By: Stefan Aarnio
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The world in general is more competitive than ever, whether it be business, dating, music or sports.
In business, we are no longer competing with our local hometown businesses; we are competing with our local businesses PLUS China, India, Russia, Africa and the rest of the world!
If you go on elance.com (now upwork.com) and look at designers for hire, you can hire a designer in India to make you a decent logo for $40-50 USD. In India, $40-50 USD is decent money. Some people in India live on less than a dollar a day. However, right next to these Indian designers are Canadian or American designers from major cities with major degrees of major colleges either asking for $250 for the same job or they are cutting their prices to barely live at $40-50 USD per logo.
In India, that $40 or $50 can go a long way. In New York City, $40 or $50 won’t even put a dent in your $2000 a month rent!
In dating in 2015, you don’t just date one girl and she doesn’t just date you. Both of you will be simultaneously flirting with 6-12 other people simultaneously through apps like Tinder, Plenty of Fish and Match.com. Plus if you do make it into a relationship, there are now suitors on facebook, instagram or twitter that are sending your girlfriend (or boyfriend) constant messages and are competing for his or her attention.
In music, artists not only have to compete with the artists of today, but they also have to compete with the greats of the past like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones alone with Mozart and Beethoven. All of the artists above are competing for the same $1.29 digital download on iTunes or attention on a music streaming service.
In sports, records keep getting pushed higher and higher and some athletes will do anything (even drugs) to get an advantage on the competition.
The bottom line is that the world today is more competitive than ever and it’s harder to get ahead.
Or is it?
Competition? What competition?
Personally, in business, I love competition. Competition means that there is money and customers spending money in a certain market or niche. Today I drove by a small popular burger joint in Winnipeg and an A&W hamburgers had opened up right next door. While McDonalds spends millions of dollars locating and analyzing the best burger locations in the world, Burger King’s strategy is to open up right next door to McDonalds.
Let the pioneers take the arrows and the settlers get rich.
Why would Burger King bother spending millions of dollars to locate the money when they can just piggyback off of the McDonald’s real estate budget?
Or consider Coke and Pepsi. Coke was the original, it was big, it was sexy, they made all of the right moves and Pepsi just seemed to always copy what Coke did (and still do). Why be #1 and take the arrows when you can be #2 and just slide right in?
Competition is good because it forces businesses to come up with new ideas and innovate. Right now, Tesla motors is releasing it’s patents to the public hoping that other car companies will embrace the electric car technology and follow suit. Sure it seems like a benevolent move, but wouldn’t Tesla benefit from having more electric cars on the road driving consumer awareness and demand for more supporting infrastructure? Tesla is thinking 10 moves ahead by offering it’s patents to expand the entire market for electric cars (in which it’s the major leader).
Gas stations typically line up along the side of the road in the same location so that they can embrace the sweet spot on the highway where all of the cars seem to run out of gas. They don’t mind having competition and neither should you.
What’s even better is when you can make money off of your competition by selling to the prospects that they failed to close, or even better, enter a joint venture with your competition to make commissions off of unclosed leads.
If the customer didn’t buy from your competition, find out why, fill in the gap. There is a niche for everyone!
If two realtors trade unclosed leads and refer buyers to each other, statistically, the second realtor will close the sale (and send a nice 25% referral commission to the first realtor).
Why fight? Why be hostile, there is more than enough cake, pie and ice cream for everyone?
Plus 99% of businesses fail due to some incompetence of the entrepreneur in charge (not the competition.)
You are your own worst enemy, get out of your way and beat your worst enemy of all – yourself!
There is no competition.
Thanks for the support,
Respect The Grind,
Stefan Aarnio
StefanAarnio.com
https://twitter.com/stefanaarnio
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