FBC – 200 – How A David Like You Can Beat A Goliath? Special Episode #200

How A David Like You Can Beat A Goliath?

Today, I want to take a minute to thank you guys for following me for 200 episodes. A small milestones but still I don't forget everybody who's been on this journey with me from the beginning.

Today I am going to give you a super cool, funny tip that can help you get huge contracts. This is a technique I used and took it to the next level.

Sounds interesting? Then listen to today's episode.

So for today, I wanted to give you a tip.  So it's not exactly mine. It's not my tip, but I used it. And then I took it to another level. And it's something that will serve you. It will help you if you're trying to build a business. So this is helpful if you want to build a small business. This is going to be really, really cool and really awesome. It's really easy to do. All right.

So in nature, when you see a predator, you have a few options. I like to think about three options. First option is you fight. But I wouldn't recommend that. The Predator is usually way bigger than you. And your chances of coming out of this alive are very slim.

The second option is you flee, which is, to be honest, the most recommended path. That's what a lot of animals will do. Third option is you inflate. So you basically inflate so that you'll appear way scarier and way bigger than you actually are.

So people will deny you the opportunity to work with them because you do not have experience. But not having experience doesn't mean that you can't do whatever is required. It just means that you didn't have the opportunity to do it yet. So the lack of experience shouldn't stop people. But sadly, it does. Employers

will take someone else on who just seems bigger than you.  It's just that they look bigger. All right. So this is how to improve your chances of getting contracts by appearing to be bigger than you actually are.

And I applied it in my first business. I would contact clients and then sign off as the CEO. Because everybody loves to be a CEO, you have this really nice signature. But the thing is, the message you're sending to the potential client is that if the CEO bothers to send that kind of emails, it's just a one man game.  So it's actually harming you to contact people as the CEO.

How A David Like You Can Beat A Goliath?

So I changed my approach and created a business development manager. So when I was writing my emails, I was contacting people using this guy's e-mail address. So it takes you, what, two seconds to create an e-mail address on your domain. And so I created this guy.

First of all, I wanted to have my company look bigger than it actually was, because if you do have a business development manager and stuff, so you have like different levels of hierarchy and stuff, it looks like a more professional company.

The second thing is when I was negotiating prices, I had some leverage, man. I'm like a bob. What's the price of this? Can you give me something better? Oh,

I'll have to check with my CEO, which is another level of leverage.

I actually created a Google Plus for this business development guy, created a LinkedIn, created a Facebook profile for the dude. I tried everything just in case someone would go and type it because people do type your name on Facebook and stuff, too. So I actually took the time to create a profile for this person.

So anyway, if you want to build a company, like providing services and stuff, what you do is that you go on your domain. And in the back end of your domain, you know, you can create email addresses.

It's really easy. Takes a second. You will create an e-mail address that says sales, the one that says marketing, PR. Another one like support. You create loads of email addresses that you will put into the contact us section. And all these emails, they just get redirected to the same e-mail box, which is yours. All right.

So from the outside, it looks like they're dealing with this like mega huge corporation where they're like three hundred people in there. Whereas it’s just you.

So, again, the objective of this is not to trick people. It’s just a way to combat this unfairness of you know what? I don't know. You're too small. Well, dude, regardless if I'm small or not, I mean, these big corporations that you see today, they started somewhere.

I don’t think Google started with three thousand employees or something. No. They were in the garage, man. Don’t think these guys weren't good at what they do. They were. Right.

It helped me get, you know, quite a lot of contracts and all that stuff. And it can work for you too. And hopefully will get you a few big breaks to get you started in your business.

How A David Like You Actually Beats A Goliath, After 200 Episodes Of Watching It Happen

Here is the thing the giants in your market desperately hope you never realize. Their size is not only a weapon, it is also a cage. A big competitor cannot move fast, cannot answer one customer personally, cannot change direction in an afternoon, and cannot care about the small, weird, specific niche that could be your entire world. You keep trying to beat them at scale, at ad budget, at polish, which is the one game they are built to win. The real opening is speed, intimacy, and the freedom to be sharply specific in ways a corporation is structurally forbidden from being.

The way a David wins is never head-on. You go where they are too slow, too broad, or too proud to follow, and you serve those people so well that scale becomes irrelevant. After 20+ years and four businesses, including years serving Fortune 500 names like Coca-Cola and eBay from the inside, I can tell you exactly how slow the giants really are, because I watched it up close. That is the whole reason a lean operator can win. I tell that story in my story and dig into it across the Freedom by Choice podcast. For the strategy behind small players beating incumbents, Harvard Business Review is strong on disruption, and McKinsey Digital covers agility as an advantage. Stop fighting on their turf. Win on the ground they cannot reach.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can a solo creator beat a much larger competitor in 2026?

Pick a niche the giant cannot serve without slowing down. Speed, specificity, and personal voice are the three weapons giants cannot match. A 60-person SaaS team takes 6 weeks to ship a feature you can ship in a weekend. Exploit that gap with sharp positioning instead of fighting on breadth.

What specific tactics give small operators an edge?

Reply to every email within 4 hours. Ship features the same week customers ask. Run niche-specific webinars to 12 attendees instead of generic ones to 1,200. Build a community of 200 hyper-aligned buyers rather than a list of 20,000 cold subscribers. Intimacy beats scale in the early years.

Which markets are easiest for a David to dominate?

Markets where the giants offer generic solutions to specific tribes. Examples: time tracking for therapists, CRMs for solo financial advisors, automation tools for one-person Etsy shops. Pick a niche too small for a billion-dollar company to chase yet big enough to support 200 customers at 50 dollars a month.

How do you avoid getting crushed when the giant copies your idea?

Build relationship moats, not just product moats. A copy of your product without your voice, your community, and your trust will lose to you in the segment that already knows you. Most giants ship copies, ignore them for 18 months, and quietly sunset them when adoption stays low.

About the Author

Martin Ebongue is the founder of martinebongue.com, an online business and lifestyle design blog focused on helping aspiring entrepreneurs build location-independent businesses. Since 2014, he has been creating and scaling online ventures across multiple niches, from digital products and affiliate marketing to SaaS and content platforms, while traveling the world. He shares the real-world strategies, tools, and systems that work, with a particular focus on AI-powered automation for solopreneurs. Follow him on YouTube, X (Twitter), and Instagram.

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