Different Is Slower, But It’s the Only Thing Anyone Remembers
There is a speed that comes with doing things the conventional way and it is genuinely seductive. You pick a category that already exists, you use the language that people already recognise, you build your offer the way everybody else builds theirs and the world says yes almost immediately. The feedback is instant. The recognition is instant. The sense that you are on the right path is instant. And I understand why that feels like the safer, smarter, more logical choice because when you are building a business and paying the bills and trying to make something work, instant anything feels like exactly what you need.
But here is the thing about instant recognition that nobody talks about. It is also instantly forgettable. When you slot into a category that already exists, you become one of many people inside that category and the only thing separating you from every other person in there is how loudly you can shout about it. Convention gives you speed at the expense of something far more valuable, which is being remembered.
Convention Gives You a Fast Yes That Fades
Think about the last time you scrolled through LinkedIn or any social media platform and saw a post from a business coach or a brand strategist or a copywriter. You understood what they did immediately because the category already existed in your head and you filed them under that heading without a second thought. You probably kept scrolling. You probably don’t remember their name. That is the trade-off of convention. The world understands you instantly and moves on just as fast because there is nothing to pause for. Nothing unusual. Nothing that makes someone stop and think, wait, what is that, tell me more.
And this is the part that really matters for founders who are building businesses that are supposed to change their corner of the world. If your business looks, sounds and feels like everyone else’s, the people who need you most will scroll right past you because they have no reason to stop. They’ve seen it before. They’ve filed it. They’ve moved on. You gave them a fast yes and it faded before it even landed.
Different Gets a Slow Yes That Lasts
When you do things differently, the yes takes longer to arrive and that wait can feel agonising when you are in the middle of it. There is no existing category for people to file you under so they have to stop and think about what you are offering and that pause, that moment of not immediately understanding, is where most founders panic and change course. They think the pause means it is not working, that the silence is evidence that different is wrong, and so they retreat back to convention where the green lights are waiting.
But that pause is not a rejection. It is the beginning of something that convention can never create, which is genuine curiosity. When someone pauses because they have never heard anyone put it that way before, they are not confused in a bad way. They are leaning in. They are paying attention. And when they finally understand what you do and why it matters, they don’t just file you under a heading and move on. They remember you. They tell other people about you. They come back. Because you gave them something they had never encountered before and that is the kind of thing that stays with people.
When You Can’t Borrow, Everything Becomes Intentional
There is another layer to this that I think is worth sitting with. When you do things the conventional way, you can borrow almost everything. Someone else’s offer structure, someone else’s marketing approach, someone else’s language, someone else’s pricing model. You assemble your business from parts that already exist and there is a speed to that because you are not having to think about every single decision from scratch.
When you do things differently, you cannot borrow. There is no template. There is no formula. There is no swipe file. Every decision you make about your offer, your marketing, your language, your positioning, how you speak to people, what you charge, how you structure your day, all of it has to come from you. And because it comes from you rather than from a template, it carries something that borrowed things never do, which is intention. People can feel the difference between a business that was assembled from parts and one that was built with thought. They might not be able to name it but they sense it, in the language, in the way the offer is structured, in the feeling they get when they land on your website or read your content or sit across from you at a coffee. That intentionality is what makes a different business feel like it was made for them specifically rather than for anyone who happens to walk through the door.
Slow Is the Advantage, Not the Cost
I have built businesses both ways. I have done the conventional thing and I have done the different thing and I can tell you with absolute certainty that different is harder at the beginning. It is slower. It is quieter. There are long stretches where it feels like nobody is listening and the doubt creeps in and you wonder whether you should just go back to doing it the way everyone else does it because at least that way you would know it was working.
But what I also know is that every founder who has found Quietly Disruptive and said this is what I’ve been looking for did not find it through a template or a formula or a conventional category. They found it because it was different. Because it said something they had never heard anyone else say. Because it didn’t sound like everything else in their feed. The slowness was not the cost of doing things differently. The slowness was the thing that made it possible for the right people to recognise it when they found it.
So if you are building something different and it feels slower than you expected, remember this. Convention fills a room quickly with people who will leave just as fast. Different fills a room slowly with people who will stay. And a room full of people who stay is worth more than a room full of people who were never really paying attention in the first place.
About the Author: Becky Benfield Humberstone partners with Quietly Disruptive founders to build businesses that change their corner of the world, on their terms. If you started your business because you believed things could be done differently, and you're ready to make that vision real, she gets it. Based in the UK and working globally via Zoom and in-person, she's done this work herself, more than once.
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