Simon Sinek describes how he realized he was irrationally jealous of another author and speaker until they admitted they were both insecure about each other. He argues for "worthy rivals" instead: competitors who expose your weaknesses and teach you, not just opponents to defeat. Netflix beat legacy TV networks because those networks were obsessed with Nielsen ratings while Netflix focused on what viewers actually wanted.
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So there's another guy who does what I do. He writes books, he gives talks, etc. His work is extremely well respected, and I admire his work as well. I happen to hate him.
He's never done anything mean to me. And we've always had a very cordial relationship when we see each other professionally. I have an arbitrary hatred of him. And as a result of my hatred, I'm extremely competitive with him. I would log on to Amazon on a regular basis and check my book rankings and then immediately check his. And keep in mind, I check no one else's, just the two of us. And if he was ahead, I was angry, and if I was ahead, I was smug.
And whenever his name came up in polite conversation, I would seethe underneath. We. We were invited to speak together at a conference where we would be interviewed together. And I don't mean like literally. We would be on the stage together and the interviewer thought it would be fun if we introduced each other.
And so I went first.
And I turned to him and I said, you make me really insecure. And I said, all of your strengths are all of my weaknesses. And whenever your name comes up, I get really uncomfortable. And he looked at me and he said, funny, I think the same thing about you. The reason I was so competitive with him had nothing to do with him. It had everything to do with me. Because his weaknesses reveal to me, because his strengths reveal to me my weaknesses. It's more difficult to take a hard look at myself and say, here's all the work you have to do. It's much easier and, dare I say, more fun to direct all my energies at beating him.
That turned out to be an extremely cathartic experience.
And I learned the value of a worthy rival. And the funny thing is, after that experience, I've never checked mine or his book ranking since. I applaud his work, celebrate him, want him to do well, because it turns out working together, we actually are stronger.
And I think this is the same folly in business, right?
Which is we decide who our competitors are and then we obsess with beating them. Like abc, NBC, CBS and Fox were obsessed with beating each other. And all they did was look at Nielsen ratings every morning. And then Netflix came up and didn't like, who cares? They're all blew them out of the water because they weren't even looking, they weren't even watching, because that's the arbitrariness of if you. I remember back in the early days when I first started my career, I was in the ad business. And I was junior dogsbody to the junior dogs body, and I was on the competitive analysis team. And basically what that meant was we studied the competition and we put together decks to the executives of look what the competition is doing. And we sometimes would hire outside consultants to run, you know, research for us. If it was too expensive to study seven of them, we'd cut it down to four, which is hilarious if you think about it. So you're making decisions based on 4 and ignore. Anyway, you get my point. So I think the value of the other players in your industry, of the other players in the game, is not to beat them, because there's no such thing. As I said before, you know, Best Buy didn't win anything when Circuit City went bankrupt.
But it's to recognize and respect them. There are some players who do some or many things better than you. Maybe they have a better leadership, stronger culture, better marketing. Maybe their products are better designed. Who knows what? And instead of trying to beat them, which could mean you choose underhanded things or just drop your price, you actually say, okay, let's make our product even better. They have revealed our weakness. Let's now work on that. Because the ultimate, the only competitor in an infinite game is yourself.
You know, it's interesting you say that. We have some companies in really, really hyper growth markets right now. And oftentimes when I ask our companies who are in hyper growth markets tell me about what's going on, they go right to the competitor.
Yep.
And I'm like, gosh, you have this whole market. Just create the awareness.
Yeah.
How do we work with our teams who are so used to focusing on the competition, to make sure that you know how to build awareness so you make sure that. That Netflix doesn't show up the next day. How do you even set up a culture like that?
Well, I think you asked the question, which is I would like a presentation on the other players in the game. I don't call them competitors. I call them rivals. Because competitors are to be beaten. Right. So stop calling for one. Language matters. So let's just stop calling them competitors. Call them rivals. And some of those rivals are worthy of comparison. And please do some research on them and tell me the things that they're doing better than us objectively. And then let's look at our own systems and processes and figure out how we can then improve those things that were revealed by their strengths. And we wish them the best of luck. Remember, business is a game where two companies can both be wildly successful selling the same product at the same time.
