1081 – Make yourself the best: Tom talks Superlatives

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

In this episode, Tom Antion explains how superlatives (words like best, fastest, largest, most, least, only, longest) can be powerful copywriting tools to differentiate your business from competitors.
Superlatives describe extremes — the highest, lowest, fastest, or most unique aspects of a product, service, or company. Short words often add “-est” (fastest, shortest, largest), while longer words use “most” or “least” (most luxurious, least expensive).
A key caution is to avoid making unverified negative claims about competitors, which could lead to legal issues. If comparing competitors, it’s safer to reference credible third-party sources (like Consumer Reports). However, subjective claims about your own business are generally safer, especially when framed as opinion or positioning.
Tom shares examples from his own businesses, such as:
• Claiming his school is the only licensed, dedicated internet marketing school
• Calling his mentor program the longest running
• Describing offerings as most unique or most successful
He emphasizes that businesses can still use superlatives legitimately by:
• Narrowing the claim (e.g., “largest in our city”)
• Focusing on unique operational traits (e.g., only all-electric landscaping company that can work at night)
• Being first or only in a specific niche or location
The main takeaway:
Using well-chosen superlatives in marketing, ads, and sales conversations helps signal quality, leadership, and differentiation — which can increase customer trust and conversions.

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Episode 1081 - Superlatives
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.
[00:00:24] Hey everybody. It's Tom here with episode 1081 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about superlatives. These are copywriting techniques and basically how you describe various parts of your business to set you apart from your competitors. All right. Let's see. Hope you didn't miss episode 1079. That was the ins and outs of charitable giving, mostly from the angle of tax deductions, but lots of interesting things in that episode. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, then the episode number. Charitable giving was 1079. Pick up a copy of my automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Version 3.0 is the current version. And check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and my school IMTCVA.org, the only licensed dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world certified to operate by SCHEV, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to be in Virginia because it's quality distance learning.
[00:01:37] All right. Now, that description I just said of my school is going to be used as one of the examples of superlatives. Okay. So keep that in mind. All right. Superlatives. Well what what are they. Well, they're adjectives or adverbs that show extreme Goodness or badness or time. Extreme time or short time. The highest and the lowest of things about your business as compared to others.
[00:02:10] Now for short one syllable things about your business you want to add e to the end. So let's say you really respond quickly to customer inquiries. So fast. You do it fast, right? But let's say you add est and you claim to be the fastest. And that's not hard to do if you answer your darn phone. Okay. Or you check your email regularly, or you get notices when an email comes in. You could be the fastest. Or maybe you get results in the shortest amount of time. So it's short amount of time, but you're the shortest. You can get results for people in the shortest amount of time. That's a superlative. Or maybe you are a restaurant and you have large portions. Well, you could claim I have the largest portions or my restaurant has the largest. Those are superlatives. Now, if they're longer words, you can add the word most or least to them. So let's say you're talking about let's say you're bragging that you're the most expensive. And so you're trying to get high end clients. So I just used it there just without even thinking. The most expensive like we're the most expensive and we're the highest luxury or the most luxurious were the most durable, or it could be the least expensive. You could say I'm the least expensive in my class.
[00:03:52] You know, of people of my level. Now, if you're using this against a competitor. You got to be careful. Let's say your product is way more durable, but your competitors is the least durable of any of the products that you know, any of your people that compete with you. Well, let's say somebody is asking you online about some other competitor of yours and you say, well, they're the least durable. Well, that might not be true. So make sure you are citing some other credible source because you don't want to get sued. Okay. So you could say according to Consumer Reports, my competitor was picked as the least durable of any of the washing machines. So something like that. You don't want a lawsuit, but when you're talking about yourself, you can just say anything you want basically, and then dare somebody to challenge you about it. You know, you won't get sued by claiming yourself as the most expensive or the most luxurious. Not only are those kind of subjective things, that how is somebody going to say, take you to court and say, well, they said they were the most luxurious. You know, it's like, uh, very subjective, but it does have a big effect on the people that may want to do business with you when you use superlatives. I'm the most and, uh, and there's some other ones, best and worst you can use.
[00:05:29] You can say, well, I have the best track record of all with the Better Business Bureau, and you could now you could use worse, you could say, and some of my competitors, without naming them, have the worst track record. Just go over and check the Better Business Bureau. Say so. Nobody wants to accidentally hire the worst, right? So they're going to go over there. And if you have a very high rating, that is the best and they see it, you know you're probably going to get the business. Now let me refer back to what I was talking about with my school. Here's an example of what I said. I said I'm the only licensed, dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world. All right, let's break that down a little bit. So am I the only digital and internet marketing class as part of a school? Well, there's tons of schools that are giving you e-commerce classes and crunching numbers and all kinds of stuff. So I legitimately say that that I'm the only licensed and dedicated. So I am licensed by SCHEV, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, And my school was dedicated to just one topic internet digital marketing, say. So that allows me to put the word only because there aren't any other that I know of in the in the country or the world, right? So if they are, they could challenge me on it.
[00:07:11] But after 13 years of saying this, nobody has ever challenged me on it, right? But it makes my school stand apart. I also could say I'm the it's it's the only school run by a legitimate digital marketing internet multi-millionaire. Right. So, so. And then when I say in the country, probably the world, it just sounds like, hey, this is the one place in the entire world that you can get this, this kind of training with a guy that's dedicated to this and made a fortune doing it. So, so the only. So you also use the word only on my retreat center. It's the only retreat center of its kind. Well, there's loads of retreat centers in the world and in the country, but this is the only one where you can actually live with a high end internet marketer in the house with them. Right. So it allows me to say only my mentor program. It's the longest running. All right. So I'm superlative, longest running since 1997 a mentor program. I say it's the most unique and most successful. Well, again, in all these years, nobody has ever challenged me on that because they would have to put their program up against mine.
[00:08:39] With the number of students, the number of successful students, how long it's been running, all of these things, and nobody would want to be exposed. I usually say nobody will challenge me on this because they'd be embarrassed. See, because, you know, hardly anybody lasts for two minutes. Nowadays, you know, the flash in the pans out there. See? So I use this in my business all the time, and it sends a message to people that I want the best. All right. Now, what if you don't have this anything like that? Well, you can manufacture it and still be legitimate. All right. So here's an example. And one thing you want to do is start small. So let's say, um, you you transitioned in a landscaping company to all electric stuff, electric mowers. And they're real quiet, let's say an electric weed eaters. And and so you could say we're the only landscaping company and then name your city. That can work at night or early in the morning, because we're all electric and very quiet. So you could you could do that. You could say we're the first daycare center offering internet training to your children. You know, so or we're the first adult daycare that provides internet and cell phone training to our residents. I mean, see? So we're the first or we're the only if you happen to be, you know, have five different locations.
[00:10:15] We're the largest chain in our city. See? So find a way to put superlatives in, and you will send a message to potential clients that they want that helps them want to deal with you. So that's what superlatives. It's just one phase of copywriting. But if you can work that in somehow to your when you talk about your company, you know, and your business cards and your advertisements and you know, on your phone calls when you're trying to close clients, This can really help you. All right. So that's superlatives. And I'm one of the only podcasts that has reached over 1000 episodes. All right. So I had to say one of them because there's been about 7000 of them, but that's out of two. Uh, I mean, almost 3 million podcasts over the years. So, uh, we're pretty unique there. I might be one of the only entrepreneurship ones. I'll have to check that. But anyway, use superlatives and it'll help your business. And check out my mentor program. Greatinternetmarketingtraining.com. It's the it's the longest running, most unique, most successful ever in the field of internet and digital marketing. Check it out at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com And I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.