How Do You Break Through the Noise?

The question gets asked more times per day than probably anything on the internet: how do you break through the noise? How do you stand out from the masses?

For the person with 252 views on YouTube, he wonders how someone could possibly get 2000 views let alone 2 million or more. He becomes frustrated and quits.

For the stay-at-home mom with 76 new visitors to her website this month, she becomes discouraged and doesn’t share her nuggets of wisdom anymore.

It’s the reason that “how to get 1000 followers per day” videos and courses overwhelm a certain segment of the internet. We want to get our idea or product or service out there but there are just so many people doing the same thing.

Or are they?

If you’re reading this, you’re probably average in intelligence, height, looks, weight, and temperament. It’s what average is. You may think you’re above average, but you’re probably not. Sorry. So how do you get to be just a cut above?

Recently I read a quote that made sense after considering it for a good length of time: don’t be better. Be different. Okay, so it’s not the most compelling quote I’ve ever read. It’s a shortened version of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” poem.

Someone like Gary Vaynerchuk would take that quote and ask, “Why can’t you be better AND different?” and it makes total sense for him because he’s a master at both. As a frame of reference, Vaynerchuk took the phrase “Work smarter, not harder” and made it into “Work smarter AND harder.” Boom!

Let’s explore different for a second. Everyone and their sister examines ‘better’ so we’ll address ‘different.’

• Different doesn’t mean weird or odd.
• Different doesn’t mean fake or hokey.
• Different doesn’t mean vile, perverse, or nasty.
• Different doesn’t mean counterculture necessarily.

Different simply means different. If everyone is zigging, you zag.

If everyone on your block has a new Lexus, buy a 1970 Dodge Charger.

That’s different. Not better, just different.

Different isn’t keeping up with the Joneses; it’s setting the new standard so that people will eventually keep up with the Millers or Johansons or Nightingales.

But don’t be fooled. Even if you’re different, it doesn’t mean you’ll be the next Zuckerberg, Gates, Schmidt, or Bezos. It just means you’re different.

In a nation of 330 million people, only four people will be Zuckerberg, Gates, Schmidt, and Bezos. The likelihood that you’ll reach that level is next to nothing. I mean, let’s face it, the level of day-to-day pressure those individuals are under at the top would break most of us, so who really wants to get to that level? You can still be different and stand out.

So, what does different look like in real life?

• Different is spending your time coding on a Friday night and all day Saturday while your friends are out partying.
• Different is posting every single day while your competition is satisfied with 2-3 posts a month.
• Different is being consistent about posting, sharing, and delivering.
• Different is asking the question “What is everyone in my space doing?” and doing something outlandishly opposite.
• Different is having a plan when everyone else is winging it.
• Different is actually implementing “outside the box” thinking.
• Different is admiring the moment while everyone else whips out their smart phone cameras to capture it.
• Lastly, different is implementing. If it fails, learn your lessons, lick your wounds, and move on.

Everyone has to work out different in their own minds. Only you know your market and audience. What is everyone else doing? Are they all following a prescribed pattern? If they are, how do you go against the grain of that pattern that makes sense to you?