November 11, 2024

How To Be Original

Emulating your heroes, role models, and colleagues is a great way to get your business off the ground.

But eventually, it’s not enough.

Your revenue plateaus. Your margins shrink. You start losing deals to eager newbies.

Why?

Because the world doesn’t usually reward copycats for long.

So what do you do about it?

Something original. Something uniquely your own. Something that has never been done in quite the same way.

Something wild. Something risky. Something that scares the living sh!t out of you.

Ok... fine.

But what?!

I dearly wish I could tell you exactly how to do something original, but that’d be a paradox (or a logical impossibility or an oxymoron or something like that).

That’s not how being original works. The spark has to come from you. You have to figure it out on your own.

The good news is, there’s a better-than-average chance that your originality is staring you in the face, but it’s so close to your nose that you just can’t see it (or you’re afraid to see it).

Try this...

What is the thing about you or your process or your worldview that is “obviously insane” to everyone else but makes perfect sense to you, and you could argue for it endlessly?

If you can answer that, you know how to be original.

Yours,

—J

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