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Are you building a valuable company? Such an intriguing question that gets to the heart of running a creative enterprise: Preparing for the famine in times of the feast. This isn’t just about money though. It’s about our time, attention, creative resources, ideas, and relationships. Building a valuable company means that you are not only creating value for others, but capturing it as well to fund and fuel what is next.

Quotes Referenced in this Episode:

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel with Blake Masters:

“…your company could create a lot of value without becoming valuable itself. Creating value is not enough—you also need to capture some of the value you create” (p. 23).

“But in 2012, when the average airfare each way was $178, the airlines made only 37 cents per passenger trip. Compare them to Google, which creates less value but captures more. Google brought in $50 billion in 2012 (versus $160 billion for the airlines), but it kept 21% of those revenues as profits—more than 100 times the airline industry’s profit margin that year” (pp. 23-24).

“…perfectly competitive markets achieve equilibrium when producer supply meets consumer demand. Every firm in a competitive market is undifferentiated and sells the same homogeneous product. Since no firm has any market power, they must all sell at whatever price the market demands” (p. 24).

Thiel’s answer is a monopoly, not in a negative sense, but “the kind of company that’s so good at what it does that no other firm can offer a close substitute” (pp. 24-25).

“If you want to create and capture lasting value, don’t build an undifferentiated commodity business” (p. 25).

Value-Based Fees: How to Charge—and Get—What You’re Worth by Alan Weiss:

• “What will be the difference in your organization at the conclusion of this project?”
• “What will be the effect on revenues (sales, profits, market share, and so on)?”
• “What if you did nothing?”
• “What if this project failed (or have these attempts failed in the past)?” (pp. 6-7)

The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life. by Robin Sharma:

“The 2x3x Mindset: to double your income and impact, triple your investment in two core areas—your personal mastery and your professional capability” (p. 70).

Questions to Consider:

• Are you building a valuable company?
• What value are you creating and keeping?
• How are you competing with other creative entrepreneurs?
• Do you focus on what you make or what you do?
• What is value in the world of creativity?
• How will you build systems that capture the value you create?

Two ways to think about value:

• Value is the measurable impact of your work on other people or organizations.
• Value is found in how you and your business are different.

Show Links

• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel with Blake Masters
• Value-Based Fees: How to Charge—and Get—What You’re Worth by Alan Weiss
• The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life. by Robin Sharma
• “Invest in Yourself” with Eric Thayne (GWTW287)
• Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by Mike Michalowicz
• Freshwater Bay Creative
• Photo by Rene Böhmer on Unsplash
• The (Seven Deadly) Curiosity Killers
• Support Getting Work To Work on ChrisMartinStudios.shop!
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter: The Curiosity Lab