By Greg Primm
Like many of you, I’ve been sucked into the vortex of social networking. Facebook, Twitter, Friend Feed, LinkedIn — I’m on all of them.
In fact, just click on these links to connect with me: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed.
I rarely notice the ads on Facebook, but for some reason the one to the left stuck out this week. It was probably the white sand beaches and crystal clear water. So, I took a moment to read it — which was the point, right?
This resort spent I’m sure a considerable amount of time, effort, and money to develop the ad. I assume it was seen by millions of people across Facebook. The advertising people knew they had a millisecond to get me to take notice, read the ad, and click on it.
What did they lead with?
That they are 3rd best. Not the best, not second best — third.
C’mon. Is that the best you’ve got?
Don’t get me wrong, the 3rd best resort in all of Mexico is pretty heady stuff. Nothing to be ashamed of that’s for sure. But that’s not what you lead with.
Why not? Third place is still pretty good, right?
Sure it is. But once you’ve resigned yourself to anything less than your best (like advertising yourself as 3rd place), it’s easy to start settling for less. The people at Hotel Villa Rolandi may be thinking that the two resorts ahead of them in the rankings can’t be beat. So they get a little comfortable. Next year, they’re ranked 4th. That’s not too bad, they say. Before long, just being in the top ten is acceptable; and then a few years later, Hotel Villa Rolandi is just one cheezy resort among hundreds of cheezy resorts in Mexico.
What does this mean for you and me? It means everything because we do this all the time in our own work. How?
- We do work that is good enough, but not great.
- We make five sales calls when we could make ten.
- We provide customer service “just as good as the other guys”.
- We do the work that’ll be seen today, but put off the little detail stuff cause it can wait until later.
What about our personal lives?
- Convince ourselves that we’re inbetter shape financially than most, after all a little debt’s OK, right?
- Spend a little more time with our wife than other people, but we secretly know its not enough.
- We watch less TV than most, but everyone watches 8 hours of sports on Saturday, right?
I actually tried to come in 3rd place one time. In high school I was in an academic competition (nerd, I know). I came in first place at the district level and moved on to the state-wide competition. If I came in 1st or 2nd place in the state, I would move on to the national competition in Washington, D.C. I couldn’t go to the national competition because it fell right in the middle of my summer baseball season (see, not too much of a nerd). So, my goal was to come in — 3rd place. I actually accomplished my goal and got a plastic trophy out of the deal. Here’s the thing — it made me feel horrible. By resigning myself to anything less than my best, I had lost something along the way.
I’m not saying that we’ll all be the best ______ in the world, but we should never resign ourselves to just being as good as everyone else. If you make that decision about your work, you’ll find that your career stagnates. If you decide that it’s OK to be average in your financial life, you’ll continue to have mediocre results.
Don’t do it.
Photo credit: Hotel Villa Rolandi (via Facebook), which I’m sure is a wonderful resorts that doesn’t intend on settling for 3rd place.
