5. Keep Your Friends Close…
This exercise comes from my time in the content game, but understanding how what you do plays into your competitive landscape is a valuable exercise for anyone. It boils down to three questions:
What do your competitors do that you must beat them at?
What do your competitors do that you can ignore and cede to them?
What don’t your competitors do that you must?
The answers to no. 1 are where you will need to devote a lot of thought and resources. They tend to be the sorts of things that validate or establish your credibility in your market.
Number two requires some maturity to answer correctly. Deciding not to engage can be even harder than jumping into a fight. Smart choices here are what free up resources to chase no. 1, and start differentiating yourself with…
Number three: the answer to this might even be the reason you started on your business or project in the first place. This is about understanding who you’re serving well-enough that you see they have been left hanging in some way.
At Thrillist, an early version of no. 3 was realizing for all the restaurant coverage in NYC, very little recognized that food was only one component of why people eat out. We differentiated ourself early on by focusing on things like what the restaurant would be best for – whether that was a normal meal, a first date, or a place to secretly drink wine during a work day.
