven. Elements of, what are the different things that are making me stand out awesome?

Daniel Den:

I'm gonna list them off so that we fulfill the promise

BEATE CHELETTE:

exactly that the title of the episode. So it's all in there. So here they are.

Daniel Den:

It's all there. We're spilling the beans. So we talked about, let's have it single focused, one big concept or idea. That's the first element. The second element is to put your audience center stage, aka make the message about your audience. Don't make it about you. So everybody says, don't just talk about yourself. Well, yeah, don't just talk about yourself. Make it all about your audience, your dream customer. The third element we've called, we have already hinted towards that you have to have a differentiator. You have to be different in some way. So we say, make sure it has an X factor. That's the third element, something different, because people love things that are new and different. The fourth element evokes emotion. The best marketing messages evoke a lot of emotion. So make sure that marketing message, even if you have to do it through humor, hey, humor sells. Make it exciting, like Red Bull, make it funny, like Snickers, evoke emotion in some way, shape or form. So that's the fourth element, make sure it evokes emotion. The more emotion, the better. Fifth Element, share a story. This all goes back to your brand messaging that beat always talks about. So you gotta share the story. Transformational stories is the big one that Beate says that she goes for perfect. Why is that so perfect? Just quick side note. The reason why that's so perfect is because if you share a transformational story, then it shows your dream customers that you used to be them, and because you used to be them and then achieved X results, then that's why you are the best solution for them. Lots of times in business, we are super successful when we end up selling to past versions of ourselves. Beate sells to a past version of herself. I sell to a past version of myself, people that used to be in my shoes, people that used to be in Beate shoes, and that's why we do it successfully. So that's why stories, and transformational stories specifically, are so strong for part of your marketing message. So that's the fifth element. The sixth element is to make sure that marketing message has sticky and shareable elements, and then the sick, sorry. The seventh element is that you want that marketing message to provide, in some way, shape or form, an aha moment, meaning what you want to connect those points in people's brains where they go. Ah, okay, now I see, now I understand. And when people have those aha moments, aka mini paradigm shifts, it really moves them down the sales funnel. Wonderful.

BEATE CHELETTE:

And let's move on to the second part of our show, which is really the spiritual element, and I would like to just hook this into the emotional, the emotional aspect of things that you were just talking about. I think it's a really nice segment for us to stick on that. The emotion that I need to put in my brand or in my storytelling. You are saying I can design that. How do I design that? And how does spirituality come into that? Because I think we want to differentiate between a marketing technique or a tactic and a real emotion, like, how do I, you know what I mean, how do I get this on the same page? So it sounds like something that comes from my heart, yes.

Daniel Den:

Well, this is why it's so important when people talk about brand and how you want to come up with your company's core values and when you want to figure out the real purpose behind your business, that's why you don't really want to skip those steps, even though it can sound cheesy, right? But the deeper we go, and the more purposeful we are then, and the more we do it in a very authentic way, then the more that comes across in our marketing. It's very easy to see manufactured emotions in a marketing message, and sometimes big corporations get called out for it because they are being inauthentic.

BEATE CHELETTE:

So the spiritual aspect then to you in in, in. How you apply this is that there comes a moment where you really need to drop on, on the inside and ask yourself, Why am I doing this? And then hook that or bring that out. Tell us about that. Yeah,

Daniel Den:

we specifically have, like, we've workshopped this with people, and this is, this is, maybe you just do it better than us. Deonte, but this is, like, one of the hardest things to get to people at at the core, but when we get to it, when we really get there, and when people get excited about why they're doing what they're doing for more purposeful reasons. It really like we, like people talk about like, hey, let's like, split tests, landing pages and stuff and yeah, you can see, like, a 20% 30% jumping conversions. But when inside of your brand messaging, when you really get to the core of what you're doing and you can really resonate with your dream customers because of how authentic you're being inside of your brand. Your brand values everything that you've put together. We've seen people 3x 4x and even more their business because they're resonating with people on such a deep level. You feel like that. You've seen that as well. Yeah. I

BEATE CHELETTE:

mean, I actually think what it really is, it's a certain amount of vulnerability where the vulnerability gives the relatability. That's how I see it really work. I mean, you are absolutely correct. And when I work with my clients, the unless there's a clear idea on why we're doing this and what the purpose behind it is. I don't think it works, and the idea can only be valuable or powerful or impactful if I can say it and everybody feels that this is really important to me. There's a difference between me saying I'm a business consultant and I help people to grow, build and scale their business, right? You've heard this 10,000 times before, but if I say I deliberately choose the term growth architect. And the reason I did this is because I realized that people do not know in what order they need to architect their growth, like when you build a house. Everybody's been seeing seeing a time lapse of how you build a house. There are steps that go in order, or that house will not make it. And so growth architecture is built on the same principles. So now I'm having a story that I can tell, and then I use the analogy of helping you know people land planes, because if you had 30,000 feet, that might all be all fun, but you crash eventually because you're running out of fuel. I mean, you're gonna have to land somewhere. So where are we going to land? Or do you want to just take your idea and circle forever? And so with this, because this is really aligned with my experience in the market, and that's what I'm hearing you say, is you need to go deep into this part about saying, What is this about for me in my and then figure out a way how to put it in your marketing. But that story, or the vulnerability of the story, or why that is, and the relatability to that story is, I wasted time, I wasted money, I wasted energy. If it's not in that story, people feel like they're being sold to. But if it's in the story, they discover it alongside with you.

Daniel Den:

What I've seen personally is this, it's sometimes we have to fail forward, and at first, if I'm going to be completely honest with myself, I started working with Pedro 12 years ago because I saw a blue ocean opportunity. I was all about, you know, this blue ocean, and let's help a lot of people down in Brazil. And, oh yeah, I speak Portuguese, so this is great. That was authentically part of my why. But I'm also going to get to travel to Brazil and hang out with the Brazilians a lot more. So my Whys were kind of all over the place, but once we got to the point where the stories were so many that we didn't have time to read all of them. Then I was like, Oh my gosh. Like we are actually because of The X Factor effect methodology and the way we are helping people. We are personally make helping their economies blossom. They are making more money for themselves, and they're making more money for their family and their employees. And so we are having people like go from struggling to blossoming, and

BEATE CHELETTE:

that is, I think that's when the spirituality, the thought of helping, then becomes a much larger message to helping people make an impact. And then looking at how this impact then multiplies by creating wealth for yourself, by creating wealth for the people that work with you, by creating wealth for the customers you're serving, and then suddenly the thing that you know, you and I do. Two, which is, I think, why we're so excited about this, and that's why we're here. And nobody pays us to be on this podcast. We do this because we like sharing ideas and bringing these conversations forward and bringing more people into our into our universe. Is because, when I get this, thank you. Note very much like you, and we see that that we literally made this happen because of something we said or did, or a tactic or strategy or an idea or some thought that suddenly, boom blew up. There really, literally is nothing better, to me, that that signifies the value you bring to the world as a as a marketer or as a as a consultant, because it is not about making the sale. It is about giving someone the tool to then go and do what they want to do, better, faster and more successful,

Daniel Den:

beautiful, exactly. But

BEATE CHELETTE:

tell us about where can we find out more about you, where we where can we get the book and how do we get to work with you. Thank

Daniel Den:

you. Beate, so our big thing in 2024 is the book plus the box experience. Because we're really trying to help people, we give it away for free. We just ask you to pay shipping and handling it costs us a lot more, a lot more than the shipping and handling that we charge for the book plus the box experience helps you come up with big, bold, sticky and wildly successful marketing ideas that break through the noise, so that you can have an additional X Factor inside of your business through your marketing message that helps you to become that market leader. Yes,

BEATE CHELETTE:

thank you for that. And I do have the, I do have the the box. I did get the box, and I opened it, and I was very impressed. There was many fun little things in there that certainly will jolt you your marketing brain into, oh, I can do that. Or that's not that easy. That's not that difficult to do. I could, I could do something very easily. And for those of you who seeing this online, you see that we have our own box up there. So when we work with clients, we ship them a box because we want that first impression to be a powerful impression. And I think that you're really teaching that very well with a box. If for nothing else, I really recommend everybody to go take advantage of this offer. See what something like this looks like. Get to know about how Daniel can help you with that and with that. That's it. That's it for us for today. I appreciate so much, Daniel that you were here on the show and took us through some of your marketing ideas. Thank you so

Daniel Den:

much. You so much. Beate. You are amazing.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Thank you all right, and that's it for us, for today. Now, if you know anybody who struggles a little bit with marketing or had had these conversations about, what do I do, how do I stand out? How do I find my differentiation factor, please share this episode with one other person today that maybe needs to hear what we talked about today. Do remember to please subscribe. Leave us a comment, ask us a question, we are here for you. We appreciate you. We want you to always get value out of the show and provide you with cutting edge information, insights and tips and tricks about how to grow, build and scale your business, and that's it. And with that, I sign off for today and goodbye. So appreciate you being here. Thank you so much for listening to the entire episode. Please subscribe to the podcast. Give us a five star, review, a comment and share this episode with one more person so that you can help us help more people. Thank you again, until next time. Goodbye.

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Beate Chelette

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