Larry Weidel explains how to handle intimidation from stronger competitors. Instead of fixating on what they do well, focus on your own strengths and strategy. Fear loses power when you stop measuring yourself against them.
Lets talk about something that is very real, holds a lot of people back. And it's the fear factor here. Got that Fear factor TV show, but it's the fear factor. Ooh, I'm afraid you get intimidated. You get intimidated by the big shots, the big people. And here's a little drawing we put in here that Vanessa made for the Bill Arender How I Found My Way to the Top book. And this is supposed to be Goliath, but these are these people, they just look so imposing to us. What happens is before you know it, you wind up being intimidated, you wind up being backing up. It puts you on your heel and when that happens, you're beat. If you are intimidated, you got to realize you're beaten before you start. But if you attack, you might be the David and Goliath person who goes out there and finds out. Until you give yourself a shot at it, you don't know what you can do. But you do know this. If you're intimidated and you don't do anything, you're doomed. You have no shot. So it happens all the time. People look and what they see is, they see all of the obvious things. They see like power, strength, you know, their tremendous size. Wow, how could I compete with that? They say, look at this superhuman human work ethic. You know, the people on top, look how hard they work. Who could compete? How can I ever catch up with them? They're getting the attention to detail. You look at these great companies, these great leaders who've been out there, the attention to detail, their staffing, the things they have set up, that not only puts them in front, keeps them in front. How can I ever compete? I wouldn't even know where to begin. You know the insight. You listen to these people talk and they see things you don't see. Wisdom. We got the wisdom of the ages. Knowledge. They know things. They've been doing it so long, they just instinctively know this, like, wow, how can I? And then the way they, their game plans just blow us away. They're detailed. And then when things go wrong, they come up with these adjustments that. Who could have thought of that? And they just think of it so quick. Well, when you start looking at all this stuff, you become the scared rabbit. You know, you're out in the road, you got the headlight coming and you are doomed because you're focusing on all of them. You're focusing on all the reasons why you can't beat them. And every thought in your mind is a reinforcement of that. You lock in like a laser on Things that the people on top are doing that you can't do right now. And you're talk totally defensive. You wind up, you know, like a machine gun. You're spitting out reasons to yourself why there's no way on earth you could compete with this colossal power. And you forget about competing. You're ready to run and hide and shooting out excuses. So you gotta shit, you know, if you can't find somebody to slap yourself in the face and wake yourself up if you find yourself in that mode. Because look at this. Nobody's perfect. Remember this, don't get overwhelmed. Get start getting your feet back under you. Nobody is perfect. You're seeing the pluses. These are all pluses. But if you look close, there are weaknesses. Because nobody's perfect. And you can go through it step by step and work it out. There are weaknesses, there are ways to beat them. But you got to look. And so what you want to do is shift to where you're all focused on them and their greatness and advantages and move over to a mode to where you're focusing on yourself. So you want to put your eye back on you, your team. You want to get yourself thinking, now, how about our game plan? What are our strengths? What are our positives? What have we got going for ourselves? And you want to start getting all of your focus back on how you can beat them. What's our odds? What's our chances? If, sure, they're overwhelming, their odds are against us. You always go with this with overwhelming competition. Sure, the odds are against us. We'll probably never do it. That's what logic says. But on the other hand, if it was possible, if we actually did it now we know for a fact nobody stays on top forever. And so if somebody's on top, somebody's going to beat them. We don't know when, we don't know how, we don't know who. But if we were the ones to beat them, how would we do that? How would they pull that off? And you start once, you allow yourself to think, if we could beat him, or we some point were to beat him, how so you get your mind off of, see you. You got to slap yourself and get yourself jolted out of looking at them. Oh, how big, how monstrous. And start thinking, wait a minute, wait a minute. Nobody stays there forever. Nobody's perfect odds are against us. But that doesn't mean the odds are zero that we could pull it off. And then you move to the if, and then you move to the how. Does that make any sense? And you Start thinking more rationally and you start saying they know things, what do they know we can copy, we can improve that we can beat them at their own game. We start getting unraveling this. They say they understand things, let's ask, let's find out, let's read their material, let's talk to their people, let's ask questions and find out what it is that they understand. They know, they see that we don't see. See if you sit there and shake like a coward in a corner, you're never going to find that out. But chances are you're getting beat by because of reasons. They've got ideas, they've got thing and ideas don't care who use them. And so you're going to say whatever it is in their mind I want to unravel that I'm going to have at least the guts to ask, to inquire, try and figure that out. Try and take. You want to take as many of their advantages that you can pin down and make them yours. That's what I always did. I didn't want to be Thomas Edison reinventing the wheel. I wanted to find out and I would. I've always operated. I want to find out who's on top, not who's got what, not what professor's got the greatest theories, who can talk the best, sounds the best, but who is the best and then find out why are they the best and what can I learn from them. I can implement that and I can have those things working for me. Why should I assume that I'm going to get beat forever? Why not say they've got as far as they have because they figured some out, they've implemented some plans, Now I can learn off of them and take it another step, figure out how I'm going to do it and I have a chance to pull off what people think is the impossible and that is beat them. So here's the point folks. You got to get your eye off of Goliath and all Goliath's strengths and all of the reasons like a broken record just stuck on why you can't beat them and get yourself on. If we were to beat them, how would we go about it? What are their strengths? What can we learn from them? What can we implement? And step by step get back on the attack and get out of that intimidation, letting yourself being bullied, mentally bullied by advantages and everything that maybe you can use to wind up beating the bully. Don't let yourself be intimidated, folks. Don't let the fear factor overwhelm you. That's my attitude. What's your.
