Pick Your Battles – Stay Clear of the Big Boys!

How many folks do you know that have had a great business idea, but never got going because they figured they couldn’t compete with Wal-mart, Amazon, some well established local competitor, or just big business in general?

Maybe you’ve experienced some of those thoughts.

I have a sense that this “road block” stops many aspiring small business owners from ever pursuing the dream of going into business for themselves.  They imagine the competition has too much of an edge and they are too late to the party.

Listen . . . there are hundreds of thousands of solo small-time operators working out of a home office competing profitably in customer markets where the big boys have their products stacked high and deep.

Here’s the key: choose your niche wisely, specialize deeply, focus on your strengths, do things in your business that the big boys won’t do, and forget about going head-to-head with the juggernauts.

Let me give you an example.

Say you have a passion for the big screen, for movies.

You’ve seen them all, you have most of the great lines memorized, know something about the stars, have great memories of those good old days when you “went to the movies every Saturday afternoon,” and would love to be involved in that genre.

The natural tendency for such a hobbyist would be to think: “Yes, why don’t I open a movie store?” What a great idea!

Not.

So you invest a lot of money in an inventory of your favorite movies that you bought at a discount and now you plan to sell them from your online catalog store or on eBay.

I will tell you that’s not the right battle to fight.

Everybody is selling movies these days including Wal-mart, Amazon, Best Buy, Target, K-mart, Red Box, NetFlix, and thousands of others as well as all the video rental stores and kiosks in every city.

That’s an extremely crowded market with thin margins and very few options for setting yourself apart from the others.

Why try to compete in that setting when the odds of success are stacked against you?

Instead, why not start a subscription web site where you attract other passionate movie fanatics and charge a small monthly fee to give them access to your members-only site?

Another option would be to sell popular movie posters.

I don’t know how many others are doing that, but the number is going to be just a fraction of the DVD and Blue-Ray movie sellers.

Or maybe you would start a personal movie review site that was monetized by Adsense, or affiliate products related to highlighted movie themes.

You might also do some combination of the above.

The point is . . . don’t do what the Wal-marts and Amazons of the world are doing.

YOU CAN’T COMPETE PROFITABLY WITH THEM!  PICK A DIFFERENT BATTLE GROUND.

Here are five reasons why the home based business owner can be successful in the same general market as the large and well-healed corporations if you pick your battles wisely and don’t go head-to-head with the giants:

1. The big boys are forced to engage big markets, or diversification and breadth of product.

They don’t pay attention to “under the radar” niches that can’t support their voracious appetites.

2. Corporations are often swollen and bulging with their attention fixed on mass appeal and a mindset riveted securely to a middle-of-the-road mentality.

They can’t afford to “play the edges” or cater to off-the-beaten-path audiences.

3. Big business chokes on individual consumer preferences, personalized attention, and one-time off-the-wall customer requests.

You can satisfy them all and be paid handsomely in the process.

4. Huge organizations are afraid to offend or step on toes, quick to apologize, and must seek to satisfy the majority of their customers in all they do and say. Democracy is never forced upon the little guy.  You can be who you want and not try to please everyone.

5. Finally, big business is boring, plain vanilla, and typically intolerant of outrageous ideas and “rock the boat” strategies.

But you can profit wildly from creative and offbeat products, strategies and execution.  Your small business is nimble, aggressive, and can alter its course in an instant.

Corporate size, expertise, muscle, financial strength and access to mass markets may seem like insurmountable advantages that the small business owner can never successfully compete against.  But if you don’t try to compete head-to-head with them, there are plenty of profits to be made as you dance around them and use your adaptability to serve the “edge” markets.

To your online business success,

Steve Browne