Every successful business creates something of value. The world is full of opportunities to make other people’s lives better in some way, and your job as a businessperson is to identify things that people don’t have enough of, then find a way to provide it.

The value you create can take on one of several different forms, but the purpose is always the same: to make someone else’s life a little bit better.

Without Value-Creation, a business can’t exist — you can’t transact with others unless you first have something to trade. The best businesses in the world are the ones that create the most value for other people.

Some businesses thrive by providing a little value to a others focus on providing a lot of value to only a few people. Regardless, the more real value you create for other people, the better your business will be and the more prosperous you’ll become.

    The 5 Parts of Every Business
    Economically Valuable Skills
    The Iron Law of the Market
    Core Human Drives
    Status Seeking
    10 Ways to Evaluate a Market
    The Hidden Benefit of Competition
    The Mercenary Rule
    The Crusader Rule
    12 Standard Forms of Value
    Form of Value #1: Product
    Form of Value #2: Service
    Form of Value #3: Shared Resource
    Form of Value #4: Subscription
    Form of Value #5: Resale
    Form of Value #6: Lease
    Form of Value #7: Agency
    Form of Value #8: Audience Aggregation
    Form of Value #9: Loan
    Form of Value #10: Option
    Form of Value #11: Insurance
    Form of Value #12: Capital
    Hassle Premium
    Perceived Value
    Modularity
    Bundling and Unbundling
    Prototype
    Iteration Cycle
    Iteration Velocity
    Feedback
    Alternatives
    Trade-offs
    Economic Values
    Relative Importance Testing
    Critical Assumptions
    Shadow Testing
    Minimum Viable Offer
    Incremental Augmentation
    Field Testing

Offering value is not enough. If no one knows (or cares) about what you have to offer, it doesn’t matter how much value you create. Without Marketing, no business can survive – people who don’t know you exist can’t purchase what you have to offer, and people who aren’t interested in what you have to offer won’t become paying customers.

Every successful business finds a way to attract the attention of the right people and make them interested in what’s being offered. Without prospects, you won’t sell anything, and without completing profitable transactions, your business will fail.

Marketing is the art and science of finding prospects – people who are actively interested in what you have to offer. The best businesses in the world find ways to attract the attention of qualified prospects quickly and inexpensively. The more prospects you entice, the better off your business will be.

Marketing is not the same thing as selling. While “direct marketing” strategies often minimize the time between attracting attention and asking for the sale, marketing and selling are two different things.

Marketing is about getting noticed; Sales is about closing the deal.

    “Make something people want... There’s nothing more valuable than an unmet need that is just becoming fixable. If you find something broken that you can fix for a lot of people, you’ve found a gold mine.”
    Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, venture capitalist and essayist at paulgraham.com