Are you Planning to Compete OR are you Planning to Dominate... Yes there is a difference!!!

Are you Planning to be the best and number 1 in a certain area in your life or in your business? Have you made a plan that roadmaps exactly how it is that you will be able to get to victory? Is your plan tailored to be the better competitor or the dominator? Does your plan factor in how you are going to remain at the top after reaching there?

Every battle is won before it is fought

~Sun Tzu

~(Chinese military general, strategist, philosopher, and writer)

In the case of business, while you may have always suspected, but could never put in words. The way you plan for your business determines where you are going to end up in the market. Whether you are going to be the market leader or you are going to be an effective competitor.

Success is always planned for! To reach the top you must have a plan and a strategy designed to get you there!

Most business owners as they are starting out, they are just looking to compete better, to get in the game and be better than the average competitor. Often this is a good strategy in that it allows you to learn more about your market while making above average progress in your business. Most business schools talk about "competitive advantage", meaning the aspects of your business that make it better in reducing costs, maximising profits and attract more clients than the competition. Many business owners are familiar with the concept and have used for a long time in a reliable way to keep their businesses running.

However, while competitive advantage is good in getting you ahead of your competition, it doesn't necessarily prepare you for reaching the status of market leader or market domination. Market Domination is really what most entrepreneurs, business owners and high level executives are looking for and yet they are not being offered a business plan and strategy that is able to make them reach it. They are offered effective competitive tools that are good at making them marginally better, but not designed to get them to reach and stay at the top.

Being a great competitor means that at best, you are aiming for position number 2.

Even if you manage to reach the top, you will not remain there because you had not planned to get there, you do not know how to remain there.

Being a market leader or dominating the market is a very different ballgame altogether. Instead of looking around for competitors to measure and adjust your strategy to be slightly better, you set the rules and the direction of how it is that the other people will be looking to compete against you.

Whatever they do, you would have done it first and done it better. Your influence in the adoption of certain trends and the dropping of others will influence how others will fall in line and behave in accordance. The leader sets the pace and is at the forefront of exciting new discoveries of possibilities.

Being number 1 doesn't happen by accident, you have to intend it in your planning and as a prime goal visualized and strategized for.

1. Amazon, from the start, were planning to end at the top.
2. Facebook from the beginning was planning to be at the top.
3. Tesla, from the beggining was planning for the top.
4. Apple from the beginning was planning for the top

There are many organizations that are effective competititors that have capacity and potential to be at the top, but because they planned to be an effective competitor, they will never reach top of their markets and industry. Many people have this misguided belief that through hard work, perseverance and a bit of luck, they will be the number 1 market leader. They end up learning this lesson the hard way.

So whether, in business or in other areas of life where you may find yourself having to choose if you want to win, to dominate or conquer or are just happy being a good competitor. Understand that winning, domination and influence are victories that are planned for before a single action is taken on the field of competition.

One of the key defining features of the Thought Masters Services is that whether you are looking to enter the market and compete at your best, we can assist you. However, if you are looking for Market Domination and would like to take a decisive step in that direction, we will also assist you.

To put it in perspective with sports analogies, When Usain Bolt is thinking of running, he is not thinking of competing. When Serena Williams is thinking of Tennis, she is not thinking of competing. When Christiano Ronaldo, Lewis Hamilton, Tiger Woods are thinking of their respective areas of expertise, they are not thinking of competing. They are singlemindedly thinking about dominating and leading. They make a plan on how to get it done and they get it done. This plan is different from the person who is only looking to compete. The same principle can be applied to plans in business.