Think Cooperation, Not Competition
There are those of us in this world that are competitive by nature. We are even competitive about being competitive. We are always thinking in terms of ‘winning’ or ‘losing’.
There really isn’t one thing wrong with wanting to win a competition. The trick is telling the difference between a competitive event and an event where the prize is gained by cooperation rather than through competition.
You see, when you are engaging in a competition, there is always a goal or a finish line. If you are playing a game of chess, for example, the object is to ‘check-mate’, if you are playing football the object is to get more points than the over team in a limited amount of time. Internet marketing, however, does not come with a finish line. There is no time limit and the game is never over.
Internet marketing is at its optimum when it works to research, test, share and act on new ways to do internet marketing better. It works best when working within a community to better itself. Competitive attitudes get in the way and progress is much faster through cooperation.
Everyone contributes to the development of internet marketing since there is a huge benefit to the community as a whole, and your customers are better able to do the things they want, resulting in more profits all round.
If you are a competitive person you will want to compete to supply more leads, put together more joint ventures, help more people than your competitors.
There is only one way in which competition can help internet marketing, and that is by competing in terms of how cooperative you are compared to your competitor.
There are more than enough customers out there for all of us. When one of us benefits, the rest will experience that benefit as cooperation spreads the word on the latest innovations within the industry.
Leading on from this is my next point. Stop blaming the Guru’s..
There are a huge number of people out there who always have an excuse for their failures. In most cases they will tell you that their failure was not their fault, and caused by someone else.
When they relate their stories one common thread starts to shine through. They were the victims in their failed business. It wasn’t their fault that their business failed, they didn’t do anything wrong, etc, etc. It’s dangerous to believe them purely because it’s wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. We all hold success and failure in our hands, and we actively choose one or the other via the decisions we choose to make.
Businesses fail, that’s a fact of life, but the reasons they fail cannot be laid at the feet of others. I’ve heard internet entrepreneurs blame the failure of their internet businesses on someone they scornfully call an ‘Internet Guru’.
According to these people, an ‘Internet Guru’ sold them products they didn’t need, flooded their email inbox with so many emails that they couldn’t get any work done and just generally led them down the wrong path and made their business fail.
The thing is that when any successful internet marketer (‘guru’) offers products to his list, he isn’t forcing anyone to take up his offer. He is merely offering the product, and highlighting the benefits. Each customer makes a choice about whether to purchase the product or not.
These are merely offers of products that these successful internet marketers feel are worthy enough to be offered to their lists. The offer doesn’t mean that the product will necessarily help each and every person on those long and impressive mailing lists.
Each internet entrepreneur is responsible for their own success as well as for their own failure if it comes to that. Everybody should know their own business well enough to determine whether a product offered would be truly helpful or not and when advice is given, it is just that, ADVICE.
It isn’t an order that you must follow…it is only a suggestion. The decisions about your business are always up to you and you alone.
Filed under: Marketing