I don’t think a lot about competition but I know it’s a big concern for some people. It’s always a sure sign of a young entrepreneur when they ask me to sign an N.D.A. (Non-Disclosure Agreement) before we’ve even laid eyes on each other. They’re worried someone will steal their idea, or get to it first.
I have good news and bad news. The good news is that you mostly don’t need to worry about people stealing your ideas.
The bad news is that the reason you don’t need to worry is because so few people actually take action on their ideas.
If you’re in your first 5 years in business, chances are your competitors aren’t the folks you need to worry about. I’ve been hired by two of my ‘competitors’ in the last two months.
Even though it might seem on the surface like we should be competing for clients, when you drill down, we each have our own unique focus and talents that makes what we offer pretty unique.
The Real Enemy is Apathy.
Getting people to DO stuff is hard.
- Getting your subscribers to click a link
- Getting a visitor to give you their email
- Getting a customer in your store to buy
- Getting your Virgo wife to make a decision*
- Convincing yourself to go for a run or sit down and schedule your social media posts.
Your potential customer is less likely to be choosing between you and a competitor and more likely to be choosing between doing something and doing nothing.
Sometimes getting ourselves to do the things we need to do is the most challenging thing in our business.
So how do you conquer the real enemy? Search Your Feelings, Luke.
In order to triumph over the tendency toward inaction, you have to connect with a deeper purpose and motivation. As much as we like to delude ourselves that we’re logical beings, science says otherwise–and this newsletter falls firmly in the science-is-real camp.
So if you find yourself procrastinating, take a moment to connect with WHY you wanted to accomplish your goal in the first place and then take the next small step.
Alternatively, you can remind yourself why you’re fed up with NOT accomplishing your goal.
If you’re trying to motivate other people, then you need to connect with their WHYs and motivations.
I REALLY want to help a lot of people have thriving businesses and avoid making expensive mistakes with their websites, so I stayed up until 3:00am making a sales page for the Working Websites course.
Oz, my cat, helped.
Action breeds momentum (unless you’re a cat). Momentum breeds results. Results breed action.
What are you doing to beat the competition this week?
* I am so sorry, I don’t know how that got in there. 🙂
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