Jake Thompson reminds followers to Compete Every Day

In order to influence, one must be able to motivate. In order to remain motivated, one must not lose sight of the end goal. Whether it’s bodybuilding, launching a business, or simply finding peace within oneself.

Compete Every Day wants to help each of its followers and customers remain focused and motivated.

“Compete Every Day is a mindset for life,” founder Jake Thompson says. “The brand provides positive motivation and educational resources, through clothing, workshops, keynote speeches, and media content to help people stay motivated while pursuing their career, fitness, and life goals. But ultimately, it’s a mindset that every morning you’re going to take a step forward in the pursuit of your goals, relationships, and best life.

Jake, who prefers the title Chief Encouragement Officer, launched Compete Every Day after years of working as a freelance marketing consultant. He wanted to make a positive impact in others’ lives, and thus, Compete Every Day was conceived.

“As I shared my vision, I saw that the tagline and message stuck with people differently, but still stuck,” Jake says. “I knew at that point I had something, but it wasn’t until I was ‘in the weeds’ of building the business that I fully grasped where I wanted it to go. We’re now in that direction with a full-focus on keynote speaking, workshops and resources to help people build their mental toughness, leadership skills and compete for their best careers and lives.”

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Although Jake maintains a positive and optimistic social media presence, he admits that social media can be draining sometimes.

“I feel anxious and mentally cloudy if I spend too much time scrolling,” Jake says. “So I’ve intentionally set up safeguards to make sure that when I log in, it’s for engaging our following. In the past, I would spend hours ‘chasing down the rabbit hole’ online and the more I did it, the less use it would serve. It’s easy to get caught into a constant ‘comparison’ trap of comparing your entire story with someone’s highlighted ‘perfect’ picture.”

In order to remain positive and motivated, Jake believes in approaching his goals one step at a time. “At this point in the year, I believe close to 85 to 90 percent of people have given up on their 2019 goals,” he says. “Most of them quit because they were too concerned about how ‘far’ they had to go; how much weight they had to lose, how many deals they needed to close, and when the year started more difficult than they anticipated, they quit. But when you take the focus off of the goal and instead focus on the daily process—plan your meals for the day, make five sales calls, read one book chapter. Turn your focus onto things that you 100 percent control: your actions, your choices, your attitude. It’s easier to maintain positivity when you’re not distracted by what you don’t control.”

While Jake’s goals with Compete Every Day are to motivate and inspire, he doesn’t consider himself an influencer. With every piece of content he shares, he wants to share truthful messages.

“Yes, my brand is motivational in nature, but it’s not about just believing something great will happen to you and then—poof—it happens,” Jake says, “It’s about doing the work, embracing the process, and seizing the results. I work my hard to make sure people see that it’s, one, more than a t-shirt company, and two, that there’s substance to every message we share.”

Originally published as part of the May 2019 "Influencers" feature