During my first year in Los Angeles, after I had been transferred from Clear Channel in Connecticut, I was told by my new management team that all of the executives were going to be given a Gallup assessment of our strengths.
Gallup is a highly credited, personality-testing organization that is often used by everyone from employers to the FBI to the government . . . even to help profile fugitives. Their assessments are valued as highly accurate. They are a great tool for creating a culture to manage people based on their strengths. I grew to really like these assessments and started to give them to my employees as I moved into management as well.
I took my Gallup StrengthsFinder assessment, which spit out thirty-four strengths in order of their dominance in my personality. The claim is that everyone has some degree of all thirty-four of these strengths, but the volume is turned up higher on some than others, and it’s different in everyone. The top five are known as your “Signature Strengths” and the ones that, for all practical purposes, determine who you are.
My top five or Signature Strengths were (in order): Competition, Achiever, Responsibility, Futuristic, Focus. I mean, can you say heart attack waiting to happen? That is some galactically intense shit. Number six was Activator.
My dominant strength is competition. Sounds about right.
When I started Ten Thirty One Productions in 2009, there wasn’t another company doing what we set out to do. We had a pretty clear lane with little competition in an apples-to-apples way. There were other Halloween attractions in the marketplace, but they weren’t being produced by companies with an entire focus on the Halloween and horror industries. They were amusement parks that went to Halloween content for a few weeks, then switched back to their original content for the rest of the year.
With the exception of three major amusement parks, two of which were over forty minutes away, the Los Angeles Haunted Hayride would have very little competition. We were the newest and only independently run attraction in LA, and the first and only haunted hayride ever in Southern California. It was incredible that a market the size of LA was so underserved for this giant six-billion-dollar (at the time) holiday.
We were able to come into the Los Angeles market for the first time with very little competition. Because of our unique model and being the first to jump into the pool of bringing city-dwelling Angelenos into the woods at night—something that is highly unusual in the concrete jungle of LA—we were an instant hit.
We were first because the moment we had the idea, we took the shot. No waiting, no overthinking . . . just shooting. We needed to get there first. And we did.
When you think of other industries, there is typically a clear leader. It’s most often the one who got there first. Not always, but often. And without a doubt, when you’re the first, it’s yours to lose.
And I will throw that gauntlet down very clearly . . . we were first, we are leading now . . . and I want to lead even more in the coming months and years.
In 2009, there were four Halloween attractions to speak of in LA. Only one was not an amusement park: Los Angeles Haunted Hayride. During the Halloween season that finished in 2015, there were twenty-six Halloween attractions.
Call me a narcissist but we started something.
LA Haunted Hayride did something very interesting. We made it look easy. Two girls that nobody had ever heard of erected a big, beautiful Halloween attraction that pulled in tens of thousands of people from all over Southern California. There wasn’t a big corporation behind it, no celebrity name to speak of, not even a little corporation that anyone had heard of . . . just two thirty-year-old girls who loved decorating the hell out of their house and throwing parties at Halloween.
“Well, if they can do it, I can do it” seemed to be an echo that would haunt me in my sleep for the upcoming years.
Competition was born.
Light would start to be cast on the dark-horse industry of Halloween attractions. It was a sexy and alluring endeavor but gave a very false sense of security to potential competitors, as it wasn’t nearly as easy as it looked. As quickly as the new attractions came, they also went. Not one new attraction in Los Angeles from 2010 to 2014 came back in 2015. Attractions linked to famous names of icons in the horror world have exploded onto the scene with visions of mountains of money and books of amazing press and accolades just to fall, never to return—at best they’d move to another city.
Why? Because, it’s really hard. It’s not nearly as easy as its seductive call would have you believe. And these days competition is fierce . . . and a blast.
There is something so invigorating about competing and watching competition. When more Halloween attractions started popping up, it was energy. It was an energy that was starting a frenzy . . . a feeding frenzy. And the frenzy just made that world bigger because attention is contagious.
Could anything be more fun than this type of competition?
You must evolve every day; you must stay ahead of trends; and you have to hunt for treasure in unusual places and see treasure in trash. You must prevail or cease to exist. Every day you hit the ground, knowing it could be your last. The stakes are high and when you are driven by a competitive disposition, nothing can be more motivating. Not money, not relationships, not creativity . . . just winning.
You’ll start to see our prior discussions about passion, activation, and choice work in the realm of competition. We’ll start to look at how these themes affect competition and outcomes, and how even those of us who aren’t competitive can still thrive in a competitive environment.
Competition can consume you. It can push you to achievements you never thought possible. It can cloud your judgment, make you excited or angry, and a host of other emotions. It’s also a fantastic thermometer. If you have any doubt whether you’re on to something or good at something, look around you to see if there’s a line of people ready to compete or copy you.
I started to think about how competitive I was, in a cerebral-awareness kind of way, in my early twenties. I had just broken up with my first love and turned to cardio kickboxing as my outlet, which was just starting to become giant. It was exhilarating. There was such a sense of team in those classes. The other class members followed the instructor from venue to venue to take his classes. I realized it was something pretty special . . . not just another cardio class. The music was driving and would blast through the room while we threw a myriad of different types of punches and kicks into the air and into big punching bags. We left it all in that room, exiting with nothing but a few steps left in us to get to our cars.
The instructor, Dennis, was an actual fighter who was actively engaged in tournaments. His instructor was the owner of a kickboxing school and also a very skilled fighter and an active competitor. I was immensely intrigued by the fact that they were actual fighters. After a few short weeks, it appeared I was getting pretty good, quickly. Dennis approached me and asked me if I would ever consider competitive fighting. Well, that was it . . . you can’t ask me a question like that and ever think I’m going to walk the other way. The question alone felt like I was being challenged. There was no way I wasn’t going to start down that road. And once I start something, the challenges and competitiveness just keep pushing me farther.
I started training with Dennis and his instructor Les, traveling wherever they were training each day. I was going all over the state of Connecticut to learn the skills to get into a ring and compete and hopefully not get seriously injured.
It appeared I was uniquely talented at this weird new sport and also really fast. They registered me for my first fight and I was terrified. Being that terrified meant I had to do this even more. I was never going to show that I was terrified so I just got quiet, which made me look tough—it seemed to be a good strategy.
The day came for my first competition. It was intense. I waited for what felt like an eternity for my match to be called, and when it was, I was ready. I stepped onto the mats and fought against a girl of similar dimensions, and after three long rounds, I won.
My instructors were elated. They soon started to put me in every tournament in our area and I kept winning. There was one girl who was undefeated and had kicked the living shit out of another girl from my school in a prior tournament. She was huge, strong, and had been a fighter her whole life as was the rest of her family. My instructors wanted to put me in the ring with her. She had never lost, and everyone expected me to change that. I was beyond stressed out. But of course the challenge of it, the competitiveness that drives me as the number-one strength that Gallup later told me decides who I am, could not let me lose this fight. As nervous as I was, I was not going to let this massive, undefeated chick keep her title. Looking back, I realize I wasn’t nervous about fighting her or getting my ass kicked. I was nervous about not winning. I have now learned that the biggest part of my stress and anxiety comes from the fear that I will not win.
When I am negotiating a deal, I’m pressured most by victory—not the issues of the deal. I need the deal to be my way . . . I need to win. It’s a great motivator and often pushes me so hard that I do indeed win. However, it can also hinder me if it doesn’t allow me to focus on the issues in the interest of moving something forward that could still be worthwhile and successful. It’s a balance that I have learned to pay attention to, but I’ll always have to work at it.
I won the match against the undefeated fighter. And it was an incredible win because the entire arena stood up and was screaming during those last moments. I don’t have the words to describe how the feeling of an arena screaming and cheering for you when you win feels to a person whose number-one signature strength is competition.
That was the beginning of my addiction to winning.
Being competitive alone will not make you win, and winning isn’t always a destination. Often, it’s a constant reinvention that is critically necessary to stay in the lead or even just keep you in the game.
What makes you different? What is your unique selling proposition?
The answer can take many different shapes. I’ve stated already that, in so many instances, the only difference between a poor person with an idea and a rich person with an idea is that the rich person activated his or her idea. In this example, the person who won the competition was unique because he or she activated. You can start to see the synergy of competition with the other key ingredients we’ve been discussing. Steve Jobs’s relentless drive to make the world better revolutionized it. It wasn’t necessarily about Jobs being competitive. Passion put him at the top of the leaderboard. And now, the ability to consistently reinvent and stay ahead of technology is keeping Apple there. You see, it’s not enough to get there. You must stay there. The competition lives whether you are competitive or not. And you can compete whether you’re competitive or not. As I just said, passion can win. Taking the shot can win. Being smarter can win. Being more talented can win. And, all of those things can exist in a person with or without a competitive “gene.”
Who are you? Where will you win? Without taking the Gallup StrengthsFinder (though I highly recommend it), it could be a bit more tedious to evaluate yourself to answer these, but it will be enormously helpful. Spend the time to find out what drives you. Learning these strengths will help you manage yourself in the same way these assessments help employers manage their employees. It can also help you get clear about the strengths that may be turned down in volume in yourself. And in those cases, you can team up with others who are greater in those strengths and really start creating a strong and strategic foundation for competing in whatever professional environment you choose.
You cannot escape that you will have to compete, so it makes sense to set yourself up to win by competing where you know you are strong or seeing where you are weak and strategizing to make that part more powerful.
For example, if you have a high degree of “woo,” which means you’re motivated by meeting new people and forming strong connections with them, you will succeed by building your relationships and winning people over. Focus your efforts there. Maybe you’re more of a one-on-one type of person with woo who isn’t going to command a roomful of people, and the thought of that just makes you want to throw up. It would make career sense for you to team up with someone who has a strong sense of command to manage that part of the process. This could be an effective strategy in a competitive business environment in which you don’t have your own competitive strength turned up to excel.
Once you have become very familiar with your best quality, you need to relentlessly own it. Mediocre success isn’t going to do it for us. In order to stay not just relevant but unprecedented, you must always be evolving into new, uncharted territory. Find the treasure first. Look in places that have not been touched and be unreasonable in your desire.
And for crying out loud, enjoy it. Competition is a great thing. It implies value. If there isn’t anyone interested in competing in a certain area, it’s most likely because the perceived value isn’t evident.
And every single potential or realized competitor, demanding customer holding unreasonably high standards, press reviewer, and genre aficionado out there only augments the challenge and unreasonably high standards to which we hold ourselves.
And that’s the ultimate competition for us.
After all that, it really boils down to outdoing what we think has been our best work. Because, again, we’re back to it being about extraordinary, and to me that means not stopping when you win the day. Winning the day is just the start to the real target, which is not only to lead your competitors, but to lead your own very best . . . and then top that.
And when that is your sincere intention, leading your competitors will be a side effect.