Dear Brothers and Sisters,

If you already have some experience with life, you would realize that you are tired and stressed the most when you try to get something. You work hard – that is one reason to be tired and stressed. But more than that, you often have to fight against others who either compete with you for the same prize or simply try to prevent you from getting to your goal just because they don’t like you. Fighting against others makes you tired and stressed manifold more.

Having experienced that, we know immediately that in order to have relaxation and peace, at least we should avoid fighting. However, sometimes it is hard to avoid fighting, especially when you are doing business. You have a Pho restaurant, and all of a sudden, another guy comes in and builds another Pho restaurant 3 stores away from you. Like it or not, you are in fierce competition – you need to watch out for his price, his quality, his service, his restaurant’s atmosphere, to compete with him and to outdo him. This kind of competition may take a lot of energy and spiritual peace from you.

That’s why all the great masters tell us: “Don’t fight.”

But how can we not compete when our competitor is right there, on our face? We need to survive, our business needs to survive.

One of the ways to avoid fighting/competing in business is to serve a submarket different from other people’s submarkets. Say, the new Pho restaurant sells typical Pho for everyone. You may want to turn your Pho into a nouvelle-cuisine Pho, focusing on health – everything in your Pho is healthy – less cholesterol, less fat, less carbohydrate, less chemicals – aiming at the health-conscious clientele. This sub-market is different from the general market where everything goes. It allows you to stand out among many other Pho restaurants around. And you don’t really have to fight/compete against other restaurants, because your health-conscious customers will go only to your health-conscious restaurant.

This strategy is also called “niche market” – a very small specialized submarket of product and service. If you carve out a niche market for yourself, chances are you are the only seller in that niche market and you don’t have to compete against anyone.

As a matter of fact, many sellers with different-but-complementary products or services may stand close to each other and support each other, instead of competing against each other. Ex: children clothing store, women clothing store, men clothing store, teen girls clothing store, teen boys clothing store, large-women clothing store, petite-women clothing store… can stand together on a street, support each other in serving different types of clients, and turn that street into the “fashion street.”

Most companies start out in a niche market to avoid competition and to maximize the benefits of its specialties. As a company becomes big, it may think about venturing out into some other markets, if it wants to.

You can use this “niche market” theory in many different areas of human activities. Ex: music. You may want to start out your guitar career by focusing on Jazz, which is a submarket still underdeveloped in VN. And when you have become famous with Jazz, you may think about venturing into other kinds of music, if you want to.

So you see, “Don’t fight” is an advice that is not only good for you soul, but also good for your money, if you understand the advice deep enough.

Spiritual teachings often are good for business. Don’t forget this point.

Wish you all successful in business.

With compassion,

Hoành

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