Competition is usually seen as “bad” by new business owners. In this blog, I share the most common misconceptions that cause many new business to fail.

It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog post, and I’ve been busy, starting new online businesses.

In one of these new businesses (which I can’t tell you about just yet), one of my partners said, “let’s not launch this as our first product line, because there’s already competition”.

I completely understood where he was coming from.  I used to think that way too.  Most people launching a new product, want there to be little or no competition.

They want to be the first mover, and really dominate the market.

After running a successful business for 3 years, I’m more convinced than ever that competition is good…

This Thursday, I will be the third anniversary of me having started my very first online business, and the perspective I’m about to share on competition, is one of the crucial lessons I learnt in the last 3 years – confirming my belief when I quit my law career to start this online business, and proving that this theory holds true, not just for the startup phase, but that one can scale one’s business to well over 7 figures even with competition.

When I first started my online business, one of the keys to rapid success was to just do what other successful people were already doing. That enabled me to go from not knowing the first thing about running an online business to replacing my corporate law income within 6 months.

But without a unique product, would I be able to grow that business? Well the answer is absolutely, and that’s one of the things I’ve proven to myself this year. There is so much scope to reach a market as big as the entire world, that there is no reason to think that competition and saturation might limit my business growth.

The thing is, contrary to conventional thinking, having very little or no competition might not be a good thing.  It could very well mean that I’m one of the smartest guys on the planet, and came up with this brilliant idea that no one else came up with before.  But that’s not very likely, just ask any of my teachers in school…

More likely, it means that someone else has tried it and there wasn’t enough demand for him to continue selling that product.

If your competitors are selling a product you’re thinking of selling, that means that they are making money off selling it.  If they weren’t, they’d have stopped.

Of course the converse is also true.  Too much competition can mean that unless you’ve got a seriously different value proposition, you might be entering a price war.  But I’m not talking about that scenario, I’m talking about having some competition to prove that there’s demand.

The thing is, to find that balance of having sufficient proven demand (there’s competition), without there being so much supply that you need to slash prices to survive.

Besides fear of competition, other misconceptions many new business owners have, is that they need to start something completely new, build a brand, sell something they know lots about, or are madly passionate about…

My other major lessons from having run an online business for 3 years now is – all of that is irrelevant – the only thing that you should sell, is what people want to buy.  And believe me, when you start building cashflow off that, you’ll find that you actually do start to learn about it, get knowledgeable on it, and maybe even get passionate about it!

If I had tried to build something completely new, build a brand, etc, I would NOT have managed to replace my corporate lawyer’s income in 6 months.

Seeing competition as good, not needing to build a brand or product at the start of your business, are things that do not come naturally to someone who has not run a business before.   So, if you are keen on starting a business, then it is important to get educated and to learn the right things.

I’m more than happy to share what I did to replace my income in 6 months.  Submit your application here.