Your Real Competition

Most companies define competition incorrectly.

They build spreadsheets comparing themselves to the businesses in their category. Same product. Same industry. Same lane.

But customers do not live inside your category.

They compare every experience they have across their entire life.

In this episode of Slackers, Jaime Solis and Jonathan Sasse explore the idea that modern competition is horizontal, not vertical. Your real competition is not the company that sells the same thing you do. It is the experience that trained your customer to expect something better.

• A pizza tracker from Domino’s can reshape expectations for furniture delivery.
• A seamless checkout flow from Amazon can change what customers expect from healthcare portals.
• A well-designed Little League app can influence how someone judges enterprise software.

Once customers experience transparency, speed, or simplicity somewhere else, they begin expecting it everywhere.

The conversation also explores why traditional competitive analysis often misses the point. Strategy should not be limited to spreadsheets and industry comparisons. It should function as a listening device for understanding what customers are learning from the broader world of commerce.

Key themes in this episode include:

• Why industry-based competitive analysis can create blind spots
• How customer expectations move horizontally across industries
• The Domino’s Pizza Tracker example and its ripple effects on other businesses
• Why benchmarking against the “low floor” of your competitors creates vulnerability
• How the Kano model explains the drift from delight to table stakes
• Why customer support teams must be part of strategic decision making

The core lesson is simple.

Customers compare you to the best experience they had today.

Not the company that looks most like you.

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The Slackers Podcast is produced by Jaime Solis and Jonathan Sasse.
Audio production by Stephen Kallao.
Cover art by Jonathan Sasse

Connect with the Hosts

🎙️ Jonathan Sasse — Chief Strategy Officer and executive advisor.
🔗 Connect on LinkedIn · Forbes Communication Council

🎙️ Jaime Solis — Music & Media executive, strategist, and creator of the Red Threads newsletter.
🔗 LinkedIn | Newsletter | Website
📱 Social: Instagram · Threads · LinkedIn

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