How are you a disruptor in your business?
To help you find new ways to be disruptive in business, we asked business leaders and entrepreneurs this question for their best advice. From spotting market inefficiencies to consent-based organizations, there are several ways you can be a disruptor in your business.
Here are eleven ways to be a disruptor in business:
- Taking Care Of Clients Like Family
- Removing The Limitations Of Geography In Recruiting
- Natural Food For Your Pet
- Spotting Market Inefficiencies
- Online Faxing
- We Transformed Our Services Into A Product
- Hiring Executives Who Look And Think Like The CEO
- Personal Struggle Became A Catalyst For A New Business
- Identifying What Makes Our Clients One-Of-A-Kind
- Consent-Based Organization
- The Ancient Art Of Barter Trading
Taking Care Of Clients Like Family
The financing industry is often seen as the hungry middleman. Customers often feel the need to perform lots of research to ensure that they are getting the best deal and aren’t being taken advantage of. At Charter Capital, we are a family-owned business, and our goal is to take care of our clients like they are apart of our family. We can be your navigator, your consultant, and the bridge between your equipment financing needs and our 40 years of accumulated knowledge.
Carey Wilbur, Charter Capital
Removing The Limitations Of Geography In Recruiting
My business, C9 Staff, has been changing the way companies look at staffing, recruiting, and hiring great talents for their teams. You see, traditional staffing and recruitment are limited geographically. You can only hire and recruit talents who are geographically accessible to you and vice versa. Our business removes the limitation imposed by geography on your hiring and recruitment efforts and gives you access to a global pool of outstanding talents. You don't need to settle for someone who may be good at the role you're hiring for, yet is quite expensive because he's the only one who can do the job who's located near you. With C9 Staff, you have more options. Our deep penetration of the top talent markets around the world allows us to find, recruit and hire, not just good, but the best talent for the position you're hiring for at a fraction of the cost. All you have to do is break out of traditional thinking and be open to the possibilities brought about by a globally distributed team.
Phillip A. Lew, C9 Staff
Natural Food For Your Pet
I entered this market because I was disappointed with the options I had to feed my dog. Once I learned about the process used to make kibble, the inferior ingredients, and that these over-processed foods led to dogs experiencing health problems and shorter lifespans, I knew I had to create something better for my fur baby. Side By Side’s mission is to help pets live longer by feeding them the way nature intended, with whole food ingredients and species-appropriate ingredients to support their needs. We hope to touch as many lives as possible so you and your dog can have more walks, cuddles, and adventures together in the future.
Carol Bramson, Side by Side
Spotting Market Inefficiencies
In the insurance industry, companies like mine compete against the big brand name agencies by being more nimble. For our agency, that means knowing what our customers in Lehi, Utah, actually want and customizing our policy offerings. Big agencies have a more difficult time being nimble and altering their approach. But for us, offering policies like ATV insurance or tow truck insurance enables us to better meet local customer demand. Being a disruptor is all about spotting market inefficiencies. Find the overlooked opportunities, and stay nimble to disrupt at the local level.
Brandon Berglund, Berglund Insurance
Online Faxing
Faxing is still evolving. Businesses still need to send and receive sensitive information and documents securely online. With advances in technology, you no longer need a fax machine to send or receive faxes. Instead, you can fax as easily as sending an email and far more securely from any device. We’ve sent more than 20M faxes from 20,000 companies, including Lyft, Microsoft, and Harvard University. The fax machine was ripe for disruption, and it’s great to help faxing become more simple and accessible.
Adam Korbl, iFax
We Transformed Our Services Into A Product
We realized going into 2020 that we had hit a glass ceiling, so we decided to rethink how our little agency operates. The first step was to turn our services into packaged fixed-price products that can be bought online. With each project was a system in place, consisting of checks and milestones. It sounds dull, but this process really breathed new life into our agency, and I'm writing a book about how others can do the same.
Doug Dennison, MailNinja
Hiring Executives Who Look And Think Like The CEO
I had one CEO client who had a bias towards women. However, he relied too heavily on just a few key female executives. In the long term, they both let him and his company down. As leaders, it is critical that we include people who do not think or look like ourselves. In order to ignite innovation, we must bring diverse perspectives and experiences to the decision-making process. Nothing else drives shareholder value in the long term without diverse perspectives.
Katharine Halpin, The Halpin Companies Inc.
Personal Struggle Became A Catalyst For A New Business
I launched my company, indipop, after I struggled to find healthcare when I left the corporate world to go out on my own. I was part of the 57 million paying 3x’s the rates or going without insurance. I did find a solution and now I’m sharing it with the freelancers, solopreneurs and small business owners who I like to call the “Independent Population” of self-employed. Health shares, although not a mainstream approach to managing medical needs is an alternative that typically has lower monthly rates, offers concierge care to help navigate the care and cost and provides fair medical pricing. But not all health shares are created equal; I personally handpick the plans offered on the indipop site. They go through the Melissa Test, it needs to be simple, affordable and I would actually enroll in the plan. Because it is not a one-size-fits-all, indipop helps guide you to help match or fit you with the right plan.
Melissa Blatt, indipop
Identifying What Makes Our Clients One-Of-A-Kind
As a “Disruptive Branding Studio,” AtticSalt uses strategic positioning to help our clients identify what makes them one-of-a-kind, and we build an entire brand system around that unique differentiator. This way, when prospects are searching for a company with your specialty, it makes it 10x more likely they will choose you over your competitors. We have built our entire brand around disruption. Our positioning, messaging, and visual identity are distinctly different than our competitors. Our bold and unapologetic language also helps us attract the work we want to do and eliminate the stuff we don't. Companies interested in standing out want to work with us.
Rani Sweis, AtticSalt
Consent-Based Organization
My business is a consent-based organization focused on social justice as a whole. All of our staff members choose when they work, what they work on, and what working looks like to them. They get to choose exactly how much they work, and there are no hierarchies as we are all working towards a common goal. One of the most notable things is that we don't have a time-off policy—each team member has an unlimited amount of time off that they can take with no questions asked.
Zoe Waters, Necessary Behavior
The Ancient Art Of Barter Trading
Using today’s technology, we’re disrupting how local businesses and digital freelancers connect, collaborate, and do business with each other. We’re bringing back the age-old art of bartering. Every small business and freelancer has excess capacity, such as unbooked hours, slow times, empty seats, which currently go to waste. By utilizing these excess capacities to trade for services, skills, and talents needed, small businesses can maximize their productivity and scale without spending money. What is innovative and disruptive on Avontage is our trade credit system called Avontage Bucks. Avontage Bucks allows members to trade in multiparty settings and not limit them to one-to-one trades only. Due to the pandemic and its economic impact at the local level, business barter trading is on the rise, and it is the smartest way to achieve scalable growth without expanding overhead and expenses.
Sean Sarram, Avontage
Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.