Saturated

 People love the idea of community but never the practice.

I’ve seen and heard a lot. Business owners. Promoters. Stylists. Entrepreneurs. Creatives. Everyone smiles around each other. Everyone calls each other “bro”, “sis”. Everyone says “support local”. But underneath all of that, a lot of them are quietly competing with each other in unhealthy ways. Comparing numbers. Comparing money. Comparing attention. Hoping someone succeeds but not too much. Not more than them anyway.

And the strange thing is most of them are operating in markets that are already oversaturated anyway.

Five events on the same night in the same city with the same customer base. Ten hairstylists offering the same services. Photographers charging nearly identical prices. Brands all selling the same aesthetics.

Everybody fighting over the same audience while acting like they’re dominating. Most are not. In reality the market just keeps splitting.

Some people would rather fail independently than succeed collectively because succeeding together means admitting they needed other people. For some people that feels threatening. Which sounds mad until you realise for some people the business is not even about making money anymore. It becomes identity. Validation. Proof that they matter.

“I own this.” “I’m the CEO.” “This is my brand.”

Yeah, but the business is struggling to maintain consistency. The profit margin is low. The customers are inconsistent. Now what?

Established businesses understand something people around me often refuse to accept. Sometimes working together makes more sense than constantly competing. When markets become overcrowded it makes sense to merge, combine resources and move together. Bigger companies understand survival better because they think long term. Sometimes it’s smarter to share infrastructure than slowly destroy each other fighting over the same customer base.

Everybody wants to be the face. Everybody wants credit. Everybody wants their logo bigger. Everybody wants to feel like they built everything themselves. Everybody wants to be the headline.

And honestly I think pride and the need to feel above others destroys more businesses than lack of talent ever will.

You can put four struggling promoters in one room and logically they should dominate together. Shared audiences. Shared marketing. Shared costs. Shared workload. Better production. Better consistency. But instead everyone wants to know whose name comes first on the flyer. Whose ticket link is going to get used.

Like be for real.

That mentality keeps people small.

Sometimes I look at nightlife and realise half the events could actually become something serious if people stopped trying to outshine each other every weekend. One strong event is better than four half dead ones spread across the city. Imagine this, I can name eight different brands all running almost the exact same type of event tonight in the same city.

Then people wonder why attendance is inconsistent.

Everybody is splitting the same crowd while pretending they are building something worthwhile. They would rather own 100% of something subpar than build something together.

Most people don’t even realise they are draining each other at the same time. The audience gets tired. The money gets spread too thin. Quality drops. Marketing becomes repetitive. Everything starts feeling the same. Everybody burns out trying to survive individually while pretending everything is thriving.

Then one day the business disappears.

Administration. Debt. Low attendance. Low sales. “Taking a break.” “Rebranding.” “Closing temporarily.”

When sometimes all they really needed was structure, unity and less pride.

People underestimate what happens when people genuinely work together. A strong network works better than one person trying to do everything alone. Promotion alone is exhausting. Funding alone is exhausting. Creativity alone is exhausting. Running a business alone is exhausting.

The strongest industries in the world are rarely built by isolated people. They are built through networks, shared interests and people moving towards the same goal.

But people feel threatened by collaboration because somewhere in their head working together feels like becoming smaller. So instead people continue competing in overcrowded spaces, slowly starving each other, while calling it independence.