Hi friend,
Good to see you again.
Today, I’m writing to you from a coffee shop right in front of the majestic building of Stockholm’s School of Economics. I’m sipping on my black coffee with deep techno in my ears.
In other words, perfect writing conditions.
Question:
Do you think competition is good?
It’s something I’ve thought about a long time…
On one hand, competition’s great for customers, because it presses the price low and keeps the quality high.
But, competition s*cks for you as a company.
You loose your pricing power.
If you were the only person in the world offering your service, you would have complete power over the price.
No competitors.
Maximum $$$.
We’ll get to why this matters later…
…but first, another question for you:
Have you ever dated someone?
Because I want to let you in on the dating life of a friend of mine…
For simplicity, let’s call him Viktor.
3 weeks ago, he started to meet an interesting girl.
So far, they have been on three dates, which, at least in Viktor’s eyes, have gone quite well:
On the first date, Viktor took the girl to an intimate cocktail bar in central Stockholm. Great.
On the second date, Viktor surprised the girl by booking a table at a cozy Italian restaurant in Stockholm’s old town. Amazing.
Because Vitkor paid for both dates (he’s a baller), the girl invited him to eat at her place for a 3rd date.
She cooked great food and surprised Viktor by inviting him to a unique bar afterwards. Superb.
That was last Friday…
But I didn’t hear about it until today, on Sunday, when Viktor called me to ask for advice:
“Yo Nils.
Everything is good at the moment, but I feel like her and I are going down a vicious cycle.
Because every new date tops the previous one, it gets harder to harder to overdeliver.
But I really want to impress her…
Do you know a cozy spot in Stockholm I could take her?”
For context:
If you’ve dated yourself, you know the feeling:
If you make it past the 2nd date, you’re kinda interested in the person, but still have your guard raised.
You like them and you don’t want to f*ck it up.
So you try to impress them…
You take them on romantic dates.
You buy them flowers.
You show them your hard-earned 129 Twitter followers. (please don’t)
As you build trust with them, you’re in a constant emotional rollercoaster between trying to be cautiously optimistic and trying to not get attached.
Viktor was at this stage…
…and he wanted to exceed ever-increasing date expectations.
But after such a superb third date, that’s hard.
So I told him to change the playing field:
“Don’t take her to another dinner date.
Go for a brunch and walk or something. Instead of going to dinner dates that get more and more exclusive and pricey and competitive...
...create a new date category which she can’t compare with the previous ones”
Now, friend…
Do you see the business analogy yet?
Just as with Viktor’s dinner dates…
When your business joins an existing category, you’re subject to comparison.
Customers compare you with your competitors.
And that’s terrible for you…
…because you loose all your pricing power. Remember?
There’s always gonna be someone who can deliver your service at a cheaper price than you.
It’s a race to the bottom that MELTS away your margins.
Instead…
You must be like Viktor.
Just as Viktor changed the date setting to avoid comparison…
…you must create your own category.
Having your own category means being the ONLY provider of something.
When you join an existing category, customers will think about you as “one of many”.
A commodity.
But when you create a new category for yourself, customers look at you as “the only one”.
A premium good.
(equally true for dating, btw)
And creating your own category is all about positioning and framing yourself.
Look at the difference between:
“I’m a ghostwriter”
and
“I ghostwrite educational email courses for seed stage and series A AI-driven SaaS startups”
Only a year ago, I thought it was smarter to be 1) than 2).
I was afraid that getting too specific would make me miss out on clients.
But two weeks ago, I dared to change my bio to option 2.
Because when you try to talk to everybody, you talk to nobody.
Also…
If I’m just a “ghostwriter”, people can go into my DMs, ask me for my price, and leave me for a cheaper option.
They can go to someone else - I got little pricing power.
But if I’m an “educational email course ghostwriter for seed stage and series A AI-driven SaaS startups”…
…there’s nowhere to go for my target audience.
Like seriously. There is no second option.
Where the f*ck are they gonna go?
In other words, I can charge a premium because I created and own my category and there’s no competitor to compare me to.
How to create your category:
You create your category by specificity.
Who, exactly, do you serve?
What, exactly, do you talk about?
Why, exactly, do you talk about what you talk about?
How, exactly, do you serve?
When you stack these qualifiers on top of each other, you get so specific that you're the only person in the world with that niche.
Then, you have your own category. (tada)
And just like Viktor, you won’t have any competition, so you’re more likely to be successful.
(If Viktor fails his 4th date, I might have to delete this)
That’s all for today, friend!
Hope you have a great week,
Nils
PS. As I promised you last week, I launched my first FREE educational email course, Solopreneur Supercharge, last Wednesday.
It helps you as a Solopreneur to take back control of your time with AI, no-code automations, and task prioritisation.
Loved every second of this. Truly one of your best piece of writing so far... how will you compete with it?