In the previous article we landed on the idea that standing out is a matter of being worth talking about. And that's where a very natural fear shows up: standing out sounds like risk. And when real money is on the line —yours, your family's— the last thing you want is to take a risk.
So you play it safe. What works, what everyone does, without stepping outside the mold. It feels prudent. And it's the most dangerous thing you can do today.
Safe feels safe, but it isn't
We already said it at the start of this series: in a saturated market, blending in with the rest isn't protection, it's slowly disappearing.
The real risk isn't trying something different and having some people not like it. The real risk is looking so much like everyone else that no one has a reason to choose you, slowly becoming invisible while you think you're being careful.
Safe isn't a shelter. In a saturated market, it's a slow death.
The Kodak story
Kodak was the giant of photography. For decades, taking a photo was, practically speaking, using a Kodak.
And here's the incredible part: Kodak invented the first digital camera, in 1975. It had it in its hands. But digital threatened its film business —its safe part, the one that made money— so they put it away in a drawer. They played it safe. They protected what worked.
That "safe" decision is exactly what sank them. In 2012 Kodak filed for bankruptcy, while the digital world they themselves had invented moved on without them. Safe didn't protect Kodak: it buried them.
And with you it's the same trap
You're not Kodak, but the trap is identical, and when you're small, even more dangerous.
The auto shop that does exactly what the other twenty shops do. The restaurant with the same menu as everyone else on the block. It feels safe —"this is what works"— but it means you're invisible. And being invisible means you can only compete on price. And competing on price really is the true race to the bottom: there will always be someone who charges a little less, until nobody wins.
The safe road leads you straight to the most dangerous place of all: irrelevance.
Flip how you think about risk
The question almost everyone asks is: "what if I try something different and not everyone likes it?".
That's the wrong question. The right one is the reverse: "what happens if I stay exactly the same as everyone else?".
And the answer to that is the one that should really scare you: nothing happens. No one notices you. No one talks about you. You slowly fade out.
Being purple isn't betting the business
And here's the relief: being a purple cow doesn't mean gambling your whole business on some stunt.
It means daring to be different in something concrete: in how you serve, in what you guarantee, in how you communicate, in one thing that's yours. Small, deliberate risks that make you memorable, not a leap into the void. You don't have to reinvent everything tomorrow. You have to stop being one more copy.
That's why, at DISSAU, one of the things we see most is a business that knows it needs to stand out but freezes because change is scary. A good part of our work is exactly that: making that change deliberate and low-risk, instead of a blind leap.
Where to go next
If you feel that pull —you know staying the same isn't working, but you're not sure where it's safe to be bold— that's exactly the conversation we have in a free assessment: a session where we look at your business with you and find where you can stand out without betting the house.
This was the third article in the series. In the next one we go after the engine almost no one uses on purpose: that small group of passionate people who, if you win them over, grow your business by talking about it for you.
See you on the road. 🐮💜
