What did I learn from Dean McArthur’s beach story?
Find the small ponds so you can be the big fish.
When I was at Harvard Business School I was below average in everything. Grades, class participation, whatever you were measuring, I was in the bottom half. I was a little fish in a big pond of high achievers from around the world. I never felt great about what I was accomplishing there. I was always on the low end of the totem pole.
I think about this a lot when I see ads on the inside covers of fancy magazines advertising new Manhattan condos starting at $5 million. That’s a little fish in a big pond right there! $5 million means you have the worst condo in the entire building. No view, no prestige, no nothing. Who would drop money on that kind of pain when $5 million could buy you a penthouse suite almost anywhere else?
When I started at Walmart, I was different.
And different really is better than better.
My degree wasn’t immediately neutralized by being surrounded by tables of people with fancy degrees. At Walmart, I was worth something. So my confidence went up. My “I can do this!” feeling rose and rose and rose.
Don’t start swimming in the biggest pond you can find. Start in the smallest. Don’t chase the hot guy or hot girl at the beach. Find the nerd at the library. Find the broken company.
Find the place nobody wants to be.
And start there.
Dean McArthur’s advice worked so well for me I started using it in other areas of my life, too. Sometimes it was conscious. Sometimes it wasn’t.
But it always worked.
When I began doing paid keynote speeches, my speaking agency suggested a starting fee range that seemed super high to me.
“Summarize everything you’ve learned from your research and experiences in an hour, fly wherever people want you to be, deliver it all live in front of a thousand people, and make sure you’re entertaining, educational, and empowering. It’s a hard job! You should be paid well for it.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “That seems too high. Who else is in that range?”
They listed a slew of people. New York Times bestselling authors, gold medal–winning Olympians, rock star professors. I’d heard of them all.
“Hmm,” I said. “What about half that price?”
They listed a bunch of people I’d never heard of before.
“And what about half that?” I asked.
“There is no half that,” they said. “That’s the lowest range. It doesn’t make sense for us to work for months and spend hours on conference calls and manage all logistics for commissions on speeches below a certain level.”
“Okay,” I said. “Start me at your lowest range, please.”
The agency didn’t love it but by giving speeches at a lower price I got booked for smaller conferences and events. I was in local boardrooms with fifty people instead of Vegas casinos with a thousand. My confidence went up. And it stayed up as I moved onto bigger stages.
I looked into the research underpinning the small pond line of thinking, and it turns out it’s only thirty years old. Back in 1984 a study by Herb Marsh and John W. Parker appeared in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. It asked a very simple and incisive question: “Is it better to be a relatively large fish in a small pond even if you don’t learn to swim as well?”
The research in the study provided the clear answer.
Yes.
It is.
That study was the lead domino in a slew of studies around the globe that confirmed the same incredible result.
Regardless of age, socioeconomic background, nationality, or cultural upbringing, when you’re in a smaller pond, your opinion of yourself—what’s called “academic self-concept”—goes up. And importantly, it stays up even after you leave the pond. This is because two opposing forces present themselves: fitting into the group you’re with and a contrasting belief of feeling “better than this group.” Our brains like that second feeling, and it sticks with us as we realize “Hey, I can do this” or “Hey, I can maybe do better than this.”
What’s another way to think about it?
Ask yourself one key question.
Would you rather be a 5 in a group of 9s, a 9 in a group of 9s, or a 9 in a group of 5s?
The most impressive results of these studies say that being a 9 in a group of 5s increases your positive academic self-concept even ten years after you leave the group.
Put yourself in a situation where you think you’re a big deal. Guess what? You’ll think you’re a big deal for a long, long time. And the studies saw these results across a wide range of countries in both individual and collectivist cultures around the globe.
So I say there’s no shame putting yourself in situations where you feel really good about yourself. Should you downgrade yourself? No! Definitely no. But there’s nothing wrong with entering the marathon in the slowest category. Playing in the house league instead of the rep league. Teeing off from the tee closest to the pin.
You know what you’re doing?
Setting yourself up for success.
You’ll move up because you believe in yourself.
Now, is there a danger here? Can you think you’re such a big deal that you damage relationships or hurt others? Yes! That’s the fire we’re playing with. Do you ever wonder why so many celebrities get divorced after they first become famous? Maybe it’s because their academic self-concept skyrocketed! They think they’re a huge fish! And suddenly the small pond marriage they’re in feels way too small. So they jump into a bigger pond and date a superstar.
Why do I mention this? Because it’s about self-awareness.
We have to be aware of which pond we’re swimming in and be kind as we swim. Finding small ponds isn’t an excuse to act arrogantly and feel boastful. We’re not trying to spike volleyballs into kindergarten foreheads here.
We’re using a proven science-backed way to be kind to ourselves, swim in the shallows, and help ourselves slowly, slowly, slowly get all the way up to awesome.
Find small ponds.