Competition Isn’t Proximity

Business maturity is not defeating everyone who enters your market. It is knowing which game you are playing.

A photographer came to 360ism Studios with a model who had booked a test shoot with me. He was not there to shoot. He was there as her friend and escort, and I already knew him because he had rented the studio once or twice before.

While we talked, he asked how I felt about the new studio that had opened across the street. Not across town. Not on the other side of downtown Richmond. Less than half a city block from my front door.

He asked how I felt about the competition.

I understood the question. From the outside it looked simple. There was an established photography studio on that block, and now there was a second business calling itself a studio almost directly across from it. Two studios, one neighborhood, the same potential customers. Most people would call that competition without thinking twice.

The question did not make me defensive. It made me think about how differently people understand competition depending on where they are in their business life. Early on, every new name in your category feels like a threat you have to answer. Twenty-plus years in, you learn that most of them are not playing your game, and that the ones who are do not get to decide how you play it.

Two Games

Simon Sinek, building on the philosopher James Carse, describes two kinds of games. A finite game has known players, fixed rules, and a clear end, and the point is to win. An infinite game has players who come and go, rules that shift, and no finish line, and the point is to keep playing well. Businesses can approach their market either way, and the choice shows up in how an owner reacts the moment somebody new opens nearby.

I did not start out understanding this. I arrived at it by running a creative business through more than two decades of photographers, studios, production companies, model events, and publications appearing and disappearing around me. Knowing which game you are playing determines how you respond every single time one of them shows up.

The Finite Game

The finite game has a visible opponent and an obvious scoreboard.

Someone opens a studio, so you immediately compare yours to theirs. How much do they charge? How many square feet do they have? How many lights are included, how many backdrops, how many sets? How many bookings do they seem to have, how many followers, are they running a sale? And then the questions turn inward. Should I lower my price? Should I buy more equipment? Should I build a similar set? Should I add something to my rental package simply because they have it?

Before long, the other business is making your decisions for you without ever speaking to you. They change their rate, and you change yours. They buy a piece of gear, and you feel pressure to buy one. They post a new set, and you start wondering whether you need to build something like it.

That is the finite game. The objective becomes beating the business you can see.

The problem is that this version of competition never actually ends. There is no moment when every other studio closes, concedes, and announces that you have won the market. There will always be another studio. There will always be another photographer. There will always be someone willing to charge less, include more, stay open later, run a special, or make a promise you are not willing to make. If your strategy is built on responding to all of them, you will spend the life of your business reacting, and you may look competitive the entire time you are losing your identity.

Competitive Theater

A lot of what businesses call competition is really competitive theater: visible moves that create the appearance of value without anyone checking whether those moves matter to the customer the business actually wants.

A studio adds another light because a studio down the street advertises five lights. But does the intended customer know how to use those lights? Does that equipment improve the customer’s production? Will it attract a better client or produce additional revenue? Does it create a real advantage, or is it just another line on an equipment list?

The same is true of more backdrops, more furniture, more sets, more props, and more package options. More is not automatically better. Equipment has value when it helps accomplish the work. A set has value when it supports a creative or commercial objective. A discount has value when it brings in the right customer without damaging the business. Adding things simply to say you offer more than the studio across the street is not growth. Sometimes it is just an expensive reaction, and a finite-minded owner can spend thousands of dollars winning a comparison the desired customer was never making.

The Infinite Game

The infinite game is different. The purpose is not to defeat the studio across the street. The purpose is to keep building a company that remains useful, valuable, adaptable, and relevant to the people it was created to serve.

An infinite-minded business is still aware of its marketplace. It does not ignore competitors or assume that experience makes it untouchable. It pays attention to customer behavior, pricing, new technology, emerging businesses, and changing demand. But awareness does not automatically produce a reaction. The decisions still come from the company’s purpose.

What kind of customer are we trying to serve? What problem are we equipped to solve? What experience do we want people to have? What standards are we committed to maintaining? What work do we want our name associated with? What must we improve to remain useful five or ten years from now?

Those questions matter far more than how many lights another studio includes in an hourly rental. The infinite game is not about pretending competition does not exist. It is about refusing to let competition become the organizing principle of your business.

The Sidewalk Does Not Define the Market

The owners of the studio across the street were not strangers to me. They had rented my space before opening their own, and their professional background was in interior design rather than photography.

That is not a criticism. Design experience can produce beautifully styled rooms, on-trend environments, and content spaces that appeal to influencers, lifestyle creators, and people who simply want an attractive location to shoot in. Those are real strengths, and they are different from mine. It also means their buyer was probably different from mine, because two businesses can use the word “studio” and sell completely different things.

One studio sells access to an attractive room. Another sells affordability. Another sells convenience, or themed sets, or equipment access, or technical production capability, or instruction and creative development, or privacy, or a complete professional production environment. These businesses overlap at the edges, but overlap is not sameness. A fast-food restaurant and a fine-dining restaurant both sell meals. A freelance videographer and a commercial production company both produce video. A person with a furnished room and a full-service production studio both offer hourly rentals. The category alone does not tell you what is actually being sold.

Two companies can sit across the street from one another while pursuing different buyers, solving different problems, and operating under entirely different economics. The question is never simply whether both businesses rent space. The question is what the customer is actually buying.

Six Questions Before You Call Something Competition

Over the years I have settled on a short test for whether another business is a real competitor or just a neighbor in the same category. Does it pursue the same customer? Does it solve the same problem? Does it operate in a comparable price range? Does it offer a similar level of service and capability? Does it promise a similar result? Is it being considered for the same assignments?

If the answers are mostly no, the business may be an alternative, a substitute, a neighbor, or a partial competitor, but it is not playing the same game. There will naturally be some overlap between 360ism and any nearby studio. Someone who just needs a room for a photoshoot may compare both. Someone planning a small event may look at several venues. A content creator may pick whichever visual environment fits a particular project. I understand that. But a few shared inquiries do not make two businesses the same business.

Not Every Customer Is Buying the Same Outcome

A photographer who wants the least expensive room available is making one kind of decision. A content creator looking for fashionable furniture and good natural light is making another. A photographer who needs professional lighting, multiple production areas, reliable equipment, and technical help on site is making another. And a company producing executive headshots, interviews, training videos, marketing content, or a commercial campaign is making an entirely different decision from all three.

They may all type “photography studio in Richmond” into a search bar, but they are not looking for the same outcome.

That last customer is the one I built 360ism to serve. When a business brings a production into the studio, the room is the least of what they are buying. They are buying controlled sound so an interview does not have to be re-recorded because of the street outside. They are buying a space that can move from a headshot setup to a seated interview to a product table in one day without losing an hour between each. They are buying an operator who understands electrical load, knows why the lighting looks the way it does, and can fix the problem when something does not work the way it was supposed to. They are buying contracts, scheduling, usage boundaries, and someone who recognizes a problem before it becomes an emergency. None of that appears on the invoice as a line item. All of it is the product.

This is why I have never wanted to build 360ism around the baseline studio customer. That does not mean beginners or hobbyists are beneath the business. Education has always been central to what I do, many professionals start as hobbyists, and people need an accessible place to develop. But I do not want the future of the company to depend on being the cheapest room a person can rent. The broader purpose of 360ism is to create an environment where serious visual work, education, production, entrepreneurship, and professional collaboration can happen, across photography, video, business content, podcasts, workshops, model development, publishing, private events, and creative productions. Not every customer needs all of that. But those capabilities reflect the larger cause behind the company. I am not trying to keep a room occupied by the hour. I am building a creative platform.

Learning Which Games Not to Play

One of the greatest forms of business growth is learning which games not to enter.

There are low-budget studios that can charge considerably less than I can. Some have fewer expenses. Some offer only a room and a little equipment. Some accept a volume of bookings I do not want to build my company around. I do not need to defeat them at being inexpensive. If I copy the price of a low-overhead studio without having its cost structure, I do not become more competitive. I become less sustainable. I would be letting their economics determine the future of my company.

There are larger studios on privately owned property whose owners do not carry the lease, building costs, parking conditions, or downtown overhead that I carry. They can offer more space for less money and still turn a profit. I do not need to defeat them at owning inexpensive square footage. Matching that price would mean ignoring the real cost of professional lighting, sets, sound equipment, backdrops, production tools, building access, utilities, cleaning, repairs, and insurance, all the things a customer does not see when they walk through the door. A high-overhead business cannot win a race to the lowest price. Trying usually ends with the business working more, earning less, and slowly losing the qualities that made it valuable.

And there are model photography events whose real draw is not photography at all. I have learned not to compete for that customer. That is not a failure to understand the market. It is a deliberate boundary, and knowing what you refuse to sell can matter as much as knowing what you offer. Every dollar is not compatible with every brand. There are forms of revenue that change how customers, models, business clients, neighbors, and professional partners understand a company, and once that perception shifts, it can be very hard to shift back.

This is the difference between saying “I cannot compete” and understanding “that is not my game.” Someone else may win on a particular scoreboard. They may be cheaper, larger, more decorative, or more accommodating to a certain kind of customer. That does not require me to adopt their scoreboard. If winning their game would mean damaging my margins, abandoning my standards, confusing my brand, or drifting away from my intended customer, then winning would actually be a loss.

Competition Can Make You Abandon Your Buyer

One of the quiet dangers of constantly watching competitors is that you forget about your own customer.

You start making decisions based on what another business offers instead of what your buyer needs. You add equipment your customer never asked for. You create discounts for people you never intended to attract. You build sets that do not support the work you want to produce. You expand services without asking whether they fit your capabilities. You fill the calendar with low-value bookings and then have no room for the clients you originally wanted. Eventually the business becomes a collection of reactions. It offers many things, but it no longer stands for anything.

An infinite-minded company stays connected to its buyer and its cause. That does not mean it never changes. It means the reason for changing is not simply that someone else made a move. The business changes because its customers have changed, technology has changed, the work has changed, or the company has found a better way to fulfill its purpose. That is adaptation. Buying something because the studio across the street has it is imitation. Those are not the same thing.

Twenty Years Changes How You See Competition

I have worked in this industry for more than twenty years, across photography, television, video production, publishing, model development, education, events, and commercial media. There were years when I had my own studio and years when I rented space from other people. That history taught me that the physical studio is only one part of the business.

A person can reproduce the appearance of a studio far faster than they can reproduce the knowledge required to run a sustainable creative company. Rooms can be rented. Furniture can be purchased. Backdrops can be ordered. Sets can be copied. Prices can be lowered. What takes time is judgment.

Judgment tells you which client is right for the business and which booking carries unnecessary risk. It tells you when an opportunity does not fit the brand, when to invest, when to wait, when to expand, and when to refuse a game that has nothing to do with your future. That judgment is part of the product, even when it does not appear on the invoice.

When I was younger in business, I probably felt a need to measure myself against every new photographer, studio, or publication that appeared. Experience changed that. I no longer need every nearby business to be beneath me in order to feel secure about what I am building. I can acknowledge that another studio may be less expensive, larger, more visually fashionable, or attractive to customers who would never choose my company. That is business. The infinite game does not require everyone else to lose.

This Is Not Complacency

Playing an infinite game does not mean getting comfortable or refusing to improve.

Experience becomes dangerous when it turns into entitlement. Being established does not guarantee that customers will keep choosing you. Longevity does not excuse poor service, outdated practices, neglected facilities, or a failure to adapt. I still have to earn the market’s trust. I still have to improve the studio, listen to customers, understand how photography, media, technology, marketing, and client expectations are changing, and give the right buyer a clear reason to choose 360ism.

The difference is that the improvement is guided by purpose rather than panic. I do not improve because I am afraid of what opened across the street. I improve because the people I want to serve deserve a company that keeps getting better.

The Right Measure of Success

The finite game asks whether I got more bookings than the other studio, whether I charged less, offered more equipment, built more sets, attracted more followers, or appeared busier.

The infinite game asks whether we are still creating value, whether we are attracting the customers we are best equipped to serve, whether we are maintaining our standards, becoming more capable, building trust, staying financially sustainable, and developing something that will continue to matter.

Those are different scoreboards. A business can look like it is winning the finite game while quietly destroying its future: booked constantly, underpriced, overextended, unable to maintain its equipment or pay its bills. Another business may turn down certain bookings, protect its positioning, invest carefully, and build relationships that produce far greater long-term value. The busiest business is not automatically the strongest. The cheapest is not automatically the most competitive. The company with the longest equipment list is not automatically producing the best work. The right measurement depends on the game being played.

Know Which Game You Are Playing

So, how did I feel about the new studio across the street?

I did not feel a need to prove it was inferior. I did not need to predict whether it would succeed or fail, and I did not need to answer it with a sale, a purchase, or a sudden change to what 360ism offers. I could respect another entrepreneur’s decision to enter the market while staying clear about my own direction. There may have been customers who compared the two spaces, bookings that could reasonably have gone either way, and areas where we competed directly. But my purpose was never to win every available studio rental on the block.

By the time I finished writing this, that studio had closed. I want to be careful about how I say that, because it would be easy to read it as the finite scoreboard settling the argument in my favor, and that is exactly the wrong lesson. A business closing across the street does not make mine stronger, any more than one opening made mine weaker. It just confirms that the scoreboard people were asking me about was never the one that mattered. The market moves. Names appear and disappear. What survives is a company that knows who it serves and keeps getting better at serving them.

My purpose is to continue building a company that appeals to a particular buyer, supports a particular standard of work, and advances a larger creative cause. That is the game I have chosen.

The wisdom is not in believing you have no competition. The wisdom is in understanding that every person who opens a studio does not get to redefine your business. I am not trying to win the block. I am trying to build something that will still matter long after today’s competitors, prices, equipment lists, and scoreboards have changed.