The Fastest Way to Become (or Stay) Average
October 15th, 2026 by Diane Conklin under Business - General, Business Strategy. No Comments.
Joan had written five books.
She’d spent fifteen years building a name in her industry. People knew her. Respected her. Quoted her.
And she was broke.
Not “slow quarter” broke. Broke…and in debt.
But that’s not the part that still gets me.
The part that gets me is that not one person looked at her and said, “Joan, something’s wrong. You’re doing everything that’s supposed to work, and it isn’t.”
Why would they?
They were doing the exact same thing.
Same model. Same offers. Same pricing. Same way of selling. Same way of delivering.
When everyone is standing in the same room, nobody notices the walls.
That’s the trap.
And it isn’t just Joan’s industry.
It’s every industry…and almost certainly yours.
We call it “best practices”, but it’s not! Most of the time, it’s just common practice.
We call it “industry standard.” Most of the time, it’s an inherited habit. Passed down from someone who copied it from someone else who never stopped to see if it actually worked or not.
Popular isn’t proof.
A thousand people doing the same thing doesn’t make it right. It just makes it crowded.
And crowded is expensive.
When you look like everyone else, the only thing left to compare is price. When you sound like everyone else, nobody remembers you. When you offer what everyone else offers, your customer has no reason to pick you.
So, they don’t.
Or worse yet…they pick whoever is cheapest.
You think you have a marketing problem.
You might have a sameness problem.
Working harder at the same model won’t fix it. You’ll just get better at being average.
Joan didn’t need to get better at the model that wasn’t producing.
She needed a new model.
This isn’t about rebelling. Being different just to be different is its own kind of copying.
It’s about asking the one question you and your industry stopped asking a long time ago:
Does this actually work?
Not “Is it normal?” Not “Do my competitors do it?” Not “Did someone famous teach it?”
Does it work for you? For your business? For the results you actually want?
So, here’s what I want you to do this week.
Pick one thing in your business. Just one.
And ask yourself, honestly:
Am I doing this because it works?
Or because everybody does it this way?
Those are not the same thing.
What’s your one thing for this week?
To Your Success –
