Comments on: Community and Competition: Strange Bedfellows

By: Suzemuse

Suzemuse — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 15:51:40 +0000

Well, well said, Keith. Thank you for expanding on what I think is an extremely important discussion. We’ve all spent the past couple of years building our relationships with each other, and building our own enterprises. Now is the time for us to figure out what are the next steps we can take together. Cheers, friend!

By: Keith Burtis

Keith Burtis — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:56:28 +0000

Suze, what can I say here that hasn’t been said already except for the fact that there is no doubt that both you and Alan are amazing folks that I love working with.

Yep, it’s true that at times we might be competing, but I think the chances of us partnering like Alan said are much higher. We are all trying to figure out new business models, new back-end tracking, new customers etc..

I am currently working on a project with a woman that is in Texas, but originally from my home town of Buffalo. She opened a site called oddPodz a couple years ago and has come to be for help in building the community there. The reason I mention this is because I am going to try and help enable exactly what we are talking about here by fostering mastermind groups. It is my contention that what you, myelf, Alan and others have is going on without structure all over the web.

This article rings soooo true for me and very timely. We can all be a team! We are not approaching our business from the mindset of Diminished Returns, but that of Strength in Numbers. W all draw upon the talents of each other to BEST serve the whole. That whole means us, our vendors, partners and the customer! There is no other business I would rather be in than this one. You all mean the world to me and lets keep teaming up to change it for the better!

@KeithBurtis

By: Suzemuse

Suzemuse — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 13:34:06 +0000

Re: 1. I agree we do have a huge pool to draw from. But ultimately (and especially for you and I, as we both live in the same relatively small city) there’s a lot of crossover. You and I have a lot of similar interests in the type of people we want to do business with. I agree that you and I have a good working relationship, we see opportunities for ourselves but also opportunities to work together. I would hope that other small business owners would want to do the same. But I think that might be a bit of an idealist point of view. The good thing about our line of business, however, is that it’s not restricted geographically. We have the whole world.

RE: 2. I can’t believe you and Keith have never met. You need to fix that. ;)

By: Julie Walraven

Julie Walraven — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:18:12 +0000

Sue, This was an early lesson I learned from my career industry side of me. When I started connecting in about 1999, I found I had colleagues not competitors. There are many in the career field that are highly successful and to some extent, we draw from the same pool with the ability to work virtually but I have learned so much from my colleagues and my business has been propelled to another level because of them that I could never see them as a problem.

Continuing on in social networking where I have connected with many of my colleagues on another level has increased our visibility and I hope in the end will result in the general public understanding what gifts and talents are found in our community. We battle a different problem of being misunderstood and mistrusted by people who confuse professionals with fly-by-nights. So I see a presence of professionals in any field interacting in the public as the opportunity for the consumer to see the personalities and qualities of people they want to do business with in the future.

Continue on connecting and I am waiting for delivery of my copy of Trust Agents and two other books from Amazon.
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By: allan isfan

allan isfan — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:28:31 +0000

Sue,

Very interesting indeed. As always, let me poke at a few things.

1. Being in the same business doesn’t necessarily make you a competitor unless you’re really going after the same customer.

Our business is a bit unspecific and our pool of potential customers is absolutely huge over a very extensive list of verticals. When I was in telecom, I’d always be running into the same usual suspects at every account, going for the exact same business. Not nearly as friendly.

2. We are small.

We have some overlap in our networks but it isn’t huge. In certain cases, we may be in a position to bid for a larger project only if we partner. That has already happened between us specifically and is going on right now between Keith and myself on several fronts. Although I don’t think this way, helping each other may actually be helping ourselves.

Having said that, I’m sure social utilities have something to do with all this, after all that’s how we started in our relationships (I’ve never even met Keith Burtis in person and we’re doing business together!).

Keep on rokin in ottawa :)
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