Making Nice With Competition

Talking shop with marketing guru, Joe Rossini.

Why do some people get so uptight instead of making nice with competition? I truly believe that you can sit with someone in your same field and not only learn a lot (iron sharpens iron) but also potentially make a connection conducive towards working together in the future. There are some definite advantages to talking shop with another business owner in your field. You can swap tips, trade secrets and even talk pricing. I assure you, unless you are in a podunk one-horse town, there is enough business to go around for everyone. If you are good at what you do and lead a fine-tuned organization, then trading a few secrets about your business is not going to put you under.

I was lucky enough to have coffee this week with another marketing guru. He too designs websites, handles social media for small business owners and provides them with some of the same marketing resources that  Shoestring Mktg provides, however we don't do all the same things. We had a great time together, laughing, drinking coffee and talking shop while getting to know each other. After enjoying each other's company for a while, we talked about how fun it would be to try to work together to provide services from each other that our own companies don't do on their own. See, a relationship was born that grew a sense of trust quickly. That's chemistry. By the end of our coffee, we were talking about meeting again to further develop strategies for how we could work together and capitalize on each others customer base to make more money for us both. This will be discussed at our next coffee. Sometimes if you get too caught up in protecting yourself and your business, you miss out on building profitable relationships.