How To Disrupt Any Market
I have always loved disrupting the status quo and challenging what people have thought to be the ‘norm’. That’s the only way you can bring about massive change and disruption.
You either become a disruptor or wait for somebody else to come and disrupt the market, and take away all your customers.
I share the most powerful psychological strategies to disrupt any market and dominate it.
1. Realize Nothing Is Permanent
I remember when I was a kid, we had to wait for a year or two, to get a simple phone line from MTNL. Not just that, the people there made it extremely difficult to get a phone line and many times we were asked bribes to get a line ‘faster’.
The people at MTNL were extremely arrogant and behaved they were doing us a favor by letting us use a phone line. They believed they were a monopoly, and no matter what they did, we had to bear.
Then, suddenly, private mobile operators came and most customers shifted away from MTNL. Today MTNL is facing heavy losses and is regularly being bailed out by the government as they didn’t have money to even pay salaries. The markets and customers aren’t too kind to inefficiencies.
They didn’t realize the disruption that would come from private telecom companies and had to suffer.
Realize nothing is permanent and respect and love your customers, employees and people you work with. Think about what will make them happy – and go ahead and make them happy.
2. Don’t Think About Customer Satisfaction – WOW Them
Customer satisfaction is a very outdated concept. If your customers are just satisfied, it won’t be long before someone takes them away.
Customers, need to be constantly blown off their feet. They need to hold their breath and say WOW – that is incredible and amazing. They need to become fans. (Read the most powerful ways to attract customers and sell like a master)
Always come up with offers, products and solutions that do that.
Look at the way companies like Amazon have grown. There Amazon Prime Service in India is meant to WOW customers. I personally love it.
Because in just Rs. 999 (in 2018 – that’s around $14) they give me access to unlimited video and movie content. But in addition to that, I also get Amazon Prime Music – where I can listen to tons of music without any ads. I also get Amazon Prime Reading, where I get a vast variety of books to read on my Kindle. I also get Amazon Prime delivery, where I get fast delivery and free delivery.
They have given me so many things, that is becomes difficult and almost impossible for me to shift to a competitor. Amazon and Jeff Bezos understand this and that’s why are considered one of the world’s best disruptors in the World.
3. Make The Terms Of Competition Unfair – So That Everything Is In Your Favor
I love to compete – to win. And the best way to win, is to make sure everything is in your favour.
What do I mean by this? Imagine you are going to war against terrorists in Afghanistan. Would you want to fight them fare, or would you want to have an unfair advantage? Wouldn’t you want to have the best weaponry on the planet? The best body armour, the best drones and the best firepower?
Wouldn’t you want to have a much larger force backing you – so that you can win?
It’s the same in business. You want to make sure odds are in your favour. You need to make sure your sales force is backed by the best training, branding, psychology and skills that allow them to win.
You need to make sure your product is the most unique, stable and high quality product. Only if things are massively stacked in your favor – can you win for sure.
Look at when JIO, launched its mobile network in India. They had so many things in their favour, that within no time they became one of the largest players. They reduced phone tariffs so drastically that they disrupted the market.
The focused on providing data to people, as they realized people use data much more these days than making calls.
Now with over 250 Million customers, they can monetize them further. The can launch various products and services, which can be sold to these people. More than a phone company, they are an internet company.
4. Don’t Think Outside The Box (There Is No Box On Thinking!)
Every now and then let your imagination and thinking run wild. Think of the craziest things possible.
Because only if you can think of crazy things, can you end up bringing about crazy change.
The future is always created by people who have the guts to think crazy ideas and then put in passion, effort and action to make these ideas a reality.
People tend to restrict their thinking and want it to confine to norms and existing beliefs. If you truly want to disrupt a market or industry, you need to think like a maverick.
So look at a company like Uber – they revolutionized the way we travel. They are challenging the concept of traditional car ownership and now once again are bringing in the future with flying cars.
Imagine having a flying Uber taxi – you can skip traffic and reach work at affordable rates. I am sure flying cars will become a reality – because whatever we as humans think, can be achieved.
What was Science Fiction 50 years, today is reality.
Whatever industry you are in – think the wild ideas. And then take action on them.
5. Be Like A Child
I’m always a child at heart. To be a real disruptor, you need to be a child at heart. The world’s best entrepreneurs and disruptors all think like children. They are eager to learn, curious and have an open mind.
One such company that loves disrupting over and over again is Google. Today they are giants in almost every area they have entered and I’m sure you can’t spend a single day without experiencing some or other of their products.
From using their Android phone, to Google Search, to Youtube to Google Maps – they are everywhere.
And still, they keep disrupting and innovating every day.
Google has invested large amounts of money in developing the future of Artificial Intelligence. They own a company called DeepMind, which is a pioneer in it.
In 2018, DeepMind – Artificial Intelligence was able to learn to play videos games like Quake III Arena, and train itself. Soon, it was able to beat the world’s best players at the game.
Imagine, what technologies like this can do. They can disrupt all existing businesses and systems.
Imagine what would happen if DeepMind suddenly entered in your field? What if learnt what you could do, and do it much better? What would happen to your job or business?
A child doesn’t fear anything, even if he falls, he gets up and learns. Be like a child and welcome change and see how you can benefit from it.
6. Live Life Passionately With Inner Peace
Start living and doing everything with passion and love. If you are working, work with love and passion. If you are spending time with your friends and family, be completely immersed in it and give it your best.
If you are on a holiday – enjoy the holiday to the fullest. Once you start living with passion, you will start attracting ideas and connecting with a Higher Source.
Steve Jobs, had major discoveries and breakthroughs in life, when he was visiting India and discovering his spiritual side.
When you connect with your spiritual side, with your inner self, you feel a sense of calm. This calm will help you discover new ideas and think creatively.
I regularly meditate and spend time in water. I love visiting the sea side and the beach. Many of my most creative ideas and solutions that have helped several people grow their business and increase their sales or just come up with new innovations – come from these moments.
If you want to become a disruptor, you need to come up with new ideas. New ideas, won’t come to you, if your mind is constantly bombarded with emails and messages from social media.
New ideas come from a sense of inner calm and peace.
7. Netflix Yourself and Your Business
I know many people who are hooked to Netflix all over the world (maybe you are too!). It’s a great service and product.
But, what I love about them even more is their ability to disrupt old ways of doing business – starting with their own.
Netflix started out by mailing people DVDs. So if you want to watch a movie? Netflix would mail you the DVD. They had competitors like Blockbuster.
Once they saw reasonable success, instead of continuing doing what they were doing – they decided to disrupt their own business. The started streaming movies and content – which became a competitor to their old DVD business.
Eventually, people stopped ordering DVDs and started streaming content. Imagine what happening to people who didn’t change with times? They got extinct and Netflix became a multi-billion dollar leader.
Every moment, think of how you can Netflix yourself. How can you become totally new and disruptive in what you do? Can you think of creating a new product or service that will be a threat to your existing product and service?
8. Mistakes Can Be Disruptive
Many times, mistakes can turn out be the most disruptive things. This might sound counter-intuitive but be open and ready to make mistakes.
Making mistakes isn’t a bad thing, as long as you are doing something absolutely new and path-breaking. It is impossible to create something new and master it, without making mistakes.
Some of the world’s best products have been a result of mistakes.
There was drug research happening to have a medicine that can help people with heart problems to have more blood flowing to the heart. The drug didn’t do its job – and instead of having blood flowing to the heart, it sent it someplace else.
This drug was a mistake, but was smartly branded and marketed as Viagra and became a global bestseller.
Ask yourself, what new mistakes are you making?
9. Be Humble
In life if you want to be happy, healthy and be truly at peace with yourself you need to learn the art of humility.
Humility is also very good if you want to grow and succeed. (I share about the power of humility here on Leadership too).
Netflix had to have humility to change their entire model from DVDs to streaming content, even though they were earning money.
To truly disrupt something, you need to be humble enough to accept that you can make mistakes, that you can go wrong and that you aren’t super human.
Humility will also help you be open to new trends and ideas happening in the world.
10. Take Massive Action
The best way to bring in disruption to take massive action. Everything depends on taking action.
If you don’t take action, nothing will change. The best disruptors in the world – took massive and continuous action.
They didn’t simply sit and develop strategies or read books – they took action. They made mistakes. The lost money and they made money. They found people to invest in their ideas and vision. They hired the right people. They fired the wrong people.
They had fights, they had losses and they had victories.
Life is all about taking action. That’s what even Krishna told Arjuna during the battle of Mahabharata – to take action fearlessly.
Our duty is to take action and not worry about the fruit of action.
So go ahead, disrupt by taking action right away.
Yogesh Chabria