Where it shows up in your business
Setting your price
Cut your price and the shop next door cuts theirs. You both earn less, and neither of you gains a customer.
Choosing your market
The biggest, most obvious market draws the most competitors. A smaller one with no competitors can net more residual profits.
Reading your rivals
Every competitor has habits and decision-making patterns. Know yourself and know your rivals, and you will win a hundred battles, says Sun Tzu.
Being hard to read
If you always make the same move, a sharp competitor will plan around you. Changing it up now and then keeps them guessing.
Practise it: the moon cake board
You and three opponents stand around a board of five tiles, each holding moon cakes. Every round, you each pick one of the three tiles next to you, all at the same time. If you're the only one on a tile, you keep its cakes. If someone else picks the same tile, nobody gets them.
Five rounds, 15 seconds each, and the most cakes wins. Play solo against three bots, or join a practice table where bots fill any empty seats. Bots and people look the same, and each bot is one of eight personalities. Watch how everyone plays, because at the end you guess who was who.
Season ladder
Work through it with other solopreneurs
In the Support Group, you bring a real decision from your own business and the group works through it together, with game theory as one of the tools.
See the Support Group →