The #1 Most Underrated Growth Strategy: Colleagues Over Competition
There’s a belief that shapes how a lot of women build their businesses, and it’s costing them more than they realize. It sounds something like this:
“If someone else is doing something similar to me, they’re competition.”
From there, everything tightens. You hold back and second-guess what you share. You stay in your own lane instead of stepping into bigger rooms.
But what if that entire premise is flawed? What if the people you’re keeping at arm’s length are actually your most valuable growth channel?
The fastest path to more clients isn’t more marketing
It’s better relationships. Not surface-level networking, not casual conversations that never go anywhere. I’m talking about real, strategic, peer-level relationships with people who do adjacent or even similar work to you.
Because here’s what I see over and over again in my clients’ businesses:
The highest-quality clients, the ones who trust you faster, commit more easily, and don’t price-shop, rarely come from cold marketing. They come from referrals. And not just any referrals. Referrals from people who already understand the value of what you do.
The shift from competition to colleague
Most business owners say they believe in collaboration. But when it actually comes down to it, they’re still operating from scarcity.
They assume:
There’s a limited number of clients
They need to stand out from everyone else
Being close to similar businesses will dilute their positioning
So they isolate and then they wonder why growth feels so slow and so heavy. Now everything is riding on them - their content, their messaging, their audience, and their ability to constantly generate demand.
That's not a strategy. It’s pressure.
What changes when you build real peer relationships
When you shift into a 'colleagues over competition' mindset and actually act on it, a few things happen.
You get warmer, faster referrals.
When someone comes to you through a trusted peer, a large part of the sales process is already done.
Trust is established before you even get on the call.
You’re no longer building credibility from scratch every time.
You stay in your zone of genius.
Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, you can confidently pass opportunities to the right person and trust that it comes back around.
You expand your visibility organically.
Not by being louder, but by being part of more conversations.
This is one of the most underutilized growth levers I see. Not because it’s complicated, but because it requires a mindset shift first.
“But what if there isn’t enough work to go around?”
This is the question that always comes up, and it’s a fair one. But in most of the markets my clients are in, the issue isn’t lack of demand. It’s:
Lack of clarity
Lack of positioning
Lack of trust
There are more than enough potential clients. What’s missing is a clear pathway for those clients to find and choose you. Referrals from the right people create that pathway faster than almost anything else.
If you were going to start small, start here
You don’t need a big community or a formal network. You need two to five people who serve a similar or adjacent audience, are aligned in values and quality, and that you actually trust.
Then you go deeper with those relationships - not transactional, not vague ideas about collaborating someday. Real interactions that look something like this:
Sharing insights
Talking about real client situations
Referring when it genuinely makes sense
Supporting each other’s growth
That’s how momentum builds.
The part most people miss
This isn’t just about getting more referrals - it’s about how you’re positioned when you’re at the center of these relationships. Over time, something subtle but powerful happens. You stop being one of many and become the person people think of, the person people send others to. The person who’s in the room.
Not because you tried to dominate your market. But because you became deeply embedded in it.
The bottom line
If your entire growth strategy relies on posting more, saying it better, and showing up more consistently, you’re missing a major piece of the puzzle.
Your business doesn’t grow in isolation, it grows in proximity.
And the question isn’t: “How do I stand out from everyone else?” It’s: Who are you building with, and how are you showing up in those relationships?
Putting it into practice
I recently had a conversation with Yael Steinberger, founder of a thriving community of English-speaking interior designers, architects, and home stylists in Israel. What started as a simple Facebook group has grown into a network of hundreds of professionals who actively connect, collaborate, and support one another.
If you want to see what “colleagues over competition” looks like in practice, you can listen to the full conversation here: