In October of 2024, I delivered a talk for TEDxCapeMay. The title I gave it was “Your Secret Is Obvious,” although the powers that be at Big TED later changed it to “Using the Obvious to Stand Out in Life and Business.”

The final talk landed well. But a week or two before I gave it, the opening was far different.

At first, I thought I needed to explain what I do for a living before telling the audience why paying attention to difference matters. When I practiced the talk with a few friends, they told me I didn’t need credentials. Standing on the TEDx stage was credential enough.

If you watch the talk on YouTube, you’ll hear the opening I ultimately used. What follows below is the original opening I discarded.

I still like it. The idea that I’ve built a career around looking for and working with differences still strikes me as wild. Like I’m some character out of “Gulliver’s Travels” or a Donald Barthelme short story.

The Original Opening

I have one of the strangest jobs you’ve ever heard of. When I tell people what I do for a living, they often say, “How did you get a job like that?”

What I am is a differentiator. It’s part business strategy, part marketing. My entire job is predicated on difference. That’s what I do all day long. I look at differences.

I’ll look at a company, or a product, or a service, or a cause, or a political campaign, or a streaming show, or whatever I’m being asked to look at, and I’ll say: “Here’s what’s different about this right now. Here’s what we could make different if we wanted to. And here’s the most important difference of all. This is the difference that will separate you from your competitors and make the world want to deal with you.”

How many of you knew this kind of job existed? Crazy, right?

Now, there are lots of ways to stand apart. It all depends on what you’re trying to make distinctive.

You might do it through a unique philosophy. Or a backstory that explains why you do what you do. Or by choosing a particular segment of the market. Maybe you’re for the wealthy. Or maybe you’re for the underdogs. Depending on which part of the market you specialize in, you’ll show up in the world in a very different way. And the options here are nearly endless.

But here’s the important thing you need to know. You must do something to stand out. You don’t have a choice. The world has eight billion personal brands, hundreds of millions of company brands, and each of us is exposed to hundreds of marketing messages every single day.

So if you don’t stand out, it doesn’t matter how good your work is or how worthy your cause is. You’ll get lost.

Your point of differentiation can be based on something profound, but it needn’t be. I mean, look at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. When it was built, there was a flaw in its foundation, and the tower unintentionally leaned about five degrees. Instead of being a problem, that flaw turned the tower into a sensation. Today, tourists travel to Pisa just to see it. It draws about five million visitors a year and generates roughly $23 million annually. And that’s after more than 850 years. Why? It leans.

Take away the lean and you take away the attention, the tourists, and the money.

Trust me. Whatever it is you do, you need a lean. Very often, that lean comes from something imperfect, something you didn’t design on purpose, something buried in the foundation. But if you know how to work with it instead of fixing it, that’s what makes people pay attention to you, or your company, or your product, or your cause.