How I'm Rethinking My Service-Based Business Model

_{[Read time: 2.5 minutes]}

Since April, I’ve been rethinking (and reshaping) my business model.

Actually, it has been since I wrote this letter.

I have been thinking carefully about how to make sure it hits these characteristics:

• simple to operate

• clear to communicate (to myself and others)

• built with sustainable growth (not reckless growth)

• converts revenue into profit or reinvestment at a high rate

Oh, you know…just your everyday business wish list.

This wish list requires me to hold two identities:

• The generalist who works in/on the business

• The specialist who works for the customer

Without the generalist, I risk business just becoming an expensive hobby.

Without the specialist, I risk confusing everyone (and never attracting customers).

I don’t just want both; I need both.

Sidenote: It doesn’t matter if you have a 1-person or 10-person company → the ‘generalist that works in/on the business’ still applies. The bigger the company, the more duties are spread out, but it’s still a generalist identity that is just the sum of the parts.

So, my top-of-mind question is:

How do I reshape my model to communicate and deliver value to the customer (specialist duties) while ensuring the business is growing (generalist duties)?

I’ve settled on a simple answer — be ‘good enough’ at these 3 strategies.

• Customer acquisition strategy → How do I get customers to learn about and buy my services?

• Fulfillment strategy → How do I deliver value (efficiently and effectively) to the customer?

• Resource conversion strategy → How do I turn resource inflows (customers and revenue) into the outflows I want?

I wrote ‘good enough’ — so it would make sense to share my very subjective rankings:

• Great

• Good enough

• Poor

• Terrible

Being ‘good enough’ at customer acquisition strategy means I attract enough of the right customers.

Being ‘good enough’ at fulfillment strategy means I deliver a valuable customer journey (without adding unnecessary stress to my processes).

Being ‘good enough’ at resource conversion strategy means I can easily convert revenue (and new customers) into profit, reinvestment, or more valuable customers.

This all sounds super obvious (I know). But what’s not-so-obvious is that being ‘poor’ or ‘terrible’ in one means I’ll never get to thriving mode (even if I’m ‘great’ in another).

And, me personally (at this stage), I’m:

• poor at customer acquisition strategy

• good enough at fulfillment strategy

• great at resource conversion

I know (now) not to expect to hit ‘good enough’ immediately. It’s a natural progression of entrepreneurship — because most of us default to the ‘craft’ or ‘skills’ we learned in our careers before entrepreneurship.

My career has always been in finance and strategy in service industries, so I naturally ignored sales and marketing.

It’s the whole ‘what got you here, won’t take you there’ argument.

For ambitious types like myself, accepting ‘good enough’ is challenging.

But I’m not saying to stop striving to be great in all 3 (by all means, strive for it). I’m saying aim for ‘good enough’ so there isn’t a massive bottleneck preventing the business you want to build.

Business is a beautiful game, but it’s also just a formula. And that formula is just asking me to be ‘good enough’ at these 3 fundamental strategies.

Thank you for reading.

See you next week.

— Peter

P.S. I got something in the works. I’ll be sharing it with you next week.