Wake-Up Call
Average is a death sentence. You just don’t feel it immediately – which makes it far more dangerous.
I’ve spent thirty years working with businesses. And the ones that scare me most aren’t the failing ones — they’re the almost-thriving ones. The ones that are doing fine. Comfortable. Ticking along. The ones where nobody is panicking, so nobody is changing.
Because panic is obvious. Comfortable is invisible until it isn’t.
The middle is seductive. You’ve got clients. You’re paying the bills. The team is stable. Why rock the boat? Here’s why: your competitors are not standing still. Your customers’ expectations are not standing still. The market is not standing still. And “fine” in a moving world is actually going backwards.
Think about it in customer terms. When your customer has a genuinely brilliant experience – with any business, in any category – they remember it. They talk about it. They go back. But when they have a fine experience? They feel nothing. They share nothing. They have no particular reason to return over anyone else.
Fine is forgettable. And forgettable doesn't build businesses.
The businesses I’ve seen truly scale all had one thing in common: they were willing to be polarising. They knew that the people who didn’t get them weren’t their people – and they were completely okay with that. They chose a direction, committed to it with everything they had, and stopped trying to be something for everyone.
So where is your business right now? Honestly? Are you building something genuinely remarkable, or are you quietly, comfortably, dangerously hanging around the middle?
