How To Compete With People Better Than You

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I didn’t have anything planned for my newsletter this week, but then I remembered what my friend and mentor Laura Belgray told me.

“If you have nothing to write, just write an email to say hello and tell them what you’ve been up. It can just be 1 or 2 sentences. I bet you’ll end up writing a lot more.”

And that’s exactly what happened.

I wanna share a conversation with my wife Gigi on our morning walk:

Gigi might need dental surgery and she asked if she should go to my cousin John, who’s a dentist.

She’s been researching and getting examined by a bunch of different dentists both in NYC and Austin and the last one she went to was supposed to be one of the best in town.

On the other hand, my cousin primarily treats child patients.

So I asked her, “Why don’t you go to the one you went to last time? Did they tell you if you need the surgery?”

She said “They said yes, but I feel like every dentist is just trying to rush me out of there. It seems like they don’t really care. They just care about my money. At least with John, he’ll tell me the truth.”

This reminded me of why my clients choose our tiny agency over some of the biggest and best agencies in the city.

The big agencies will just throw some junior account executive at them with their B-team or C-team because their A-team is busy working on big clients like Coca Cola or IBM.

At my agency, we only have 1 team, the A-team. Plus I get involved in every project myself.

I always thought running a small agency was our weakness but it turned out to be our biggest strength. Our motto is “Small in a big way.”

Just like Gigi, most people aren’t looking for the best and the biggest. They care more if they can trust you or not.

You don’t have to be the best to compete with the best.

Showing your customers that you “care” can go a long way.

I know this was a short one, but I hope that helped you in some way…  until next time, cheers!