I recently read “Niche Down: how to become legendary by being different” by Christopher Lochhead and Heather Clancy.

Here are some insights I pulled from the book.

The author starts out by saying “my desire is that this book enables you to focus your life on the exponential value of what makes you different versus the incremental value of what makes you better.”

I love when authors provide a metric to evaluate the book on, it makes giving a review based on that objective easy.

A common theme in this book was to, unsurprisingly, finding your niche. The authors defined a niche as establishing what makes you different, not necessarily what makes you better.

“It comes down to leveraging the exponential value of what makes you or your venture “different” rather than leaning on the incremental value of what makes you “better.”

I agree, and appreciate, that they distinguished between the exponential value of being different from the incremental value of being better.

They provide examples of this principle holding true in the food industry, where certain businesses have been successful by offering different pizza, for example, not better pizza.

Being different allows you to rise above the comparison game.

“No matter where your company is located (or how big it is) when you position your business or yourself as “better” than some other option you invade someone else’s queendom – you fight for attention.”

An important rule in business, don’t compare on someone else’s terms.

A principle I think Pepsi could benefit from.

Many of the principles could be applied to both a business perspective and a personal perspective.

In a later post, we’ll dive into the personal side.