Well today was my last day at Ericsson. A little over 4 years service to this Scandinavian company. Now what?
Over the last 8 years I have built two companies from scratch. Zero to greater than $1m AUD in annual turnover. Mind you both companies are not doing greater than $1m in annual turnover now but that is a different story! So what I intend to do over the next few weeks is build a business but instead of renting office space, hiring staff and carrying a lot of overheads I’m going to build a business with the following parameters in mind:
- Mostly online
- Build with virtual architecture that is transparent and cheap
- Use open source as much as possible
- Carry minimum inventory (strive to drop ship)
- Create an automated vehicle for generating revenue without spending a lot of time i.e. build a business that runs on autopilot
- Own a business but spend minimal time on it
Sound ambitious?
So off the top of my head it needs to be a product business. Avoid the services per-hour model as it doesn’t scale. To put a business on autopilot I need to avoid direct customer contact where possible – hence another reason to steer away from a service business. To narrow the field of potential products I’ll look to test a product that costs no more than $500. I’m not the type of guy that invests and hopes for the best. I will do smart testing, smart positioning and make sure my distribution is up-to scatch. Further I will limit wholesale distribution so as to maintain a consistent profit margin.
OK so I’m going to pick an affordable niche market and attack it. The order to start a business is 1) find a market, 2) define the customer 3) then I’ll find or develop a product for them. It is more profitable to be a big fish in a small pond than a small undefined fish in a big pond.
Stay tuned for progress.
