Evaluating your business ideas (even the dumb ones)

I met Christie almost 4 years ago in Palm Springs at a conference. At the time, I was our marketing team and wandered into her session hoping to gain some clarity on how in the hell I was supposed to do this job I knew nothing about. The session was immensely helpful, but what I really loved was the blunt, no sugar coating, truth she espoused. 

Today - she has not changed. Christie is a breath of fresh air that just tells you like it is. At some point in our conversation we were talking about the why - why did you start your business? And for a lot of us it was because there was what we believed was a hole in the market and we wanted to fill it. Where we all tend to get stuck is when we start looking at the competition and forgetting the original vision and goal for our business. 

We have ALL been there. You are trucking along in your business and all of the sudden the fear creeps in. The Fear of being irrelevant. The fear of plateauing. The fear of not booking. The fear of…(fill in the blank). So, we take that fear and we start to obsess. We obsess over our competition and maybe those that aren’t competition but who we aspire to be. We start to ask “how are they SO successful?” “What are they doing that we aren’t doing?” 

When you start the comparison game - you lose focus on what YOUR strengths are. When you constantly think the grass is greener on the other side- you slowly start copying the competition instead of staying in the realm of the original hole you were trying to fill. And spoiler alert- your competition will always be better at what you are trying to copy because it is integral to THEM, not YOU. 

I am not saying that you shouldn’t keep an eye on your competition - I stalk ours like the best of them. But it is more for research than trying to emulate. So many people get into business with these words “Because I can do it better!” And while you may be able to do some things better - ultimately you need to decide not what you can do better - but what can you do that is a need AND do it well. After all, isn’t it our goal as business owners to be the one people are always comparing themselves to? The ONLY way to get there is to be true to that integral core that started your business. 

So, if you are curious if you can do something exactly like your competition better - the answer is probably not. However, you can do what makes your business unique and special eons better than anyone else. 

XOXO,

Dana