Another important lesson in business is knowing when you don’t know. If you can’t fathom situations where sharing about your niche would be incredibly detrimental, maybe your corner of Amazon reselling pet rollers doesn’t afford you as much entrepreneurial experience as you thought.
An easy example is a company working in a blue ocean sector, which is a huge reason to become an entrepreneur. Do you think someone whose company invested millions in R&D or IP development should go bragging about their market on Reddit?
How about a sector with an unusually high profit margin, for whatever reason? These exist all over and many businesses became huge by finding and exploiting these before anyone else.
You could argue that your IP should protect you, but anyone who’s experienced with IP knows it’s a bandaid or stopgap in many cases. You could argue if you’re Mr Hotshot McBusiness then you shouldn’t worry, because you’re the only competent person in your industry, but there’s a world where other competent fish moving into your pond could erode your competitive edge months or years earlier than it would have.
What is the profit margin in pet rollers like? Since we’re all in a sharing mood?
I started my business with probably the same dream that probably every other entrepreneur does, to generate potentially far more income than you can from being an employee. But over the last 10 years, for me the financial milestones never really felt special or gave lasting satisfaction. We went from doing 10k per month, to 100k, to 1M, to 1M net and beyond. Eventually I realized that the reason I love being an entrepreneur has nothing to do with the income. It’s about creating new things and having customers validate that the creations have value. Overcoming the constant challenges. The satisfaction working with and learning from my team. Getting positive feedback from clients and hearing that we are the best at what we do. Having a positive impact on the planet through our work. Creating a fulfilling career for our employees. I’m in my late 30s now and could retire, but don’t want to thanks to all those things.