Are you the under-dog in your business market?

If you are, you are the lucky one.

Let me first define what the under-dog is. It is a business person who appears to have very little chance of winning or being successful. It is a person or business that does not have the high status that the ‘big boys’ do. I say that the under-dog is lucky because of a number of reasons;

1. They can decide which way they want to play the business game.
2. They can re-invent themselves whenever they want to.
3. They can use their unique strengths and abilities to out-smart their competition.

Why can I say that? I was the under-dog many times in my business life. The one that always stands out for me is when I started a retail/manufacturing business in the late 1970’s. I had 7 other competitors in our trading area. At the end of the first year in business we had 18% of the market. The year we sold our business (11 years later) we had 64% of the market. You may wonder how that could have happened.

It is because we;

• Made a conscious decision of not operating our business the way the competitors were.
• We had a continuous plan to re-invent areas of our business at least every 12 months.
• We didn’t offer anything that could be comparatively priced.

What can you do to out-smart your competition?