In this episode of the On a Roll podcast, host Mike Michalowicz opens with a production tip about filming multiple videos at once and thanks his sponsors (American Express, Skype, Dex Digital). He then delivers his core business advice: small and early‑stage entrepreneurs should aim to be the "number two" player rather than the market leader. Using the historical arcs of IBM, Microsoft, and Apple, he argues that the dominant #1 company becomes the hated Goliath while the underdog garners loyal fans. He encourages positioning a business as the beloved underdog to build a supportive customer base. Mike concludes with a tongue‑in‑cheek pseudo‑mathematical formula that humorously illustrates the futility of trying to be #1, reinforcing his point that being #2 is strategically advantageous.
Chapters
Welcome to On a Roll. And now, here's your host, Mike Michalowicz. Welcome back to On a 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. Really makes it sound sexy. Or let me first start off by thanking my sponsors. American Express. I thank you, Skype. I thank you, Dex Digital. Thank you, horrendous 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 because I forgot who we were. Okay, let's get to our first tip. It's about being number two. Yeah, that's right. You just heard it. You want to be number two. You don't want to be number one in your industry because number one is the hated one. Remember IBM from long ago? They were a little upstart and 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 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. What Goliath has 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 going to try to pull you down. The other strategy, number two is by being number one, by doing the delta spread. What you do is you go for the fourth position, subtract, divide that by PI, multiply it by three to the square root of five minus one plus two divided by four. But then you subtract two again. Then you subtract the fourth and you come back to the first spot. But I think you're the second one.
