Know Your Real Competition: It’s Not Who You Think

Spoiler alert: If you’re a retailer or small business owner, your competition probably isn’t the store down the street—or the motel one town over. Your real competition is much closer to home: it’s the business you were yesterday.

This realization hit me again on a Wednesday evening during a meeting with a local lodging tax board. I watched a group of local business and attraction owners and managers, some of them technically in the same market, sit around a table and collaborate. These weren’t competitors fighting for scraps. These were neighbors trying to build something better, together.

One business owner said, “We didn’t know your business offered trail rides.” Now that they do, they’re planning to send people that way. Another shared that requests for wedding venues were outpacing availability. Everyone at the table now knows of a second option.

This is what community looks like. This is what building a regional destination looks like.

It’s so easy to fall into the trap of seeing nearby businesses as rivals. But more often than not, the mutual opportunity to win far outweighs any potential business loss. When you focus on collaboration over competition, everyone grows. In Newcastle, Wyoming, where we operate a retail store, I see the “competition” as the challenge to get more people who are vacationing in the Black Hills to trek into Wyoming and visit our business district.

Here’s the truth: Your niche is your power. If you have a customer you can’t help, send them to the business that can. That kind of integrity and partnership builds trust, reputation, and long-term success—not just for you but your whole community.

Your competition is visibility. Are people even finding you online?

Your competition is opportunity. Are you taking advantage of free and low-cost ways to reach new guests?

Your competition is growth. Are you better today than you were yesterday?

Your competition is the quality of your product.

Take a moment to look around your community—not through the lens of rivalry, but partnership. Find the other businesses in your area. Learn what they do. Share what you do. Build a network of referrals, not a list of competitors.

Because in the end, success in retail, tourism, lodging, and everything in between comes not from beating your neighbors, but from beating obscurity.

Be visible. Be valuable. Be better than you were yesterday.

#SagebrushMarketing #ProWyomingSmallBusiness #CivicPride #RevitalizeorDie