Judging the recent MOMpreneur of the Year Award got us thinking about competition and how it affects us. As small business owners, competition is something we all need to navigate.
Our businesses are extensions of ourselves. We can’t help but look around and see what other people are doing. Like most things, it’s a good news, bad news story. Let’s start with the downside.
Occasionally, and more than likely at some point, a competitor will do something that annoys you. They will rip off your marketing materials, inappropriately target your customers, or be less than straightforward in an interaction with you.
We’ve had people impersonate customers to learn about how our business works. We've had our designs copied. Someone once copied our ‘About us’ section for her own site. And once, on a competitor’s web site, the language had been so directly copied that it instructed customers to contact
Admiral Road if there was a problem with a blanket!
We can take these occurrences very personally. Our competitors become a perfect place to target all of our stress and insecurities in our business. We’ve known some people to be so fixated on their competitors that it affects their own lives negatively. They make poor business decisions following their competitors, or trying to avoid them.
Sometimes we don’t even have to interact with another business to feel threatened by it. Every entrepreneur (every human for that matter) looks at others and feels that the other gal is doing better. We think they must have something we don’t have. Maybe, we think, they have more money, better connections, or just plain better luck. Worse, we feel disappointed and angry by her success relative to our own.
Here’s what we’d like to remind you of: When you started your business you had an idea of what you wanted from your business experience. Did you want flexibility and balance? Did you want to be home with your kids? Did you want the joy of bringing your idea to life? What we all know is that entrepreneurs are motivated by so many things. So, before you judge yourself negatively against someone else, ask yourself how you are doing in your own business. How are you meeting your own goals?
Theodore Roosevelt famously said that comparison is the thief of joy. We contend that it’s also the thief of your own notion of success. We say, if it looks like the other gal is doing better than you, then good for her. Very likely she started out with some different goals than you. In any case, her failures and successes are her business, and you should be focusing on your own.
We also argue that competition can be good for your business.
The good:
Learn from best practices of others
Reflect the strengths and weaknesses of your business by looking at others
Stops you from becoming complacent
Meet people in your field who you can potentially work with. No one really gets your business and its struggles better than your competitors.
Sometimes a competitor can be the best thing that ever happens to you. When we’ve felt most threatened by others we’ve turned inwards and adopted the mantra ‘smarter, better, faster.' In fact, the periods where we faced the most competition have been some of the most productive in our business.
You started to work for yourself because YOU wanted to work in a certain way. YOU wanted your life to look a certain way.
I’m a competitive long distance runner and I used to train for marathons with my late mother. No matter how many miles we logged together in training, when we got to the start line on Race Day we would look at each other and say, “Run your own race.” You have worked too hard, and too long to be doing this for anyone other than yourself. It’s your life. It only needs to work for you. Run your own race. We'll be cheering for you.
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