The reason I emphasize customers first, literally, as in “get your idea in front of a customer first” is that it tests the motivation for the business start-up. If your motivation is awry, you will go off track.
I teach what it took me ten years to figure out while I was working for others, what thrives is the business that serves others by solving a problem. all products and services are a solution to a problem, there is no problem that cannot be improved upon. Wealth is not money in the bank, it is access to goods and services. Only the free market can offer ever widening array of goods and services, while ever lowering cost of access thereto. A free market gives us more better cheaper faster of anything new. Capitalism and communism are both about concentration of economic power, love of money, the root of all evil.
But the individual actor matters, as does his motivation.
if the motivation is serve others by solving a problem, the individual has a fighting chance in starting a business.
Self-employment is terrifying. it gets to the fear acted out in 1 Samuel 8, “please give us a king to fight our battles for us. We’ll give up our freedom for that, we’ll take endless abuse and misery for that.”
Not everybody wants that deal. Self-employment is the path out, the necessary personal transformation from pointless servitude to meaningful servitude.
The key motivation in business start up is passion (to suffer) over an problem you experience in a field you love, and then the test is do you find joy working on the solution as it relates to customers?
After quite a while of trying to figure out why people do not just leave their jobs and start their own company, I finally figured out at least one reason why not: security.
That sad part is it took me a long time to figure out the obvious. sigh. hence, I conceived of the theme of these last few weeks, start-up the personal transformation in the job you are secure in presently. Thus the blog entries below...
What very well ought to happen pretty quickly, even “going native” while employed by another, is you’ll act out on your motivations. So while on the boss’s dime, you begin to act as though you are self -employed. And as such, watch your motivations. I see some common themes in motivations:
1. “I just want to make enough to cover my lifestyle and enjoy the work. X looks fun.” So the idea is to pick a business where others seem to be doing well, and do it too. Two problems, “seems” and “is” are two different things. In this day and age of the tax loopholes, money laundering and subsidy, you cannot know what the reality is behind the facade. Read any of hundreds of examples of people opening coffee shops, only to find themselves descending into misery. Hint: cash businesses are often in fact just money laundering operations. If you are not laundering money, you are likely not going to survive.
Essentially, this is “me too.” What is missing in this scenario is the “how come” in relation to a customer.
2. Hitch a cart to a star. This is where you get in on the ground floor starting a business with the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Your chances are better with lottery tickets. Certainly partnerships thrive better faster than sole proprietors, but “thrive” is relative. In any event, where is the customer in this scenario?
3. Front running is to find an existing product and imagine that it would do well in another market. “If i get there firstest with the mostest, I’ll clean up.“ Again, lottery tickets are a better bet. Your effort will be 837,958,0581,295th attempt to introduce that item in the new market. Everybody has tried what you thought up. And you too will find out what everyone else learned: how come not. The motivation is not customer, it is quick “success.”
4. Pseudo-charity. People who want to start a business to help some people somewhere on the earth, “preserve their culture.” Usually they will specifically state they are forming a nonprofit. Two problems: there is no one anywhere who desires to “preserve their culture.” Everyone wants to move upward and onward, and very often they want what you got: iPhones and coca cola. The last thing they want is to keep making baskets and hunting monkeys with spears.
What they do want, is to redesign to serve a wealthy market so they can personally transform themselves in any way that they want.
These pseudo-charities are actually just a consumer item, something else to own. “I’ve got the waterfront home, the benzie and the land rover, I’ve got ritalin for my kids, I’m part owner of a winery, I’ve got a nonprofit preserving a culture overseas, I’ve got a health club membership... and so on.
The irony is it is the for-profit businesses that actually transform the world along peaceful and prosperous lines, and the NGOs are the agents of death and destruction. See Maren, the Road to Hell.
5. If I just made a killing, my life would be happy. Lottery tickets work on this motivation, and most people know the lottery thing will never pay off. In this the studying markets and data is endless. Trying to find the needle in the haystack, trying to find the next big thing, and jumping on it. In this the assumption is one is so smart they can think their way to success. You can only serve your way to success in the free market.
6. The final ill-motivation is the catch-all, entitlement. In this one is motivated by a sense that for whatever reason, race, class, education, messianic complex, whatever, one just deserves to win at business. This is the easiest to do and the hardest to spot.
But this, like the other ill-motivations, is smoked out instantly when your idea meets the customers. If that meeting goes badly, then you may reflect on this possibilities as the possible impediment.
In any event, the positive action of listening to your customer and adjusting to his demands will still push you forward. But overcoming the personal ill- motivations and converting to the more realistic and happier basis is the challenge. The most important thing in business is the customer, the hardest thing is the product. It is hardest because the product reflects you and your motivations.
Did I miss ill-motivations you have spotted?
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