Build Wealth by Climbing Tall Ladders
Find and seize unexploited revenue opportunities - size them up and start climbing!
I’ve been fortunate over the last two weeks to spend time with some exceptionally talented entrepreneurs, many of whom have nine and ten figure net worths. Here is what I’ve learned about building wealth from hearing their stories.
Find a tall revenue ladder, even if it is narrow. What are people willing to pay for? What is a third party (like insurance) willing to pay for that isn’t being utilized? The search for a market opportunity to build a new business is winding and difficult even for capable and experienced entrepreneurs. It often comes with some misfires and lots of exploratory attempts. You know you are on to something when people are eager to spend for your solution even before it is ready. Sometimes these opportunities are narrow and niche. A smart entrepreneur can visualize how tall the ladder is before starting the project. It is as tall as you can stack revenue quickly with a clear line of sight. Do people want to buy blinds online but don’t have good options? Do companies wanted trained staff for their firm but can’t find the right people? Do patients need a service that no one nearby is offering?
Climb up as fast as possible. Once you see the tall ladder, the game is to get up it as fast as possible. Your starting product won’t be great or perhaps even good. The challenge is finding a place to start and iterate up from there. What subsection of your possible customers need the solution the most? Which ones don’t have many alternatives? Use these to build a beachhead. Exploit the small windows of opportunity before they disappear.
Build an alternative supply of talent and automation that improves the product. Consider leveraging a big supply of talent from perhaps outside the normal bounds. Examples are recruiting high school drop-outs that are trained to be your army of plumbers, nurses that can be trained to perform and bill insurance for tasks that were previously the domain of physicians, new AI models trained on publicly available data and combined with lower-cost staff, and PhD students eager to earn some extra money by working part-time. If you are hiring the same staff as the incumbents or alternatives, you’ll face the same constraints and cost structure. Break out of that by finding alternatives. These creative approaches give you an advantage in operations/fulfillment/delivery of your product.
Once you’ve got a seat at the table with growing revenue and an improving product, the pathway to wealth is a lot more straight forward. Build and grow earnings, build management systems that don’t rely on you as the founder to keep the system going, and find a buyer. Good luck out there. Let’s go get it!