Column

If people don’t laugh at you and your ideas at least once a week, you’re not pushing the envelope. There, I said it. Needed to. I’m tired of seeing boring businesses and people afraid to take the road less travelled. Most of the things that fill us with fear never happen, so why let them keep you small?

Great people run toward their resistances and play out on the edges of their lives. And great companies spend far less time benchmarking others than creating new ways of delivering outrageous value to their customers. Why? Because the world doesn’t need a better clone. We don’t need more copycats. The world needs more human beings and enterprises that make us say wow. That rock our worlds. The world needs more giant ideas that no one’s thought of to enrich our customers and improve our communities and elevate the planet. The world needs more visionaries, dreamers and outright revolutionaries. I love what Tom Chappell, founder of Tom’s of Maine, said: “Success means never letting the competition define you. Instead, you have to define yourself based on a point of view you care deeply about.” Beautiful.

One client recently shared that he thought it was daring for me and my team to have a picture on our rebranded website of me with my eyes closed, holding a dove. “What would all your corporate clients, like Microsoft, IBM, Nike and FedEx, think of it?” he asked. “Those companies stand for reinvention and innovation,” I replied. “I think they’d applaud the bold move.” The designer of the new multimedia show I’m running at my presentations shared that the colours I’d chosen were risky because they were not “standard corporate colours.” “Thanks for the compliment,” I joked. Business needs more daring. Business needs more people willing to take risks and play out on the skinny branches. Business needs more human beings like
Richard Branson and his devotion to putting tourists into space with his company Virgin Galactic. I love people like that. They inspire me.

All innovators are initially laughed at. They laughed at Columbus when he said the earth was round. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. They laughed at the guys at RIM when they launched the BlackBerry. They laughed at the founder of Evian, who believed people would pay money for water. Who’s laughing now?

People pay for originality. You want to lead the field in your business? Be different. Let them laugh. Let them call you crazy. Stay true to your vision. Dream bigger. Don’t be ordinary. It’s the kiss of death, as far as I can tell.