Beat the Competition: 5 Doctrines

Alright, let’s cut the crap. You worried about the competition? Losing sleep over what the other guy is doing? Comparing your pathetic progress to their highlights? Weak. You think business is some friendly game of tag? You think there are participation trophies for showing up? Wake up. This is war. And in war, you don’t compete; you dominate.

I’m Abdulvasi. For twenty-five years, I haven’t just competed; I’ve systematically dismantled rivals. I haven’t aimed to be better; I’ve aimed to make them irrelevant. While you’re trying to copy their moves, I’m busy changing the entire damn game board. You want to stop playing defense and start dictating the terms of engagement? You want to Beat the Competition so decisively they forget your name because they’re too busy closing up shop? Then shut your mouth, ditch the comparison anxiety, and absorb the ruthless doctrines I’ve used to conquer markets for a quarter century. Ignore this, and enjoy fighting for scraps in their shadow. Let’s go to war.

Beat the Competition: 5 Doctrines to Make Your Rivals Obsolete

1. Doctrine of Unfair Advantage: Stop Playing Their Game, Create Yours

Trying to beat your competition by doing the same thing, just slightly better? Offering a 5% discount? A marginally faster widget? That’s a fool’s errand. You’re fighting on their terms, in their arena. You’ll bleed margins, exhaust resources, and likely still lose to the incumbent. To truly beat the competition, you need to create an Unfair Advantage. You need to change the rules of the game so fundamentally that their strengths become irrelevant.

My Strategic Pivots: I saw this early, maybe 20 years ago. A competitor had more funding, a bigger team, broader reach. Trying to outspend them on marketing or match their feature list was suicide. So, I didn’t. I pivoted. I identified a niche within the niche they were ignoring, focused obsessively on serving that specific customer’s unique pain point with a tailored solution. While they carpet-bombed the market with generic offerings, I became the indispensable solution for a smaller, highly profitable segment. They couldn’t compete there without diluting their main focus. I didn’t beat them head-on; I invalidated their model for my target customer. That’s an unfair advantage.

The Law: Identify or Create a Playing Field Where You Are Inherently Superior. Don’t compete on features; compete on business model. Don’t compete on price; compete on value proposition to a specific niche. Don’t just build a better mousetrap; invent teleportation for mice. Analyze your competitors’ weaknesses and the market’s unmet needs. Where can you innovate in a way they can’t easily copy? (Think unique technology, exclusive partnerships, proprietary data, radical customer service model, a powerful personal brand they can’t replicate). Stop trying to win their game; force them to play yours.

Your Move: Analyze your top 2 competitors. What are their core strengths and weaknesses? What market segment or customer need are they underserving or ignoring? Brainstorm ONE potential “unfair advantage” you could build – a unique angle, niche focus, or business model innovation. Start exploring the viability of that advantage this week. Stop copying; start diverging.

2. Doctrine of Blinding Speed: Execute While They Strategize

Your competitors are having meetings about meetings? Forming committees to analyze the market? Debating logo colors for six months? Perfect. While they’re stuck in bureaucratic sludge, you need to be executing with blinding speed. In today’s market, speed of implementation is often more valuable than perfection. The ability to learn, adapt, and deploy faster than your rivals is a devastating competitive weapon.

My Bias for Action: Throughout my 25 years, the ability to move from idea to execution fast has been a constant edge. While competitors were polling focus groups, we launched the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), got real market feedback, iterated, and launched version 2 before they even approved their final design. We made mistakes, sure. But we learned and adapted faster. Speed allows you to capture opportunities, respond to market shifts, and fix errors while your slower rivals are still drafting memos. They’re playing chess by mail; you need to be playing blitzkrieg chess.

The Law: Cultivate a Culture of Rapid Execution. Embrace iteration over perfection. Launch quickly, learn from real data, adjust, and relaunch. Streamline decision-making processes. Empower your team (or yourself) to act without unnecessary layers of approval. Prioritize getting real results over crafting perfect plans. Outmaneuver your competition by simply doing while they are still talking.

Your Move: Identify ONE project or initiative currently stuck in ‘planning’ or ‘analysis paralysis’. Define the absolute smallest, simplest version you could launch or test within the next 7 days. Force yourself to execute that minimal version. Get it out the door. Speed is a weapon – start wielding it now.

3. Doctrine of Customer Obsession: Own Their Hearts, Steal Their Wallets

Competitors focused on spreadsheets, internal politics, or their own egos? Fantastic. While they navel-gaze, you need to become obsessed with your customer. Understand their deepest pains, desires, frustrations, and aspirations better than they understand themselves. Build relationships, deliver exceptional experiences, create a community. When you own your customers’ loyalty, your competitors can’t touch you, no matter how slick their marketing is.

Building My Tribe: I realized early that transactions are fragile; relationships are fortresses. While competitors focused on features, I focused on support, on building a community around my products (forums, user groups – this was 15-20 years ago), on actively soliciting and acting on customer feedback. My customers didn’t just buy from me; they felt like partners. They became evangelists. They defended my brand against competitors. This loyalty, built over years of genuine obsession with their success, became an impenetrable moat that no competitor could easily cross. They weren’t just buying a product; they were buying into us.

The Law: Make Customer Success Your Absolute Highest Priority. Go beyond basic service. Talk to your customers constantly. Understand their workflow, their challenges beyond just your product. Tailor your communication, your offers, your support to their specific needs. Build feedback loops and act on what you hear. Create an experience so positive they wouldn’t dream of leaving. Turn customers into loyal advocates.

Explore Abdul Vasi's Books on Amazon

Entrepreneurship Secrets for Beginners Gain insights into launching and running a successful business from scratch.  

The Social Media Book Explore the benefits, challenges, and impact of social media on today’s world.  

Tranquility Discover pathways to inner peace and resilience in a chaotic world.  

Bitcoinpreneur A beginner's guide to understanding and investing in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.  

Your Move: Identify ONE way you can proactively connect with your customers this week beyond just a transaction (e.g., send a personal check-in email, host a short Q&A call, ask for feedback on a specific feature). Implement ONE suggestion you’ve received from a customer recently. Start building that moat of loyalty today.

4. Doctrine of Narrative Warfare: Control the Story, Control the Market

Your competition defining the market narrative? Setting the terms of the debate? Positioning themselves as the default choice? You’re letting them win without firing a shot. Markets are moved by stories. To beat the competition, you must seize control of the narrative. Define the problem, position your solution as the unique answer, and tell a compelling story that resonates deeply with your target audience and marginalizes your rivals.

My Propaganda Machine: I understood early the power of content and thought leadership. For decades, through blogs, articles, speeches, courses, I haven’t just sold products; I’ve shaped how my niche thinks. I defined the key problems, framed the essential solutions (coincidentally, aligning with my offers), and built a brand narrative around expertise, results, and no-nonsense action. Competitors trying to enter the space had to contend not just with my products, but with the prevailing narrative I had established. They were reacting to my story.

The Law: Become the Dominant Voice in Your Market. Consistently create valuable, authoritative content that addresses your audience’s biggest challenges and aspirations. Tell compelling stories – about your customers’ success, about your own journey (authentically), about the future of the industry. Frame the conversation in a way that highlights your unique strengths and makes competitors’ approaches seem outdated, incomplete, or misguided. Don’t just sell; lead the conversation.

Your Move: Identify the core narrative or story you want to own in your market. What is the big problem you solve uniquely? What is your distinct point of view? Craft ONE piece of content (blog post, video, social media thread) this week that powerfully communicates that narrative. Start planting your flag and shaping the story now.

5. Doctrine of Relentless Improvement: Stagnation is Surrender

Feeling comfortable? Resting on your laurels because you had a good quarter? You’re already dead; you just don’t know it yet. The moment you stop improving, innovating, and adapting, your competition – even the ones you previously dismissed – starts gaining ground. Beating the competition isn’t a one-time event; it’s a relentless, ongoing commitment to getting better, faster, smarter, every single day.

My Perpetual Beta Mindset: Even after 25 years, I operate as if I’m constantly under threat. We analyze metrics ruthlessly. We solicit critical feedback. We experiment with new technologies, new marketing channels, new product ideas. We invest in skill development. Complacency is the most dangerous competitor of all. The drive to improve isn’t fueled by panic, but by the understanding that leadership is earned daily, and the moment you coast, you lose.

The Law: Embrace Continuous Optimization and Innovation. Never be satisfied. Constantly analyze your products, processes, marketing, and customer experience. Look for bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and areas for improvement. Experiment with new approaches. Invest in learning and skill development for yourself and your team. Stay paranoid (in a healthy way). Assume your competition is working tirelessly to overtake you, and act accordingly.

Your Move: Identify ONE specific metric or area in your business that could be improved. Brainstorm ONE concrete experiment or action you can take this week to try and improve it. Maybe it’s A/B testing an email subject line, trying a new social media tactic, or streamlining one step in your customer onboarding. Commit to ongoing improvement. Start today.

Stop Competing. Start Conquering.

Look, this isn’t about being mean; it’s about being effective. The market doesn’t reward politeness; it rewards results. It rewards those who deliver superior value, execute faster, build deeper loyalty, control the narrative, and never, ever stop improving.

Worrying about the competition is passive victimhood. Actively working to make them irrelevant is strategic domination.

You have the doctrines. Forged in 25 years of market warfare. They require guts, discipline, speed, and a ruthless focus on winning.

Are you going to keep glancing nervously over your shoulder? Or are you going to implement these doctrines, seize the initiative, and start beating your competition into submission?

The choice is yours. The battlefield awaits. Execute. NOW.