A Crowded Marketplace
Find the loudest room in the house. Do the exact opposite of whatever everyone else shouts about.
‘When everyone zigs, zag.’
Stephen Anderson
You're frustrated. Because the topic area that fires you up, that you want to write about, it's more crowded than Hyde Park on a sunny day.
You think the noise is overwhelming. You think you need a Marshall stack at 11 to get heard over the clamour of a thousand other creators, all hawking the same generic dream.
Wrong.
A crowded market is not a threat, it's a signal. The smart crowd knows how to turn that signal into useful information.
They take that silver-plattered dataset and pull it apart. It tells them exactly where the money is hiding and how everyone else is failing to grab it.
The not-so-smart (or the brave, or the foolish) look for a space where the competition is minimal or non-existent. Well, there's nothing new under the sun, folks.
All they've found is a ghost town where nobody else is selling. It's very likely a place where great intentions are converted into a graveyard of failed ideas.
Look for the unfulfilled gaps and leave the blue oceans for others. Saturation provides a complete map of competitor behaviour. Most people see 10,000 rivals and try to be 5% better or $10 cheaper.
That is a slow death. A race to the bottom that no one wins.
Instead, look for the one thing they all refuse to do or fail to recognise. There's always something to uncover.
When the entire industry moves in a single direction, they leave a vacuum in the opposite direction. Your job is to fill that vacuum with something that makes their offerings look like last week's lunch.
High-end example: Peter Steinberger created OpenClaw in November 2025. In February 2026 it was 'acquired' by OpenAI. Some sources suggest the deal for Steinberger was in the range of $2-15 million.
Check out some of the players in your field. You won't have to look far to find short, low-value videos designed to bait eager n00bs into some rehashed, mediocre $300 course.
It's a tired, transparent trope. Everyone hates it, but they do it over and over because they lack the imagination to move beyond the crowd.
Don't be one of them, please.
If you want to win, give the entire course away for free. No email gates, no hoops, just 6 hours of raw, unfiltered value sitting on a public platform.
Top-of-head examples: Anything from Alex Hormozi. Caleb Ralston's personal brand video:
These two guys know their stuff. It's a clever highjack that builds an audience of thousands while their competitors try to guide jaded leads towards upsell after upsell.
Don't overthink.
Get a piece of paper.
On one side, write down just 3 things your competitors do that make your skin crawl. On the other side, write the exact opposite.
Then figure out how to make the opposite real.
If they spout premium and exclusive, be gritty, informal, and accessible.
If they post high-production-value AI videos, use your iPhone and record yourself in your car.
This is your unique space. It stops the drift towards the boring middle ground where brands go to be ignored. It gives you permission to be the loudest, weirdest person in the room.
