Recently, I was helping out a friend by doing a survey on the trucking industry and found something rather interesting. The reason for gathering the data was to understand why there is such a shortage of truck drivers. What the data showed primarily was that first, there really does not appear to be as large a shortage as people perceive. Secondly, the major reason for any perceived shortage is not due to lack of manpower, yes, this includes women also, but the lack of compensation. It seems that trucking companies are involved in a race to the bottom by continually dropping their prices so they can win the business.
Mark Sanborn, leadership speaker and best-selling author noted: “If you aren’t a little different than your competition, you’re in trouble.” Again, we are talking, like we did in the previous blog on differentiating yourself from the competition. However, there are many reasons that the competition is good for you and the service that they provide you is of a great benefit to you.
If you do and sound like everyone else, why would anyone choose you over someone that they are dealing with now? Further, if they are not dealing with anyone else now, why you and not one of the other clones of you? By being one of the collective, you are bringing your product and/or service into the dangerous realm of being a commodity. The only way you will ever win in that scenario is by being cheaper than anyone else. Those clones will then, offer it cheaper than you and so on until someone wins the race to the bottom. As I have 
I was having a conversation with an individual whom I admire at a Toastmasters meeting on Saturday morning, that seemed to be having an internal struggle about something that he was speaking about to a youth group the night before. His message was, there is never a reason to lie and even a little white lie, is a lie.
“How are you?” “How was your weekend?” “Are you ready for a change in the weather?” “What do you think is going to happen in the game tonight?” 
A month ago, I wrote a blog on ‘The Importance of Value.’ In that blog, I discussed the fact that in order to build the value proposition, one would need to complete a SWOT analysis on their competition, as well as on themselves. There is however, another SWOT analysis that you have to do and that is on your company. Obviously, if you are a solopreneur; doing it on yourself is also, doing it on your company.