Sarah Clarity Studios

Learning and Imitating the Best

“Sarah, we do our best to study the models of success that are out there, but no one looks like us. We have no one in our region who knows the secret to these things. We look. We admire. We study. Is it possible to advance when we practically have nothing?”

When we are in a situation where we are looking at something that a leading company has produced in the hopes to learn and imitate that company’s product or possibly success, we can get stuck.

What is that material?

This is broken. What was it like when it worked?

Here’s a working example. This looks old compared to the broken one.

What are these wires? Is that a chip?

If you are aiming to learn from a tangible product, your questions may be similar to the above.

It is just as hard when you look at something online:

How did they make that?

Was that manual? Or did they use AI?

Which AI model did they use? This looks like A, but they did it like G. Oh God.

Did they work for A? Have any of A’s products? Used it? I mean, it’s everywhere…what about G? Well, I mean, everyone uses G, right? Everyone?! How did they put that feature in, like G? That didn’t happen with just AI. I can’t believe this is like the lovechild of A and G. Why would you design it like this? Who is this person?!

When we look at the websites of others, especially companies, we notice when features are adopted, swapped, or just plain slipped in under our noses.

The more you know, the more agitated you become.

The less you know? Just bemused. “What are we missing?”

The world of art is the same: How did they paint that? Did they use a different brush? What program is that? That’s not P. It can’t be. Is it a knock-off? Can’t be. How did they paint that? Did they use a filter or not?

When you are looking at a model of success for yourself or your company, what are you looking at?

Are you looking to see what you need to learn in order to build it?

Are you looking to see what business connections you would need to see it?

Are you trying to recreate it or come up with something similar?

Are you concerned about other competition?

Take note of your emotions.

If you are discouraged, it may be because you are in a region that is “behind” or just doesn’t produce products like the companies you are studying. What could you study anyway, to succeed? You learn that the founder of the company dropped out of university, and you think, “but I graduated Cum Laude. What am I missing? Is it money or education? I don’t know.” You wonder if it is some secret knowledge. You wonder if you can pay for it somewhere. You scour all of your sources, and no one who is trying to help you knows. What do they know? How did they build this? And we learn that our region is mined for the very secret that makes what is broken in our hands. How?

If you are angry or upset, it may be because you feel like there is something about this product or page that you have observed that makes you feel threatened. Unexpected and unforeseen competition. It’s not from the usual competitive areas that you are familiar with. Never showed up on your radar…until now. You show it to your friend who is in another region, and they laugh saying, “don’t worry, it’s not in any major sectors. They’re not a company. Take it as a compliment!” And you just get more mad, because you feel like you are missing something, and your friend has a reputation for being blindsided by new startups.

This is natural, and in both cases, there is no clear answer. We search and try to find out what, why, how, when? And there is nothing in our readily available knowledge to tell us.

In these cases, the question becomes, what is it that you really want to learn?

Do you want to learn to build? Or just to know?

Do you want to see if this new product is really A plus G? Or just feel threatened?

The answers are usually quite honest, like below. It’s always a personal answer, never objective, always subjective, as all personal things are.

“Even though we are discouraged, Sarah, I am inspired to take a loan, so I can take a class in entrepreneurship. I am told that this is not the only innovation that can be made, and I want to innovate something. This was just inspiration for me to grow.”

“I don’t know, Sarah. It doesn’t inspire me at all. I don’t know what it means. I see it, but I don’t like it. They’re going to be competition. These are the early signs. No one sees it yet; I don’t like what I see. I’m telling my partner about this so we can prepare.”

Imitating the best often brings growth, a rise in competition, and innovation.

Learning the best does the same.

If you recognize something in the waters that you have not seen before, and you find it to be better, faster, stronger than what you have built, then it would be wise to consider what you can do to improve, speed up, and strengthen your product and offers so you are not overtaken in the future by something others laughed at but you were acutely aware of. It is better to be laughed at by friends but prepared, than to shrink back and lose everything you have worked for in the past.