We all think we are special snowflakes. Unique. Valuable.
Certainly in my business I see myself and the little company in that light. We deliberately play in a small niche and we do pretty well.
Sometimes I see myself and my skills as unique in certain ways. But I’m not, really. I’m on the pretty fucking good to pretty fucking awesome spectrum (sometimes falling off the left side of the spectrum into average or awful).
Note what that self-assessment implies.
It implies that even on my best days I am not the unquestioned best in the world. And the variability in my performance confirms that. The best in the world would not fall off the chart like that. Failures would be within the normal spectrum.
So I’m a commodity.
Let’s look at Seth Godwin’s Linchpin, at page 233.
If you’re not the best in the world (the customer’s world) at your unique talent, then it’s not a unique talent, is it? Which means you have only two choices:
1. Develop the other attributes that make you a linchpin.
2. Get a lot better at your unique talent.
Andy Frisella, in one of his podcasts, hammers on this point. He says all businesses are commodity businesses. You just have to accept that fact. Within your market niche there is not a lot to distinguish one provider from another. Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche. The differences are not enough to tell you one is the leader. They are only centimeters and shades apart from each other. Really. Even an enthusiast for Ferrari would not be able to argue otherwise.
His point is that you, as the business owner, must work within that constraint: you’re a commodity business. Any other perspective is ego. (That’s my addition to what I remember him saying).
Given that you are operating a commodity business, Andy says there are only two things that give you a competitive advantage: your company culture and something else that I forget. I am going to go back and re-listen to the podcasts until I find it. But it was also another squishy, nontechnical thing. His product (nutritional supplements) is a commodity. He positions himself at the top of the market, but he has worthy competitors and he acknowledges that.
Takeaway for me? Double down on culture.