I can’t tell you how many times the incompetence with which a company operated caused me to consider setting up shop as their competitor. Once I actually came close to doing this. A company I was trying to do business with got me so angry that I seriously considered a piece of real estate right next door. I thought I’d set up shop and put them out of their misery.

In the end, I figured it wasn’t worth my energy. A successful entrepreneur sees opportunity in everything but selects wisely.

If you are struggling to compete with larger firms in your industry, be encouraged. There is always room for you.

There is a good chance that your competition is not answering their phone in real time, not following through with prompt customer service, or not in touch with their consumer base. A lot of companies rely too heavily on the Internet for customer service but it is so impersonal. We are starving for personal service. There’s an opportunity for you to stand out!

When you are hitting the wall in your business, just remember customer service.Take for example, my last two car shopping experiences. More recently, I went to a dealer that I know. I had met the COO socially a few times, so I figured I’d patronize his establishment. The guy said he could get me any car I wanted. I told him exactly what I was looking for and he assured me he could get it. Two months went buy and I still hadn’t heard from him. Making a sale could not have been any easier for this guy. Why didn’t he just pick up the phone?

Similarly, I went into a dealership a few years ago and told a salesman what I wanted. This guy was the top sales person at the dealership and he assured me he would look for the model and year of the car I wanted, but he never bothered to do the search. I ended up going online and finding it myself. Not much later, that dealership was sold and their “top salesman” was no longer there.

When you are hitting the wall in your business, just remember customer service. There’s always room for you if you focus on your customers.

Let’s consider a macro example. It’s coming to light that British Petroleum violated numerous safety protocols in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s also being reported that BP has now had three major oil spills in the past five years, including a 2006 Arctic Ocean spill that, at the time, was compared to the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster. Did BP take their oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico for granted?

The advantage of being a little guy is that you can shift gears fast, on the fly, and fix problems immediately.No wonder there’s skepticism over drilling. Everybody says it’s safe, safe, safe and that it’s not going to happen again. When it does, however, the light of day is shed upon incompetence and safety violations that had been occurring for years. Not to mention corruption, as these big companies are found to have financially supported elected officials. Now our trust has been destroyed. I don’t trust them. Do you? I’m wondering what other companies are doing the same thing.

The advantage of being a little guy is that you can shift gears fast, on the fly, and fix problems immediately. Big companies can’t because of all the layers of management.

In a conversation about reputation, the owner of a small company and I came to the conclusion that we only have one reputation. He said, “Chuck, my name is over the door.” He took such pride that his name was over the door and in his reputation that there was no way he was going to allow it to be ruined.

As companies get bigger and bigger they tend to lose control of the intimate details that made them what they are. When that happens, there’s always room for you.

I can get to the owner of every company I use because they are small companies and they care about their reputation intimately. The owner goes to sleep caring about his reputation, he wakes up in the morning thinking about his reputation, and he conducts every element of his business as though his reputation—his life—is on the line, because it is.