Most people wake up every morning and look at their rivals. They check LinkedIn, scroll through competitor pricing pages, and panic because someone else launched a feature they were still whiteboarding. It's exhausting. But here is the thing: if you are constantly looking over your shoulder, you’re already losing the race. There is no competition for someone who focuses entirely on the friction points that everyone else is too lazy to fix.
Seriously.
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Look at what happens when a company actually cares. Take a look at the early days of Zoom. Back then, the market was "saturated." We had Skype, Webex, and GoToMeeting. On paper, it was a bloodbath. Yet, Eric Yuan left Cisco because he knew the existing products were terrible to use. He didn't focus on "beating" Webex; he focused on making a video call that didn't lag and didn't require a 10-minute plugin download. By the time the incumbents realized what was happening, it was over. They weren't competing in the same category anymore.
The Myth of the Saturated Market
People love to complain that every good idea is taken. They say the market is crowded. But "crowded" usually just means there are a lot of people doing the exact same mediocre thing.
Think about your local plumber or a high-end SaaS platform. The "competition" is usually just a sea of companies offering the same average service, the same bland marketing copy, and the same slow customer support. When you operate at a level of extreme competence and radical empathy for the user, you realize there is no competition because the bar is currently sitting on the floor.
Blue Ocean Strategy, the famous framework by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, isn't just a corporate buzzword from 2005. It’s a survival guide. They talk about "value innovation." This isn't about being slightly cheaper or slightly faster. It's about making the competition irrelevant by creating a leap in value for buyers.
Why Niche Is the Only Way Out
If you try to sell "shoes," you are fighting Nike. Good luck with that. You’ll get crushed.
But if you sell "orthopedic hiking boots for people with chronic plantar fasciitis who want to climb 14ers," your competition disappears. Suddenly, you aren't a commodity. You are a specialist. Specialists don't have competitors; they have patients or clients.
The internet has fundamentally changed the physics of business. In a physical town, you had to be a generalist to survive because the local population was small. Online, the "local" population is 5 billion people. You can find 10,000 people who obsessed with a specific, weird problem. When you serve them perfectly, they won't leave you for a cheaper, more generic option. Why would they? You’re the only one who actually "gets" them.
Stop Benchmarking and Start Listening
Benchmarking is a trap.
It’s basically just corporate-speak for "copying what the other guy is doing but changing the hex codes." When you benchmark, you are tethering your potential to someone else's ceiling. If they are mediocre, you'll be slightly less mediocre.
Instead, look at the "Job to be Done" (JTBD). This theory, popularized by the late Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, suggests that people don't buy products; they "hire" them to do a job.
- Netflix isn't competing with Disney+.
- Netflix is competing with a glass of wine, a video game, or a nap.
- It's competing with boredom.
When you understand the emotional and functional "job" your customer is trying to finish, you stop worrying about what the guy across the street is charging. You start worrying about whether you are actually solving the frustration that keeps your customer up at 2:00 AM.
The Friction Arbitrage
The easiest way to prove there is no competition is to find where your industry is "heavy."
Where are the forms too long? Where is the jargon too thick? Where does the customer feel like they’re being ignored?
I remember talking to a founder who built a multi-million dollar cleaning business. He didn't have a revolutionary vacuum. He just had a website where you could actually book a cleaning in 30 seconds without waiting for a "free estimate" phone call. Every other cleaner in town was stuck in 1995, playing phone tag. He realized the "competition" was just an illusion created by a lack of convenience.
Personal Brands and the "Only-ness" Factor
In the creator economy or the professional services world, the idea that there is no competition is even more visceral.
There are a million "business coaches." But there is only one you.
Your specific mix of experiences—maybe you were a high school teacher who became a data scientist, or a chef who moved into project management—creates a unique perspective that cannot be replicated. Naval Ravikant calls this "specific knowledge." It’s the stuff you can’t be trained for. If you can be trained, you can be replaced. If you can be replaced, you have competition.
But if you lean into your weirdness? If you write like you speak and share the messy truths that others hide? You become a category of one.
People don't follow Joe Rogan because he's the "best" interviewer in a technical sense. They follow him because he is Joe Rogan. You can't out-Rogan Joe Rogan. The same applies to your business. Authenticity is the ultimate moat.
High Stakes and High Trust
In high-trust industries like finance or healthcare, the "there is no competition" mantra is built on a foundation of reliability.
If I'm looking for a surgeon to fix my spine, I don't go to Google and look for the "cheapest" option or the one with the best Instagram aesthetic. I look for the person with the best outcomes and the highest trust. Trust is a non-fungible asset. Once you have it, the "market" no longer dictates your value.
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Practical Steps to Eliminate Your Rivals
Stop looking at them. Honestly. Unfollow their socials. Mute their newsletters.
If you spend 20% of your day thinking about what "the other guys" are doing, that is 20% of your brainpower that isn't going toward making your customer's life easier. It’s a waste of energy.
- Audit your customer's biggest annoyance. Ask them: "What’s the one thing about this industry that drives you crazy?" Then, go fix that one thing. Don't worry about anything else.
- Double down on your "Only-ness." Write down a list of things you do differently than everyone else—even if those things seem "unprofessional" or "weird." Those are your competitive advantages.
- Price for value, not for the market. If you price based on what others charge, you are admitting you are a commodity. If you price based on the result you deliver, you are an investment.
- Move faster than the giants. Small companies often feel like they can't compete with big ones. The truth? Big companies are slow, bureaucratic, and terrified of change. Your speed is your superpower.
- Over-deliver on the "boring" stuff. Answer the phone. Send the thank-you note. Meet the deadline. You would be shocked at how many "successful" businesses fail at the basics. If you do the basics perfectly, you’ve already beaten 90% of the field.
The reality is that most people are just "checking boxes." They are doing the bare minimum to get the paycheck or keep the lights on. If you decide to actually show up—to really, truly obsess over the person you are serving—you will find that the field is remarkably empty.
You aren't fighting for a slice of the pie. You are baking a different pie in a different kitchen. And that is why, when you are doing it right, there is no competition.
Focus on the work. Everything else is just noise.