On Being the Misfit in the Room

I was the one in the leather jacket. Everyone else was in a suit, playing the compliance game well enough to get promoted by it. I never quite could.

For a long time I thought that meant something was wrong with me. Then a global tech company noticed the very things the system was trying to smooth (or smother) out of me, and asked me to speak about them on international stages. That was the moment I understood, I wasn't weird or broken… I just had ideas that sat outside a system that had confused conformity with success.

I bring this up because I see the same thing happening to people building offers right now. They've got something genuinely their own… a way of teaching, coaching, or holding space that doesn't look like anyone else's. And instead of building from that, they smooth it down to look more like the big name coaches who are already succeeding.
More polished. More "proven framework." More like everyone else in the room!

Here's my problem with that: the very thing that makes you the misfit is probably the exact thing worth building your offer around. Not despite the fact that it doesn't fit the mould. Because it doesn’t.

When I was searching for validation from inside a system that runs on compliance, I was never going to be rewarded with long-lived success. (Especially once they realised my thought leadership threatened their very structure.)
But I was recognised and valued from outside (and the other misfits who could see the flaws in the system).

In the same way, if your offers don’t fit into the biz system that runs on compliance, some will never be able to recognise your brilliance. And we have to make peace with that.
Because the compliant ones will never value what doesn't comply.

That's just what compliance systems do… they can only validate the things that already fit them.

You don't need the room full of suits (or lycra or linen or whatever the industry uniform is) to agree with you.

You need one vessel, built exquisitely enough, to actually hold what makes you different.