Many of the entrepreneurs address hit the theme by emphasizing the importance of connecting with people.
Beth Silver of Doubet Consulting - "The best approach when partering with those in your field is to look at everyone’s key strengths and act accordingly. I love working with other marketers as different people bring different approachs and skills. Partnering with the competition is a sign of true strength not weakness!"
Marya Grier of The New Jersey Association of Women Business Owners - "Partnerships, affiliations, mastermind groups build collaboration, cooperation and communication. As women business owners, we can’t survive without these relationships. This promotes the continuing diversity of our members and their businesses, and provides us with opportunities for value- added products, services and resources. From a knowledge standpoint it raises our level of awareness of others difficulties and how we can help them and ourselves to accelerate our business results."
Christopher Dorrris - "Evolving Beyond Competition. How To Embrace Your Competitor: As we become more conscious as a species, we are recognizing that everything in the history of our universe, with the exception of man, has operated on the principles of cooperation, not competition. We are learning that the most effective way to “get” is to authentically give. So the best method of getting more of what you want is to adopt a mentality of abundance – there is more than enough to go around. And to practice helping those you formerly thought of as competitors as colleagues."
Joseph Joel Sherman of Business Tribes "Drop the personal grudge and move forward. People often hold grudges against a competing company, sometimes for years, despite a complete change in the personal and strategy of the organization they hate. Holding such a grudge may defy logic, and destroy shareholder value if it prevents healthy collaboration. As an entrepreneur, decide if you can drop the grudge completely, and if so, move forward. Determine if your collaborator can do the same. If not, find another collaborator that you can work well with."
