From time to time I would like to share a book review as a potential resource for fellow entrepreneurs and business people. A good many of my readers are entrepreneurs and business people and in particular those in small startups.

2007 has been a breakthrough year for SpinningSilk Multimedia. We have gone from being a sole proprietorship run soley by my wife and myself. We started as a part-time venture and when “life happened” when both knew our best choice was to go into business for ourselves full-time. This year we have changed our business type to and LLC, hired our first employee and have an office outside of our home in downtown Greenville,SC.

The both of us are love what we do any have a heart for web development, print design, photography and other forms of multimedia that help fellow business people get the word out about what they do to current and potential clients. That being said we have a lot of competition in our local market. Part of the surge in competition comes from the fact our kind of work has pretty minimal start up costs and Greenville is a hot spot in South Carolina for creative people considering we are close to quite a few universities and tech school that specialize in technology. We also face competition from very large advertising and marketing firms that have a lot more capital than we do to hire many employees and invest in top notch equipment.

Considering the competition in our market and elsewhere it crucial that we explore what makes us unique and how we can niche in certain technologies and creative endeavors. One book that had helped me think harder about my competition is Competition Demystified by Bruce Greenwald and Judd Kahn. The book covers different aspects of competitive advantages, assessing competitive advantages, niche advantages and the Dilemma of Growth, etc. Neither me nor my company are the kind to want to beat another company by doing the same thing they do. I’d rather compete on being unique and serving a special segment of the market. I’d rather work with what is our perceived competition that to drive them out of business. If you are in business and struggle with keeping up with your competition I encourage you to read Competition Demystified. When you consider and work on making your business special and remarkable you will be easier to remember in advertising, marketing, networking and you and your employees will have a special pride knowing you are doing something special.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 7th, 2007 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Book Reviews, Innovation, Tips, branding, networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.