It's Tuesday at 2:00pm! (PST Time: I live and work from Southern California)
KNOW YOUR COMPETITION.
We're moving through these 4 aspects of preparing to PITCH your organization to someone, and we're taking lessons learned from the idea of Shark Tank, when a leader has a few minutes to present their vision or idea. To do this successfully, you need to understand these 4 things:
#3) Know Your Competition
#4) Know Your Customer
Today we're talking about COMPETITION.
I want to frame this in 2 ways today:
First, we're all "competing" with other companies or other organizations. This "competition" should move us to excellence and doing our best and not to attacking others that are in the same space as we are.
Second, if we are Kingdom Builders, which means we are focused on serving God and being a part of His purpose and Kingdom, than we don't compete with others, instead we collaborate.
In Ecuador, where I lived for many years, there's a "sales phenomenon" that happens... Our family calls it the "Hanging Pig Syndrome". Now you're curious...
Here's the deal: There's a small town outside of the capital city of Quito that specializes in selling pork. In the morning, you will often see business after business with smoked pigs hanging outside the front of the store or restaurant, and during the day, people come and purchase pork to take home. By the end of the day, the pigs are much thinner as pork is sliced off piece by piece throughout the day.
The question I always asked was this: Why would literally every store along this same stretch of road sell pork, but you travel down the road 15 minutes, and you don't see any "hanging pigs"? From a marketing standpoint, this didn't make sense.
It expanded into other industries in Ecuador: We had "hanging leather town" (every store sells leather), "hanging wood town" (wood carvings), "hanging ice cream" (every store sells a delicious kind of ice cream) and I could go on and on... "hanging jean town", "hanging cuy town" (don't ask), "hanging plant town" (all plants) Our family added the "hanging", but over and over again I fought to understand the marketing strategy of these businesses. Wouldn't it be better to spread out and make similar products available throughout the country, instead of saturating one town?
As I've thought about this and talked with people about it, here are some observations:
There's a mentality of "companionship". If a vendor doesn't have what you're looking for, they go to their "competition" and get it from them. They look out for each other.
They are all trying to sell "enough", and they're focused on quality of life and survival. I've had vendors tell me, "I'm taking my siesta now, please go to my neighbor".
They learn from each other, they buy from the same vendors, and they work together.
In "hanging leather town" one man helped his 4 children open stores on the same block as his. They all sold the same products, but the idea was that "together they would succeed" and when one had a big sale, they all celebrated that.
There are many lessons that can be learned from these vendors in Ecuador, but let me come back to the 2 things I began with:
#1) In a competitive world, we should focus on doing "OUR BEST", not forcing others to be worse. Become the best you can be, and win the success because of hard work, because you are doing good work, and earn it. We don't succeed by crushing others.
Healthy competition should force us to do our best, and if you're a leader, build a culture around excellence, developing high standards and healthy competition.
#2) If we are Kingdom Focused, we can have a great impact by "cooperating, rather than competing".
I recently heard Peter Greer speak, and he gave an incredible challenge to us as leaders to realize that as Christians, we are all part of the Body of Christ, and we each have our specific roles and tasks. We're not competing against each other, but we're working together.
His book, Rooting for Rivals with Chris Horst goes much deeper, but the charge is simple: Don't Compete, Collaborate!
I believe that investors, donors, and leaders are looking for successful models of healthy cooperation and partnership, realizing that when 2 or more organizations come together, the outcome is leveraged into something stronger. This is true in business as well, when 2 companies bring together their greatest strengths, the results are multiplied.
Instead of focusing on how to compete for more customers, more clients, more team members, and more dollars, find ways to work together, to succeed together, to actually BE the body of Christ.
The idea of serving others instead of competing is counter-cultural to what's happening in the world, but we're called to model this and to lead this way!
We need to think differently about competition.
"So we who are many are one body in Christ and individually members one of another." Romans 12:5
"Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in people." Faqimi Fauzi
"Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off." Franklin D. Roosvelt
Things I'm Reading, Listening To and Watching This Week:
I rediscovered this band from years ago, Third Day Essentials. A collection of great music from this Georgia Band.
OK... this is a little off the grid, but check out Rao's Homemade Marinara. We buy it at Costco, but love to add this to anything and everything Italian.
Rooting for Rivals, Peter Greer & Chris Horst. I referenced this book above. Peter Greer is also the president of Hope International, an amazing organization changing communities around the world.
For any "Golf Nerds", I watched the end of the 2021 PGA Championship this past weekend. The image around Phil Mickelson walking to the 18th Green was pretty amazing. Seeing a crowd again and seeing their appreciation to Phil was pretty fun to watch. Here's the clip: 18th Green