Competition is a fact of life, and a fact of business.

Most people shy away from competition, but I think that a better strategy is to make your competition irrelevant.

When you make your competition irrelevant, this means you neutralize their power and viability in the mind of your target audience.

You know I stress the importance of positioning. The reason for this is that properly positioning your business- creating the right context for your content- is the only method to outpace the competition and be the top choice in your industry.

I know I’ve discussed at some length the elements of proper positioning, but let me highlight one of them that will guarantee your offer is unique, and will give you the confidence you need to play big. That strategy is self-reflection.

It doesn’t sound like much, but it is very powerful.

When you invest the time to self-reflect on your proprietary system, you notice, very deeply, what makes your system and process unique. When you self-reflect, you also grow in your own inner knowing and understanding. When you truly know something, you can present it with much more confidence, and hold your conviction even in the face of criticism.

One of the biggest challenges I hear, again, and again, is that people don’t feel confident enough in their processes or systems- and they are often looking to be validated by external sources. While I definitely agree that customer feedback is crucial, I also say you can’t ever get customers in the first place unless you are 100% confident in the value of your product, service, and system.

So if you need to feel more confident about what you do (and most people would benefit from this), you want to start by self reflection. Understand how you know what you know, why you know it works, and how you can present it to a client in a way that she or he will truly understand the value, and want to invest with you.

By properly honoring your own experience, and your intellectual property, you can make the competition irrelevant, and create unique market positioning.