- Hi there, Dan Martell here.
Serial entrepreneur, investor and creator of SaaS Academy and
in this video I want to share with you how to build the right
mindset to deal with competition.
If it's throwing you off your game,
I'm gonna walk you through how to get clear and actually look
forward to having people compete against you in your market.
It might sound crazy but wait for it and at the end I'm gonna
share with you a framework called "Future Living".
It's from my Idea to Exit seminar so I'd love to share
with you how to get that video training for yourself 'cause
I really think it will help you with the way you think
about scaling your company.
(upbeat music)
So one of the most intense competitive spaces I ever got
into was building my company Clarity.fm.
You know when I started this I had this nirvana view of the
world and we're gonna take it over and nobody's ever thought
of it just quite like this so I started building a prototype
and scaling it up and it was amazing
and then all of a sudden, I started having people saying,
"Oh, it sounds just like this company."
And I'm like, "Oh, that's interesting."
I look at it, "Yeah, but we're different."
Then people'd be like, "Oh, it sounds just like this company."
And they'd send me an email and I'd look at it,
I'd go, "Ooh yeah, well kind of but a little different."
Literally this happened for six months and I kept an Evernote
file of all these different companies doing stuff 'cause
I thought it might be interesting to reference later
but I kept focusing and focusing and focusing.
I'm gonna walk you through how I dealt with this because the
big blow that almost took me out of the game,
really messed with my mind was when Google announced Helpouts
and all of a sudden now my investors emailed me,
all my friends were emailing me.
People were tagging me in the comments below on the TechCrunch
article where they announced it.
"Google launches Helpouts to connect service providers
with consumers," blah, blah, blah.
And I'm just like, "Oh my gosh.
"Now I've got like a multi-billion dollar company
"competing in this space."
But for me I kept saying the same thing.
And it those beliefs that allowed me to deal with
competition to, I mean look, Google ended up shutting down
Helpouts 'cause they had to, they were doing way too many
things and we were focused. I actually met with their team.
So whatever the there but I just kept going and going and going.
After two and a half years, I felt super lucky and blessed
to have been acquired by Startups.co.
And Clarity to this day continues to be the dominant
force in that space of entrepreneurs getting advice
through, essentially if LinkedIn had a call button
that's what Clarity.fm is.
So I want to teach you the five mindsets that I believe that
really help me not only deal with it at the time but really
get through it so that I can continue to create from a place
of excitement and abundance.
Number one, work backwards.
What I mean by this is focus on the customer.
I don't care what the competitor's doing right now.
I always ask myself,
"How do I work backwards for the customer?"
I got this incredible advice from a guy named Joe Gebbia,
the co-founder of AirBnB.
And I remember when I first showed him Clarity,
Joe looked at the product and just said,
"Who is the patient? If this is the tool,
"who's got the pain that needs this solution? The patient?"
If I'm a doctor and I'm trying to treat this patient,
what tool am I gonna go find in the market to actually treat the
pain that my patient has.
I kept, always got to work backwards from the customer.
What are their problems, their challenges?
'Cause look, competitors are gonna be out there.
They're gonna be doing stuff but the truth is is most of them
don't know what they're working on anyway so always work
backwards from the customer is just like an overriding
principle of dealing with competition
and just building your mindset.
Number two, learn don't distract.
My biggest pet peeve is founders that I coach telling me about
well this competitor's doing X
so we're gonna do the same thing.
And what I continuously remind them is they assume that their
competitor actually knows what they're doing.
In 90% of the time I've realized is that most startups,
most companies are executing strategies and they have
no clue if it's gonna work.
They're testing. They're iterating.
So the last thing you want to do is just blatantly copy somebody
else's strategies 'cause you think they're
more successful than you. It's never the case.
And they're winning with that strategy.
What I will encourage you is to learn.
If you notice there's a certain way they do pricing,
just use that input from learning about your competitive
set so that you can bring those ideas to the team but by no
means whatsoever should you be copying things from somebody
else you compete against just because you think that
it's working for them.
Because you might actually go down the same rabbit hole and
run into the same brick wall that your competitor's gonna run
into if you just blatantly copy because they're doing it.
Number three, you do you.
The most unique thing, the most interesting thing,
the most valuable thing you can do in your startup,
in your business is to do you.
Is to be 100% you.
From a brand point of view.
From an energy point of view. From a product point of view.
From your opinions and details of just what you're creating.
I think so often we look at other businesses being
successful and we think well, we go to do that too.
And I'm telling you as a founder the most important thing that
you need to maintain is your level of excitement and passion
towards solving this problem.
And if in that journey, as you're going through it you
start doing things that compromise your values or the
way you want to build things, it actually will stop you from
succeeding in the long run because you're gonna fall out of
love with your company.
I've seen so many companies founders that I work with pivot
into a different market, a different segment,
a different customer just because they thought that's what
we need to do to be successful and in doing so
they lose the passion for that industry.
They don't care about that customer and what I always
remind them is the most unique thing,
the most interesting potent, fun thing you can do is just lean in
to being who you are because there's only one.
One of you in the world.
This isn't like hokey pokey mumbo jumbo stuff.
This is like legit.
If you want to build something interesting,
think about what you value and how you want to do it and
just own it and you do you.
Number four, life supports those who support life.
And I remember I first heard this from Tony Robbins and the
whole idea is if we give, if we teach,
if we share then by doing that, the world from an intention
point of view will give back more.
And I think bringing an approach of wanting your competitors to
fail and that competitive friction just messes up with the
whole way that the world works.
That the rain falls to the ground to feed the plant that
grows to the sunshine and it's just this beautiful and look
this is just the way I think about life.
And again, it's a mindset aspect.
It's like by thinking this way, you can just restructure your
belief systems to look if somebody comes out, great.
They should be successful.
I hope the entrepreneur succeeds.
I don't want to wish pain on anybody but I'm gonna work
backwards from my customer and I'm totally gonna crush it and
we are gonna be successful.
It's not a zero sum game.
Other people can win and you can win as well.
So I just think that that mindset and that approach to
life will really support you.
And number five is you attract what you put out in the world.
If you think about this concept, if you're an angry person,
you're frustrated at your competitor.
I can't believe...
I had a friend of mine recently get super pissed off because
this other company copied all their stuff.
And look, the end of the day I'm not for plagiarism.
I'm not for people attacking your business or copying things
that are intellectual property but what I will say is the
energy that he brought to that situation,
this anger, this frustration, this we've got take down,
it doesn't bring a level of abundance.
It's dirty. It feels icky.
If you're hiring people, you're gonna attract people
that share those same values.
What I think instead is, look, competitors are gonna show up
and the only thing I can do 'cause I can't control that.
I can only control the way I think about that,
the beliefs I have around it and the mindset
I approach to my team.
When my team asks me like,
"Hey, what are we gonna do about these guys?"
And I can say to them, "We're gonna go back to the customer.
"We're gonna focus on the people that love us and we're gonna
"build the best product in the world 'cause those are
"the things that we can control."
Look, I don't want entrepreneurs to fail.
I don't care if they compete against me.
They can go out there and create the best version of whatever
they think is gonna exist.
I'm gonna do me.
I'm gonna focus on the goodness and I'm gonna believe in
abundance because that's just a better way to show up.
So five things you can do to improve your mindset when
dealing with competition.
Number one, work backwards from the customer.
Two, learn don't distract yourself.
Three, you do you.
Be unique. It's what you are.
Four, life supports those who support life.
And five, you attract what you put out into the world.
So as I mentioned at the beginning of this video,
I want to share a training that I put together for
my Idea to Exit members. It was at a seminar.
It's called "Future Living" and it's really how I think about
speaking, managing, showing up in the world in a way that's
almost like you're living the present moment today.
I think it'll change the way that you approach hiring,
the way you approach sales in your business,
how you think about product roadmap and just how you
literally show up and communicate with anybody
that interacts with you.
Once you understand this, you'll see this pattern in many
of the people that influence and inspire you to
play a bigger game because it's kind of how
great leaders communicate as it is.
So if you click the link below, you can get access to that
training as a gift from me.
And if you liked this video I want to encourage you to hit the
like button, share it with a friend that you care about that
you think it could really serve and leave a comment and let me
know what mindset or what belief did you used to have or that you
have now about dealing with competition.
I'd love to hear from you.
As per usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger
life and a bigger business and I'll see you next Monday.
And (humming).