Everyone wants to make money.
Every business wants to bring in billions.
Every startup wants to become Facebook or Google or Amazon.
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But these start-ups fail or close down few years after start. These businesses collapse or make meagre profit till the owner dies. They are missing out a lot of stuff but there is one major mistake all of them make.
If you’re starting a company or a business, it’s very important you note this so you would not end up in that same hole. I’ll give a short story to explain a point.
Eight months ago, I had a very crazy idea that I felt would generate millions of naira for me. The next thing was that I sprung into action and began to make plans on different ways on how I’d make money from the business. I was drawing up a profit structure without considering a lot of things. I wasn’t concerned about the value people would get from it. I was just concerned about how it would reach people, I was just concerned about how to make money.
Guess what? I got stuck. I got frustrated. I couldn’t see reasonable sources of profit. It went on for months and thank God I didn’t launch. So I had to dismantle all my plans and began to create a value system. Who are the people I’m reaching, what do they love, why do they love it, what can I do? How do I reach them? Would they want it this way? Would they want this or that? How would they react?
I was now more concerned about how my product would influence people. How it would be of benefit. When I talk about giving value, it could be products, ideas, information, time etc. As I continued to investigate and solve the glitches, I began to see lots of profit channels from it which was a hundred times more than my former structure. This is exactly what big companies like Amazon do. Amazon focused on customer satisfaction and then built a solid structure from it.
Most start-ups don’t have any product they’re offering and those who have products didn’t consider if the consumer wants them. They just want to make a profit. Those businesses would all crash. We’re in a very busy age and no consumer would spend time to buy what they’re not deriving satisfaction from either emotionally or physically or anyway. I have not yet launched my idea because I’m still working on the different values people can get or how they can get it but I’m quite sure it would be a success.
Note this: If Facebook was not able to solve or bridge the gap between social interactions all over the world, between different persons across countries, it would have failed.
If Amazon, Pepsi, and Coca-Cola did not focus on consumer satisfaction, they might as well have gone out of business.
All these are values and it is one similar key ingredient most start-ups leave out.
When building a profit system, be conscious of the value it’s giving. Your profit structure should bank on the value systems you put in place. Want to increase your profit structure? Then increase your value chain!