What’s wrong with good?  We all like good food, we all want good haircuts, and we all want to live in a good area.  What’s wrong with good?  Don’t good businesses do well?

They used to.

Imagine you’re looking for a restaurant.  Your ‘search strategy’ is likely to involve either going to somewhere you’re already familiar with, or looking around until you find somewhere that looks good.  ‘Good’ is good enough.

But that doesn’t work online.

Online changes everything.  Imagine you could eat out online.  You’d choose somewhere amazing.  Absolutely amazing.  You’d dine overlooking the Great Rift Valley, and watch herds of elephants graze in the sunset.  Or you’d go to a beach restaurant in Hawaii, and watch surfers ride the World’s biggest pipes.  You’d eat the finest foods, in the most amazing settings, at the best prices.  These venues would never be full, because their dining experience would be virtualized, and could expand at a moment’s notice to accommodate everyone, everywhere who wanted to come.

Welcome to the internet.

If your business is merely aspiring to be good, you should pack up and go home.  Because someone, somewhere will have made the choice to be amazing.  And they’ll eat your lunch.

But how do you beat amazing competition?

You don’t have to be amazing for everyone.  Let’s go back to the restaurant analogy.  You can be amazing by doing something that will amaze a niche.  You could, for example, cater for people who like to eat a paleo diet and like operatic music.  You may well be the only paleo-opera restaurant in the world – and you’d AMAZE the people who wanted that specific experience.  You don’t need to worry about providing ‘good’ vegan food, or playing ‘good’ jazz – because your clientele aren’t remotely interested in either of those things.

So don’t be good – find the people in your niche, and AMAZE them.