Living and Competing with Abundance

I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts this morning (Building a Storybrand with Donald Miller), and one of the interviewees said something that deeply resonated with me: "You don't have to fail for me to succeed."

YES.

Unless we're talking about intellectual property impingement or shady business practices, you should not be grappling with your competition or rooting for them to fail. Instead, you should be focusing on how you can continually grow, improve, and better serve your customers.

I've been around companies and leadership teams that didn't have a clear sense of their why (thank you, Simon Sinek), and it's not pretty. Instead of developing a product offering uniquely suited to their mission, strengths, goals, and target market, they would chase their competition, and base every move based on what other companies in their space were offering. Unless this is part of a pricing strategy, this isn't approach isn't going to set your business up for success.

I'm not suggesting that you put the blinders on and ignore the competition. Being aware of your marketplace can help you continue to innovate and predict what your customers are going to want and need. In fact, whenever I work with a new client, we always go through a competitive analysis. Not so the client can copycat what another company is doing, but so my client can compare and contrast, see what's working (and what's not), and further tweak and strengthen their own business and marketing strategies and messages so that they can stand out even more clearly.

So, take your eyes of the competition for a moment and look ahead to your future. You don't need another business to fail just so you can succeed. Instead, trust that there's enough business for everyone, and do what you uniquely know how to do. When you approach life and business with an abundance mindset, you'll be proven right.

Photo by MARK ADRIANE on Unsplash