For many years I've been asking myself the question, what is value anyway? As time has gone by this question has allowed for more money-making opportunities than anything else I could have imagined. If you took time out and looked up value in a more economic sense, you would likely find a word that economists call utility. Utility value is basically the value that someone expects to get by obtaining something or using something. Or it could be the feeling of satisfaction they get from it. Utility and utility value are important things to keep in mind. It is important because this leads the mind to find those opportunities where we could potentially create value and make therefore money. The idea of value is a process.
Despite widely held belief as humans we have a predictable process that we go through when we deem something of value. If, for example, I have a specific problem, as it gets bigger and more urgent, the value of solving it goes up.
According to marketing business consultant Eben Pagan, there are specific times in our lives where we have a big pain and urgency, or a big fear and frustration, or a big desire and want. For something. When those emotions are at their highest, whether it be in a fear, in a problem, or whether it be an aspiration and a want, that's when a solution, or a product, or service that solves our problem or gives us what we want, has the most value. Because that's when we're going through the process inside of ourselves as seeing the problem getting bigger and bigger, or experiencing it is getting bigger and bigger. Value goes up as our need goes up, as the urgency for something goes up, as our emotional fear, or emotional desire goes up.
Bringing things back to business, the most value is created when a problem, or pain is solved, especially if there is urgency involved. People/customers pay where there is problem and pain. This is where the money is made. When you compound problem and pain with urgency, it dramatically increases the probability of this area of value being a good money-making opportunity for you and your business.
If you have a product and/or service that remove problems and pain, you can create a lot of value. A good example of this is pest control. Let’s say you found out you had mice in your home. You would have a high emotional need to get rid of them. When the pest control person comes to your home and they say, I can get rid of these mice, it almost doesn't matter how much it costs to get rid of the mice.
The marketing and sales of products and services is a very high value activity in business as this is what creates customers. There are essentially two different areas of value creation. One is products and services and the other is marketing and sales. It comes down to products you offer and the marketing of those products. More specifically, creating products and services that take away problems and pain.
The other way you could create value is by delivering what people desire, then marketing and selling these products and or services.
That said, it is a good idea to invest your time in creating products and services that alleviate problems and pains and/or give people what they desire and focus on marketing those products.
All the other things that do not add value, can be and should be outsourced. i.e Accounting, admin, and other related tasks.
The logic here is if you only invest your time doing only those things that create the most value, you would have spent most of your time doing the things that potentially will have created the most money in the long term. Since the very game of business is about creating value and money, you want to focus on doing the things that contribute most to these things. And these things are creating high value products and marketing and selling these products. This is 80% of the game.
It is very important that you create a lot of value if you want to create money. It is very important that you work on your products and services, creating high value products and services, and then work on the marketing and selling of those products and services if you want there to be money in the bank at the end of the day.