Energy is the ultimate competitive advantage
My company is in year 12, and our latest competitor is the definition of a copycat. They copy our marketing strategy, they copy our product, they copy our content, they copy our designs. They copy everything. It’s not the first time this has happened, and it’s totally okay. What they cannot copy is our energy. For 12 years we’ve endured wave after wave of copycats, who come in hot, taking everything we have built and recreating it. Sometimes it’s at a cheaper price. Sometimes they have a distribution advantage. But the it’s always the same result at the end of the day. Once their big flashy appearance is over, they fade back to where they came from. Because their energy is not sustainable.
In the world of business, people get energized by the quick hits. You look at a company like Interact, see the places where we have not optimized, and build against our shortcomings. You quickly get growth as a result. But then the mundane aspects start to set in. Customers need strategic support. Customers have demands. Maintenance has to be done. You have to keep moving forward. All at once. Then it becomes a lot less fun. Once you see the realities of running a business, and not just copying an existing product with some improvements, you find that it’s not all fun and games.
And that is when our competitors start to falter. It happens every time. We are the tortoise, slowly moving along, slowly improving. But always with energy. The big splashy impact of a new competitor who is making a push might take a bit out of us for a few months, or even a year. But then it slowly fades away, and we re-emerge.
So that begs the question, where do we get our energy from? And the answer is, we help businesses to be more successful in the best way we can. By getting them set up with quizzes that generate leads and increase sales. It sounds simple, but a quiz is so personal and draws from so many areas of the businesses we serve, that it can be a really vulnerable and emotional experience to create a quiz. But when we are successful in drawing out the expertise and personality from a customer who wants to build a quiz, there’s a shared energy there that has massive sustaining power. They are super excited with their results, and we are motivated to continue building.
Part of what makes that good feeling possible is the knowledge of why we are building Interact in the first place. Which is to help businesses grow. We are not just doing it because it’s a good business, like our competitors who see an opportunity to make a quick buck. Of course we have to get paid, and this is our livelihood, but that’s not the only reason. As a result, we can feel satisfied that our intention is to set up customers with a quiz that generates leads, works for a long time, and is at a reasonable price where they see strong ROI over a long period of time. Many of our customers have been using our quizzes for 10+ years at this point, which no competitor can say.
Our industry is one where customers invest a lot in building content on our platform. And we have a responsibility to meet that investment with longevity and success as best we can. I don’t think you can reach that mindset when you’re just looking at a business as an opportunity to build a product that makes a profit. You have to have both to sustain over a long period of time. Which is why the average lifespan of our competition is about 7 years, and we are two years away from doubling that.
If you want to build something that lasts, where no competitor can beat you, find your energy sources. In this case, the energy source I’m highlighting is service, where we help people reach their goals using our product, and that is energizing. But everyone has a mix of energy sources, and you can find yours by taking my quiz. I built it based on our experience creating interact, and from what I see in our customers who are successful in the long term.
Competitors love to make a big splash. Scare you away from your customer base. But if you have energy sources that are not reliant on the quick hits of success, you will always outlast and out-compete. Energy is the ultimate competitive advantage.
