Your Strength as a Small Business Comes Down to Diversity

Plant For Profits Column, Leslie F. Halleck

Too often, I hear business owners - and business dreamers - compare their performance or success to other businesses in the market. This comparison often leads to feelings of inadequacy or failure. Unfortunately, as a small independent business, comparing yourself to other similar businesses, in a desire to replicate their identity or success is usually an exercise in futility. They are them, you are you. Success for you as a small business comes down to carving out your own unique identity and definition of success. It comes down to you being authentically YOU.

As an American, I feel our greatest strength and offering as a country is our multi-culturalism. It’s how we are all different that adds up to something that’s interesting, accessible, and successful. Genetically, whether it comes to plants or people, diversity can result in hybrid vigor and new opportunities for not just surviving, but also thriving. Plus, absolute homogeneous uniformity is, well, just boring. The same is true for your small business.

As a small business one of your most important strengths is not how you measure up in similar ways to your “competitors” or other businesses you admire; rather your ability to differentiate and create unique, special connections with your community.

Homogeneous conformity is not the way.

These days, it seems, we’re facing forced conformity pressures from just about every direction in society and politics. There are quite a few people who want to put everyone else in a box or “role” that they deem acceptable because it assuages their own personal insecurities and fears. You’ve heard of “ego death” right? Challenges to or loss of identity is one of human’s four main fears. Non-conformity triggers the fear of ego death for many.

However, history has proven over and over uniformity just doesn’t work. Why? Because we are all different, because nature needs us to be different. Nature always seeks an equilibrium, which for the most part cannot be achieved in a state of complete uniformity. Most natural systems require what we call dynamic equilibrium; stability results when there are constant non-uniform fluctuations. Diversity is required for the supporting networking connections to function properly. Because we do not exist in a vacuum outside of nature, so do we as society, so do you as a business.

Nature always wins.

Being different can put you under a microscope. It can bring attention that may or may not make you comfortable. There can also be many consequences for being different, when being different makes other people uncomfortable. While this can be pretty challenging on a personal level, being different can also be your super power in business when it comes to capturing the imagination of and inspiring your community. But, it can be understandably scary to be “different” in business. Will you alienate or upset some potential customers? Probably. Were those people an ideal customer fit for you and your business? Probably not. Trying to present yourself as something you’re not in business can often result in mental and emotional exhaustion for you as the business owner, not to mention poor P&L performance.

Is there a place for conformity in small business? Sure. When we’re dealing with baseline commodity products and services, you’ll find some degree of marketplace conformity may be necessary in order to meet customer expectations and maintain market share. The same can be said for systems and procedures you use to handle business. Using the same tools as another business makes sense when those tools are effective and efficient. It’s how you use those tools that can make all the difference. There’s no shame in copying what makes sense to copy. Just make sure you don’t overdo it, at the expense of differentiation.

Too often non-conformity, or not “fitting in”, is interpreted as a weakness. It’s not. To the contrary, being different is what makes you interesting. Being interesting can be very powerful. Offering up unique experiences that are different from what customers will find elsewhere in the market may be your most profitable strength.