The Ten Times Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure

1.
Set 10X targets.
2.
Align them with your other purposes.
3.
Write them down every day—when you wake up and before you go
to sleep.

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Chapter 10
Competition Is for Sissies

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One of the great lies perpetuated by mankind is the idea that competition is
good. Good for whom—exactly? It might help provide customers with choices
and compel others to do better. However, in the business world, you always want
to be in a position to 
dominate
—not compete. If the old saying is, “Competition
is healthy,” the new saying is, “If competition is healthy, then domination is
immunity!”
From what I have seen, competing with others limits a person's ability to think
creatively because he or she is constantly watching what someone else is doing.
The reason my first business has been so successful is because I created sales
programs that introduced a truly original way of selling for which there was no
competition. It was clearly a new way to think and approach selling. No one had
done anything other than just copy one another for the past 200 years. So I
ignored the competition and did something created a new sales process called
“Information-Assisted Selling.” This was before the Internet and before
consumers had information readily available to them. I predicted that sellers
would have to throw away the old ways of selling and learn how to use
information to assist them. Although I was ahead of my time and traditional
thinkers resisted once the Internet hit critical mass, information-assisted selling
became a way of selling, and my competition was left holding on to antiquated
systems and processes. And I came out on top, because people were thrilled to
see something completely new. Forward thinkers don't copy. They don't compete
—they create. They also don't look at what others have done.
Never make it your goal to 
compete
. Instead, do everything you can to
dominate your sector in order to avoid spending your time chasing someone else.
Don't let another company set the pace; make this 
your
organization's job. Stay
ahead of the pack. Make it so that they want to chase 
you
and try to be like you,
not the other way around. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't study others' best
practices in industry trends; however, you want to make it your job to take those
concepts to another level. For example, Apple makes computers and
smartphones; it didn't simply copy what Dell, IBM, Rimm, and others were
doing. Apple doesn't compete; it dominates, it sets the pace, and it lets others try
to duplicate its success. Don't set your goals at a competitive level. Set them at a
level that will overshadow and dominate your sector completely.
How do you dominate, you may wonder? The first step is to decide to
dominate. Then the best way to dominate is to do what others refuse to do. That's
right—do what they will 
not
do. This will allow you to immediately carve out a
space for yourself and develop an unfair advantage. Let me be clear: I want an
unfair
advantage if I can create one. Though I am always ethical, I never play

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fair. I seek out ways in which I can get an unfair advantage—and one surefire
way to do this is to do what others won't. Find something they cannot do, maybe
because of their size or their commitment to other projects, and then exploit that.
Maybe they are cutting back during a time when the economy is uncertain. This
would be your moment to expand into those spaces where they are contracting.
A company I was working with that was in dental implants told me the leader in
the field had cut all travel expenses and elected that all client contact is done by
phone and over the Internet. To get a competitive advantage, we decided to
dominate the personal contacts while the leader retreated. Domination—not
competition!
Never play by the agreed-upon norms within which others operate. The rules,
norms, and traditions of any group or industry are usually traps that prevent new
ideas, higher levels of greatness, and domination. You don't want to just be in a
race; you want to be at the top of the list of considerations. Even better, you
would like to be the 
only
one considered as a viable solution. You need to adopt
the attitude that you have so much power in your space that your clients, your
market, and even your competition automatically think about