 in the business world, we often talk about competition. But the problem with competition is that it tends to develop fear within us. We start to either get discouraged that somebody else is in our space doing the same kind of thing we are, or we might even tend, some people tend to get aggressive towards their competitors. They might purposely talk bad about their competitors or try to steal the competitor's customers or whatever it may be. So instead of competition, why don't we start to use the term niche mate? Okay, that's my recommendation. So competitor suggests aggression, niche mate suggests collaboration. So the truth about it is that somebody who is doing the same thing that you are, think about this. Somebody who's doing this, trying to provide the same service that you are to the same audience is by definition, either your best partner or your best mirror. Okay, let me explain. If they are providing the same service, they're serving the same audience, chances are they're gonna be approached by some potential clients. They can't help for whatever reason. They might be too full or they might not find that person to be the perfect fit for them or that person might find the service provider not to be the perfect fit. Anyway, your niche mate is going to have some people approach them that are not the right fit. Which means if you become friends with your niche mate, chances, there's a better chance that your niche mate will refer business to you. Simplest way to partner and collaborate. Of course, there's as many ways to collaborate as there's creativity. So you might decide to create some content together. You might decide to share each other's best content. Whatever it may be, when you collaborate, everybody wins because your partner's audience, any audience, right? In any audience, there are people who might follow that person's content but might not find that person's offerings to be exactly right. But when that person introduces you and your content, the person who previously didn't buy might look at your offerings and say, wow, this person has a much better fit for me. Energy-wise, style, personality, timing, whatever may be, okay? So in any audience, there are people who are not being served by offerings that if they only partner, they could serve those people. Okay, similarly, in your audience, same thing. In your audience, I don't care if your audience is a million or if it's 10 people. If your audience is only 10 people, two of them aren't gonna buy your thing ever, let's say. Maybe it's five or eight. But let's say two of them will never buy your thing out of 10 because it's just timing's not right or your personality's not right for them or whatever reason. But then if you introduce your partner, your niche mate, your so-called competitor, but I'm calling niche mate to your audience, those two people might say, wow, that was the right person for me now. Thank you, so everybody wins, right? Your partner wins. The person who weren't served now, they can win. And you win by being the nice guy, the nice gal. Your whole audience says, wow, you are really abundance-minded. You're not afraid, okay? You're abundance-minded and you're willing to introduce other people to us that may be a better fit for us. Amazing, you're amazing, okay? Everybody wins. Now, if for whatever reason you are not yet ready to partner with a niche mate or they're not yet ready to partner with you, still they can be your mirror. All right, if I'm trying to adjust how I look, right? Am I wearing the right thing? How's my hair, right? It's very hard to figure out how my hair is doing unless I look in the mirror or unless I look in the camera, right? I have to look in the mirror to adjust how my hair is doing. Same thing with your marketing, same thing with your business, same thing with your offerings, same thing with your content. It's hard to critique your own marketing or your own offerings unless you look in a mirror and guess who the mirror is, what the mirror is? It's your niche mates. Your niche mates are your best mirror. If they are doing the same thing for the same audience that you are or they're doing a similar thing for a similar audience, then by definition, they are a mirror. You can look at how they're doing things and say, I really like that they're doing it this way. I never thought of doing it that way myself, but now that I see them doing it, in other words, it's much easier to critique somebody else who's similar to you than it is to critique yourself, you see? Because it's hard, again, like you can't see your own actions, you're too close to your own actions. Either people either think everything they do is great or that everything they do is terrible. It's not quite right, but when you look at a mirror, when you look at somebody else who's doing something very similar, it's easy to say, you know what, they actually, they're doing a good job there or they could do that better. But you don't tell them. I mean, you could tell them if they're doing a good job and if they're really, really open to it, you can tell them how to improve. But I'm talking about looking at them to provide insights into your own behavior. Does that make sense? So look at your niche mates, either as partners, potential partners, if they are also abundance-minded and willing to uplift the whole instead of just thinking of themselves. If they're abundance-minded, they're willing to partner, then wonderful, find a creative way to partner. If they are not willing to partner or you're not ready to do that kind of thing, just look at them, study them as a mirror so that you can improve your own marketing, see what they're doing that you don't wanna do, then okay, fine, I'm gonna make sure I don't do it. See what they're doing that you really like doing, then okay, well then do more of that because remember the golden rule, do one to others as you want done unto you. Your niche mates are the perfect application of the golden rule. You look at how someone else is doing it and that your own judgments of them are really your own judgments of how you can do it better. Your own praise of them is really how you can also do well in that area or maybe you are doing well in that area. So I hope this is helpful and one thing I would therefore encourage you to do if you would like to, is to comment underneath this video and introduce your clients, whom do you serve, what kind of client is your ideal client, and what do you do for them? And how might, and those two are the basic questions, if you wanna take it one step further, you can say how you might like to partner, but maybe it's too early for that. Just talk about who is your ideal client and what do you do for them? And now I know these things change over time, but just what do you know about your ideal client right now and what do you think you wanna do for them? If you're just kind of in the early stages of figuring that out, we're always changing that, but just what you know right now. And if you see somebody else's comment who is a niche mate of yours, okay, or if you know a friend who was a niche mate for them, maybe privately message that person and say, hey, I really appreciate your introduction. I also do the same thing or I also serve the same audience. Maybe there's a way for us to learn from each other or mutually support each other or creatively partner in some way that's a win for everybody. So I invite you to start practicing this idea of niche mates right here in the comments thread, if you wish to. I hope this is helpful. Let me know if this makes sense. Essentially, this is a reframing of competition into something much more beneficial and uplifting for everybody. And I think much more true of how the world works. One more thing I forgot to say is that competition, the idea kind of dehumanizes that person, right? If you think of a competitor, you think of someone who's buff and has a sword and like you're in the gladiator ring like fighting to the death, right? But a niche mate has this idea that, well, they too have needs, they too have insecurities. They have, they also have their own geniuses like I do and they have a family to support or they have themselves to support to the least. They too wanna do good for the world. No, really your niche mates aren't trying to like destroy the world. They're trying to uplift the world, trying to do good for the world in the way that they know how. So they just like you, okay? How do you think of yourself? You're worth supporting, right? You're worth having opportunities. Well, so are, so do they. Same thing. Just look at your own thoughts of yourself, put yourself in their shoes. They think the same way. And so when someone comes along and is open to supporting them and partnering with them, think of someone coming along to you and being open, doing the same thing. It is an upliftment for everybody. So I hope this is helpful and anyway, let me know if you have any questions and I look forward to your comments if you have any. Take care.