Blue Ocean Strategy – One of the biggest challenges you have as a businessman, as an entrepreneur, now a day, is how you differentiate yourself from your competition.
How do you stand out with so much competition that’s going out there?
Consumers have more choices than ever. They have so many competitors entering your market space. What do you do?
The best way I believe to do that is through a Blue Ocean Strategy.
Now, what is a Blue Ocean Strategy?Â
Blue Ocean Strategy in Business
Now, I want you to imagine, that you’re competing in an environment where there is a lot of competition.
We call that the Red Ocean. Bloodbath & Pricewar. In the Red Ocean there are a lot of sharks, right? There’s a lot of blood, and you differentiate yourself by saying,Â
- “I am better than everybody else.”
- “My products are better than everybody else.”
- “My service is better than everybody else.”Â
But it may or may not be true, and consumers, they are so confused. They’re so skeptical, and they don’t know what is good and what is not good.
Just because you say you’re better, well, how do I know? A Blue Ocean is completely different.
A Blue Ocean is finding a marketplace, finding a market space, within this environment, that’s untapped.
It makes the competitors irrelevant. I want you to think about the taxi. The taxi business has been around for a long, long time, right? I have this taxi company, I have that taxi company. Maybe we charge a little bit less, a little bit more, maybe we have better service, and then guess what?
Uber comes along. Ola comes along. That’s a Blue Ocean. Completely disrupts the marketplace. It makes the competitors irrelevant and puts a lot of taxi companies, and taxi drivers, out of business, unfortunately.
Good and bad, but that’s the capitalist society. That’s Capitalism, being disruptive. So, I want you to think about, in Blue Ocean, what could you do.
Three Types of Business
#1 Me Too
There are three types of businesses, I believe. The first one is what I call the Me Too business. Yes, right? Me too.
Like, I am the same as everybody else. If I put you next to your competitors, the consumers can not tell the difference.
They can not tell the difference, as you look the same as everybody else.
You provide such of the same product and service. Now, then you have what I call the second type of business, which is Me Better.
#2 Me Better
Now, what is Me Better? Me Better is, you’ll say, yes, I am better than everybody else, that I’m better than my competitor.Â
- Maybe I’ve been in business longer than my competitors.Â
- Maybe I have a better team than my competitors.
- Maybe my packaging is better than my competitor’s.
- Maybe my warranty is better than my competitor’s.
- Maybe my technology’s better than my competitor’s.
It doesn’t matter. You’re saying, I am better. That’s a Me Better business, but the best business to be in, or you at least, you want to strive to be in is, Me Only.
#3 Me Only
How can you be the only person in that space that does what you do That’s what you wanna do. In my career, I’ve started a lot of businesses.
Some of them are Me Too, just like the same as everybody else. When I was selling audio systems and car accessories when I was working as a LIC agent part-time. When I was fixing a computer for people.
I’m essentially operating just like everybody else. Then I strive to be better than everybody else, right?
To have better marketing skills, better management skills, provide better service, provide a better product.
That’s Me Better, and that’s okay. I make a decent amount of money, but really, I created a tremendous amount of wealth when I found that Blue Ocean.
When I found that Me Only business, that this is what I do.
I am the best in the world at this one thing, that one thing that only I can do.
Now you may or not be able to get there overnight, but if you can get there just a little bit closer, then sometimes it doesn’t even have to be a revolutionary thing, just a perception in the marketplace, cause perception is reality, that if a marketplace can perceive you to be a little bit of Me Only.
To say, hey, you know what, he or she of this company does this, that nobody else does, you have dominated the marketplace, and now you have applied the Blue Ocean Strategy.
So, think about how you can find the Blue Ocean, and dominate it.