How to Become a 0.01% Outlier— or Even More

Bell Curve Image

The bell curve explains a “distribution” of data points, where most cluster around the “mean” or average.

An “outlier” is a data point that falls far away from the mean, typically 2–3+ standard deviations away.

There is much written and discussed about “outliers,” and particularly how to become one.

Yet, there is something very misunderstood about how to become an outlier… even an extreme outlier. In fact, the crux of becoming an outlier is rarely discussed at all.

First- let’s speak to ambition. How many people truly aspire to become an outlier? Meaning, getting into the 99% or above?

The answer is fewer than you’d expect.

As someone whose worked with thousands of companies, one theme I’ve seen almost always is that few companies aspire for “scale.” Most companies are seeking linear or incremental growth.

What I mean by this is: If a company is doing $1M revenue, they probably aren’t seeking to get to $20M, $50M, or $100M in revenue.

Instead, that $1M company is solving for $2–5M max. In other words, linear growth.

Very few people or companies are seeking true scale. Even less are actively solving for it.

When you begin solving for scale, such as reaching $100M+ revenue in the next 2–3 years (not the next 10–20), then immediately, you are solving for extreme outlier results.

In the United States, there are over 34 million companies. The “mean” or average revenue of those 34 million companies is $50K revenue.

Out of those 34,000,000 U.S. companies, only 17,000ish are doing over $100M revenue, which is 0.0005%. This means only 1 out of every 200,000 companies reaches that level.

That’s an extreme outlier.

1/100 = being in the 1%.

1/200,000 = being in the 0.0005%.

Again- few are seeking that level of scale or ambition.

But here’s the rub. If that WAS your ambition, then your “floor” or dividing line between “yes” and “no” would also need to be 0.0005%. In other words, to actually live out and realize that ambition, you’d need to say “no” at that level. You couldn’t say “yes” to things even at 0.005%… or else you wouldn’t be living in alignment with your objective.

Dr. Michael Porter said “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

Steve Jobs said, “Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”

When you’re going for extreme scale or ambition, and thus being an extreme outlier, you’ll have to say “no” to almost everything. Warren Buffett explained, “The difference between successful people (1%) and very successful people (0.0005%) is that very successful people say no to almost everything.”

The further you get from the “mean” or average, the more uncommon you are.

Raising your floor is the crux of scaling. It’s the crux of upward mobility. It means saying “no” to what you formerly said “yes” to. It means saying “no” to even what most outliers would say “yes” to.

Listen to THE SCIENCE OF SCALING audiobook FREE here.

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