A little competition can be helpful. It can work to keep you sharp and to make yourself ready for the challenges that are coming. But if you’re not careful, you can allow fear to make you believe that your competition can’t be beat.

Never Let the Competition Intimidate You Out of Your Plans

Your plans have made you so excited and you can’t wait to get started creating your own success journey. You know you can do this and that it’s going to happen for you.

Then, you get a good look at the competition.

You start comparing where they are and where you are on the journey. They look like they’ve cornered the market. Self-doubt creeps in. You don’t see how you’re going to compete with that.

Maybe they have a bigger budget to work with. They have dozens or hundreds of employees. They have someone to answer the phones and email and to handle any problems that arise.

You look at them and then back at your plans. You can’t see how you can possible gain an edge – not when they’re all over the place and not when everyone knows who they are.

It would be like a drop of rain trying to compete with the force of ocean and maybe you just shouldn’t even try. If you think like that and you don’t stop it, your competition will intimidate you right out of your plans without lifting a finger.

You will have taken yourself out of the running all by yourself. Don’t be your own worst enemy. Don’t stop your success just because you think that someone else is better. There’s plenty of room for every person who wants to try in the marketplace.

There are hundreds of opportunities in the same niche. In the same field. What you have to remember is that consumers are always the unknown factor when it comes to business or any kind of success you want to market.

Just because your competition seems to have all the bells and whistles doesn’t mean that you don’t have something to offer. Just because it seems like they have thousands of loyal consumers buying from them left and right doesn’t mean they don’t have thousands of consumers who don’t want to do business with them.

Every single person or business who’s your competition is going to have someone out there who doesn’t like them, who wouldn’t do business with them if you paid them to. You have a wide open opportunity no matter how fierce or how much better you think your competition is.

As the new guy on the block, you can introduce things to people with a new twist. You can get them to see things differently because you bring a difference to the table. You can be the one who shows the consumer that there’s a new way of doing things that works better for them.

You could be the one who has the charisma and the personality that connects with consumers when your competition failed to do so.

To Beat the Competition, Become Their Customer

You don’t take a test without studying. You need to know the material in order to know the answers. When you know the material and give the right answers, you ace not just the test, but the entire class.

You need to beat the competition and to do that, you must study them. In order to study them, you have to get an inside look at what your competition is bringing to the table.

Obviously, if they’re successful, they’re doing something right.

You want to find out what that is, but you can bet if you simply asked them, they’re not going to tell you – not when they know they’re going to be competing against you. So what you have to do is study them with the mindset of a customer.

Find the inside track with the competition by allowing the competition to treat you like someone they want to sell their product or information to. For that, you’re going to need a way for them to connect with you.

Check out their site and if they have a sign up box to get information, sign up. Let yourself get put on their mailing list. This way, every time they send out any information, it’ll come right to your inbox.

You’ll be able to see how they talk to customers. You’ll get to see how often they announce a product that they have. You’ll be able to see when they talk about discounts or sales.

You’ll also see how they handle bonuses. You’ll also be able to tell how often they send out their list to the customers. Study all of this. Take a look at what’s working in those messages.

Pay attention to what’s grabbing your attention. Do they have a way of phrasing something that makes you want to rush over and buy the product? What makes you want to ask for more information?

You’ll need to spend a little money on their products. Buy whatever it is that they’re offering for sale that you’re going to be competing with them on. Break the product down by what makes it good or bad.

Look for the cost. See if the value of the product is equal to the cost of if there’s room for improvement. If so, find that improvement and implement it in your own product. Check out the competition’s product for ease of use.

If you feel like you need an owner’s manual just to figure out how to use it then you’ll know to make sure your own products are easier to use. See if the product delivers on its promise.

Sale pages can hype up a product that doesn’t quite meet expectations. This can teach you to make sure that your own products exceed expectation. Finally, look at the results of that products and determine that you’re going to deliver more value to the customer with your product.

They’ll want to choose you over the competition because you’ll have a product that was created with them in mind. And it will all thanks to the decision you made to become a customer of the competition.

If You’re Not Competitive, Do Something About It

When you’re after success you must have something to offer that’s as good as or better than what the competition has. If not, you won’t be the one consumers choose when they have a need.

You might be someone who doesn’t really have a strong competitive streak. When you look at the competition you think that there’s no way you could ever measure up. You compare your skills, your knowledge and your plans to the other guy’s and you feel like you’re falling far short.

This is the point in your success journey where you’re going to have to make a decision. You can stay immobilized and think about all the ways that you’re not competitive and wish you were or you can do something about it.

There are always going to be people who can do something more than you can. There will always be people higher up the success ladder. People who know more. People who have more talent.

That helps them get ahead. It helps them deliver products that consumers want. But it doesn’t mean that you’re left out in the cold with no hope of changing the game. What it means is that you’re going to have to pursue the skill that gives you the edge.

You’re going to have to become competitive in order to succeed. You already know that you don’t know everything that you need to know in order to succeed. You already know that your competition probably has a leg up.

But there’s a huge difference in knowing and doing nothing and knowing and deciding that you’re not going to let that stop you. You must be willing to do whatever it takes to narrow that gap and surpass the competition.

It means that you can’t just sit idly by and wish you had the skills that you need. Being competitive means that you have to first be willing to take action. By taking action you can learn what you’re missing.

You can discover what it is that you need to know. When you do this, you’ll gain the knowledge and the skills that you need to better yourself. You become competitive when you recognize what your strengths are, and you learn how to use those to your advantage.

But you also learn what your weaknesses are, and you take steps to overcome them so that they don’t hinder your efforts.

Forget About Being the Best – Try Being Unique Instead

If you look around, you’ll see that someone is always telling others how they can be the best. Have the best body. Be the best at strength training. Be the best at your job. Be the best at dancing.

Or performing. Or in other creative endeavors. Push yourself. Be better. Never stop striving to achieve the title of the best. If that sounds like something you’ve been following in your life, now’s the time to forget all about that.

Being the best doesn’t work.

It’s not that the competition to be the best is too hard. It’s that you shouldn’t care who the best is and it’s not a position that you should want to aspire to. That might be shocking to hear, but the truth is that the world is full of voices all crying out to be the best or that they are the best.

They tell people they have the best idea, the best product, the best way to fix something. So what happens is that all these bests get lumped together. They fall into a giant vat of everyone’s ideas and then no one actually stands out to the consumer.

If everyone’s the best, including you then you’re no different than your competition.

Consumers are tired of hearing that. They’re tired of getting the best because it’s the same old, same old all over again.

Nothing to get excited about. Just more of the humdrum.

Be different. Be uniquely you. By setting yourself apart, you become what the consumer wants. They’ll chase after what’s different because you’ll shake up the landscape. Upset the status quo.

You’ll make them view things with fresh eyes. You’ll make them want what you have. You’ll capture their attention. You’ll make them feel. When they see you, they feel like you’re the answer.

What you have to offer is what they need. That’s why you need to tap into the difference that you bring to the table. It’s about being your true, authentic self in a sea of people all saying that they’re the best.

The authentic voice is louder at a whisper than the combined shouts of hundreds claiming they’re the one on top. When you are true to yourself, then you’re someone that no one else out there can be.

You’re not trying to fit in. You’re trying to stand out and people respond to that. Think about what it is that you’re trying to accomplish. Brainstorm how you can achieve your goals by being unique.

Your Biggest Competition Should Be Yourself

Having some competition is healthy. It makes you want to do better, to be faster, to be at the top of your game. But the biggest competitor in your life should be you. That might sound strange, but it’s true.

The person that you need to concentrate on beating is you. Just like in the game of golf, you should focus your concentration on trying to better your own game. While it’s tempting to always keep an eye on whatever your competition is doing, if you focus on being your own competition, you’re going to end up being a huge success in whatever it is that you decide to do.

When you work on improving yourself, you improve how you do things. It’s a by product of getting better and that’s something that just watching the competition won’t give you.

There are areas where you need to compete with yourself.

One of these is with goals. You should have goals that are always leveling up. Once you reach one goal, aim for another, higher, bigger goal. If you sell 2,000 units of a product, aim to sell 4,000 in the same time frame.

Compete against yourself when it comes to progress too. Determine that the place where you’re going to be in six months is going to be greater than where you are now.

Decide that whatever you do now, you’re going to improve on.

You’re going to be faster, better, and you’re going to find ways to learn even more about the same things you’re doing now. Whatever records you set for yourself, don’t stop until you break them.

Make today better than yesterday. Tomorrow better than today. As each day unfolds, work harder than you did before. Increase your ability. Look for ways that you’re able to take care of stuff smarter with less time, effort and money involved.

Polish up the skills that you have now until you level up from beginner to experienced, then from experienced to expert. Improve on the what you know and seek out what you don’t know.

Keep score with yourself and check to see if you can beat that score. The reason that you want to focus on being the competition that you have to beat is simple. When you do that, you’re going to beat everyone – all your competition – because you will have raised your skills to a level that’s beyond theirs. Your skills will have improved to the point that you’re able to do more and do it in a way that consumers take notice.