Your competition is not your enemy!

I belong to my fair share of photography forums, and sometimes it’s enough to make me puke. More and more lately, the topics are NOT photographers wanting information to help them become better photographers, they are photographers complaining about their competition:

• My competition is copying my locations! The last time I checked, your locations were all public property. If you truly desire “private” locations that you can pee all over and call yours, invest in putting a shooting park on your property. If you don’t have property, then suck it up, them’s the breaks.
• My competition is undercutting me! Price-fixing is illegal, what’s your point? Everyone has different offerings at different prices. Them’s the breaks, suck it up!
• My competition is stealing my clients! All is fair in love, war and sales. If your clients are going elsewhere, then they weren’t your clients to begin with. Obviously, the competition is offering them something that you were not. Either cater to their needs, or suck it up!

Are you starting to see a pattern?

Our competition is not our enemy WE ARE! We are sitting around bitching and moaning about something that’s part of the economic business circle of life. This is how it is in the real world. Do you see Sam Walton or Donald Trump sitting around crabbing about their competition? Heck no! They’re constantly studying their competition and learning lessons from them.

Our competition pulls tactics that makes us reconsider what we’re doing and change up the way we do business in order to stay competitive.

Instead of complaining about the competition, study them, figure out what they’re doing and why they appeal to clients you would like to have. Then suck it up and adapt.