Today, we’re going to talk about competition and whether you should be looking at other people in your industry or not.
People ask me all the time…
“Fabienne, do you look at your competition?
Should I be looking at my competition?
Sometimes I get so triggered by other people’s success.”
Well, I look at competition a little differently than most people (especially other business coaches). Here’s my advice on when to look at your competition and why:
The way that I look at life is that there’s plenty to go around for everybody.
Yes, there are plenty of good people out there who do something similar to me, but they don’t do it at all like I do it.
We each have our way of doing things, and so I like to remove the energy of “competition”.
Instead of relating to other people in my industry as my competitors, I like to call them my colleagues.
The more you look at it as competition the more you might look at life as a zero-sum game.
Yes, your colleagues might have clients, they might theoretically be making more money than you do and they might have a strong social media presence.
But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have it too. (That’s not the way the universe works.)
Recently I was working on developing my new personal growth and development program, the one that has nothing to do with business (called Boldheart Life).
As I was thinking about what to include in the program, I started thinking, “Well, how do other people deliver their personal growth and development programs online?”
I went and looked at five or six of my colleagues to do some fact finding. I went to their websites, I looked at how they market, I looked at how much they charge.
And I made an assessment (“I like that idea, I’m totally never doing that, don’t like the way they’re doing that, interesting but not sure if it’s for me, yes, totally love that”)…you get the idea.
After I got the information I needed, I stopped looking.
This is important, because if you spend too much time studying someone else, you might unknowingly pick up their way of doing things, their language and their -isms.
You want to stay an individual.
You want to stay true to you.
You don’t want to copy someone else.
And you also don’t want to get into a mindset of constant comparison.
I don’t know about you, but I can be easily triggered when I compare myself to others.
I start thinking to myself, “Oh, he’s doing that, she’s doing that, well maybe I need to be doing that, why are they doing this better than me?”
I’ve met a lot of people who are doing really well in business, and they still get triggered.
And so, for those reasons, I choose not to look at other people (unless I’m just doing a bit of research).
I choose to create and innovate on my own.
This is my invitation for you, too, sweet friend. If you must look around at what others are doing, do it strategically and with purpose. But don’t keep looking. It’s not good for you.
