[Transcript starts at 1:32]
Hello, hello, hello my podcast people, and thank you for joining me for yet another episode of my favorite podcast. So right off the bat, Michelle, that one was for you. Uh, it is monday while I'm, as I'm recording this and as a little life update, folks, Rupert has been on one. For those of you who don't know, maybe you're new to the podcast,
Rupert's my cat. He's a beautiful Russian Blue. He is a Neblung, I believe it's how you pronounce it when they have long hair, and this dude has, I don't know, this is like sleep regression. He's like three years old now, but dude has been on one, and that is the update. I love him dearly and bless all of you out there who are parents and deal with human children that you can't just like throw into the other room. Bless you.
So today we're gonna be talking about reframing your view of competition, and this episode is inspired by a conversation that I had with a former client in the DMs. And it's something that I hear a lot and I understand it and I wanna fully acknowledge that I'm on the other side of things having, you know, been in the industry in, you know, multiple industries now for many years. And that's gonna be a big component of reframing your view of competition and making it easier to reframe your view of competition.
But I wanna do this episode just to put this out there so that you even start thinking about this, because one of the first things that I see happen when someone has an online business, or even just an an online business idea, as soon as they see someone else who's either thinking about it or doing it, it's the, uh, you know, shit hits the fan. Like they go crazy and there's just a lot of like jealousy and there's a lot of focus on the other person and really, really being preoccupied with what the other person is doing. I understand it. In the beginning you have no, you don't necessarily have the concrete evidence, concrete proof that there's enough to go around. You don't have the concrete evidence of your own proficiency to give you the confidence, said confidence twice, but you don't have the confidence of your, in your own proficiency. You don't have the, uh, evidence of your own proficiency that gives you this, this confidence moving forward to be like, yeah, I can do this and it's okay that other people are doing it.
I wanna put this episode out to do whatever I can to kind of get ahead of that, even if it's just putting this onto your radar so that you have something you can go back and listen to when the, you know, the enemy strikes and you're just like, oh, someone else is doing this thing. I'm super focused on it, right?
So as we reframe competition, you will see two things. Number one, competition will help you actually get better at what it is that you do. And number two, competition actually provides you with referral sources for the shit that you don't wanna do. It's a phenomenal, phenomenal thing. So we're gonna split the episode into those two parts, explaining those two kind of things, how competition helps you get better, and the fact that it provides you with a referral source uh, and then we'll wrap things up. I almost said then we'll open up for questions, but we won't because this is a podcast and I am talking to the camera. Talking to myself, myself.
Uh, but okay, first part here, how competition helps you get better. I think we all inherently understand this. If you've ever played sports, right, this is sports 101. You go and play against the team, you lose and you're like, shit, I got things to work on. If you want that outcome, which is, in this case, it's a zero sum game, someone wins, someone loses. If you want that outcome, well then, you know, like, I have to go and work at doing these things. PTs and personal trainers saw this, and I firmly believe personal trainers, forced physical therapists to level up.
The fact that personal trainers started going to these courses and could do a lot of the same things from a movement perspective that PTs could do, suddenly, the physical therapists, they, I, I think physical therapists were, went into one of two camps: One camp, they were like, shit, I gotta step up my game because this other person has a skillset that can get them the outcome that I want. Right?
This other person has a skillset that will help people, and my people are gonna go over there because they're getting the outcome that they want from that person. The other camp that people went into was, oh, we're scared, we should, we're don't, we don't wanna allow personal trainers into these courses.
I personally think these people never played sports, or we're just never good at sports, or always gotta picked last and they gotta fucken grudge. And now they're like, we're gonna flip the power dynamic on its head. We know, and I'm gonna just say a blanking statement, we know if you've ever played a sport, the way that you say that you are the best at something is by beating everybody else.
It's by playing with the best and beating the rest. Right? Beating all of them. It's not by saying, oh, you can't play. No, you can't. And you can't. You also can't play. All right. As the things are level, we all have the same kind of, you know, starting from the same place here. Oh, oh, but you can't play. Oh, no, no.
You play against everyone and you say, Hey, I beat you. The end. If we adopt this approach, which is the approach I hope that you adopt, suddenly you're like, yeah, I see how competition could be incredibly helpful then in forcing me to level up and acquiring new skills, which is awesome, and learn new things and learn better ways, new ways to help your people.
Tying into that is the fact that competition brings you back to reality. So the first sport that immediately comes to mind is wrestling. I never wrestled, but, we know, I said we know a lot in this episode. It's coming out. That's the, that's the phrase for this episode. But we instinctively understand that with wrestling, if you get your ass kicked, you got your ass kicked.
Like physically, right? Like you go play sport and you play basketball and play volleyball and you go man, they kicked our asses. But something like volleyball, they don't touch. You like literally the other team doesn't, doesn't, you never touch each other unless they're like going under the net to like say high five, like not say high five to give each other a high five as you're switching sides. That's it. There's no like physical physicality, uh, with the other team. Wrestling, they literally beat your ass. And I'm like, damn, that is Whew. Brings you back to reality real quick. And suddenly you're like, okay, maybe I'm not that good. And that's a great thing. It'll show you your holes, right? That sounded weird. That sounded weird.
But we're leaving it in, Courtney. We're leaving it in. It will show you your deficiencies. It will show you areas that could stand improving, or could use improvement. It will highlight deficiencies, inadequacies, and then you get to go and work on them, which, once again, at the end, the end outcome of that is it helps you get better and then it helps you serve your people better.
Uh, flip side of that, bring you back to reality, cause we have that one half of it is like, you know, I got my ass kicked and that's what I'm not that good at, the flip side is that it can help you realize what you are good at and that is phenomenal. I think that's actually super important. That's gonna tie us into the next point here, which is the referral source, right?
We said two parts of this, it'll help you get better at, it'll help you get better at what you do. And the second part is that it provides a referral source as we reframe competition.
Competition helps you highlight your strengths. What am I actually good at? What do I actually want to be doing? The faster you get through this, right, and I've been talking about this for a few episodes, this is nicheing down.
What are you the best at doing? What, what problem are you the best at solving? That's what's actually gonna attract the qual, the most qual high quality clients, the people that you're the best at working with, cuz you're the best at solving those problems. This is phenomenal. So, I have strong opinions about that kind of phrase about, you know, working on your weaknesses.
Yes, and, sometimes it's okay to be like, I just don't do that. I'm not good at that thing. In, uh, something like volleyball, yes, we want to have a well-rounded game. But if you're actually playing with a partner that there's truly positions. You don't have to be that good of a blocker if you're a defender, like you just have to have like some proficiency in it, but your blocker, that's their job, to be amazing and to be tall. Same thing goes for online business when we're nicheing down.
In the beginning, you think you have to be good at at every part of the way of solving this problem. When you could actually just be like, I don't do that. Right. So for me, the example would be, yes, I help people with, with online business, namely by using, helping them use social media to build their brand, build a personal brand.
I don't help you with Pinterest. I don't know shit about Pinterest. I don't help you with LinkedIn. I didn't really know LinkedIn was still a thing until about a week ago. That's not what I do. Having competition in the space, having other people that help health and fitness pros build online brands it was really helpful because I could see, okay, well that person actually does Pinterest and that person does LinkedIn.
I actually don't do that. I'm doubling down on what I'm really good at and what I really like, which is Instagram. And then the way that I go about doing it, the way that, you know, I lead with honesty and transparency and, hey, this is going to be a long play game. Hey, I don't love a lot of strategy from the beginning, especially for beginners. It tends to be more of a barrier than anything. So we're gonna take this kind of, kind of a more broad approach and really help people figure out what they wanna be doing and really focus on consistency, building confidence, getting clarity in message in their messaging over time. That comes about by having other people in the space doing things and me being like, actually, that person's way better at that and I don't wanna do that and I don't have to do that.
Right? So competition can bring you back into, bring you back to reality. On the one hand, yes, it can highlight your inadequacies, it can highlight things that you're not good at that maybe you do want to improve, right? I'm only thinking about physical therapy here. If you're like, actually my manual skills aren't that good and I, I want to be good at that, okay, cool, then you can do that.
Or like, I'm not actually that good with understanding the visceral component of things. I wanna get better at that. Or flip side, it highlights what you are really good at and what you can keep doubling down on. And you know what you don't actually necessarily have to worry about.
The second half of this, this episode is the fact that competition highlights referral sources.
Over time you do the things that we were just talking about and you learn what you are great at doing. You learn what you're not great at doing. We, you learn what you enjoy doing. You learn what you don't enjoy doing. From there, you get to start saying, no. I get it. In the beginning you be saying yes to everybody cuz you've just gotta eat.
I get it. A hundred percent. But as we go, as we move forward and you get more reps and you start to get more clients, one of the most freeing things that can ever happen to you and you can ever do in business is saying no, and being like, nah, that's actually not what I do. Like, no, like you, uh, you know, want to use Wix for your website. Actually, I don't do that. I work with people who use Squarespace. No.
If you are listening to this and you're like, shit, I use Wix, more power to you. I don't like it. I personally use WordPress. Uh, Lex came on before spoke about how, uh, Squarespace is her, is her choice. And I, that is my choice for people that are just starting as well.
A hundred percent go with Square with Squarespace . We can talk about it in another episode, or you can take it up with Lex about Wix, but I'm not a big fan. But either way, being able to say no, like, yes, I could help with that, but hey, I don't want to. I could help with that, but hey, I'm not the best at doing that. Now you still get to help that person because you can refer out because you know your competition and you're like, actually, Susan, does websites that are built with Wix and you can go and, and I, I just drop my name if you want. Um, I'll, I'll connect you if you want. That's the person for you. It is the most freeing thing.
These two people do the exact same thing. They, they both help people build websites. They're made up people. But you know, actually Lex is not made up, but let's say Lex and doing, using Squarespace, and Susan using um, Wix. It's amazing. Yes, they are competition. And as I'm saying this, maybe you're like, they don't sound like competition.
That's also my point, right? You think that these people that you, that you're coming up against, so you see in the space, are your competition, but if you actually dissect it and tease it out like that, they're not. They're doing different things. They're solving problems in different ways and part of the different ways, just how they look and how they speak and how they teach things and how they go about doing things.
So while yes, the ultimate outcome that they're, ultimate problem that they're solving is the same, the way they go about doing it is different, which now we see is actually not that direct head-to-head competition that you tend to think.
Last part here is circling back to what we said earlier, that this whole thing is gonna take time. I am on the other side of this having developed concrete evidence of my proficiency and having seen, you know, tangible evidence that there is enough to go around and that other people can do what I want to do.
You know, Jill is a perfect example. Jill helps people build online businesses. We do similar things, but I don't even honestly view us as doing the same thing. I don't view us as competition and actually we work together so we're not. But from the outside someone would be like, but you like do the same thing.
And it's like, we actually don't. And it's incredibly fucking helpful to have her. I get to focus on what I wanna do. So we work together, but, and when we are working together, I get to focus on more of the branding side, more of the storytelling side, more of the relationship building side with people and support them in that way, especially our intermediate business owners.
And then from the uh, um, her side, she gets to work on the strategy with people. She gets to work on the numbers, she gets to really get in the weeds with launching and things like that. From the like bigger business side when we're not working together, I really focus on one-on-one clients, and I really focus on people refining their messaging, refining their branding, doing more consult calls, not necessarily holding their hand through here, here's how exactly you start building online business. I'm really refining and, and helping people build and refine their personal brand.
Jill, her signature offer is FBA, phs Fitness Business Accelerator. She literally specializes in helping people go from no business at all to having an online business.
That's her signature offer. Yeah. She has other tiers and things like that, but that's phenomenal. When people come in and they're like, I don't know where to start, I'm like, cool. You can start with my Intensive if you wanna, if you wanna be using, learning how to use Instagram for online business, but if you want the nuances, the didactics, you want your hand held on how to actually create that business outside of the social media component, Jill's your person. And now I get to do exactly what I want to do and she gets to do exactly what she wants to do and what we're, you know, we're both the best at doing.
Getting to a place where you're really comfortable with that and you see that will take time. Absolutely. It is my goal again, by doing this episode, you just start to, to, you have a resource that you can go back and listen to and remind yourself it's not actually a competition in the same kind of way, that it is beneficial if we are gonna view it in competition in the same way, and it helps us get better and helps us provide, helps provide us with a referral source.
Two things to think, two more things to think about and then I'll, and I'll wrap this up. People are not gonna steal your ideas. I have come up against this from some of my newer business owners and the reality is people are not going to take your ideas. One cuz they just like actually won't do the thing.
Like the very few people will actually carry things out and actually take action. It's remarkable how low that number is. Until you're actually a business coach you may not realize that, but when you start coaching you're like, damn, I see it. Like people just, they don't do it. Life happens. They get busy, they start, they stop.
Very few people will actually start and keep going. Second part is if they do manage to actually get started and keep going, they're not gonna do it in the exact same way that you will do it. And that is huge. As I was saying earlier, and I think that as I was saying it, you folks listening probably were like, oh, this actually sounds like two very different things.
It is! Because it's two very different people going about solving a problem. And we tend to forget this if, as we are on the, you know, business owner side. But if you flip a script and you ever need something, you need to learn something, you wanna learn something, you wanna be coached on something, and you look in the online space, you will see there are a bunch of people doing the same thing, but certain people, you're like, I just don't want them.
I don't like, it doesn't jive. I don't like the way they look. I don't think that they can understand me. I don't think that they actually can deliver the thing I want. Whatever reason it is. So I need you to understand that going in. And I know that many of you listening to this, you, you know it, you've heard it and you know it.
This is me just giving you another reminder, and then on top of that, the reminder that it's going to take time to actually outwork, outwork your insecurities and build up the confidence that yes, you can actually do this. Yes, there is enough to go around. Yes, you are good at these things. Or maybe it brings you back to reality and you're not that good at these things, and then you have data points to actually go and, and work on things.
The big here, the big here, the big thing here is generating that evidence and taking the time to do that, putting the reps that it, it requires. So the action items, we're gonna round this episode out with action items. Three things that you can do when this, these things come up in your head and you're like, oh my God, someone else is doing the exact same thing that I'm doing.
I'm frustrated. I feel some jealousy. I feel some annoyance. I wanna validate that you're a human, but here are three things you can do if you're like, I don't wanna feel like this, I wanna move through this. So one, obviously this is, this should be action item zero: Accept it. You know, um, validate that you feel that way, identify it.
Yes. And now the things that you can actually do, number one, go create. Outwork your insecurities. Get so freaking obsessed with your work and what you're doing that you don't have time to worry about what other people are doing. Like go and make something. Don't not sell something. Go make posts. Go make a blog.
Go make a podcast. Go, go do something. Second thing, diversify your competition portfolio. So our brains naturally work via comparison. It's, it keeps us safe. It keeps us alive. It's efficient. In doing that. It also helps, gives us a sense of, of worth like, this is better than this. I am better than I was before.
It's all helpful for us. Self comparison counts. So my, my suggestion here is give your brain something else to compare besides just your work. Go and do things that you are actually good at and be like, I am better than that other person at that I am more skilled than that someone else, or I'm more skilled than my past version of myself, right?
You go and learn something new and you can diversify that competition portfolio. And then number three, go be generous. If you're really feeling some kind of way, and I did an episode about this, I can't remember, I couldn't find which one it is. I think it might be the Thanksgiving episode. Episode. Actually, I'm not sure.
Courtney, if you link that, that's great, cause that episode was still good. Um, but go and be generous. Go do something nice for someone. When you are feeling some kind of way and you're like, yeah, I'm negative. I'm like, , go be kind. Go give something to someone. Go say something nice to someone. Go say thank you to someone. It will turn your day around.
So in summary, if your goal is to succeed in the online space, reframing competition as something that will help you get better, at what you do and something that will provide you with referrals for the things you don't wanna do is basically, a hack. It's a shortcut to success.
And yes, it will take time, it will take reps, but the faster that you internalize this and you show up with that confidence and you show up with that self-assuredness, the faster that you will succeed.
Okay, I'm looking at my little outline, looking at the time, bada bing, bada boom. I do believe that is it. As always endlessly appreciate for every single one of you.
Until next time friends, Maestro out.
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