Most businesses with one operator are in highly competitive industries.

Think realtors, service professionals, musicians, freelancers… It’s unlikely that you’re in a business that is so unique that you don’t have millions of potential competitors out there.

Now if you’re Lionel Messi, Shohei Ohtani, or Beyoncé, you are so exceptional that you tower head and shoulders above any potential competitors.

Most of us aren’t like that.

It’s very unlikely that I can convince you I’m a better dentist than the 4,000 other dentists in your 5-mile radius.

But if you share your point of view—if you're comfortable with putting the weirdness that makes you you out into the world, that’s your best chance of attracting customers.

They won’t buy because you’re the best in your field. They’ll buy because you’re you, and they like you.

The greatest feeling in the world is connecting deeply with likeminded human beings.

The worst feeling in the world? Being isolated from likeminded human beings.

So we conflate (a lack of) social media metrics with isolation or connection.

But the insidious part of social media is that it hijacks these basic human desires and inserts itself between us as if it were a necessary medium for that connection.

These companies want to make us believe that social media is like air.

But in reality? It’s more like cotton candy.

It can be nice, it’s mostly fluff, it’ll probably rot your teeth if you eat too much, and if you breathe it they’ll kick you out of the carnival for “causing a scene”.

Cough.

From an article on Mashable: “Google wants to release millions of mosquitos into the sky.”

Google's years-long effort to engineer away disease-carrying mosquitos shows tech solving real human suffering.

"Mosquitoes kill more people than every other animal combined," the article notes, killing up to a million annually.

Now listen: We’ve all heard of the butterfly effect. The concept that eliminating these bugs could have far-reaching and dire consequences we can’t anticipate.

But, take it from me, a member of the species that has no problem spewing out all manner of crap into the atmosphere at an unfathomable scale: I think we can roll those dice.

The biggest mistake service providers make is assuming that because everybody in an industry behaves a certain way, that everyone in that industry WANTS to behave that way.

We can look at boring industries, and we can say “they sure don’t have the wow factor of SpaceX!”

But it would be a mistake to assume that people in unsexy lines of work are happy with the status quo.

There’s always room to imagine something differently.

There’s always room to exceed people’s expectations, even when we think there’s definitely a right answer.

And those with the courage to do something (wildly) out of the ordinary are rewarded time and time again.

When we’re nervous, we tend to go in a linear fashion from question to question, or from moment to moment.

We’re so focused on trying to get through the experience that we're not present in the moment, and we don’t remember what was said before.

If there’s one thing listeners love, it’s when someone comes “full circle”.

If you can close your pitch where you began, it will be stronger.

If you can circle back to a question an interviewer asked you at the beginning of the interview, at the end of an interview, you’ll impress and stand out from the crowd.

Pay attention to what happens, even if something doesn’t go according to plan. Bringing it back demonstrates mastery, not fear.