Latest / GTM Made Simple / What Business Are You Really In?
Transcript
- Sangram here. Again, on the move. Today I want to talk about and ask [music] the question what business you really are in. Let me give you a quick story. I got two CEOs that I'm working with right now. And actually, as a matter of fact, both of them are doing some businesses that are super cool, super interesting. So, one of the business owner is someone who has a trucking business and his son has a lawnmower business and they're building doing lawnmower like they're doing about a million a month right now. What's interesting about that is he re reached out to me a few months ago and said, "Man, I'm bored." I'm like, "What are you talking about? You're doing a million a month. What do you need to be bored about?" And he said, "Well, I think I need to start this new business that I have this new idea that's going to help him to because he's into auto parts and Jeeps like I am." And he's like, "And and there are not many Jeeps available." He was going into it super passionate about it, by the way. I said, "Okay, well, that's good to hear. So, how does that work?" And he went through the whole business plan. it seems like a very labor intensive, challenging business to focus on. I'm like, all right. Well, I'm like, well, how much time are you spending on this million dollar a month business that you have for lawnmower in all the neighborhoods? He's like, well, I don't have too much. I have a crew and all of these things. There are some issues, but we're working through it, but I'm bored because it's the same business. I'm like, okay. I asked him this question, and I want you to ask this question, and I'll give you another example in a minute. What business are you in? So, I asked him that question, and he said, well, I'm in the lawnmower business. I'm like, no, dude. No, you are in the trust business. He's like, what? Tell me more. I'm like, look, I'm trusting you to come in our backyard, in our front yard, around our house to do lawnmower, right? Yeah. I'm like, okay. Well, what else can you do for me? Could you do pest control? He's like, of course, that's easy. All right. Well, could you do attract maintenance? He said, yeah, but these are all businesses that I can buy. I'm like, there you go. You don't have to get in one new customer. And with your existing million-doll customer, I promise you, if you focus and talk to every one of your customers today and go and figure out in the next six to 12 months, you will not only double triple your business, but you don't even have to get a net new customer to do what you're trying to do. He was like, "Wo, that's crazy. Are you real?" I'm like, "Yeah, that's how you think about it's what we call in the three-piece problem market fit, product market fit, platform market fit. What you have is a product market fit. The market is there, the product is great, you don't have a churn issue, people are retaining, what you need to go is from go from a product market fit to a platform market fit. So that's the story. Instead of trying to say that my business is boring, I don't have much to do or it's just taking more of my time. It's not as exciting, make it exciting. Do something that will drive and grow your business. So now he's working on that. And I see private equity actually doing the same thing. They're buying, gobbling up all these businesses that have clear retention, simple acquisition, and really an expansion strategy. So, I'm like, why don't you become your own private equity to do all this stuff? That's very exciting. If you turn your million dollar business to a $5 million month business, where adding new customers, isn't that? So, you got him super excited. So, the moral of the story on there is that passion projects really don't make money. What makes money is what makes money. So, you should focus on that. And you can use the passion project and do it, but don't confuse between what business makes money and what it is. And it's really what you need to be is excited about it. And he got excited about it. I'll give you another example. A friend of mine, we're at the church and having a great lunch Saturday morning. He was talking about, man, he has this incredible photography business. It was like number one in Atlanta. He showed me on Instagram and all how amazing he's doing. And then you know what? What happened? He said you know and I also have these partners um and and these partners because we are so flooded with business right now that he said our partners we started this new thing called partners where we keep 80% and give 20%. Like what you keep keep 80% and give 20% revenue to partners for referral like yeah if we refer another photographer in our industry because we're so good and our quality is so high we give them only 20% and we keep 80%. And I'm like, "So what do you think? What business you're in?" And he's like, "I'm in photography business." I'm like, "No, dude. You're in the marketing business. You are doing what most of these photographers can do. You have figured out how to create brand because you have a brand now. You can go and build a brand business." He has been in business for 5 years. He's worked really, really hard. He and his sister actually. And they both have built this photography business number one here in Atlanta and Instagram and everything top ranked. And I'm like, "Well, why not turn your business into a marketing business?" He said, "What do you mean?" He showed me all the stuff he does. I'm like, "Dude, you have an infrastructure for every company. What would photographers pay for you to give them leads?" He's like, "Well, I think they'll pay a lot because that's their biggest problem." Like, great. So, why don't you become a marketing business where you have all of this stuff and you just be the top brand for photography, for all kinds of events and activities and all that, and you give them leads. And instead of charging 80%, you make tears 20%, 40%, 60%, you know, make tears for people from premium to others. If they do great work and they want more commission, then here's what they do and they become a certified partner of yours. And if you can generate leads for them, imagine it's not a million-dollar business, it's a $100 million business. As a matter of fact, if you can figure that out and do that well, then you can go to different cities and actually replicate that exact model. and his mind just blew off. I just met him yesterday. He's like, "Dude, I can't sleep since then." The point is, what business are you in? Because if you don't know what business you're in, you're going to be either selling time for money or you're just compensating on something else or you might get bored. But if you figure out what business you're in, you'll be phenomenal. Like just in my last business, finish with this terminus, we were an accountbased ad marketing business. Now we the product was accountbased advertising. All right, that's what we focused on, accountbased advertising, but we call it accountbased marketing. And in the process, we acquired five companies and we built a $100 million plus business. So, I'm not saying all these stories of B2C or B2B. I'm just saying this is how business grows. You have to find a way to go from a problem market fit to a product market fit to a platform market fit. And in order to do that, sometimes you don't even need to add new customers. If you could go and expand just like my friend Son who is doing the on the lawnmower business or this photographer business where he thought he's in the photography business. A lot of us get tied into the product business but product is not the business. Product is a means to an end where you need to go and platform is where the money is. So figure out what business you're in and let's get moving.