I want to share with you why I think competition is bad for advice and services firms… and you!
I have been competitive in my life, I have used it as a means to push myself to achieve certain things. I’ve been a top producer, I have won awards and outperformed, I have even been ranked number one in the world for a highly competitive online game that six million people were playing.
I would even say that there are certain things that I may be among the best in the world at. For example, the crossover between the Business of Advice, Innovation and adapting to a digital world.
I can also tell you that I no longer care about those definitions or even the measurement of them and that ceasing to compete has been one of the most liberating realisations of my life and business journey.
I used to believe that ‘competition is healthy’, that I could use it as a way to achieve success. What I instead discovered is that all it ever led me to accomplish was other people’s versions of success, and in doing so blinded me to different ways to achieve more.
Competition, as a psychological principle, means you are measuring yourself against the performance of another. The act of competing also means that you’re just trying to improve upon what has already been done. Simply put, competition is the antithesis of creation.
What’s worse is that competing requires you to judge yourself based on the relative merits of how you compare to others.
To me this is one of the greatest limits that a business owner can face – competition limits your innovation and your ability to adapt and to create radical breakthroughs in simple ways.
I see this as a major limitation to the development of the Advice & Services Professions. By measuring against what has already been done, no matter the incremental improvements made, we have still carried assumptions about ‘how things should be done’ and ‘what people will pay for’ that are in fact limiting beliefs.
By personally letting go of my ‘competitive streak’ I am more innovative, can come up with solutions with far less precognitive bias and most importantly I am able to live a life more on my own terms and more authentically with who I am.
Universally, when working with fellow Advice and Service Firm Business Owners, I have found that every time I help them make the same realisations and breakthroughs they are able to get more done, solve issues faster and are able to build far more profitable and impactful businesses.
Of course, in hindsight, it’s easy to admit what you thought of as a strength was actually a limitation but it can be much harder to let go of the crutch you have come to believe you are reliant upon.
The only competition that really has any value to me anymore is ‘whether today I was more of the real me than I was yesterday’ and whether that has allowed me to help more of the people I love to serve to achieve more of the things that are truly meaningful to them.