Andy Neary, a former professional baseball player, argues that trying to fit in gets you overlooked. He uses his baseball career and marketing examples like almond milk's arrival in the milk aisle to show why differentiation matters more than imitation.
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The second lesson, the second mindset shift I talked about in the keynote that really applies to life is quit trying to fit in and start standing out. Now, in this keynote talk, when I shared that message of just trying to fit in, creating marketing that looks like everybody else, what I was really referring to at that point in the talk was my own experience with this, playing professional baseball. You see.
All the while I was growing up in. In Little League in high school and college, and then once I got to pro ball, the goal in sports, if you're gonna play at the next level, is you've got to stand out, right? Whether it's in high school trying to get the attention of college recruiters or in college trying to get attention of scouts from Major League Baseball, you have got to find a way to stand out. And in sports, the way to do that is to perform, right? To perform on the field of play. And the problem I ran into or the mistake I made when I got to pro baseball is I didn't want to stand out anymore, actually. I was just trying to fit in. And a lot of it had to do with mental barriers I had placed on myself. I was fearing the comparison of others. I was fearing the judgment from others. And so knowing that I was just a free agent playing pro baseball, and I was surrounded by guys more skilled than me who signed for a hell of a lot more money, who the brewers had put a lot more money into, I was just focused on trying to fit in. And guess what happens when you're just trying to fit in? It's easy to get overlooked. And in this keynote talk, I shared how that same message applies to marketing. When your marketing is designed to just fit in, you want it to look like everybody else. You know, I come from the insurance industry, and everybody's marketing looks a lot like each other. They're all using the same stupid elevator music for their videos.
It's easy to get overlooked. You're going to get overlooked because the person your prospect is going to choose, the recognizable name, the one that looks different, the one that stands out.
You know, an analogy I use to talk about standing out versus fitting in is. Is one that I heard from a book that I read years ago by Carmine Gallo. Carmine's the gentleman who helped Steve Jobs create his legendary keynote talks for Apple. And he shares the story of almond milk. And, you know, when I was a kid, I don't know if you're. If you're the same age. I am older than me when I was a kid, and I went down the milk aisle with mom.
Back in the 80s, right? Early mid-80s, the choices of milk were very slim. You had, I don't know, 1%, 2% whole milk, vitamin D milk. I don't even know if skim milk was around yet, right? But really, at the end of the day, when you went down the milk aisle, what was it? It was milk, milk, milk, milk, milk, milk, milk. Different, different brands, but at the end of the day, it was all milk. Then one day, what was this? Maybe the early 90s, mid-90s, you went down the milk aisle and this thing called almond milk appeared.
And you're like, what in the hell is that? It looked so different from everything else. What was your initial reaction? I don't know what this is, but I gotta try it.
And now look what we have these days, right? We've got almond milk, cashew milk, oat milk, you name it. All these different kind of milks that apparently come from nuts, but they're different, so we have to try them. And that's what you want to have your marketing look like. And quite frankly, that's what you want life to be like, stand out.
