How to Kick Your Competition Out

By Jessica Albon

Over the last two weeks, I’ve released a video series for my newsletter subscribers. In the videos, I’ve been revealing how over the past 10 years, I’ve marketed my business in a way that all but exploded on me last year–leaving me frustrated, confused, and completely burnt out. It’s been awesome hearing from readers about how they’re enjoying just how authentic and vulnerable the videos are, and how much they’re learning from what I share.

But there’s a flip side. On the one hand, my tribe is rejoicing and clamoring for more. And on the other, a number of not-so-right folks have ditched the list. What’s been awesome about those folks who’ve decided to stop getting my newsletter is this: they were mostly my competition.

Now, I don’t actually have much “competition” in the traditional sense. There are a number of people who do what I do whom I genuinely admire, have collaborated with, or would love to collaborate with in the future. (And they’re all still on the list–yay!) But, every service professional has a handful of folks who hang out on their list to “keep an eye” on ’em. Those people who just subscribe to see what you’re up to and possibly steal it.

If you want to kick out your competition, here’s all you need to do: start doing YOUR stuff. Your work, your fun, your adventure. Start claiming what’s yours to do and leave the rest alone. What you’ll find is that all that stuff that’s yours looks much harder than it is and that scares your competition off. See, making these videos in an authentic, compelling, true way has actually been quite easy for me. Creating worksheets so that you can tackle each activity with vim and vigor has been a blast. Sure, it’s taken my team a lot of time behind the scenes (about 100 hours so far between filming and editing and sorting out the content and uploading the video, building the video-watching page, and answering the emails that have come pouring in), but it’s been such deeply rewarding work. Hearing from several hundred people that they feel like this has started them on a more sustainable, more powerful direction–that’s what I’m in business for.

My competition, though, they took one look at those videos, realized they had no intention of ever tackling something so big and bold, and jumped ship. Because, clearly, there was nothing here for them to copy.

There are two morals today. One: if more than 1% of your list is made up of folks you’d classify as competition, you’re likely not spending enough time doing YOUR work; and Two: there’s no shortcut here, but know that showing up, doing your work, and doing it well will get you to where you want to go.

So, darling, isn’t it time you started doing your work?

xo