By Tommy Mello, owner of A1 Garage Doors, a $200M+ home service business. Sharing what I’ve learned to help other entrepreneurs scale.
You hear it all the time in business…
Beat our competitors!
Destroy them!
Steal all their market share!
It’s the win-or-lose mindset. I’ve seen it so often from my competitors. “Oh no! Tommy is in our market…”
Here’s what I say to them:
“Me coming into your market doesn’t mean that you have to lose. I’m going to help you guys. And we will all make more money!”
Because here’s the thing: Why dream small when you can dream big? Instead of win-lose, why not go for win-win? I call this the “elevate mindset.”
Here’s what a study said: Collaborative competition in the area of finance can reduce company costs for both parties (if the collaboration lasts for three to five years). And here’s one of my favorite examples: Starbucks.
Look at how Starbucks makes other businesses better. Some of its drinks are $5 or more per cup. How does their premium pricing help their competitors? Restaurants, coffee companies and other cafés followed what they did and started charging more for coffee or focusing on premium pricing. They elevated the entire industry. And that’s why people call it the Starbucks effect.
So how do you think bigger as a business owner or leader so that you can collaborate with competitors and even turn them into your partners?
Have An Abundance Mindset
A lot of business owners think small. They think that other people’s success equals their failure. If someone is taking up more market share, their position in the market is threatened. Competition is “us versus them”: you win or they win.
The truth is, your market is bigger than you think. Let me give you an example or two. As powerful as Amazon is, it only had a 37.8% share of the e-commerce market as of June 2022. In the garage door industry, the industry I’m in, the global market cap is around $18 billion.
What does that mean for you? There’s more than enough room for you to do well in your market, even if it’s as competitive as e-commerce. So think in terms of abundance instead of scarcity.
Ask ‘What’s In It For Them?’
Rather than asking “What’s in it for me”, ask the opposite. Ask yourself: “What do my competitors want? Does wanting the same thing mean one of us has to lose?” That will help you have more empathy toward them and see them as people you can learn from and even work with.
And here’s the thing: Most of us want the same things in life anyway. As business owners, we want more money and freedom. That’s why I created a group of garage door business owners—so that we could bulk buy marketing and other assets and support each other.
Have Way Bigger Goals
If you have small goals, you will probably get threatened by other businesses doing better than you. But if you have big goals, these businesses won’t be as important to you—you’re competing on a whole new level.
My biggest “competitor” isn’t a garage door or home services entrepreneur. His name is Elon Musk. Why? My goal is to grow my business to $1 billion and even go beyond home services.
