The Competition is Killing Your Career.

Sophia Ahamed
Jul 25, 2017 · 2 min read
Photograph by Olu Eletu — Unsplash

We’ve all heard it before. Who’s your competitor? Your competition? Do you know what they’re up to? I have been asked this question time and time again throughout my career and my response has always been the same — Does it matter?

I can understand the basis for a question like this, from a practical standpoint. It’s important to study your industry and to know where your business fits in and how, but many of us take studying our competition to a whole new level.

We begin obsessing about what other people are doing. How many clients they may have in a single quarter, what they must charge for their services and how we match up against them. How we need to be as good or better than they are in order to be successful. All the while taking away from the time and energy we could be spending on perfecting our craft, learning new skills to better our work, or most importantly, learning how to build strong relationships with our clientele and our industry.

I know many friends and colleagues who have gone through this time and time again, myself included. It leaves you with nothing but a sense of self-doubt and a massive feeling of coming up short no matter how accomplished you may seem to be.

So do yourself a favour, focus on what YOU bring to the table and the value that you can provide to your own customer base. You will feel a lot better for it in the long run!

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