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Hello {{first_name | EduCreator}},
I’m a very competitive person. When I was in middle school, I wanted to be a competitive cheerleader and did whatever I could to make the team by the time high school came around. And I did!
I always knew I wanted to go to college but I only wanted to go to one college: the University of Florida. I didn’t apply to any others. I signed up for every extracurricular activity and club I could, and took on extra AP classes to make myself more competitive. And it worked, I was accepted.
After college, I applied to a highly selective program that paid for you to get your masters while teaching at an inner city school. The acceptance rate was around 5%. I was accepted with a full scholarship to George Washington University for grad school.
So what’s the point?
It was never about competition with others. I was my own competition (and sometimes by greatest opponent). In life and now in business, this has served me very well. I’m constantly asking:
What makes me uniquely qualified to be the best at what I do?
I’ve always understood that if I was going to be successful, I would need to create my own pathway that aligns with my skills, gifts and talents. This doesn’t mean doing it alone or reinventing any wheels, it means knowing very well what I bring to the table and how to position myself.
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Competition Is Not the Game Founders Win
Most founders are taught the same lesson early.
Competition is healthy.
Competition makes you better.
Competition is how markets work.
That belief sounds reasonable.
It is also the fastest way to trap yourself in a low leverage business.
When you compete directly, you are not building the future.
You are negotiating margins down to zero.
Let’s reframe this through a founder lens.
In economic theory, perfect competition is often treated as an ideal state.
For founders, it is a dead end.
When businesses offer similar solutions to the same audience:
pricing power disappears
margins compress
innovation slows
energy shifts from building to surviving
Most founders stuck here are not lacking skill.
They are stuck in a structure that punishes differentiation.
Competing on features, price, or speed forces you into a constant reaction loop.
You are always responding to someone else’s move.
That is not strategy.
That is exhaustion.
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Why Uniqueness Beats Effort Every Time
The most durable businesses do not win by force.
They win by being difficult to compare.
Progress does not come from outworking competitors.
It comes from solving a problem so clearly and so specifically that comparison stops making sense.
When a founder creates something meaningfully different:
a new category forms
value stays inside the business
growth becomes internal instead of extractive
This is where real leverage lives.
Not in being better at the same thing.
But in doing a different thing that matters more.
A ChatGPT Prompt to Find Your Unfair Advantage
Use this prompt when you feel stuck competing instead of differentiating.
It is designed to help you identify where uniqueness already exists in your work but has not been clearly articulated yet.
Help me think like a founder focused on uniqueness, not competition.
Context:
I am building a [business or newsletter].
My audience is [founders].
My goal is to create something that is difficult to compare and not dependent on price competition.
Instructions:
1. Ask me 5 questions, one at a time, to uncover
- the specific problem I understand better than most
- the lived experience or insight that shaped this understanding
- what frustrates me about how this problem is currently solved
- the type of person I am best positioned to help
- the outcome I care most about creating for them
2. After I answer all 5 questions, summarize:
- my unique point of view
- the category I am actually building, even if it does not have a name yet
- 3 positioning angles that make my work hard to compare
3. End by suggesting:
- one clear sentence I could use to describe what I do
- one idea I should stop copying from competitors
- one idea I should double down on because it is uniquely mine
Escaping the Zero Sum Trap
Highly competitive markets operate like zero sum games.
If one founder wins, another loses.
That environment trains founders to copy what already exists because it feels safer.
But copying only scales what is already crowded.
Real progress is positive sum.
It happens when something new is created.
Moving from 1 to n is replication.
Moving from 0 to 1 is creation.
Founders who focus on 0 to 1 thinking stop asking:
How do I beat competitors?
They start asking:
What problem am I uniquely positioned to solve?
What insight do I see that others are ignoring?
What structure allows me to build without constant comparison?
That shift changes everything.
The Founder Advantage No One Talks About
Most founders underestimate how much leverage comes from clarity.
Clarity creates:
stronger positioning
simpler decisions
calmer execution
better long term outcomes
When your work is clearly defined, competition fades into the background.
You are no longer fighting for attention.
You are attracting alignment.
The Bottom Line
Competition may sharpen your skills.
Uniqueness builds your business.
If your offer can be easily compared, it will eventually be commoditized.
The goal is not to win the race.
The goal is to stop running in it.
Build something that stands alone.
That is how founders create durable advantage.
That’s all for now,
Christel
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