Creating The Perfect Business
Creating The Perfect Business
How do I know if my business idea is worthwhile and I should commit to it?
Many people are in really, really crappy businesses. You're having a very hard time because it's not a good business. You have to be honest with yourself about that. If it's a good business that you're in, what you need to do is you need to look at the offer. You need to look at what do you offer and why is it different.
My nephew came to me and he wanted to buy a Turkish towel company. So I said to him a very basic question. What is your differentiator? There are 8 billion Turkish towel companies and nobody cares what Turkish towel they have in their house. No one could give a crap what company it's from. If it feels good, it looks good. Why would I buy your Turkish towel over anyone else's Turkish towel? And he never had an answer for that basic question.
You have to be honest with yourself. Is your pizza actually going to be better than anyone else's, or maybe your location is very special? There has to be some differentiator that makes it worthwhile. If it is, and that's true, and it's really been figured out that this is a good business. Then you just got to grow a pair of balls and you just got to fight.
Why am I not selling things? How can I be a better salesperson?
Passion has to happen when you're selling yourself and you're selling your product. If you believe genuinely in your staff, and genuinely believe it's good for people, your staff will have that passion. So if you have people working for you, or even if yourself, you're a salesman and you're not successful, it's because you don't honestly believe it's good for that person. If you believed it was good, you would fight to the death. The lesson is that if you have something good, you need to be passionate. People feel that passion and they'll believe and know, okay, he's passionate because this is really great for me.
*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.*
