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This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. We try and be your rapid, efficient place to get business news and business information. We hope you enjoy it and thank you for listening. Today's discussion is building great businesses, 10 key concepts. And this comes from a book that we've got coming out and we'll talk about at the end of the podcast that's coming out this June called Building Great Businesses, Create Momentum, Overcome Setbacks. And we've had a lot at Scale with Confidence, so we'll give you a pitch quickly. To pre order the hardcover, copy the book at Amazon. Again, building Great Businesses Create Momentum, Scale With Confidence, Overcome Setbacks. So here are 10 concepts we talk about in building business. First, in terms of getting started, what I've seen is there's a million different ways in which people get started on businesses. And so often a business that really grows to a serious business was not started with that intention. I mean, sometimes, yes, a business started with a very serious business plan, very serious intention, often funded by venture capital and so forth. But. But so many of the startups that I've seen are people sort of toying around with something, working with something, and then having the recognition that this can become something serious. The different businesses that I've started, the two I talk about the most. I built a serious law practice at McGuire Woods, a leading healthcare law practice, with great intentionality because I was intent on being sort of having my own client base and having some security in doing so. The second business I built, which became sort of what people really know me for, is Backwards Healthcare, a healthcare media company that became a very serious business and has done tremendously well. But it was started with the intention of being thought leadership. For my first business. It wasn't started to be a serious business that at some point I was able to say, oh my goodness, this is going great. I better invest and double down on this business and try and grow it into a real business. Again, million different ways to start a business. No absolute right way. I know of the two businesses that I really got going and then there's several others that I've served on the boards of or have started. Some have gone well, some have gone poorly. Some have started with great intentionality Building a law practice. Second intentionality came Becker's Health Care. After really being involved in it for several years and deciding, oh, this can be really a thing and we should grow it. So. So again, various different ways in doing it. The second thing we talk about in building businesses is what I think of as no business plan, simple business plan, or complex business plan, I tend to bias towards the very simple business plan. Here's where our customers are going to come from, here's the core product we're delivering, here's what we're trying to do, here's our starting expenses, here's what staff we need in a lot more. But I'm not a fan of the hundred page business plan that I see so many amateur business people put together that almost comes off of online or something like that. I'm a much bigger fan of almost the you have to have a business plan, but a much bigger fan of almost the advanced back of the napkin business plan. Where here's what we're trying to do, here's what customer trying to serve, here's what niche we're trying to be in and going from there. And I think I see so many businesses that make the business plan itself, the business we often talk about. That is that's like playing business versus being in business and what people actually being in business. And then you're going to adjust and pivot over time. But I do think you need a business plan. But I'm also fan of that business plan is something you ought to be able to put together within a week or a couple weeks. That should not become the journey itself. The third thing we talk about is, and so many of the things we talk about in the book and we talk about in business are things that come out of different takes I hear that I often disagree with. There's one concept that you see over and over, often on X, it's amplified about burning the boats. To make yourself great, you've got to be so engaged and so desperately at it that you have no other alternative that you should quote, unquote, burn the boats. And this comes out of a famous historical concept where a famous general, and I forget whether it's Napoleon or Julius Caesar, had talked about burning the boats. So people had nothing other to do than to try and win the battle. Now we're a fan of this maybe in war, although I'm not really a fan of it there either. In actual business, in life, we're not a fan of that. We're a believer. Yes, you've got to be totally obsessed and totally compelled by what you're doing. But we do believe in hedging your bets. Certainly myself, I kept a locker going forever, quite frankly. Well, I built a separate business that became the core of my professional life and ultimately shredded the two. But in whatever you're doing, if you're somewhat financially secure. If you've got a job, you're building something and you're doing the job well, you've got to do the job well. I think you're much safer hedging bets. And of course this may be different if you're a fifth generation wealthy person. I don't know, I'm not. But at the end of the day, we're not really a fan of this often talked about concept on the Internet of burn the boats. The fourth concept we talk about in building businesses is what we think about as product market fit. And products market fit really comes down to are you doing something for a customer that actually wants it. I often talk about in writing that when I'm doing my best writing, I'm doing writing for an audience of one. One person that I'm really writing for. So I know is I'm really touching one person. Product market fit is not so different. It's not an opaque idea of what you're trying to do. It's really trying to make sure you're solving a problem problem for someone. So if you're building a product for a health system, is there someone that really wants that product? We talk about businesses where there's not really product market fit as businesses where there's not really revenues is essentially what we think about is often being a hobby versus a business. In the way that you find product market fit is very early on in whatever business you're doing. You've got to constantly touch customers, touch the market, test things. And a lot of it's got to be hand in combat, really talking to and working with specific customers to find out if there really is interest in it. So that's the concept on product market fit. At the end of the day, without product market fit, somebody that really wants what you're doing, you don't really have a business. The fifth thing we talk about is how you start a business. And people talk about the gigantic customer landing, the whale, getting the elephant, all those kinds of things. And you're seeing a business literature time and time again. Most of us in business are going to start with small and medium sized customers. They're often the starting point and they're very, very important to really starting to develop what you're trying to do. Really trying to understand your product market fit, really trying to figure out how you deliver services and then over time you scale into bigger and bigger customers. In most businesses, sooner or later to make it really work, you are going to need larger businesses, larger customers. That's what really keeps the lights on. That's really makes it go. That's what allows you to hire the staff and teams that you need to have. So we talk about at the end of the day larger and larger customers. But you can't forget that most all businesses start with small and medium sized customers. There's exceptions that of course, but most of us start with smaller or medium sized customers. The sixth point is also a very important point and somewhat related we talk about in business, in any kind of business. I see it a lot in health tech businesses, in all kinds of businesses is this concept of point solutions versus broader solutions. The reality is most entrepreneurs start with a civic point solution that solves a very specific problem for a customer. And again, this is probably the way for most businesses to start. And this is the spot where if you're an engineering team or you're doing something for a healthcare company or whatever kind of system you're doing it for, there's something you do that's really good for your market that's very specific that solves it better than the big boys or the giants solve it. Then over time, even though you've started with point solutions, it's very similar to small and mid sized customers. At some point you likely have to go deeper and broader and it sort of is what it is. The seventh thing we'll talk about and we talk a lot about really three things. Great teams, great customers, great niches and niches ties into being product market fit and customer centric. But when we, when we try and select niches, it's small enough niches that we're not competing with the most competitive companies and systems in the world at the same time. Large enough niches that if you win, it's actually worth winning in and you can actually support the business you're trying to build. So it's sort of pitching niches, picking niches. And we are a believer that most great businesses are built around niches. Again, in my own experience, when I've built businesses around niches, I've been hyper successful. When I built niches businesses around more general areas, I've been semi successful at best. I'm a big believer in the niche centric concept of business. But again it's can you win in the niche and is it worth winning in? Are two of the defining questions for niche centric businesses. The ace thing we talk about in anything we ever talk about is this concept of the solopreneur is in my view largely a myth. Most all businesses are built with great teams. You ultimately need a team, and that could include whoever is going to be part of that team. But all the great entrepreneurs that have gotten so much acclaim, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Cuban, Elon Musk, they may be forces of nature themselves, but none of them have done it. Jeff Bezos, Judy Faulkner have done it without building great teams. And we believe building building great teams is fundamental to ultimate building great businesses. In my own experiences, when I've built great teams, I've had great success. When I have failed to build great teams, I've been very unsuccessful or very wishy wash. And success, I think a lot of it is you have to build great teams if you really want to be a great company and do great things. The ninth concept we talk about often is the founder's evolution. And I talk about this here in three stages. The first concept of the founder is it's sort of the old adage of does almost everything themselves, chief cook, bottle washer, whatever it might be, does everything. The second evolution is a founder to hire people. And those people aren't necessarily better than the founder, but they allow the founder to leverage him or herself so they can do more, serve more customers, get better. But this is not where the magic really happens, in my view. The magic really happens in the third stage, when the founders hired enough people and those, those people in leadership across the board do better at what they do than the founder could ever do it. And this isn't to belittle the importance of the founder. Very, very important. But if at some point Steve Jobs doesn't hire a better engineer or a better commercial expert or better commercial anything, at the end of the day, he stagnates and the company stagnates. When you start to hire people that do all the jobs that are out there to be done better than you could do them. And you have your role as a founder now. You've built a company that could, that could sort of multiply and grow in a way that it can't in the other two stages of the founder's evolution. Finally, the last point I'll make today in this discussion is we're a big believer in constantly stacking people and teams on your key efforts, your key customers, and about knowing your business, knowing your best people are, knowing your best customers are, and constantly doubling down around those things. Again, the concept is you're not trying to have lots of different people do lots of different things. Rather, you're having, you want to have a lot of people doing a few things that are very, very important to really be focused on the most important thing that the business is doing. Thank you for listening to the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. We hope you enjoy this. We ask you to do us a favor if you enjoy this. Please go online to Amazon pre order a hardcover copy of our book Building Great Businesses. Create Momentum, Overcome Setbacks and Scale with Confidence. Thank you for listening to the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast.