In this episode of the Honor Roll podcast, host Mike Michalowicz opens with a brief productivity tip and thanks his sponsors before delivering the main advice: entrepreneurs should aim to be the number two player in their market rather than the dominant number one. He argues that market leaders become the hated Goliath, citing historical examples such as IBM, Microsoft, and Apple, which each faced consumer backlash once they achieved top status. By positioning a business as the underdog, owners can cultivate loyal fans and avoid the negative attention that comes with being the industry leader. Michalowicz also humorously presents a convoluted “delta spread” mathematical routine that pretends to place a company in the fourth position but ultimately makes it appear as the second, illustrating the absurd lengths some might go to appear as the underdog.
Chapters
Welcome to Honor Roll, and now here's your host, Mike Michalowicz. Welcome back to Honor Roll. I'm Mike Michalowicz, and you will notice that my outfit isn't changing. Here's a little productivity tip for you. When you do filming of your own videos and blogs, film multiple at once. And do it next to a guy that's making a lot of noise out there too. It really makes it sound sexy. Oh no. Okay, let me first start off by thanking my sponsors. American Express, I thank you. Skype, I thank you. DexDigital, thank you. Preventis Group, thank you. And all of the sponsors, thank you for supporting what we do here, and thank you for supporting us, small early stage business owners and entrepreneurs. I had to step through that 'cause I forgot who we were. Okay, let's get to our first tip. It's about being number 2. Yeah, that's right. You just heard it. You want to be number 2. You don't want to be number 1 in your industry because number 1 is the hated one. Remember IBM from long ago? They were a little upstart and they came, they became the dominant big blue force, and we hated them. We couldn't wait for Microsoft and its little DOS invention to kick IBM's ass. Then Microsoft wins Windows, comes up with these great ideas, these video games, all this stuff, and Microsoft becomes the big Goliath. And then we hate Microsoft. And we're like, "Come on, somebody, please, Apple, kick Microsoft's butt." And Apple becomes the number one guy just recently, and now we're starting to hate them. The Goliath is always hated, it's the little guy we love. Always position your business to be the little guy, and you'll have fans that are loyal and supporting you. You become number one, and they're gonna try to pull you down. The other strategy would be number two, is by being number 1, by doing the delta spread. What you do is you go for the 4th position, subtract 2, divide that by pi, multiply it by 3 to the square root of 5, plus pi minus 1 plus 2, divided by 4. But then you subtract 2 again. Then you subtract the 4th, and you come back to the 1st spot. But they think you're the 2nd one.
