You Are Competing Against Ordinary

Whatever you do in life, whatever you want to be, whatever goals you want to pursue, understand that you are competing against a vast sea of ordinary. If you are only trying to be ordinary you won’t stand out. If you offer ordinary service in the service sector, then someone somewhere can do it cheaper. Ordinary competes on price and price alone. Anybody can do ordinary.

Ordinary can be hired cheaply and easily. And just as cheaply and easily ordinary can be gotten rid of. As one of the people I know who is a conference organizer says it plainly: "You can be replaced by a button that doesn’t do anything." If that applies to you, it means you’re ordinary.

I can find people who will do average, ordinary work anywhere in the world for less than I have to pay you. If you can only be ordinary at something, why would I hire you? Whatever it is you do in life, you need to be more, you need to be so far beyond ordinary at what you choose to do that you aren’t competing with anyone.

If only there was a word in the English language to describe someone or something that was more than just ordinary.

Someone that went the extra mile.

Someone that gave an extra 10%.

Someone that produced one extra sale.

Someone that generated one extra lead.

Whatever that word would be it would describe someone that went beyond the ordinary, which delivered that extra something, that extra that wasn’t just ordinary. If only there was a word…