Why being safe is the worst thing you can do for personal success
“Death by a thousand Mehs”
This quotation comes from a chapter title in Dataclysm, a book by cofounder of OkCupid, Christian Rudder. The books is about the insightful data he has gathered from the dating site. In that particular chapter, he described how in the dating world, it’s better to be bold than to be safe.
In addition to the world of dating, being safe is a bad strategy for business and product too.
All of the examples in this story will lead one single insight.
In essence, in our current world, there are TOO many options. It’s impossible to succeed by being safe and thus trying to appeal to as many people as possible.
To find success, it’s much better to stand out and to captivate a small group of committed audience.
Case I
Being safe gets you less dates
OkCupid’s site used to have a rating system of 5 stars. In that chapter, he analyzed the messages received by women who hold a rating of approximately 3 stars. In other words, he analyzed messages received by women who are “average” in the stack.
What distinguishes the women of this group is the VARIANCE in their ratings.
Let’s say that 100 men voted. A woman can have a score of 3 if all 100 of the men each gave her a 3. She could also score a 3 if 50 of the men gave her a 1 while the other 50 gave her a 5. The woman with 50 ones and 50 fives have a much higher variance than the women with 100 threes.
Which woman (one with 100 threes or one with 50 ones and 50 fives) do you think got more messages?
The data from OkCupid revealed that variance is highly correlated with number of messages received. Thus, for women of the same physical attractiveness group, the ones who are polarizing are the ones who receive more attention.
Being highly polarizing will get you WAY more messages; in fact, 70% more.
What this means is that a very low-rated woman (20th percentile) with high variance gets hit on just about as much as a woman with low variance in the 7oth percentile.
In other words, it’s better to have a quality about you that stands out than to be average and safe. Yes, some people might look at your dating profile and go “hell no,” but there will be others who’ll give you a 5 for the exact same quality. Don’t be scared to be your bold audacious self.
“Be yourself and be brave about it.” — Christina Rudder, Dataclysm.
Or, as Seth Godin would put it, don’t be scared to be “The Purple Cow.”
Seth Godin is the author of his popular book, Purple Cow. This book is mostly about marketing a business or a product. However, the lessons could be applied to all aspects of life as well.
In his book, he described that in this post-TV and post-mass marketing age, the only way to achieve success is to be remarkable, i.e. to be a purple cow.
Not everyone will like the purple cow, some will find it repulsive. However, the purple cow has a much better chance of being noticed and being paid attention to than a brown cow in a field of brown cows.
Being a brown cow is safe, and it will get you nowhere.
Case II
Being safe gets you less customers
Purple Cow contains numerous case studies of people who have managed to create a purple cow and in turn found large success. One example was Chip Conley.
Chip Conley is an American hotelier and entrepreneur. His first hotel was located in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. Tenderloin, for those who are not familiar, is THE WORST neighborhood in San Francisco.
How did he get his first hotel, the Phoenix to succeed?
He redesigned it to have a hip and funky vibe. He invited up-and-coming rock-and-roll stars to stay. His plan worked, and he created something remarkable: “a rock-and-roll motel in the center of San Francisco.”
I was in Barcelona recently for vacation. Opening Google maps and looking for hotels is, to say the least, overwhelming. There are dozens of them in the neighborhood and the price range we wanted. All of them looked decent.
My boyfriend and I ended up choosing Hotel Praktik Bakery because it had a bakery inside the hotel. That was the ONLY reason we had chosen it as opposed to any other hotels in the neighborhood. (We have both foodies).
The Praktik Bakery Hotel has created a Purple Cow. Anyone who’s drawn to pastries will naturally be drawn to it.
Other examples
Southwest, Starbucks, IKEA, and Target are all examples of successful companies who have succeeded by being different: by creating a purple cow.
Southwest and IKEA created a purple cow by beating their competitors in terms of pricing. They redefined the rules of the game.
Target and Starbucks designed their strategy to cater to the professionals: people with disposable income to spare.
At the end of the day, being safe equals being ordinary. If you’re ordinary, you are not extraordinary; you are not remarkable. If you are not remarkable, you will get nowhere. This is true whether the product is yourself (as in dating) or your company.
Remember, it’s better to have lots of yes, lots of no, but very little meh.