Did you used to be one of those kids at school who would have his arm round his work all the time for fear of someone stealing it? Or, were you the kid who happily shared his work with others? How about now, when you get a cool idea, what’s your first instinct? To blog about it or to keep it to yourself? Go on, be honest.
Photo from Flickr by Stuart Pilbrow
If you’re the kind of person who believes there’s enough ideas, resources, business to be won out there that you’re happy to share your cool ideas then you have what’s called the ‘abundance mentality’. On the other hand, if you believe there’s only so much to go around, only so many clients out there to win business from, or only so many good ideas that you want to keep your latest gem as your own, then you have ‘the scarcity mentality.’
A few Meetdraws ago I mentioned that Meetdraw is a great example of the abundance mentality at work. Bournemouth is a fairly small place yet there are maybe 30 digital agencies* here. You’d be forgiven for thinking that there’s only so many clients needing websites in this area, so why would you fraternise with the competition? What possible benefit would there be of talking to other agencies, you might let something slip that loses you competitive advantage.
*wild guess!
The thing is, however groundbreaking your approach is and however unique you feel you are, it is unlikely that the way you work, or what you work on, won’t be replicated elsewhere in the country/world and sooner or later that precious competitive advantage you have will be gone as soon as someone with the abundance mentality happily blogs it and gets the kudos for putting it out there.
Sharing your ideas and your unique techniques is a great way to gain competitive advantage. Clients see you as forward thinking, other agencies respect your ideas, you attract potential employees and stand out as a thought leader. Lets face it, of all those great ideas you’ve had, how many have actually turned into anything? How many have been shelved at the back of your mind as ‘must do one day’ only to never see the light of day again. My advice would be feel the fear and blog it anyway. You’ll be amazed at how liberated you’ll feel.
Sharing your ideas, meeting the competition and getting to know them is a fascinating and enjoyable experience. You can talk about the shared challenges you face, laugh about the client questions you receive and enjoy the experience of meeting likeminded people. Before Meetdraw started up I was contacted by a ‘competitor’ who asked if we could recommend a good supplier to them. If I had my pessimistic pants on, I would have told him where to go. But thankfully my abundance mentality kicked in and I happily shared the resource. Months later we met at Meetdraw and enjoyed a beer together. Months later again, he called me to see if we could help them out with some usability testing because they were overloaded with other projects. This was the abundance mentality at work.
Put simply, the abundance mentality assumes there’s plenty of work to go around and in my experience actually creates more work for you. The scarcity mentality closes doors, closes minds and limits possibilities. So, stop reading about Meetdraw and shaking your head, and get yourself down there and meet your competitors. Once you do, you’ll realise they are a lot less scary than you thought!
