I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination -- and there are still days when I struggle with my mind set big time -- but for the most part when I look at my competition now, I think, "Good! Let them be successful and attract all the perfect customers for THEM. I'm going to attract all the perfect customers for ME." Because just like we service providers are all unique and different, so are our customers. And not every service provider is a perfect fit for every customer and vice versa. I appreciate my competition for paving the way by educating people through their marketing why they should be even be thinking about using the type of services that we offer. There are literally millions of potential customers in the world -- I only need a fraction of them to buy from me to make a really good viable business.
Awesome stuff Dan, I have realized that even the big competitors in any space are not perfect, that means there is always an opportunity to provide value and take market share. The key for me to keep focused is to just listen to the customer, spend very little time focused on competitors and more time on the solving the customer's needs. Once I see competitors, it reassures me there is a need in the market :)
Needed to watch this. Originally was searching for something about dealing with toxic competitors, this video popped up before I finished typing and I'm glad I clicked.
Thanks for this video, Dan! Its come at the right time as I've been having problems dealing with a dirty competitor. They make a similar product to mine and spend a lot on advertising, whereas I concentrated on creating efficiencies and passing the savings on to my customers, believing that eventually the customers would figure it out and start to find me. After a few months this really started to work and I was doubling my sales every 10 days with no advertising, and started to cut in to the #1 competitor's sales. Then they came at me and started paying people to put fake, negative reviews on my product to make it appear that my product was lower quality. This really hurt my sales and they dropped about 75% and are just staying stable now. Its made me angry and hurt my sales momentum. Some competitors play dirty pool and its hard to deal with. I may have to raise my prices and use the extra funds to pay for advertising now. I've been resisting the urge to hit them back.
Focus on you, your customers and what you can control. Play the long game. If anything, it'll make you stronger and force you to adjust pricing and build out marketing funnels to help you grow. DM
Thanks, Dan. That's what I'm going to do. I've been thinking about it and to really add value I have to make the effort to let my customers know that there's a solution for their problem, and not just wait for them to find me. So I'm going to test raising my prices next month and using some PPC advertising. I think you're right that it will ultimately make me a better entrepreneur. Cheers
@@poolmine50 Well, I ended up having some customers of mine jump in and reply to comments (without me asking them) and they defended my product and said great things about it. Also, one of my sales channels (Amazon) started to realize that competitors were cheating and paying people to post fake reviews, so Amazon ended up going in and deleting about 80% of the fake reviews in Amazon. Then I gained a lot of organic growth and went up to #1 on Amazon for my product and sold out of all my inventory in 2 weeks. I stayed near the top for about 18 months. But I made a mistake because I told my Chinese supplier that I needed more inventory ASAP because I was selling out like crazy and wasn't using any advertising on Amazon. (which saved me a bundle) My Chinese supplier then delayed my order and copied my ads almost word for word and started competing against me! It was so close I would look at the listings and almost get confused myself as to what one was mine and what one was their copy of mine. Because they were the original supplier they could sell at a lower cost than me, although they usually priced about the same because they wanted to make profit and just confuse customers. I then changed my ads and started a small Amazon advertising campaign, and after a few months got back to #1, even competing against my Chinese supplier. Then Covid hit! It was good and bad. It caused supply chain issues but I could sell for more. I was able to increase my prices about 25% and still sell out within 3 weeks, but when I tried to re-order inventory my Chinese supplier gave me huge numbers of defective units (20% defective). I don't know if this was intentional, to try to ruin my reputation/business, or because they were having supply chain problems and didn't have enough trained workers available or what the reason was. I sold out of all my inventory again, refunded all defective units, and tried to re-order on the condition that the supplier would guarantee the quality (or reimburse me for defective units). The supplier refused to offer any guarantees or reimbursements, and told me it would take at least 5 weeks for me to get my next batch of units. This would cause my Amazon ranking to fall and i'd have to rebuild it up all over again, but if the units turned out to be defective then I would be screwed. So I just kept my money and didn't re-order. I decided to take a hiatus for the last 12 months and I've developed several other business ideas and will be launching 1 of them within the next 6 months. I've learned not to trust Chinese suppliers at all and not share info with them. Many Chinese suppliers do not see it as a business partners relationship, but they just try to use North Americans to figure out a market and marketing strategy, then steal everything from them, copy, and compete against them, and will employ dirty tactics to try to overtake that market after its been established. I will now use a holding company to purchase from suppliers and not let them know what my brand actually is (not allow them to do the packaging, no sharing info, use multiple suppliers who each supply only part of the total product, etc). It was still a great experience. I made some money and learned a lot, which I'll be using for my next venture. Thanks
@@Kellysayshello Damn what a journey! I'm glad that you are out with money and valuable experience. its always interesting to hear about the challenges that other businesses face... I'm having a lot of challenges with my start up too but at the end of the day we should learn,enjoy the process and wait for the moment to blow. thanks for sharing it with me.
Peter Thiel (Co-Founder & Partner at Founders Fund) you want wars to be short. Let that process go on too long and you’ll lose yourself in it. So your strategy must be shock and awe. You have to win very quickly. But since very often it’s not possible to ensure a quick victory, your primary job is to figure out ways not to have war happen at all.
Sue them to exhaust their funds (sic). That's what most companies that become bigger do. It's a cancer of the business world. Great video Dan. You're moving up in subscribers as well. Good to see. You deserve 100K+ for your content.
Certainly not with business topics or even worse narrow saas. You'll be lucky to get 200K. The masses want entertainment not education. Maybe you could explain topics while petting a cat in your lap. Preferably a white one. "How to make ONE MILLION dollars!"
I think I never commented on your videos allthough I've watched already a couple videos of yours. Great video, once again! ;-) Now I have the impulse to share my opinion to this topic: Business Competition. As I'm a big fan of open source #OpenSourceEnthusiast, I think that businesses should work more hand in hand. Of course this isn't applicable to every business niche, but deffinetly to many! Imagine this... Let's take the "Blog Softwares" for example. The most used blogging software WordPress is actually already open source & therfor a good example. WordPress is the most used Open Source blogging software and a powerful CMS. Now, when every "Blog Software" and/or "CMS" business would stop develop their own custom solution & instead work on the OpenSource project, the obvious result would be to have a more robust , flexible WordPress which would benefit everyone. A more robust & flexible WordPress can be used to create more awsome open source products and/or evan actual businesses. This is just an example with WordPress for Blog Softwares. However the results of an active open source community is priceless. What do you think?
Francis, using open source is just a business model decision, no different then freemium. Doesn't always work, but it can. Really appreciate the comment! DM
Thanks Dan, First revenues this week for us at PreventScripts! We are high off that milestone, but we are excited about the work ahead we'll be doing to help our first customers find success.
But what do you do when you discover that a startup is already there and has raised over a million dollars and can hire a legion of engineers and crash the price down so you can't compete?
However, I see facebook are adapting every business idea to all their platforms when innovative compition comes along. Can you can do an up to date video using facebook as the subject? how they approach innovation and implementing their competitors innovative ideas with adjusting it on their own way. Due to your experince, It will be great to get your insight/prospective on the matter Dan? Thanks
The process of product creation is taking too long. Meanwhile expenses keep mounting up. Things r feeling super difficult and it feels if i am drowning because i m not able to stay afloat.
Pre-sell. Always get the money upfront if possible then build. Also get the most basic version of your product out and start emailing and calling prospects asap.
Product creation can be a big hurdle for many startups, especially if at the early phases you have to be paying developers. The Lean Startup (theleanstartup.com/principles) is a great place to start to get ideas of how to move faster and getting an MVP into your customer's hands sooner. Also, product creation really does take quite some time, so you should be prepared to spend 12-24 months, but before you do, ensure to get the MVP out to your customers fast which can be a source of initial income.
The bigger issue my competitors are smuggling the same price and by not paying taxes and special permissionsnto import they are undercutting my prices.
I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination -- and there are still days when I struggle with my mind set big time -- but for the most part when I look at my competition now, I think, "Good! Let them be successful and attract all the perfect customers for THEM. I'm going to attract all the perfect customers for ME." Because just like we service providers are all unique and different, so are our customers. And not every service provider is a perfect fit for every customer and vice versa. I appreciate my competition for paving the way by educating people through their marketing why they should be even be thinking about using the type of services that we offer. There are literally millions of potential customers in the world -- I only need a fraction of them to buy from me to make a really good viable business.
Exactly! Love that Susanne. Keep shinning your light.
DM
Great mindset!
Awesome stuff Dan, I have realized that even the big competitors in any space are not perfect, that means there is always an opportunity to provide value and take market share. The key for me to keep focused is to just listen to the customer, spend very little time focused on competitors and more time on the solving the customer's needs. Once I see competitors, it reassures me there is a need in the market :)
Orane, 100% ... competitors only validate market, but there's always opportunity to create more value for the customer and win them over.
DM
Needed to watch this. Originally was searching for something about dealing with toxic competitors, this video popped up before I finished typing and I'm glad I clicked.
Thanks for this video, Dan! Its come at the right time as I've been having problems dealing with a dirty competitor. They make a similar product to mine and spend a lot on advertising, whereas I concentrated on creating efficiencies and passing the savings on to my customers, believing that eventually the customers would figure it out and start to find me. After a few months this really started to work and I was doubling my sales every 10 days with no advertising, and started to cut in to the #1 competitor's sales. Then they came at me and started paying people to put fake, negative reviews on my product to make it appear that my product was lower quality. This really hurt my sales and they dropped about 75% and are just staying stable now. Its made me angry and hurt my sales momentum. Some competitors play dirty pool and its hard to deal with. I may have to raise my prices and use the extra funds to pay for advertising now. I've been resisting the urge to hit them back.
Focus on you, your customers and what you can control.
Play the long game.
If anything, it'll make you stronger and force you to adjust pricing and build out marketing funnels to help you grow.
DM
Thanks, Dan. That's what I'm going to do. I've been thinking about it and to really add value I have to make the effort to let my customers know that there's a solution for their problem, and not just wait for them to find me. So I'm going to test raising my prices next month and using some PPC advertising. I think you're right that it will ultimately make me a better entrepreneur. Cheers
im wondering how did it all go now after 3 years
@@poolmine50 Well, I ended up having some customers of mine jump in and reply to comments (without me asking them) and they defended my product and said great things about it. Also, one of my sales channels (Amazon) started to realize that competitors were cheating and paying people to post fake reviews, so Amazon ended up going in and deleting about 80% of the fake reviews in Amazon. Then I gained a lot of organic growth and went up to #1 on Amazon for my product and sold out of all my inventory in 2 weeks. I stayed near the top for about 18 months. But I made a mistake because I told my Chinese supplier that I needed more inventory ASAP because I was selling out like crazy and wasn't using any advertising on Amazon. (which saved me a bundle) My Chinese supplier then delayed my order and copied my ads almost word for word and started competing against me! It was so close I would look at the listings and almost get confused myself as to what one was mine and what one was their copy of mine. Because they were the original supplier they could sell at a lower cost than me, although they usually priced about the same because they wanted to make profit and just confuse customers. I then changed my ads and started a small Amazon advertising campaign, and after a few months got back to #1, even competing against my Chinese supplier. Then Covid hit! It was good and bad. It caused supply chain issues but I could sell for more. I was able to increase my prices about 25% and still sell out within 3 weeks, but when I tried to re-order inventory my Chinese supplier gave me huge numbers of defective units (20% defective). I don't know if this was intentional, to try to ruin my reputation/business, or because they were having supply chain problems and didn't have enough trained workers available or what the reason was. I sold out of all my inventory again, refunded all defective units, and tried to re-order on the condition that the supplier would guarantee the quality (or reimburse me for defective units). The supplier refused to offer any guarantees or reimbursements, and told me it would take at least 5 weeks for me to get my next batch of units. This would cause my Amazon ranking to fall and i'd have to rebuild it up all over again, but if the units turned out to be defective then I would be screwed. So I just kept my money and didn't re-order. I decided to take a hiatus for the last 12 months and I've developed several other business ideas and will be launching 1 of them within the next 6 months. I've learned not to trust Chinese suppliers at all and not share info with them. Many Chinese suppliers do not see it as a business partners relationship, but they just try to use North Americans to figure out a market and marketing strategy, then steal everything from them, copy, and compete against them, and will employ dirty tactics to try to overtake that market after its been established. I will now use a holding company to purchase from suppliers and not let them know what my brand actually is (not allow them to do the packaging, no sharing info, use multiple suppliers who each supply only part of the total product, etc). It was still a great experience. I made some money and learned a lot, which I'll be using for my next venture. Thanks
@@Kellysayshello Damn what a journey! I'm glad that you are out with money and valuable experience. its always interesting to hear about the challenges that other businesses face... I'm having a lot of challenges with my start up too but at the end of the day we should learn,enjoy the process and wait for the moment to blow. thanks for sharing it with me.
Feeling threatened by competitors? Watch this episode for the 5 mindset shifts I used to take on and overcome a 100 billion dollar tech giant.
Peter Thiel (Co-Founder & Partner at Founders Fund)
you want wars to be short. Let that process go on too long and you’ll lose yourself in it. So your strategy must be shock and awe. You have to win very quickly. But since very often it’s not possible to ensure a quick victory, your primary job is to figure out ways not to have war happen at all.
Ayoub Mz Brilliant
Sue them to exhaust their funds (sic). That's what most companies that become bigger do. It's a cancer of the business world. Great video Dan. You're moving up in subscribers as well. Good to see. You deserve 100K+ for your content.
Appreciate the comment and kind words.
I'm shooting for 10M subs... so I've got some ways to go.
DM
Certainly not with business topics or even worse narrow saas. You'll be lucky to get 200K. The masses want entertainment not education. Maybe you could explain topics while petting a cat in your lap. Preferably a white one. "How to make ONE MILLION dollars!"
Don't stop doing you!
Hi Mr Maxrtel
I am a new comer to your audio programs. I am simply loving it and it's a great learning experience.
Thank you
Mohit Mahajan from India
🙏🏻
Great mindset shifting approaches!!!
Dan, thank you for sharing your thoughts and approaches to life and business! It really helps
Thx Arik, absolutely my pleasure!
DM
Great video !!! Thank you for this, truly helped me get out of my head of “competitors”
im working on an app and today i discovered that i have competition i was devastated but you know what im gonna destroy them!!!!!
Same here man, let's do it better!!
Same here man.but i gng to do it in a some better way
Getting customer feed backs and solving thier problems is the way to go. Even big companies don't do that.
Powerful Dan Martell
I think I never commented on your videos allthough I've watched already a couple videos of yours. Great video, once again! ;-)
Now I have the impulse to share my opinion to this topic: Business Competition. As I'm a big fan of open source #OpenSourceEnthusiast, I think that businesses should work more hand in hand. Of course this isn't applicable to every business niche, but deffinetly to many! Imagine this...
Let's take the "Blog Softwares" for example. The most used blogging software WordPress is actually already open source & therfor a good example. WordPress is the most used Open Source blogging software and a powerful CMS. Now, when every "Blog Software" and/or "CMS" business would stop develop their own custom solution & instead work on the OpenSource project, the obvious result would be to have a more robust , flexible WordPress which would benefit everyone. A more robust & flexible WordPress can be used to create more awsome open source products and/or evan actual businesses. This is just an example with WordPress for Blog Softwares. However the results of an active open source community is priceless.
What do you think?
Francis, using open source is just a business model decision, no different then freemium.
Doesn't always work, but it can.
Really appreciate the comment!
DM
Thanks Dan! This video helped a lot to deal with my competition thoughts.
Of all the 7 billion people on earth... there is one YOU & thats the most important thing.. Be unique
Love this, this really inspired me
Thanks Dan, First revenues this week for us at PreventScripts! We are high off that milestone, but we are excited about the work ahead we'll be doing to help our first customers find success.
Natalie, that's awesome!!! Congrats. Huge milestone.
Keep up the hustle.
DM
Competition help your company develop in the tomorrow
👊🏻
Absolutely GREAT video!!!!! Thank you!
But what do you do when you discover that a startup is already there and has raised over a million dollars and can hire a legion of engineers and crash the price down so you can't compete?
However, I see facebook are adapting every business idea to all their platforms when innovative compition comes along. Can you can do an up to date video using facebook as the subject? how they approach innovation and implementing their competitors innovative ideas with adjusting it on their own way. Due to your experince, It will be great to get your insight/prospective on the matter Dan? Thanks
The process of product creation is taking too long. Meanwhile expenses keep mounting up. Things r feeling super difficult and it feels if i am drowning because i m not able to stay afloat.
Pre-sell. Always get the money upfront if possible then build. Also get the most basic version of your product out and start emailing and calling prospects asap.
Product creation can be a big hurdle for many startups, especially if at the early phases you have to be paying developers. The Lean Startup (theleanstartup.com/principles) is a great place to start to get ideas of how to move faster and getting an MVP into your customer's hands sooner. Also, product creation really does take quite some time, so you should be prepared to spend 12-24 months, but before you do, ensure to get the MVP out to your customers fast which can be a source of initial income.
Build a clickable prototype and presell.
DM
hello sir i am from india
The bigger issue my competitors are smuggling the same price and by not paying taxes and special permissionsnto import they are undercutting my prices.
raise quality and sell at premium price
Hhj