The Main Blog
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Refresher – What Is Business About?
Business is all about providing solutions, i.e., bundles of products, services, and experiences that satisfy customer’s Job To Be Done. Business is NOT about you making something that gives you the jollies, where you then try to foist it on to customers. Business is NOT about you at all. Business is about the customer, it is about creating and providing solutions that customers want to tear out of your hands so that they can get their jobs done, problems solved, and their jollies provided...
Break-even Calculator
Introduction Assume that you want to start a burger bar, not unlike, but much better than McDonalds of course. How many burgers do you need to sell to cover all of your costs (both fixed and variable), and then, how many extra do you need to sell in order to make your target profit. The sales volume (number of units sold) where revenue covers all costs and where further sales will result in profit is called the break-even point. Stated differently, the break-even point is reached when your...
About The Banner Picture
The Thinker, is a bronze sculpture by Auguste Rodin. Rodin first conceived the figure as part of his work The Gates of Hell commissioned in 1880. [Wikipedia, September 2018]. When I first saw the statue, I was captured by the concept (in my mind) of a person thinking deeply before perhaps charging off on some wild escapade. And then along came Wikipedia and we can all delve into the history and learned interpretations of the work. It was through Wikipedia (a brilliant resource that my family...
The 9-Forces Model – In Brief
Please note: this brief post and the fuller discussion have been superseded respectively by:https://www.dontthinkcheck.co.nz/blog/the-ten-forces-model-in-brief/https://www.dontthinkcheck.co.nz/blog/the-ten-forces-model-industry-structural-analysis/ The Five Forces Framework (a model), “is a tool for analysing the competition of a business,” and was invented by Michael Porter, and “first published in the Harvard Business Review in 1979.” Wikipedia.org, September 2018. The original model is...
The 4-8Ps Marketing Mix
The 4Ps marketing-mix model is a tool “to help develop a package that will not only satisfy the needs of the customers within the target markets, but simultaneously maximise your organisation’s performance.” Key Management Models, Steven ten Have et al. The Ps stand for Product, Place, Price, and Promotion, and are often modified to Product (or service), Place (distribution), Price, and Promotion (marketing). The model can be used to not only look outward to the customer, but also inward...
Customer Value Equation
To assist with our understanding of how we affect the value our customers receive, the relationship between benefits and costs can be expressed as an equation. To learn more, please use this link.
The Role Of Luck
The role that luck plays in business success is very understated. When I studied for my MBA, the distinct (possibly false) memory I was left with is that if you have a killer product or service and you’re more cleverer than the next MBA at marketing and branding yada yada yada, then your success is nearly assured. I concede that a killer product or service (solution for a job to be done) is very important, as is being clever, as in clever enough to research, try, learn, try again etc., but...
Customer Value
We will speak frequently of value, as in “the worth of something compared to the price paid or asked for it.” oxforddictionaries.com, 2018. It is important to understand deeply what people value. People will exchange money, which they value, for products, services, and experiences which they value more. That is, if someone pays $10 for a loaf of bread, this means that the loaf is more valuable to them than the $10, otherwise by definition they would not have made the exchange. Perhaps the...
My Approach
The approach used by SMB is an evidence-based approach based on the principles of the scientific method.The principles of the scientific method go a little like this: 1. Develop Develop a hypothesis (fancy name for a guess) for a business. 2. Observe Observe an event or phenomena and develop a hypothesis or conduct an experiment by either making something or arranging an event based on a hypothesis and observe what happens. 3. Learn Determine if your guess matches with reality, i.e., is your...
Is this a Get Rich Quick website?
SMB is NOT another Get Rich Quick website. Sorry, if that’s what you were looking for, you’ve arrived at the wrong place. On the contrary, SMB is going to go to great pains to point out that: Overnight success normally takes a bit longer than you expect. Starting a business is hard work, probably much harder than you imagine. The failure rate for Small to Medium Enterprises (SME1) is depressingly high (approx. 50% fail in 5years2) resulting in a lot of wasted time, energy, and wealth. Building...