Change the Environment
Gaining an advantage on a competitor isn’t an easy thing to do by any means. It’ll take plenty of planning, strategy, and cunning tactics to have any effect at all. But the number one thing that you can do as a young entrepreneur trying to gain an advantage is this: be different!
Sure, easier said than done, I know. But in order to break into a well established sector filled with plenty of hefty gorillas, you’re going to have to change up the battlefield – force them into a completely new environment.
An environment that you have defined and that you know like the back of your hand. When you force your competitor onto a new battlefield, you force them to take the time to learn what exactly you are up do. Keeping ‘em dazed and confused like how some of you feel during those frat parties, right?
While your competitor is busy trying to figure out your unique business model and your new service that hasn’t been seen before, you will be busy pushing forward with your plans and gaining that advantage.
The more time you force your competitors to think about what you are up to, the more ahead in the game that you will be. In order to bring about such a strategy, you have to think outside of the box when creating your service.
Do your homework and spend time studying what’s already out there. Study similar services, new services, similar products, and keep track of what your competitors are up to. Don’t underestimate anyone, never.
It’s extremely dangerous when you become complacent and forget to keep tabs on your competitors’ moves. Once you gather this information, start mixing it up.
It’s akin to cutting out random words from a newspaper and throwing them into a hat and giving it a good shake. Then randomly pasting together words from the hat and coming up with completely new sentences.
Sure, it may not make sense at first and expect a level of confusion, but this is all a part of the process of coming up with something so wacky, so unique, and so fresh, that it’ll force your competitors to say “wait a minute…what’s going on here… huh?”
Einstein said, “if at first the idea isn’t absurd, then it has no chance of survival.” Don’t be scared of absurdity and weirdness, embrace them. Cherish them. Those are the things that are going to separate your business from the pack and keep the gorillas wondering.
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