Brett McEllhiney
Lonnie Minton
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Are you prepared for competition?
By admin | October 22, 2008
The turtles are quickly learning that they have competition in the tank. The picture to the left shows the fish competing directly with the turtles for the food I just added.
Now the funny part is that the fish were originally added to be turtle food. I bought 16 fish and added them to the tank. 4 of them did not last 2 minutes as the turtles were very happy to have a fresh meal.
Since that time the fish population has diminished to 7. The thing is that 4 of those seven have now become big enough that when they get fed they want the turtle’s food and not the little flakes that have been added for the smaller fish. Those small fish still have a healthy respect for the turtles as they have not grown enough to hold their own but the larger ones will push and shove the turtles to get what they want.
Well enough about the turtles lets see how this applies to you and your business.
- When you are small and starting out you can get eaten by the competition
- If you keep growing eventually you will be able to compete with the bigger residents without fear of getting eaten.
So the obvious fact is that you need to be growing to ever be able to compete and in the beginning you need to be nimble or you will get eaten before you start.
The key once you have started is to get traffic. Without traffic you can’t tell how well your offer is working. Without traffic you can’t get enough visitors to start your testing and improve your process.
Once you have created a process it all stops without traffic.
Not all traffic is the same and what type of traffic works for one will not necessarily work for the next one. You can discover over 50 different ways to get that traffic so you stay nimble and don’t get eaten at
Now what you need to do is try 5 or 6 of these techniques and see if they work. Usually one or two of 5 will be effective for you so keep those and replace the ones that don’t with more until you have the traffic you need to grow quickly.
Then you can be like the fish and start competing on a level field with the turtles in your marketplace and get your share of the food.
The Turtle Dad
Disclaimer: Some of the links mentioned within this post or posts it may lead to are my affiliate links and in such case I will get compensated for recommending those products. However, I will never recommend something that I don’t personally believe in and I welcome your questions and feedback.
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