Crimson Stripes, Unicycles, and Why Differentiation Is More Important Than Ever

While reading Chris Do’s book, A Pocket Full of Do, I read a story from Errol Gerson about differentiation that was so good I had to track down the original.

The 1/8" Crimson Stripe

In 1971 Gerson graduated with 60 other young MBAs from the University of Southern California (USC).

This was before personal computers, so he had to use his typewriter to type out each copy of his résumé in Times New Roman.

After about six weeks and 60 letters, he hadn't received a single reply. When his next-door neighbor, who was an architecture student, heard him complaining, she said, "No wonder nobody's calling you. That's hideous. Come with me."

She took Gerson to Kelly Paper Company, and the choices that followed produced a very different outcome:

• Gerson bought six pieces of beautiful Strathmore paper because that was all he could afford.
• He asked the salesman to cut the pieces into 8 1/2" by 11 1/8" sheets—that is, 1/8" too long.
• Gerson went to a print shop, asked to see some fonts, and picked Helvetica.
• After sending his résumé out to a type house in Venice, the print shop printed his resume. Gerson asked them to keep the extra 1/8" at the top and run the copies through the printer again to put USC's crimson at the top.

Gerson sent out the six copies of his new, oddly sized résumé, and three days later, he got a call from IBM in New York.

The man told him that, after he had been given a stack of 50 résumés, he’d tapped them on the desk to straighten them. Gerson's had stuck out, literally.

IBM sent him a ticket to New York where he also interviewed with two other companies.

Decades later, Gerson still tells the story with this piece of advice:

"If you want to be effective in your life, you've got to learn how to stick out an eighth of an inch."

Taking Chances with Differentiation and Strategy

Gerson's story, which you can hear directly from him here, struck me for several reasons. It’s a lesson on trying something different and getting different results. It’s a story about having the courage to differentiate. And it’s a story about strategy.

None of Gerson’s choices was guaranteed to produce a better result. What if the man at IBM had been the stick-in-the-mud, bureaucratic type?

Plenty of people perceive any deviation from the norm, even a 1/8” one, to be an attack on civilized society.

He might have thought, “This résumé is the wrong size. This USC grad clearly doesn’t understand what professionalism is supposed to look like. He shouldn’t be rewarded for breaking the rules.”

Instead of calling Gerson, he could just as easily have wadded up the résumé with a crimson stripe and thrown it into the wastebasket.

Gerson had to risk getting the wrong reaction to get the right one, and that’s what makes that crimson stripe, that extra 1/8”, so memorable and compelling. Small, calculated risks.

Differentiation is a tactic, not a goal.

Gerson’s numbers have something to say about not the job market at the time or even his capabilities or desirability as an employee but about the effectiveness of differentiation:

• Generic résumé (aka, conventional strategy): 60 résumés, 6 weeks, 0 responses, 0% effectiveness
• Beautiful, oddly sized résumé (aka, unconventional strategy): 6 resumes, 3 days, 3 responses, 50% effectiveness

Now, some folks will take this idea to heart and mistakenly believe that being the crimson stripe or square peg is always the better strategy. They’d be confusing strategy and goals.

Good strategy gets you the results you want. Differentiation or being original is a single tactic in a grab bag of tactics, and it doesn’t always work.

Let’s say you want to get more clients on LinkedIn. About the worst thing you can do is be too clever with your LinkedIn title. One like “Unapologetic Story Spinner with a Penchant for Personal Transformation” may be bold and even accurate, but no would-be client is searching for that.

Even if they were to stumble across your profile, your title will be confusing and off-putting because they can’t quickly understand what you offer.

They’ll quickly move on to the next profile with a more legible and outcome-focused title like, “Brilliant white papers for blockchain companies.” Or, “12 smart, funny videos per month for edgy CPG brands.”

In an interview Sequoia Capital and former Zappos.com Chariman Alfred Lin explained that there’s little benefit in being contrarian if you’re also wrong:

“I often think about that as there are people who think of the world and they just follow conventional wisdom, and there are people who want to be contrarian. Well, in either case, whether you want to be conventional or contrarian, you have to be right. If you’re right and conventional, it’s probably a less interesting solution, but if you’re right and contrarian, you probably won’t be able to make a lot more money because nobody’s going after that opportunity. I often find that it’s interesting. There are people who just want to be contrarian, but if you’re contrarian and wrong, that’s not a great situation. I try to put things in these two-by-two matrices of right and wrong and conventional and contrarian.”

We want to stand out not because originality or differentiation is the goal but because, as Gerson’s story illustrates, standing out often represents the shorter, more effective path to the desired result.

Differentiation in Freelancing

Let me offer a cold dose of reality: Several hundred million freelancers are hunting for their next project online. Competition is… significant.

When finding and landing projects proves to be a challenge, many freelancers shake their heads and conclude, “There just aren’t enough good clients out there.”

However, a freelancer’s situation isn’t so different from Gerson’s after he’d sent out 60 copies of his résumé and got no replies.

He could have concluded, “There just aren’t enough good jobs out there.” (Or worse, he could have internalized the outcome: “Maybe I’m just not good enough.”)

As Seth Godin observed, his original résumé made him difficult to notice:

“In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.”

My question for you, dear reader, is this:

Do you stand out?

I’ll repeat Gerson’s advice: "If you want to be effective in your life, you've got to learn how to stick out an eighth of an inch."

What’s your eighth of an inch right now?

If you aren’t getting the results you want, take a chance on a different strategy. Find your crimson stripe.

Epilogue - Start with what you can do

My friend found his dream job opportunity, one of 12 positions an international brand was hiring for.

The only problem was he knew that, the current job market being what it was, the company would likely get tons of applicants.

He was right. They got over 1,000.

My friend still landed the job.

How?

He wrote them a song about why he was the right fit, turned it into a music video, and submitted it—even though the company neither asked for or required a video with applications.

When there’s something you want and you have a hunch you need to differentiate, start with what you can do, whether that’s a 1/8” crimson stripe and Helvetica on expensive paper or a ridiculous music video complete with unicycle.

You will find effective ways to differentiate if you start looking and tap that big, beautiful mind of yours.

The tall poppy gets cut first, and the tall poppy gets hired, too.

When you’re ready, here are ways I can help you:

1. Free Money. A pricing and money mindset guide for freelance creatives. If you’re unsure about your freelance pricing, this is the book for you.
2. Morning Marketing Habit. This course will help you build an “always be marketing” practice, become less dependent on referrals, and proactively build the business you want with the clients you want. My own morning marketing habit has enabled me to consistently make  6 figures as a freelancer.
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