The Three laws of Entrepreneurship

If I had to distil 40 years of business activity into 3 simple to follow rules, I think it would these three.

My long time business partner thinks that number 3 should be first – but I’m a marketer. Unless someone wants to buy it there’s no point in having a business model.

So how do you find out what people want to buy?

Put baldly you have to talk to them. You have a set of things that you can do and things that you might do. They have a whole series of wants, needs and desperations. You have to hold a series of interactions with enough of them to find out what they want or need enough to part with sufficient money to allow you to provide whatever it is and still make sufficient profit to let you scale the business to whatever level seems right to you.

You can do this in person.

You can do it online by making a series of offers and seeing what people go for.

You can do it by using market research techniques.

I’ve used all of these over the years. What I discovered is that the market almost never wants what you want to give it. What it does want – if you’re lucky – is part of your offer mixed up with a load of things you only find out by the kinds of interaction we’ve just set out.

This is called co-creation.

It can be as complicated as two engineers designing a product together (one from the buyer and one from the seller) or as simple as “make it a bit bigger, do it in blue and take 10% off the price and I’ll give you an order for 12”

But your first job is to establish what you can profitably deliver.

The second law is all about following the money. I often think that the best market research comes from sales you’ve already made.  If someone wants it - they’ll buy it.

If it’s something that enough people will want to buy a business you’ll know about it quickly. So look out constantly for signs that you have a winner on your hands and be prepared to scale.

Which brings us back to the third law. Make sure you get enough money back soon enough to let you scale – at least a bit. Selling on line is good -you get the money back quickly.  Selling services with a 50% upfront deposit is good too.

Whatever you do you need to stay liquid – otherwise you’ll get bogged down before you can get moving.

Hope that’s helpful – look out for the next article.

And if you need help sooner you can always contact me via the LinkedIn system.