Donna Genie advises treating competitors as allies and recommends specializing in an industry niche. She tells an anecdote about a CPA couple who specialized as industry accountants; over 25 years this specialization enabled extended travel and a more fulfilling life.
We've talked a lot before about your competition and how they're really not your competition. Look at your competition as your best buds. These are people doing the same things you are. You have so much in common with them. Why not make friends with them? One of our good friends that I have known is another couple. Wife is a CPA and the husband works in the practice as well and does sales and marketing. And we had a conversation the other day. We catch up every so often and see what's going on and any new finds that we have. And he said to me, I want to thank you. He said, we've been on the road traveling for five weeks straight now. They were on three back to back cruises and also spent a week in the Puerto Rico. He said, I have to thank you from the bottom of my heart because you told us many years ago that we should specialize in a particular industry niche and really dive deeply in rather than just spreading general knowledge around. And that has caused us to have a different life than I ever expected. He said, it has made such a difference in our whole life now over the past 25 years as we've evolved into that process of being specialized industry accountants.
