Focus on being competitive, NOT on your competition
When we pulled up at the shop that morning, there were 300 flyers for the competition right outside our door.
We were pissed. It made us so upset that our competitors were all we could focus on for the next couple of months…
What are they doing?
How can we beat them?
We worked hard to beat our competitors, but the funniest thing happened…
We started seeing less growth than we expected.
I remember talking about it with my brother. We finally decided the only thing we could do to beat our competitors…
…was to let them be.
We turned our focus on being competitive, not on our competition. We focused on ourselves, our culture, being a better pawn shop, and giving better customer service
And as soon as we started doing that, we crushed our competitors.
It’s kind of like being a musician. You can either be the guys playing cover tunes in the local bar and trying to sound like their favorite band…
…or you can be the guys who understand that their favorite band had a lot of different influences, and then take all the different tricks from all their own favorites and use them to create amazing original songs.
Which band gets picked up by the record company? (Hint: it’s not the guys stuck in the smoky dive doing covers.)
Your shop is unique. Your business is unique. Focusing all of your attention on your competitors keeps you from doing the work to build your own culture and showcase what makes your shop special.
Do you know what it is about your shop that keeps your customers coming back? Have you thought through ways to build that culture to bring in your ideal customers? Shoot me a reply and tell me what it is that makes your business special and unique.
Be unique,
Yigal
Yigal Adato
Yigal is a 3rd generation pawn broker, and is now a mentor, coach and educator with the pawnbroking industry.
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