How to grow and drive progress through competition

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Happy Sunday and thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter. This week, my Economics degree has been turning in my brain and I’ve been thinking a bit about the concept of the free market, and how competition drives innovation.

As a business owner myself, I understand that one of the primary reasons that you want to be better is to beat your competition, so it’s like second nature to know that you have to keep up with the latest trends and technology to continue to stay in business.

As I consider two of my brainchildren - my newsletter and my run club, I’ve noticed two distinct mindsets that I employ which have taught me how to distinguish myself in a competitive space.

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How Sweat & Salty Run Club and #TheLifeofJLOWE have taught me different lessons

#TheLifeofJLOWE is a competition with myself

When I started writing #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter, it started out as a simple blog post that I would send to 20 people at most for a few months - primarily my friends and family. It was like a check-in, just recounting what happened in the past week and the lessons I learnt from it.

It still is, by many measures, a weekly check-in, but at the same time, with over 1200 subscribers (yes, can you believe it!?) the audience has definitely grown past just friends and family.

I never saw this turning into a newsletter, and so the only driver behind its growth and innovation was (and still is) myself. The format, style, tone and all other aspects of my newsletter are not influenced by other newsletters, because while yes, I know I’m competing for space in your e-mail inbox every week that you receive this newsletter, I’m also not necessarily competing with other newsletters (like I should), because I write #TheLifeofJLOWE for myself more than anything else.

Sweat & Salty Run Club is competing with other run clubs and communities

With Sweat & Salty Run Club however, to a much larger extent, I’m definitely competing. There are lots of activities to do, lots of communities to join, and so my goal with my run club is to make it the run club of choice.

Attracting new members, pushing social media and retaining members too is all part of the strategy with the run club, and it requires me to understand the landscape of competitors (whether it be other sports, other run clubs or just staying in bed instead of waking up at 5:00am to run).

To me, having a competitive mindset towards my run club has helped to drive its success over the past 2 months since inception. It’s all about being the best and making sure the experience that each runner has when they join us is one that makes them want to come back.

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Competition as a means to innovation and success

For those of you who might not be familiar, in Economics, we talk about this idea of a “free market” in which all players are left to their own devices and eventually prices in the market should equilibrate at the best price based on market supply and demand.

Basically, if everyone just does what they want, capitalism believes that it’ll all work out exactly how it should in the end.

The free market theory believes that we’ll compete until we figure it out, regardless of who gets booted

A big part of the reason why this theory makes sense is because of competition. To give you a scenario, free market competition means that if your bread doesn’t taste good, I’m not going to buy it for the same price as another brand of bread, and so you’ll forced to either make a better bread, drop your price or exit the bread market altogether.

I hope I haven’t lost you… 😅

The reason I bring this up, is because I believe that in both scenarios - my newsletter and my run club, although one is clearly more externally competitive than the other, both still involve some level of competition, and I feel that both have grown despite those differences in competitive nature.

And why’s that?

Because I’ve been internally competing with myself all along as well.

Learn how to compete with yourself in a kind way

While I don’t necessarily map the market for newsletter competition like I do with my run club, the trait that has brought my newsletter progress over time is that I compete with myself as the creator.

I’m constantly seeking out better ways to create thumbnails, refining my logo, updating the website and learning from feedback to make my newsletter better. If you’re new here, this newsletter started on Wix, then migrated to Wordpress, and is now hosted on beehiiv. It’s been a journey across platforms to get where we are now, and it’s all because I want to be better for myself.

Conclusion

I say learn to compete with yourself in a kind way, because it’s easy to become your own biggest critic in the process. It’s easy to point out all of your own flaws, and get caught up in all the negativity instead of seeing pain points and problems as opportunities for growth.

While external competition can be motivating, there’s an even greater challenge in competing with yourself. In many ways, this is the most difficult kind of competition there is. There’s no real finish line and no visible opponent to measure yourself against. Instead, it’s just you, your past self, and the constant question: “Can I be better than I was yesterday?”

In the end, the best kind of competition is the one that makes you better—whether it comes from friendly rivalries with others or the internal drive to outdo your past self. The key is balance. Competing with others can push you to new levels, but it should always be done with respect and camaraderie. Competing with yourself can fuel long-term growth, but it should always be done with kindness and patience.

So, as you go into this new week, ask yourself: How can I use competition—both external and internal—as a tool for positive growth? Whether it’s stepping up in a friendly challenge with a peer or setting a new personal benchmark to surpass, embracing competition as a force for good might just be the economics concept that actually made it out of the classroom for me.

So until next Sunday,
Justin