HOUSTON--The secret sauce to a successful business is finding the great alignment between what you do well and what you love to do.

“When you find that passion, it makes an amazing difference both for you as well as those who may want to work for you,” said Ken Jones, associate director of the Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Houston.

Jones has more than 25 years of experience in creating, building and selling businesses. He recently was named the university’s entrepreneur in residence, where he oversees more than 75 new patents a year.

“My job is to monetize these great ideas so they will go on into the marketplace,” he said.

While addressing attendees of Hart Energy’s Entrepreneurs’ Forum on June 9, he helped identify the core strategies of thinking like an entrepreneur, which he defined as someone who understands the outcome is up to him or her and wants it that way.

A big challenge, especially in the oil and gas industry, he said, is how to transition from being a doer to a leader. The key is to recognize how others may perceive you and how you want to be perceived, or in other words creating a successful brand.

“Resoundingly, it’s that difference in perspective that to me makes the difference in fishing and cutting bait,” he said.

Today, a company’s brand is all about customer service, he said. Branding includes supply chain, partnership, software and not until most recently—human resources.

“The most valuable asset that companies never put on their balance sheet is their customers,” he said.

However, the real test for any business trying to establish a brand is to differentiate itself from its competitors, he said. Jones provided attendees with several steps businesses can take to build a competitive advantage.

Revitalization: Rejuvenate your value proposition with new services, sharper differentiations and justifiable premium pricing.

Retention: Hold on to your high-profit customers longer by targeting the profitable niches where you can become the dominant player of choice.

Reacquisition: Win back your valuable inactive or lost clients.

Referrals: Network with the right people. It costs a lot less and takes less time to close referred business than a non-referred prospect.

Rain-making: With customer loyalty decreasing, you need superior rain-making and strategic account management skills to identify and win large profitable new accounts.

Related sales: Up-sell and cross-sell to increase customer share of the wallet.

Reputation building: A powerful brand can add anything from 20% to 30% on the price premium you can command.

Remarkability: In an age of idea diffusion, we have too many choices and too little time. What gets chosen must be remarkable.

Jones is leading two teams of young entrepreneurs that have made it to the finals of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Clean Energy Business Plan Competition. One of his teams has already won $500,000 with its patented product focusing on new technologies in the oil patch.

The University of Houston’s Wolff Center was recently named the No. 1 undergraduate entrepreneurship program in the nation by The Princeton Review and Entrepreneurship Magazine. The university is the second-leading publisher of patents in the state of Texas, Jones said.