What happens when your competitor beats you to the punchline?
One woman CEO’s tale of being caught with her pants down, and no tampons. Figuratively speaking.
My worst nightmare as a CEO came true yesterday.
I founded Juniper, a tampon subscription service, last year. As one may expect, I’m used to friends pasting all things period-related on my wall. Yesterday, a ton of friends sent me the same link at the same time. I didn’t even think twice before I clicked on the link.
My heart stopped as soon as I saw who made the video — a competitor.
The video was perfect.Hilarious, beautiful, sharp, empowering, and to the point. There is this adorable 12 year old kid yelling “vagina” all over the screen. There’s a megaphone. I love megaphones. Yep, this is definitely going viral. My nightmare is coming true: my competitor has scored the slamdunk I’ve been pussyfooting around.
I probably shouldn’t ever admit this, but I was awash in panic. Why hadn’t I came up with this brilliance? This seems SO obvious now.This feeling of anger and envy bubbled up in me and stayed. It felt worse than the worst PMS. I crawled into bed hoping for a shift in perspective or reality. Neither came. It was a tough day.
This morning I woke up refreshed. I don’t have time to do a psychobabble deepdive. Let’s just say that I decided that I gotta get back to what I’m good at: being a real woman, with genuine intentions. this is the perspective that has earned me love from my customers, this is the perspective that will help me heal my bruised ego. I needed to turn this frazzled energy into something constructive.
“What would it look like — what would you gain — if you were to feel HAPPY for your competitor’s success stead of envy?” I challenged myself.
It became so obvious: simply put, my envy is an ugly version of admiration. The petty-entrepreneur in me has been so busy feeling angsty and envious, that the confident-entrepreneur in me never acknowledged that this woman has just inspired me to up my game. Further more, personally speaking, as a marketer, I am really impressed by this video! Forget for a second that we’re competitors, as one woman entrepreneur to another, without reservations, I want to congratulate her on hitting this one out of the park. “ I should tell her that! I bet it would make her feel awesome to be congratulated by a competitor.” I thought to myself.
So I did. I shot her an email and I told her all of that. I don’t know if this is smart or stupid. But I did it, and got the nicest reply back. This empowered me to move forward on other ways to take advantage of this surge of attention. I took to Twitter and did a public shout out. Then, using my competitor’s hashtag, I offered a 50% discount for people who sign up for Juniper today. We’ve already saw a bump in sign-ups. Rising crimson tide floats all tampon subscription service boats.
So our competitor’s video is still raging on the internets. I’ve figured out ways to cash in on her success. I’ve made friends with my competitor. We’re both still bringing an honest service to women. It’s a good day.
This doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game just yet. Not today.
Best of all, I’ve weathered this so-called-nightmare. Turns out in the long marathon of entrepreneurialism, a nightmare is just a hidden opportunity to arbitrage. And who’s to say Juniper won’t have our own videos?
