Hi,
Entrepreneurs often talk around how their market is oversaturated.
And, yes it’s at least partially true. If we stopped making things today, humanity would still have enough non-food stuffs to last a while.
By all logical accounts, this should mean you don’t stand a chance but, contrary to popular opinion, competition isn’t what’s killing your career. What kills your career is believing you’re trapped in the same game as anyone else, and that you’re already losing.
You might think there are only one or two ways to succeed, but there are infinite.
Success is a blue ocean, and we need to start thinking like it. Blue Ocean Strategy is all about refusing to drown, or get eaten, in the bloody red waters of competition.
In a red ocean, everybody’s fighting over the same customers, slashing prices, and clawing for attention, and it’s miserable. In a blue ocean, you carve out your own lane, create something so different that you’re not competing at all.
You win by shifting the rules of the game, by offering unique value that feels obvious once people see it, but invisible to everyone else still stuck brawling in the red ocean.
It’s not about being better at their game. It’s about making their game irrelevant.
Amazon specifically is the definition of a red ocean, where everyone is fighting over the same customers, slashing prices, and bleeding each other dry.
You win by changing the axis to one you can win and refusing to let anyone else define you by theirs.
An axis could be:
The format you create in.
The platform you choose to build on.
The community you build.
The style only you can deliver.
And there are an infinite number of these axes. Every time you pivot to a new axis, you create a blue ocean where nobody else is competing because you’ve redefined the game.
When people struggle, they are almost always relying on another company’s positioning to define their own. You might thing they define the market, but they don’t.
They only define their market. And they define it so well that anyone who buys into their definition will obviously buy from them, not you. By framing yourself in their terms, you’re essentially selling their product for them.
Why would you do that? Why would you hand them your customers?
That kind of positioning only works when the arbitrage (the gap between supply and demand) in the market is wide enough that you can skim off opportunity. Once a market is saturated, that arbitrage disappears.
Then, the only reliable way to find arbitrage is to make your own, which means you have to stop playing on axes where you can’t win.
Stop trying to compete on the same stage as mega corporations and redefine your edge.
Define your own stage.
Build your own axis.
Create a game where you are the obvious, inevitable choice because you’re the only one playing it.
There is always a game you can win. The market leader often defines the opportunity, like Amazon, and gives people the language to talk about it, but they also create legions of people dissatisfied with that experience and want something else…and that’s the crack in the dam.
The market leader always leaves people unsatisfied, because no one product, no one brand, business, or platform can serve everybody equally well.
For every customer that adores a business, there are others who can’t stand them. For every person who happily one-clicks on Amazon, there are plenty who are sick of the algorithm, the ads, and the endless sea of sameness.
That’s where you come in.
The real opportunity is in identifying the people who aren’t being served fully in the existing market, and then offering them something that resonates with their frequency instead.
That’s soul resonance selling, where you’re not fighting over scraps, but building work that vibrates with on the right weird frequency so deeply that customers who’ve been hungry for what you offer can easily find you.
The general tenor of my marketing method is that I am gonna find as many potential customers as possible and say stuff so bonkers (but also true) that nobody else would even think about saying it because nobody would even fathom connecting those dots in that way.
Yeah, most people will say “no thanks”, but those who resonate with it have no choice but to hang out with me because I am the only person talking about this stuff in this way. At the end of the day, if you like the Russell thing, I have that, and if you don’t, well I still have the same Russell thing either way.
My focus then becomes having you make up your mind as to whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
I don’t care if you love me or hate me. I just want you to make a decision.
That is a much different value proposition than whether you buy my stuff or not. I don’t care about that even a little bit, because I know that if enough people make up their mind then the rest will work itself out.
Right now, too many businesses are selling their work like a charity drive, making customers feel like the only reason they should give you their money is out of pity, obligation, or some vague moral duty.
Guilt might work once, but it doesn’t build a career.
Customers don’t owe you a living. If the entire backbone of your sales funnel is “support me because I’m small and scrappy,” then you’ve already lost.
Customers don’t wake up in the morning thinking, “Man, I really hope I can support some random small business today.” They wake up thinking about what will serve them, fulfill them, and make their lives better.
This is another version of the same trap. You’re playing someone else’s game.
Amazon has already defined the buying experience as easy, cheap, and fast. If your entire pitch is “buy direct to support me,” you’ve basically admitted you can’t compete on their axis and, instead of creating your own, you’ve tried to make customers feel bad for choosing the option that actually serves them better.
That’s backwards.
Sales only works (unless you’re already a market leader) when you offer something others can’t and define yourself by the rules of your game. Kickstarter’s real revelation, for those that do it right, is that it helps you define your game. It shows what you care about and why your business matter.
People don’t back a campaign because they feel sorry for the creator. They back it because they want to be part of something exciting they can’t get anywhere else. That’s an axis Amazon can’t touch.
If you need help finding your axis, then here’s something akin to ikigai, the Japanese concept of purpose at the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for.
Draw three overlapping circles:
Joys: What lights you up instead of draining you? (This is the work you’ll actually sustain.) Examples: “I love bantering with customers in person,” “I get obsessed with making the most complex apple pie,” “I live for designing simple products.”
Jolts: What makes your customers lean in. (This is the resonance piece.) Examples: “People tell me my cookies are super gooey,” “Fans beg for more behind-the-scenes peeks at my art,” “People say they feel ‘seen’ in my products.”
Gaps: You have to love the standards in your niche, but some of them are overdone, cliché, or just plain disconnected from reality. And customers feel it, too. They roll their eyes, sigh, and mutter, “Not this again.”
The overlap of Joys + Jolts + Gaps is your unique axis. It’s the place where you’re most alive, your customers are most lit up, and the market has left a hole big enough for you to stomp through. (By the way, you can have more than one. You can have unlimited.)
Stop trying to be the next Amazon or Facebook and be the most you that you can be.
Once you realize there are infinite axes, you stop seeing other businesses as competition at all. You’re not playing their game. You’re building your own.
That’s why competition isn’t real. There are only axes you can’t win and ones where you still can. The moment you step onto an axis where you can win, you’ve already left the red ocean behind.
And the funny thing? Once you do that, you realize the supposed giants aren’t your enemies or your competition. They’re the ones creating the opportunity. Every customer they fail to satisfy is a customer who might find a home with you.
So stop measuring yourself against their scoreboard. Stop playing their game. Define your axis and play your own game because the second you do, all that bloody competition vanishes.
Looking forward to being the best me I can be.
Love this perspective about competition!