Competing Against Yourself
Pele’s famous backward bicycle kick (Credit: AP)
“Competing against yourself” is the answer that I received when I once asked an athlete about how she was able to keep with her competitive swimming rivals.
It’s funny how this concept can be applied to our business and marketing too!
As a business owner or founder of a company, we all have similar worries when we are up against issues related to our product, our sales, our operations, or our marketing.
Often, we may look to outside factors and place frustrations or blames on competitors, state of the industry that we are in, or the current economy that could be affecting the health and growth of our business.
Yet we don’t look consistently from the inside and ask how we can do better. Whether it be with our product, our process, our operation, our marketing, or our efforts in learning new things to win in our business and marketing.
Staying Competitive, Mentally Focused and Motivated
When we as a business owners or founders who did not grow up playing sports, we may not be trained like athletes in having the mindset that will help us do better under high-pressure. That means staying competitive, mentally focused and be motivated at all times to finish a game – win or lose.
We tend to compare ourselves with others. When the better method is to compare our efforts with what we have done previously – and figure out how to beat our previous records.
Because when we strive to bring our product or service to be a better version at the next round, we’ll always improve and gain more from learning our own mistakes and do better next time.
Asking questions such as:
1) What costs can we trim so we can keep expenses in check while buffering from revenue reductions due to a soft economy?
2) What tasks that we can automate so we can focus more on building relationships for our brand and flows for our pipeline?
3) What mindset do we need to adopt so we can stay resilient and be continuously inspired to be in business, and come out stronger on the other side?
4) What are new frustrations that we are sensing from others that we can turn those ideas into relevant products that other people want?
Elites Look Inside. Averages Look Outside
Like author of Atomic Habits, James Clear, said: We are elites when we look inside to make the right changes or transformation to succeed, instead of looking outside and shifting blames to your rivals, suppliers, bad lucks, or other reasons.
Similarly, like the swimming athlete that I talked to at one point…her goal is to meet or exceed on her own records. So she can continue to stay competitive yet not get distracted.
This kind of healthy mindset will keep you going strong and be challenged to bring your business and marketing to a better state – that’s what every business owner or founder want for their endeavors.
Question for you: What are you (or your business) competing yourself against?
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