Friendly versus ruthless rivalries

There are many kinds of rivalries in the world, from business to athletics to “yard of the month”, and they can be a good thing. In a recent episode of the WorkLife podcast, host Adam Grant gave the example of Ohio State and Michigan in football — when one succeeds, as Ohio State has been doing recently, it pushes the other to be better. They offer some great stats to help support that.

When it comes to rivalries, there are essentially two kinds: friendly and ruthless.

Friendly Rivalries

I’m a big fan of friendly rivalries, as that’s essentially what our Meetup is all about. It’s a room full of our competition, coming to get ideas from us and then share their ideas with us. While digital marketing is technically a zero-sum game, it’s really not, as there’s plenty of work to go around.

Folks like Brad, Aaron, Kathy, Diana, and dozens of others are sometimes direct rivals with us, but we’ve all gained more from one another over the last decade than can be put into words. Friendly rivalries like that can be absolutely amazing.

Ruthless Rivalries

Inside of the WordPress community, friendly rivalries like that are very common. I’ve found that inside the rest of the digital marketing space (outside of WordPress), things aren’t as pleasant…