Building a Business: A Metaphor

A metaphor.

The platform we are building has a footprint, think of it like a street in a small town. As we add to our main product, we build it higher. Adding more program developers adds floors to the building – for they are working on the product. More time spent adding features, adds floors to the building. Fixing bugs will add floors to the building.

If we put all of our time into the Product, we end up with a sky-scraper. This is not a bad thing, in this metaphor, but it shows the imbalance, when compared to the other sections of the business.

For the company to succeed in the marketplace we need to build horizontally. Email marketing; Content marketing; Social media; Face-to-Face engagement; Talks at investor forums; Engaging potential customers. Each becomes a building that we start construction on.

The first blog article we write becomes the foundations for another building. The more we invest in writing blog articles, the more solid that “building” becomes, and the taller we can build it.

Each “building” we add will extend the footprint of the company. We start to build in different places, and invest in many buildings. We start to build our own street, heading towards our own city, building by building.

Taking steps outside of the product – adding new buildings – is imperative to success, because it builds our reach. It extends our worth beyond a single “investment” and – shows potential customers that we have built more than the product. It is something more to engage with. It is a richer experience.

The longer we wait to start these new buildings, the further behind we get. A business is worth more than a product.

The product is not “everything”, yet often we think of it as the most important.

Photo by Lucas Franco on Unsplash