My father taught me from a very young age all about countercyclical living.

countercyclical activities do not follow the pattern which is normal in business or the economy -dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/…

The main idea is that if there’s a crowd there, go somewhere else.

We would always park a little further from the store, for instance, because it was easier to find a spot.

Or, instead of standing in line for hours to see a new movie (back before you could get tickets online), we would see a movie a few weeks old.

My father didn’t understand why anyone would go where the crowd was when it was so much more pleasant to go the other way.

I’ll be honest, it was infuriating when I was younger, but the older I get the more I see the wisdom in it.

This presents in business as the Blue Ocean Strategy.

Blue Ocean Strategy is referred to a market for a product where there is no competition or very less competition. This strategy revolves around searching for a business in which very few firms operate and where there is no pricing pressure. -economictimes.indiatimes.com/defaultint…

What does this have to do with not getting drowned out by the crowds? Well, it’s pretty simple. If a bunch of people are drowning, you should probably not go that way.

Instead, you should go another way and find shallower water. If everyone is talking about one thing, then you find another axis to talk to the same people about something different.

Yes, there is a benefit to going into the red ocean where everyone is feeding because that’s where the action is, but plenty of people are completely turned off by that, and you can get by really well doing the opposite thing.

It might take a little bit longer, but the sea is calm and you can go at a leisurely pace because nobody is there yet.

Then, when people figure it out and start a frenzy, either you jump to the next thing, like a Desert, or you’ve spent so much time there that you’re now the first to feed, like a Grassland.

If you want to grow fast using this strategy, then you can harness your inner Tundra to draw attention to the thing you figured out and start a frenzy, but you can also simply go your own pace and keep the ocean calm.