How To Compete With The Big Names

On Substack and everywhere.

There’ll always be someone bigger than you and that’s scary AF.

Big names come to Substack these days and attract thousands of subscribers (including hundreds of paid subs) in hours.

It seems unfair.

It deflates a lot of beginner creators and some of them say it shows in their results.

But the problem isn’t in the competition—it’s in the deflation.

Let me change the way you think about competition and you’ll finally see it for what it is: the greatest fucking thing that could happen to your business.

What competition really means.

1. It means there’s a market for your idea

If you’ve watched Shark Tank, you may have noticed sharks raise their eyebrows when someone tells them “there’s no competition.”

This means one of two things:

• There’s no market for this — or if there is, the marketing process will be slow and painful

• The entrepreneur hasn’t done their homework

If there’s competition, there’s market share.

Someone’s already educated the audience on why they need that thing you’re selling.

Now all you have to do is offer a different version of it.

Facebook had serious competition. Google had serious competition. Apple had serious competition. You don’t have to be a pioneer to win.

“Pioneers take the arrows, settlers take the land”—Duncan Clark

2. It means you are where you’re supposed to be

Big creators don’t go just anywhere. If they choose to create on the same platform, it means the platform makes it easy for them to build, grow and monetise.

And keep in mind, these are people who can afford any platform, and have usually tested more platforms and tools than any beginner.

If they’re on Substack, that’s another proof that it’s the place to be.

It’s like getting a product into Best Buy and complaining Samsung sells there too.

3. Big creators bring their audience with them

When he launched his Substack newsletter, Unsubscribe, Justin Welsh send out an e-mail to his over 200K email list to join it.

I bet you dollars to donuts many of those people were new to Substack.

Not anymore. Now, they are people you can attract as subscribers.

But how do we stand out now that these huge creators talk about the same things we do?

The reason you think you can’t “fight” the big competitors is because you think you must be better than them.

You don’t.

You just need to be different.

I’ve already written about this in this free post. Audiences don’t care about better. No one follows anyone else because they write slightly better subject lines.

Audiences care about different, and different isn’t as hard as you think.

(You’ll read more about the how of different in the free post I linked above.)

Have a strategy.

If you’re selling copywriting services, and your “competitors” are selling products about social media growth—are you really competing?

Maybe for attention, but not for buyers.

In fact, you can have the same customers which means you can actually collaborate.

If you’re too small and/or shy to ask for a direct recommendation, you can show up in comments when their post is relevant to what you do (please, don’t spam).

This means if you have a business strategy, you can actually leverage these guys’ presence and win.

Clarity.

Solopreneurs who worry lack clarity.

Because they lack clarity, even the slightest change in external circumstances confuses them.

I’ve written a lot about how to gain clarity as a solopreneur in these pieces:

• Clarity for solopreneurs

• How to sell so people buy

• You can also access the Solopreneur Assessment that will help you understand what type of solopreneur you are and what business best suits you here.

In short, ignore the big names and keep going. Everything’s alright.

See you soon,

Maya