For the 25-odd years that I’ve been shaving, I’ve had this mild terror of uneven sideburns. I obsess about making sure that they match. If it looks like the left one is a bit higher, I’ll take a bit more off the right. And if I take off a bit too much, then I’ll go back to the left again. I reckon my tolerance is under half a millimetre.
Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time and energy getting them just right.
Recently I was struck by something remarkable.
I’ve never noticed anyone with uneven sideburns. Not once. Ever. In my whole life.
Come to think of it, I’ve never noticed anyone with particularly even sideburns. Turns out I just don’t pay attention to any sideburns other than my own.
And my guess is that no-one else is paying any attention to mine.
At our Thought Leaders Business School immersion a couple of weeks back I had a thought leader who was concerned about launching an offer to natural health businesses. He was worried about what people who knew him as one thing would think if they saw that on his website.
The answer is they wouldn’t think anything. They wouldn’t notice. No-one is paying that much attention. Everyone is too caught up in their own world to notice that type of detail.
Likewise no-one notices if your weekly newsletter doesn’t come out for a month. Sorry – we’re not searching our email each morning with bated breath hoping that it’s going to be there. (So you don’t need to start with an apology that you haven’t written it for a while … no-one noticed.)
This doesn’t mean don’t obsess about positioning. Or that it's not important. Or that you should be out in the world with uneven sideburns.
It just means relax a little. And don’t let the minutiae get in the way of going to market and selling stuff.
