Great for you (but what about me?)

Hey all! Inaugural post for The Jessi Thomas Blog, a new blog within this site where I talk more about my personal thoughts, stories, reviews, recipes, etc.

For this first blog post, I wanted to write about something that is on a lot of minds and hearts right now; community over competition.

This is a phrase we love around Southern Illinois, and on social media in general. I speak it regularly. I cheer on my competition. Because that’s what you’re suppose to do, right?

But no one talks about the feelings when you’re congratulating someone for achieving what you want. For being offered an opportunity you were not given. Or how about when you see someone asking for recommendations online, and your competition is always recommended - but never you? It brings up feelings of everyone being invited to a party, except you.

So let’s talk about it. Can we truly support and be happy for others in a competitive business arena? Because as much as we want to dismiss competition, the fact remains that there are only so many expendable dollars in a region. If the top salary in a region is X, the average salary is Y, the costs of living is about Z….we could figure out a loose number of the expendable spending a county has.

And as consumers, we know that we want to support everyone - but we can’t. At the end of the day, we can usually only choose one vendor for what we need. When we’re trusting vendors with big events or sales, we don’t always want to go with the new or little guy. We want to go with someone we have either used before, know personally, or is just the go-to name. As nice as it would be to take turns with the vendors we hire, it typically doesn’t happen.

So, how do we find space in our minds to be happy for others when that means missing out on money and opportunities for us? What happens when we cheer so loudly for our competition, we cheer ourselves out of business?

I think we have to remember that sometimes, when it comes to business, your feelings are going to get hurt. This is part of the growing process. You can cheer on your competition, as still feeling jealousy they’re doing your dream. This is normal. Jealousy can drive us to look at ourselves and how we can change, shift, improve.

Where it becomes a problem is when you let the jealousy drive you in a negative way. When it leads to campaigns of smearing your competition. When you try to find ways to copy or steal from them, undercut your pricing to take their clients, makes you speak ill of them - and yourself.

If you find yourself resorting to these tactics or harboring this negativity, you have to sit down and ask yourself where within you these feelings are coming from. Are you feeling insecure because you’re not confident in your product or service? Have you been too afraid to make the leaps and proposals your competition has, and you’re really mad at yourself for not having the same courage? Ultimately - where can you step it up?

At the end of the day, realistically….no we can’t support everyone to the point we alone are financially sustaining them. Whether that means being a client, giving them free marketing, or referring our own clients to them, we have to draw a line when it starts to affect us financially.

But competition doesn’t have to be a dirty word. It doesn’t have to draw visions of backbiting, smear campaigns. We can find a balance in which we support our competitors without giving them our clients, our profits. By sharing posts, referring work when you can’t manage the job, engaging on social media, being a client yourself, you’re supporting a competitor.

And when in doubt, just stick to the Golden Rule: if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.