There might only be two fish in the sea.

This is good news if you’re one of the fish.

Leadership coach Belinda Thomas told me she felt like she was swimming in a huge ocean of competitors. Her confidence was down.

I said “Sure, there’s a million videographers too. How many do you know?”

And she said… “Two.”

If Belinda needs a videographer, she’s not choosing from a teeming ocean. She’s fishing in a pond with two fish. And I’m one of them.

Pretty good odds!

Yes, I know more than two videographers. But that’s not relevant. SHE doesn’t.

Comparison is the thief of joy. But possibly not the thief of your market.

Col has some great thoughts on how to refocus a fear of competition in this episode of The Fink Tank.

KP’s been to SEVEN OLYMPIC GAMES as a performance psychologist. I had no idea until yesterday.

That is RIDICULOUS.

For the first couple of years I knew Dr Kirsten Peterson, she never mentioned she’d been to the Olympics SEVEN TIMES. She was an engaged participant in my Be Less Shit on Camera course during that time, creating videos talking about her work. I still didn’t know!

It felt like she actively hid it from me.

And she’s not alone.

To get paid to do the thing you do, people need to know you do it.

Most people fall down at two main hurdles:

1. Saying it at all

2. Saying it enough

These comically simple barriers affect nearly everyone running a small business.

Fear of rejection. Imposter syndrome. Tall poppy. Take your pick.

Over several months as KP’s business coach, Col lovingly hounded her into owning it. Her LinkedIn bio now leads with “7x Olympic Games Performance Psychologist”.

She’s talked about it on radio and TV.

She (apparently) references it often, yet I STILL DIDN’T KNOW.

That’s how much noise is out there. Even people who know and like you might miss the message.

So say it.

Then say it again.

Then keep going.

One 2003 ski trip. 50 mates.

Plenty of dickheadery.

And a warning about forming strong opinions from weak evidence.

In this episode of The Fink Tank, Col and I talk about the beautiful human habit of overthinking the anecdote and underthinking the maths.

About how we love to build worldviews from tiny, noisy data points, and then swear they’re true. Humans are notoriously poor at assessing probability, sample size, and causation. Where your business is concerned, this is probably costing you.

What can we do about it?

I loved revisiting this old footage which is somehow TWENTY TWO YEARS OLD. This episode is actually two years old itself! A 9 minute version was sitting unused in the folder for season 1. So I gave it a trim and added the ski trip footage.

We haven’t changed a bit.