Making Money is NOT a Business Idea.

Making money is not a business idea.

It’s definitely an objective but it’s not an idea, and it’s certainly not an idea that will sustain your business in the medium to long term.

I know this seems an obvious thought, so why am I wasting your time and mine? Let me offer a little context.

We help businesses to improve and grow, and we have seen and worked with a lot of businesses in almost every sector. With no exceptions, I can tell you how each one of our clients uniquely adds value to their customers. And it doesn’t have to be about the product necessarily. It can be about trust, reliability, service, the ease of doing business… etc. It can be about many things, but if you can’t articulate how you add value uniquely, you don’t have a sustainable foundation to profitably build your business.

Your business idea must answer two basic questions. Who do you serve? How do you serve them uniquely? “Let’s make hay while the sun shines” is not an idea; it doesn’t answer either question. You might well make some hay, but what will you do when the sun stops shining?

Recently we declined some work from an erstwhile cannabis provider. We declined it because they had no value proposition. They saw a potentially massive market opportunity and thought ‘we should get a piece of that.’ So they cobbled together some parts of the supply chain and wanted help in figuring out how to turn those parts into a whole. I will eat my hat if they are around in two years. I’ll eat yours too.

On the other hand, we have a client that manufactures toilet partitions and sells those into the commercial construction market. I can almost guarantee that if you’ve gone to the bathroom in an office building in Canada or the U.S., you have enjoyed the privacy offered by their partitions. Toilet partitions are a commodity item in a brutally competitive market. But our client’s customers will tell you that they like doing business with our client more than another other company they do business with, and not just suppliers of partitions. They can tell you exactly why, and it’s not an accident. It’s the result a meaningful and sustainable business idea and strong execution.

What’s your business idea. Who do you serve? How do you serve them uniquely?