A few weeks ago, I did an episode of The Portfolio Life called "Don’t Build an Empire, Find a Few Friends Who Care." It was about how the secret of marketing and getting your ideas to spread is really just about having a few friends who care. You want to create remarkable work and put it into the right hands to get it to spread.

So, in the email that I wrote for that podcast and blog essay, I asked people to email me a question, something that they were struggling with or need help with, and I got a ton of questions. Here I am a few weeks later, still not having answered those questions (sorry!) and so I decided to just turn on the old mike, pull up the inbox, and answer those questions in a podcast.

Hopefully, these are answers to questions not just a handful of folks asked but maybe questions that you're wondering about. Often, when you're in a classroom or workshop setting, some brave soul raises their hand to ask a question. It's often something lots of other people around are wondering as well so hopefully, that's the case here, and you get your question answered, even if you didn't ask it. 

Often, we think the way to stand out from the pack is to be better. And sometimes that is the answer: to become an improved version of who you were yesterday, to do what the “other guy” is doing with a few added features.

However, this is often a losing strategy, as you are making iterative improvements on someone else’s work. A better way to become world-class at what you do is to change the game completely.

Don’t be better; be different.