The Importance Of Creating Enemies

Most people aren't using enemies to their full potential.

Ok that was kind of a weird sentence, but hear me out.

The common path for most businesses is figure out which companies sell competing products and then stop there.

But I'm here to tell ya, it pays to have multiple enemies. Why? Because internally, they can be powerful motivators. Externally, they'll help you find buyers who think similarly and will champion your product... even if a competitor offers a similar product to you.

A couple big name examples:

• Amazon made one of their enemies physical shopping stores. Their belief was that the future of shopping was online.

• One of Tesla's enemies was the idea that electric cars were slow and unattractive. Their belief was that they could be just as fast and beautiful as gas-powered vehicles.

But you don't have to create massive, world-changing enemies like Amazon or Tesla did. Check out some lesser known examples:

• MyFitnessPal made their enemy the idea that tracking your diet was overly complicated. So they created an app that made it easy.

• TaskRabbit made their enemy the hassle of doing complicated or tedious tasks yourself. So they created a platform where users can book services with the click of a button.

TLDR: you should create enemies outside of the vendors you compete against. What outdated ideas, beliefs, or methods can you challenge? Find something to stand against.

How To Build A Product Marketing Consultancy

Devon O'Rourke is the Founder & Managing Partner at Fluvio, a consultancy that helps tech companies find product-market fit, establish go-to-market strategies, and deliver high-impact marketing campaigns.

He shared how he transitioned from a full-time Product Marketing career to building his business, how he got his first clients (and how you can get yours), the difference between consulting and freelancing, and more.

Advice From the Community

2,000+ messages are exchanged every month by your favorite Product Marketers in the Healthy Competition community. To read the below conversations in full, sign up for the community here.

• What is the future of competitive intel-focused roles? This was a hot topic and we had 20 responses from 7 different community members. Read here.

• Our Product team is eager to get more deep competitor info, but we can't seem to find much public information. How can I support them? This question got 12 responses. Read here.

• Do you use sprints to track and complete your work? One member's company announced that all departments (including PMM) were moving to a sprint-based model. Many folks jumped in to share their two-cents behind this decision. Read here.

💚Andy