Can you own your one thing?

Your One Thing should also be distinct and defensible, something you can own.

Photo by Santiago Lacarta on Unsplash

It’s your One Thing, after all. Nobody else can ever be “The Prosperous Mind guy” or “the creator of Prosperous Mind” because I have created something new that can be mine.

Ideally, your One Thing should also not simply be the subject matter in which you are an expert. If other people might be able to claim the same expertise, then it is not unique. However, you may still be able to own the term and defend it against competition.

Here’s an example. I mentioned in the introduction that I like playing chess, and have recently picked up the game again in the effort to improve. Most improving chess players will feel the need to get familiar with new openings, whether to know how to play them or to play against them. When I was looking into openings, I kept finding one teacher, Dereque Kelley, who runs the website chessopenings.com.

We will revisit Dereque’s business model later in the course, but for now let’s look at the name “Chess Openings” as an example of a One Thing. On one hand, the name itself is generic. There are plenty of chess masters who could speak with equal authority about openings. However, Dereque is the one who snapped up the domain chessopenings.com. Owning a domain name is exclusive: nobody else can own the same one while you have it. So, although Dereque cannot claim to own the topic “chess openings” outright, he will always be well placed to rank well on search engines. If he had not managed to secure the domain name, he would have found it very difficult to claim the title “Chess Openings” as a powerful and defensible One Thing.

Tip: Is the title of your One Thing available as a dot com domain name? If not, you may need to come up with alternatives.

The name of your One Thing can be incredibly powerful. Start to think about it as something that you should turn into a proper noun, complete with Capital Letters. Something that is more than a description, but a new Thing that is yours. (The power of the title is something we will explore in more detail later in this section.)