Business Growth in a Competitive Market

Take a walk with me through the daily aisle; we’re going cheese shopping! There are so many types of cheese to choose from, but you can only choose one. You narrow down your favorites and end up with two bricks of sharp white cheddar. The prices are similar, the look is similar, the packaging on the front is similar; they appear very similar! So how do you choose? Which is the best? Then, you notice on the back label of one brick is a few sentences that tell the story of the cheese and cheesemaker. After learning about the aging process and how many generations of love have been put into making this specific cheese on a small farm in England, it clearly stands out against the now very generic looking cheese in your other hand. Plus, you’re intrigued with the process and are now considering checking out that brand’s brie as well. It’s the personalized story that gets us 9 times out of 10.

Now you’re probably thinking, ‘alright weirdo, how does cheese relate to growing my business?’ and my answer is this. Just like an entire aisle filled with cheese that all can look and taste very similar, we can start to feel like we’re just one in a bunch and maybe we need to do what they’re doing to be picked by consumers. So we start to compete by changing our pricing to undercut the other cheeses and when they start to add herbs into their making, so do we. Darnit, if they say they melt perfectly between two slices of bread, so will we! Pretty soon, we’re replicas and still struggling to be picked. What we need to do, is brand ourselves as a desirable, one-of-a-kind cheese.

You still with me here?

What I’m saying is, while a little bit of healthy competition is good for growth in a variety of areas in life, you shouldn’t let that be your focus in business. Your goal should be to design your business around about how you can best serve your clients based on your personal values, not how you can copy or beat out the competition.

While I do think it’s okay to check out the competition to see what you think is or isn't working for them so that you can take a stand in your own business, the best way to grow your business is to focus on defining your voice in the industry. Tune out the noise and focus on diving deep into your core values and find ways to show that to your audience. Serve them from your heart. Your story will stand out to the right people and you’ll organically start to grow your business as you authentically make connections with other people who have similar values.

When you’re in a strong position of knowing who you are and what makes up your brand, you may start to realize your competition was not really your competition at all. Instead, they’re a completely different business that you can now send referrals to when you realize a client would be a better fit for them. A rising tide raises all ships, after all.

Don’t worry about your competition, love. Just allow yourself to bloom into who you are meant to be.

What do you think? Should competition be your big focus when trying to grow your small business? Leave a comment below! I’d love to hear from you, even if all you want to do is tell me that you love cheese as much as I do. ;)