The Need to “Beat” Everything and Everyone

I don’t know what it is but I’m very competitive, even if I don’t directly show it. Although my web hosting service isn’t exactly live yet, I regularly keep tabs on every direct competitor. I conduct periodic competitive analysis so I can find every gap, every opportunity I can exploit to compete against these incumbent firms. It also helps me track competitive trends (like whether a competitor is stagnant, innovative, up to date, etc.)

Keep Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer
I don’t feel like these other firms and I should all share the pie and coexist. Call it vicious, ruthless, whatever but I look at these companies and I want to crush them. This is business - if you can’t compete, you die (figuratively). The same is certainly true for me, more so since I’m a newcomer. If I fail to penetrate the market, then competing in the Ithaca market isn’t viable and I’ll have to explore other avenues.

Visualize and Execute
That’s my mantra with a lot of things. Let me use an analogy for my marketing campaign. First I plan to carpet bomb. I’m going to basically cover as wide an area as I can to establish initial awareness. This will go on for a round or two. Then I’ll engage in high precision bombing - very targeted direct mail campaign using a criteria I’ve developed. Generally, I think this should have a decent conversion rate. That’s what I envision and every step I take towards that goal is tailored to accomplish that. I want to build mind-share and become the go-to provider in the area.

I’m not a marketing genius and sure it’s possible it won’t go down like that, but it’s what I’m working towards. Like in basketball, I visualize the move before making the move. I visualize the shot going in before I release the ball. I don’t say “I’m probably going to miss this” but let me shoot it anyway.

It Ain’t Over Until It’s Over
For example, with video games, most of my house mates from college can attest to this - I beat new games extremely fast (if they’re linear, not replayable multiplayer games). I don’t stop until it’s finished. And then I uninstall the game and likely never play it again. It’s beaten, it’s done, it’s time for me to move on. The same is true for my business. Except the end can be very far down the line. If I dominate a local market, I move to another market, and another market. Then I expand to another niche, and then another one. If I reach a point where I feel it’s not engaging enough anymore, my exit is to sell the business.

DOMINATING!!! (Unreal Tournament reference)
I kind of admire Microsoft. It’s so powerful. It’s got such huge cash cows that enables it enter so many different markets. I mean how many rivals does it have? Okay sure, some argue it used monopolistic practices to maintain its dominance. But how did it obtain that dominance in the first place? Are you saying a company is going to just let go of what it achieved? I don’t think so. And it’s not even that much of a monopoly anymore, with all the competition it’s facing in various markets. That to me, seems so exciting, to compete against many rivals, all battling you for control over markets.

Making Sure You Have Adequate Funding
Well anyway, end of that rant. I was starting to digress a bit with that Microsoft stuff. In other news, I’ve designed my business cards and will be getting a starter batch of 250 printed up. Next up are direct mail postcards and the blitzkrieg shall begin! Honestly, it was supposed to begin a while ago but for various reasons I had no money. At this point I’ve followed very little of my actual, written business plan but it still really helped to sit down, plan, research, and write it all down. This business is very much bootstrapped and I’ve been doing freelance design jobs to bring in money that’s being put back into the business. It’s going to suck once the grace period on my school loans end. But hey, such is the life.

EDIT: As this post was still pending a public release I got my first bill from my loan consolidator. It seems when you consolidate your school loans, the grace period is cut significantly short. I can afford to pay the minimum monthly payments right now but oh how I wish I didn’t have to.