Race to the Top

Excellence isn’t found at the bottom. There is nothing in the lowest price category that it the highest quality, best experience, or most meaningful. Nothing.

Excellence can’t be found by cutting your prices, cutting your spending, or creating less value. In any category, someone is always willing to begin the race to the bottom. They aren’t great at creating value or capturing their portion of the value they create, so they lower their standards. They decide to remove price as a consideration to capture what they cannot capture in some other way ( a bit of profit). And down they go.

Excellence is most often found by raising your prices, increasing your spending, and creating more value. There are only a few competitors with the audacity to race to the top in a category (and you know their names). Companies that race to the top are good at creating value and capturing their fair share. They also remove price as a consideration by making the offer right for their dream clients and wrong for anybody who doesn’t perceive the value they create.

No one is going to remember the person or company who created the cheapest, lowest quality work. They don’t create anything worth remembering, at least not anything positive. The cheapest product doesn’t leave a mark. Neither does a transactional experience.

Excellence requires a greater investment of your time, your energy, and your emotions. Excellence requires that you do meaningful work, that what you do makes a difference.

If you are going to run the race, don’t race to the bottom. Race to excellence.