Ignore your competitors (your success depends on it)

I've been sent to give you an Urgent Message please stop paying attention to what your competition is doing like literally ignore your competitors your business's success depends on it what we got a lot to unpack hey friend Graham here I'm I'm very passionate about this subject um I want your business to succeed I really really do and uh before you throw me out to the wolves as being naive and ignorant um and I know what you're going to say there's merits to keeping an eye on what's working and what's trending blah blah blah blah blah

blah can we just put that off on the Shelf just for a second just just for a second I'm here to help you I want you to win that's what the show is all about um and let me let me just break this down for you um there's a couple of things going on here that are happening when you pay attention to your competitors too either your literal competitors like you know them and you're actually competing or what I really mean by competitors is other people in your space in your niche in your industry doing

the type of business you're doing um here's the the problem what I want to do is walk you through actually three problems with paying attention and copying and being inspired by or however you want to call it your competitors there's three problems with that there's three reasons why we do it and then what I want to do is give you four Solutions four alternatives to actually help you win in your business it reminds me of a story when I was starting my first business the recording Revolution uh I was teaching if you don't know that

that business you can go check out the recording Revolution but I was teaching musicians how to set up and use recording equipment in a home recording studio that was my first online business so I would do tutorials Gear reviews um and just help budget musicians by budget equipment in non-traditional spaces that weren't meant to be recording studios and put it all together learn the craft of it so that their music would sound really really professional and I was not the first in that space and I was not the only in that space and obviously there

are plenty of others in the space now today but even when I started in 2009 I was not even the first and one of the other people who had started before me is a guy named Joe Gilder and Joe if you're listening you know who you are um we became really really good friends which was great early on we decided to not View each other as competitors in general but as collaborators and friends we started a podcast together for fun we did inperson workshops and events in Nashville together um we ended up running a membership

site together for seven years and we made a ton of money together and served a ton of people it's really really fun and he's still running his business today as well home studio corner you should check it out he's really really good at what he does so we became friends and I didn't view him as as competition even though I could have but even even this this is I'm giving you this example as an extreme even a good friend who also became a business partner he still had his own business and I had my own

business and I I tell the story often but I remember there was a season where I was starting to see his emails come in um because I was on his email list of course and he was doing some really cool things and launching some cool products and I was getting a little jealous and I was getting a little like distracted and I was like well maybe I should be doing what Joe's do do that it's actually a really good idea and I remember how it made me feel like this angst of watching him roll out

his new things and comparing it to what I was doing and thinking should I be doing that and I remember it being such a frustration and a burden that I eventually unsubscribed from Joe's emails I unsubscribed from my friends email list who was also an active business partner of mine because I just knew I I needed to not see what he was up to cuz it wasn't good for my soul now that's just an example of me knowing my limits and my personal Tendencies and where I'm going to get discouraged and I know I work

best when my head is down but what I've discovered coaching tons of online business owners over the years especially my really successful ones they're doing multi6 and seven figure businesses that they and maybe you pay pay way too much attention to the competition way too much and what I want to submit to you today is that you you actually can ignore them completely not only can you the success of your business depends on you ignoring it to the degree that you ignore your competition I believe is the degree of how much success you'll have in

your business let me unpack this here's the problem most of us are so insecure about our business or our content that we'll just look at whatever else is doing and copy it or mimic it or quote unquote be inspired by it AKA copy it and this could be anything this could be copying the type of product they're launching it could be copying their sales copy I've literally had my sales Pages I've had my whole websites literally copied and pasted and then they swap out a logo and the name of the person running the business but

they don't actually go through all the copy and they haven't swapped out the name of the product they's still my product name on their page like if you're going to copy me at least try to do it a little more uh strategically people copy sales copy people copy pages but most often than not what's happening is people are copying Trends oh they see a certain style of launch I'm going to copy that launch everyone's doing challenges okay I'm going to do a challenge oh this is how they do their challenge I'm going to do it

just that way and what we will do is we will look to the most successful of us or so we think which we'll get into in a minute and say wow they're doing this big thing maybe I should be doing that big thing and we copy it because we are so afraid and insecure we're afraid that we don't have what it takes we're afraid that our sales copy is not good enough we're afraid that our launch strategy is not good enough we're afraid that the way we think about business and marketing isn't good enough because

we're either brand new so we we aren't good enough yet and we don't have any proof that we can do it so I understand that I know what that feels like or even if we're doing a good job we're all just insecure at the end of the day and so we look at someone else and we always assume well I shouldn't say we always assume there's actually two types of people but a a good chunk of us will assume that those people out there that have been doing it longer than us or that seemingly have

a bigger impact or reach than us they must know what they're doing as opposed to me and so they must have made that decision for a reason so therefore I'm just going to shortcut the process if I just do what they're doing I'll be successful too this happens all the time all the time people copied me for years with the recording Revolution all it all the time people copied me in in this brand with my personal brand all the time just the other day I literally had someone point out to me that there was some

guy who literally copied and pasted my whole website with my same logo and like like all my sales copy just swapped out his name like this happens all the time at that level but it's also just happening in a sort of sneaky level where if you look around everyone's kind of doing the same thing everyone's kind of sounding the same looking the same okay so we'll get to this in a second why why is it a problem to copy or mimic or do what your other competitors are doing three problems number one and the biggest

problem with this that no one seems to talk about is we don't even know if what they're doing is working for them do we know that that 5-day challenge that they're running is actually putting money in their bank account and if so how much money and if so is that profit or just before the ad spend that got all the leads to come to the challenge like come on guys like million dooll launches mean nothing a million dollar challenge means nothing if it cost $900 $75,000 to get leads for it then it was just a

$25,000 launch which is great but just call it what it is it's a $25,000 launch it's not a million dollar launch so we don't know if what that person you're copying or mimicking is doing people that copy me they don't know if it's working for me they just assume it is but they don't know I try things all the time and not all of them work so if you're copying me without any data of how it went on the back end you're taking a risk and this is what's crazy to me is we see people

oh everyone's on Tik Tok I should probably get on Tik Tock well is all the effort they're putting into Tik Tok and all the reals on Instagram is that actually putting money in their pocket and moving their business forward if it is that's a separate conversation we'll talk about that in a second but do we know do you know that that person that you look up to that you're mimicking that you're like oh my gosh the way she does everything I'm just going to copy her thing I'm going to copy his thing do you know

that it's actually working for them you don't it sure seems like it is because no one's going to act like it's not everyone's going to put on their best self everyone's going to act confident because it's a decision they made of course they're going to believe in their decision but we don't know if it's working for them how can you have so many successful people on YouTube social online business owners all of a sudden from one day to the next quit disappear right disappear there it's just don't copy what you see because you don't know

what's happening behind the scenes very very important that's the number one problem with copying number two okay maybe it is working for them maybe that person that you're following maybe that competitor that you were looking to that inspirational figure in your industry or Niche that you want to be like them like maybe they are crushing it because you know what of course there are people that are crushing it and the tactics and the strategies and the things they're doing are actually working even if it is working for them it may not work for you I

I don't know how else to say this but not every strategy or every tactic or every idea works the same for everybody this is part of what I love about business is that there are so many paths to Greatness and so many paths to success I love the variety so that's a beautiful thing the flip of that is just because one path works for some person one technique works for some person one type of content or one type of YouTube thumbnail or one type of real or blah blah blah works for someone does not mean

it'll work for you for your audience for your customers for your industry now you don't know that till you try it I get it but again don't blindly copy what you see cuz a it may not be working for them not times out of 10 I'm problem with you it's not and B even if it's the 10% that it is working for them there is no guarantee that it's going to work for you so blindly copying it without any thought or strategy or research behind it again it could be a giant waste of your time

at best a giant waste of your time at worst it could push your business backwards because maybe you're already doing the thing that works well for your business which we'll kind of get to in a second but number three and this one blows me away number three problem with copying what other people are doing your competitors are doing and this one blows me away that people don't seem to care about this or realize what's happening because it's just obvious is that even if it works for them and so you copy it and even if then

it wow miraculously works for you in the end you're just going to look like them and everyone else that's copying them and everyone else that They're copying CU I'm promising you They're copying somebody else what does that mean if you look like everybody else you disappear you blend in which is the literal opposite of what you're trying to do in business it has been said that the number one marketing strategy is to do something or be someone worth talking about the number one marketing strategy is to do something or be someone worth talking about something

or someone that's remarkable people remark about it if you look like everybody else if you're doing what everyone else is doing no one will notice you and then you will not get the leads you will not get the attention because we are in an attention economy and attention leads to money it's the first step if you can't get attention you're not going to get money and you can't get attention if you look like everybody else you you just disappear it's so funny that our insecurity of I don't know if I'm good enough I'm different than

them is what drives us to become and look like and just blend in with everyone else because we don't want to be on our own we don't want to stand out we're afraid that we're not good enough so we want to be like the people that are successful and by virtue of doing that thing our fear drives us to actually realize our greatest fear which is that we're not good enough no one's going to buy from us do you see what I'm saying here okay those are the three problems with copying what you see your

competitors are doing I got to move on why do we do this so there's actually three distinct reasons why we do this it's a little bit different for everybody number one is that we're lazy you might be lazy that might be you like you're just straight up it takes work to figure this stuff out I've been in business I've been doing online business for over 14 years it takes work to figure out a lead gen strategy a lead nurture strategy a fulfillment of the product like good launches uh you know customer service Ascension retention like

content strategy it takes work I'm still figuring things out and I've been I've done this twice successfully and still it's it's work to learn and like figure out a better way to do things so you're like you know what I don't want to do the work so I'm just going to copy what Graham's doing I'm gonna copy what Amy porterfield's doing I'm G copy what Alex Hermos is doing great be inspired by those greats right don't copy them that's lazy do the work to figure it out yourself the way you're supposed to do it so

laziness is one reason maybe that's not you maybe that Rings true though it's one reason why we copy um I've had clients of mine who are incredibly successful who have become dear friends who in the early days copied me and they admitted it was out of laziness and insecurity they've since changed their ways and figured things out and and done it their own way which is is so so important do it your own way because that's where you're going to find your exponential growth second reason why we copy is we're just afraid we all deal

with impostor syndrome we we all deal with impostor syndrome I wrote about this in my first book how to get paid for it you know one of the reasons why people don't launch their online businesses they just don't feel like they deserve it they don't feel like they're ready they don't feel like anyone's going to listen to them and so when you have the courage to take that first step of I'm going to launch my business or you have your business and you have the courage to take that first step to taking your business to

the next level and and playing in a bigger pool and a bigger sandbox uh impostor syndrome flood floods in and so it doesn't feel good to feel like an impostor like you're fake like you're going to be found out you don't know what you're doing doesn't feel good so what do we do we look to what's already been proven or so we think in the marketplace so we can copy it and we can feel safe knowing hey that's a proven method or so I can tell I'm just going to copy so that I can feel

better about myself fear fear is a huge reason why we do this and third reason why we do this is something that I talk about in my upcoming book Rebel something that I've I've called the two-way mirror of meaning hang with me here imagine a two-way mirror right like in a police you know Police Headquarters they're interrogating a suspect and they want to bring in somebody to sort of like identify the criminal or or potential criminal and so you've got two rooms separated by a mirror but it's really two-way glass so you're on one side

of the glass and on one side it's see through I can see into the other room but in that room that I can see through to they look at the glass and it looks like a mirror to them it's reflective they can't see me they just see themselves right two a mirror so imagine a two-way mirror th my theory in the two-way mirror of meaning is this is how we see the world and when we try to figure ourselves out and try to figure out who am I what's my business what what are my goals

what's my destiny what's my future we're trying to do this work figure it out and like you know it's like becoming a teenager and growing up like who am I when you're figuring out your identity even as a business owner and we try to look inside ourselves we look at the mirror who am I just by nature of the way the world is set up and the way human beings are we're always on the see-through side so when we look at ourselves or look at the mirror we're actually not seeing ourselves we're seeing through the

glass to the other people so we see all the competition we see all our friends we see what everyone else is doing on YouTube or social media and so we can't see ourselves it is hard to see ourselves all we see is everybody else and then here's the problem this is reinforced because then if we go and ask other people or even ask a coach or you're in a mastermind you ask smart people this is one of the downfalls of of getting advice it's not a perfect and I'm a huge advocate of coaching and masterminds

I I had both I do both I am a coach I have coaches I've had masterminds I'm in masterminds I'm huge advocate but they're they're not perfect because one of the reasons why they're not perfect is I'm seeing the world and I don't see myself I see everybody else and I go to these people and say hey here's what I'm thinking about doing with my business or I've got a launch coming up or I'm struggling on YouTube what do you think I should do when you see me what do you see like what's My Style

what's my strategy when they look back at you they're on the reflective side so they actually don't see you they see themselves so what do they say they say well you should do what I'm doing yeah this is what I do this is my La strategy that's what I think you should do this is how I do content that's what I think you should do everyone's advice is what they do it's it's the downfall of asking asking for advice I love getting Good Counsel but most people are horrible at getting counsel because they don't listen

to you they don't know you they just tell you to do what they do or what they've seen other people do does this make sense this is the two-way mirror of meaning it is me looking at them and them looking at them and telling me to be like them in itself reinforces and so we get nowhere and I start to then copy them because that's what I see it's also what they tell me to do and we all start to look the same is this making sense so you might not be lazy you might not

be afraid but when you go to ask for counsel or advice you just get stuck in this this Loop of looking like and sounding like everybody else do you feel this is a problem do you see how this could be a problem potentially in your business can I pause for a second have you seen this in your own business so far have you seen yourself copying is there a certain person or type of person that you've mimicked or copied out of fear laziness insecurity them reinforcing that you should just be like them okay what's the

solution if we've been paying too much attention to what our competitors are doing we need to shift our attention to four different things and my my theory is that if you shift your attention from away from your competition your energy away from looking at what everyone else is doing scrolling through Instagram scrolling through YouTube and seeing what everyone else is doing copying it if you just shift your attention away from the competitors and the peers in your industry to these four things you'll be more successful ready hey friend we'll get back to the episode in

just a moment real quick I hope you're enjoying the episode and if so please share it with somebody that needs to hear this episode today it would mean so much to me also I want to give you a gift for hanging out with me today I want to give you my free million lifegiving business formula on demand training inside of this less than 60-minute training it will help you uncover your uniqueness to build a seven figureure Boutique brand without burning out this is some of my favorite material these are the things that I'm taking my

private clients through but I want to share them with you in this free training so if you've already built your business but it's not giving you life it's taking life from you this is the training for you it's absolutely free just go to grcr and.com SL lifegiving that's gramc chrin.com lifegiving all one word and you can register for your spot right there now back to the episode number one pay attention to your audience pay attention to your people right like you've got your own tribe stop looking at their tribe stop looking at what they're doing

serve your people how do you serve how do you win in business it's not by comp competing and looking at competition you're looking at the wrong group of people look at your people right put keep your eyes down in front of your people what do they want give them that what do they need give them that what are they afraid of meet them there what keeps them up at night address those things and this is applying to your content this is applying to your offers this is applying to your customer service like you want to

win at business listen to your your customers listen listen to your audience listen to the people that pay attention to you pay attention to them it's the only respectful thing you could do now we talked about this a little bit last week's episode don't pay too much attention to the loud complainers but have the discernment to know who genuinely appreciates you and your content and your products and your offers and get to know what they need get to know what they want get to know what they dream about get to know what they're afraid of

you will have endless ideas for content and products if you just pay attention to your audience number two pay attention to your own dreams the way to win in business is to stay in the game long enough to win right Steve Jobs founder of Apple famously said that business is a game of attrition meaning most businesses die out and he who's the last man or woman standing wins just by virtue of being the only person left in the business there were so many of my competitors in the the music audio recording Niche education Niche 2009

10 11 12 13 that are gone they dropped they dropped and I don't think I was better than them but I stayed in the game I mean it's been going for 14 years you kind of win if you're the only one around and I know I'm not the only one around but you see my point so the way to win is to stay in the game long enough you won't stay in the game long enough if you kind of hate the business that you've built and you're probably going to hate the business that you've built

if it's just a mirror image of someone else's business because that might not be something you actually love you might have copied them because they seem strategic and it seems like it's printing money and maybe it is strategic and maybe it is printing money for them but if it's not built around what you love and the problems that you love solving and the type of work you love to do and the type of business you want to run it's not going to work good examples of this let's get really practical with this is everyone falls

for the Trap of oh I should be doing these massive launches but have you done these massive launches they're exhausting it takes a lot of time it takes team it takes mental space A lot of times it takes money to do the the numbers that these people are purporting they're spending a lot lot of money to get those numbers so they're very inflated you really want to know profit you don't want to know launch totals you want to know profit but just because it's working everyone copies it because it's sexy everybody wants those big those

big launches or challenges challenges are awesome if you like doing challenges but it's a lot of teaching all week long right like myON golden is is a brilliant brilliant marketer he does a live challenge every single month he's very very good at what he does I've been in one of his challenges and people say like oh like I want to do challenges like myON golden myON golden has said on the record the reason why he does a live five-day challenge every single month is because he likes it he likes it if you've listened to myON

golden you realize he is a natural teacher he gets energy being in a room and then broadcasting it to millions of people and teaching the same stuff for hours he could go for hours and never get tired he feeds off of that he loves that it also happens to be a great strategy for his programs and his masterminds that are very very high ticket but if you hate that stuff if it drains you if one webinar drains you don't do five-day challenges and don't do them every month I know people that are saying webinars are

crushing so I'm doing a live webinar every week don't do that if if you hate it only do it if you love it that might not be your dream you're going to do it for 6 months and then you're going to burn out so you need to pay attention to your own dreams you're allowed to be selfish go back to what I just said a moment ago there are so many ways to win an online business if if you ask is it launches is it Evergreen launches is it uh you know funnels is it challenges

is it social is it like YouTube podcast what is it the answer is yes like all of it works all of it works which is an invitation for you to do some soul searching figure out what you want to do and how you want your business to look right there's a lot of freedom there so pay attention to your own dreams so pay attention to your audience pay attention to your own dreams number three pay attention to your soul what do I mean by that your your health of your mind body and spirit what rhythms

and schedule helps you thrive no one can tell you this only you can figure this out and you only know this by trying things and going well that that that burned me out that was I did it but I didn't love it um this has been successful and I'm doing really really well and reaching my goals but I'm tired I mean I I've been in rooms in the last two years with some really really really successful entrepreneurs and when we talk about challenges and and what do we need help for help with or prayers for

like you know there's all kinds of different unique situations happening but one of the most common challenges and and narratives I hear amongst almost everybody is it's mostly the most successful ones but everybody is I'm tired I am tired like just pray for me like I'm I'm not sleeping very well I'm not taking care of myself I haven't spent as much time with my kids as I'd like or I I I am doing all those things but I'm feel like I'm white knuckling I'm like on the road roller coaster I'm holding real tight onto the

handles and I'm I'm on the ride and we're getting we're going fast and we're going high and we're doing great things but my grip is tight and I'm exhausted and I'm just waiting for this hypothetical moment where things will slow down can I tell you something friend things aren't going to slow down until you decide to slow down there's no slowdown police coming to say gram you need to slow down you need take a little bit of a break maybe maybe just chill out on some of those product launches maybe only do one new product

this year instead of two or three maybe only do one piece of long form content instead of three a week like no one's coming to tell you that until you have a nervous breakdown or your wife or husband leaves you or your kids hates you or your health Fades or something happens horrible right which we don't want that to happen to be the wakeup call or there's a slow death in your business because even though it's been successful you as the greatest asset to your company is starting to suffer and so you're no longer as

valuable because you're not rested and you're not focused like we don't want that to happen so there's that no one's going to come tell you to slow down two the opportunities aren't going to slow down the longer you're in business the more opportunities come your way the key to success as you become more successful is to learn how to say no and that's so hard the biggest reason why is because you're so afraid what if this is like my next big break and like I'm telling you that from experience it is really hard to say

no when really cool things are presented to you or really cool people want to be in your corner or connect with you no one can tell you what the rhythm is or how many yeses versus NOS but you got to figure that out for yourself cuz it's not going to slow down it's not going to slow down unless you say so and number four thing you need to pay attention to is your top customers okay in last week's episode if you haven't listened to it the seven mindset shifts or seven mental shifts that we used

to hit seven figures Shay and I jumped on an episode together to talk about them one of those mental shifts was to spend more time with your top customer customers this is a a life hack for successful business right is pay attention to your top customers the people who have spent the most money with you or done business with you for the most amount of years jump on Zoom calls with them jump on a phone call with them email them and and figure out more about what they want what do they love about you like

why do they do business with you why do they choose to come and do business with you versus someone else what do they say is valuable about you your offerings your content we're so close to our stuff we hopefully believe that it's valuable we hopefully believe that it's helping and hopefully the dollars coming in prove to us that's the number one metric that what we're doing matters because people are taking out their hardest earned possession their money their wealth represents their life and their work so they're giving you functionally some of their life every time

they're spending money with you so dollars are the number one indicator that you're being successful it's not it doesn't mean true ultimate success but it's a great indicator if they've spent a lot of those dollars with you or spent a lot of with you for a long period of time that says something about what you're doing but we're so close to it that we don't know what is the uniqueness about it we don't we can't smell our own uh fragrance our own uniqueness we're too close to it you know how like if you ever go

away on vacation and you come back to your home or apartment you walk in and you notice that smell you're like oh is this what my house smells like yes that's what your house smells like For Better or For Worse hopefully for better but when you live in it every day you stop you stop noticing that smell it's not that the smell was gone smell is always there but you just don't notice it the same is true in your business you don't notice the aroma of your greatness you don't notice the aroma of your uniqueness

the aroma of what's valuable about you because you just smell it all the time it just disappears and so you need other people who value you who can get in front of you and you say hey what is it about our company that you love or our content you love and it's a great place to start they will tell you so when I talk to some of my top customers it's hey I love that you you talk about wanting to win in business but also you're always talking about your family and you're always talking about

taking time to travel with them and you're you're not ever pushing to just hustle and you value your faith like a lot of people say I like you because you value your faith I even have atheists and non-christians who like that I talk about my faith they're not offended by my faith because they're they can handle it right they're secure in their own decisions they don't have to adopt my faith but they're not offended by it but they respect it because they're like I I appreciate that you're not afraid to be fully you because I

almost learn something in seeing you Graham be ful of you and your faith is a huge part of who you are as is your family your love for Star Wars or whatever it is they see that and they're like that's instructive for me that I can show up in my content business and be fully me and and and whatever that looks like and not have to dumb myself down or hide parts of me to be successful and so I have people that tell me they value that about me authenticity is a word I hear a

lot I love how authentic you are I love how you're not pushy I love how I don't feel like you're selling me you're just giving to me these are all actual things some of my top customers tell me so I need to be reminded of that so I go Ah that's what I smell like proverb proverbial proverbially right that's what I smell like to the world that's the aroma I'm putting out there and some people don't like that smell and that's they'll go somewhere else but some people really are attracted to that smell and and

that's what they like about me but I don't know what that is unless I ask you don't know what that is unless you ask so make a list of your top five customers right now by dollars spent or years doing business with you and ask them to jump on a zoom call with you and ask them hey can you just answer a few questions to help me out I want to I want to be able to serve you and people like you better what do you love most about doing business with me what do you

get the most out of my content why do you choose me over somebody else or why do you listen to my show or watch my videos or why are you in my community or Mastermind over somebody else's and and take copious notes and then ask the harder questions what could I be doing better to serve you and people of your caliber what gaps do you see in my my product offering or my content that would would serve you and you're not promising you're going to do everything but you you genuinely value their feedback that's what

you want to pay attention to not your competitors who cares what they're doing has literally nothing to do with you have you ever thought about that what your competition is doing what other people in your industry are doing even industry leaders has literally nothing to do with you what they're doing has no significance to us no impact on us that is them running their businesses for their customers with their unique goals their unique flavor of Life their unique perspec effective the way to be successful is to do it your way to do it your way

to be a rebel okay this is a huge part of what is in my new book Rebel is the secret to success the secret to satisfaction and believe it or not the secret to service to others is to do it your way and I know that we're scared and I know that it takes work and we're lazy and I know that people are reinforcing that we should do it their way but I'm telling you the key to success satisfaction and service to others lies in those four words do it your way so my friend here

is your permission to cover your ears cover your eyes unsubscribe from everybody you could even unsubscribe from me and I would be proud of you if that's what you need to do but here's your permission to absolutely ignore be completely naive to what your competitors are doing take your attention your most valuable asset right and don't give it to anybody else give it to yourself give it to your customers give it to your audience and give it to your business and watch your business grow I hope this was helpful to you if so please let

me know in a comment below if you're watching on YouTube or rate the review and review the show on Apple podcast and let me know that this episode helped you it tells me that I'm making a difference in your life and that's all that matters that's why I'm here not to look at my competitors not to look at industry-leading people but to look at you and to serve you to help you create more money margin and meaning in your life I'll see you on another episode real soon