Good Afternoon
,
Norm Brodsky, who writes a regular column in
Inc. magazine, has a
very interesting story for us this week.
He and his wife stopped by a store where Linda Pagan manufactures and sells ladies' hats.
Linda makes some very broad-brimmed hats that many people like for outdoor events. Since she includes boxes with all her hats, she needs larger than normal boxes for these hats.
She took the "bull by the horns" and helped her box supplier develop the capacity to produce these outsized boxes. The supplier hadn't identified the market for such hat boxes. She did, and stepped up to make it happen, with benefit to herself and other marketers, the box supplier, and the customers.
This is the way business should be done - win-win-win! It's how a market economy generates wealth.
Through cooperative effort, everybody benefits. Linda, the box supplier and other milliners earn a profit by selling their wares for more than it costs to make them. The customers get the hats worth more to them than the money they pay for them.
So here's the difference between an entrepreneur and another business person. Many people start a "business" which is really just a job for them. They don't answer to a boss per se (except their customer), but they're selling what others sell, with few if any unique features.
Those who identify and fill a gap, or space for a product or service that nobody is offering, are entrepreneurs. Others compete with existing suppliers without offering anything new. They must compete on price, delivery time, or other mundane features of their product or service. They have much more competition than the entrepreneur does.
Enjoy
Norm's story about entrepreneur Linda Pagan. This insight may be useful to better understand and explain the difference between entrepreneurs and other business people.
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