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Why Candles? How to Find Joy (and Maybe Profit) in a Saturated Market.
Any student of business would tell you to steer away from overly saturated markets. It’s necessary to have a ‘USP’ or a ‘niche’ to have success – and strictly speaking, they are right. It’s hard to make profits when you’re competing against so many others, and even if you can do that it’s hard to significantly scale if your model and product is replicable. But frankly, I don’t care about any of that and I’m betting my savings that I’m right.
Principles of Business (I think you can ignore)
A few years ago, I read ‘The E-Myth’ which is widely acclaimed as cannon reading for small business owners. It essentially advocates for a franchise business model where processes are systematised to the point of replicability so that you can function as a CEO and your business runs itself without your direct input.
The book distinguishes between different roles in business and helps entrepreneurs to transition from “technician” roles (like candle making in my case) to working “on the business” instead of “in the business.” It promises that this is the key to making scalable and profitable businesses in a world where 80% of small businesses fail (according to the…
