Last year I promised myself that I’m never going to start another business from scratch – and I already broke that promise.
I started my first business when I was 18 years old, with a friend. We wanted to recycle the water from air conditioners and use them to water beautiful gardens. We thought restaurant owners, for example, would gladly pay for such a service.
We designed a logo, developed a website, created a neat looking folder and even printed a sticker the restaurant owners would stick to their glass door to show off their environmental friendly investment.
We used high school level physics to fix some problems we had in our tests like the systems causing the air conditioner to drip.
We even created a long term business model, planning to sell boxed fertilizer, because not many people know that but the water dripping from your air conditioner is called distilled water and that might kill your plants.
And of course it took less than a month for this business to flop. I thought the idea was brilliant and the product was genius.
And that led me to believe that growing a business is all about marketing.
Over the next 7 years I started several other businesses, businesses that actually had customers and basically supported my living – and it was hard.
I was working 16 hours a day 7 days a week, the businesses did grow but I was paying with extensive amounts of sweat, I also lost connection with many friends and family and I was starting to get fat.
Until one day something clicked – I created a new product with a great value proposition, and the phones were ringing, suddenly so many people wanted to buy my product.
Suddenly sales were easy, marketing was almost effortless, now the only problem we had was – “how do we deliver our product to so many people”
So my understanding developed from the lie: “it’s all about the marketing” to another wrong conclusion: “it’s all about the offer”
It’s all about the distance you can create between the perceived value and of course the value you actually bring and the price you charge.
That was 5 years ago.
In the first year I was incredibly busy building the system with which I could deliver to all the people who want to buy from us, and that business grows linearly on average by 50% per year ever since.
But I wanted exponential growth, so I spent 3 years trying to create more offers that are just as incredible with the hope of repeating the success – and I failed every time.
We had peaks of creating new products or services that sold really well – for a short period of time, but nothing as sustainable and as efficient.
I was truly starting to lose self confidence starting to believe I was just lucky and that I would never recreate this success.
With that came feelings of not being worthy of this and fear of losing the business that came with massive amounts of stress.
Last year something clicked again, growing in incredible speed, in the start of 2020 before covid hit the business more than tripled itself compared to the start of 2019.
Of course, I wasn’t any smarter and instantly tried to recreate the same offer to different niches, still believing in the lie that “it’s all about the offer”
And it failed, again and again.
So I sat with the most business savvy people I know trying to figure out what is going on – and my conclusion was clear.
Massive growth in business is not about doing one thing right, it’s about doing several things right, it’s that mix that is the secret sauce of exponential business growth.
Our human mind always tries to simplify things for us, so that we can focus on one thing.
and even though i am a huge advocate of only focusing on one thing at a time.
Some things are more complex, you still have to focus on one thing at a time but you will have to dedicate the different times to work on all the different parts.
From what I identified so far there are at least 5 different things that need to happen all in once in order for a business to explode and grow exponentially.
Of course getting to the point it all clicks can take a lot of time and effort, sometimes years of hard work.
So don’t be mad of yourself if you couldn’t figure it out yet, and also I’m telling you that if you aim there and are willing to stay determined you can do it.
And when it happens it’s a life changing experience and the leverage and position it gives you for future adventures are nothing I had ever known growing up.
But of course, if you just want to do some freelance work, doing work you love and find purposeful.
You can totally have some clients that are willing to pay you an amount that satisfies you and you absolutely do not need to get into all that business madness.
We all know money, over a certain point that allows your basic living will not make you any happier.
But if you are up to the challenge – what would be the 5 different things that you should focus on to create that long searched exponential growth.
Well, they are:
- A great product
- A great offer
- Great people who want this product
- A great way to communicate your offer to these people
- A great way to make these people trust that you can deliver on your promise
So of course every one of these parts will fill an entire video,
So if you consider watching these videos when they come out – simply click the subscribe button and that notification bell so that you can easily decide if you want to watch them as soon as they air.
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If you identified other key areas that are required in order to create an exponential growth in a business please share it down in the comments
Of course there are other crucial areas for a business to survive and thrive, such as managing the finances, hiring great people, having the right business model and strategy and so much more – in the channel there are many videos on most of these topics.
