Flush the Toilet: Young Entrepreneurs

From Freud we learn that our dreams quickly melt away in the mornings when we try to remember them because of the lack of connections. Dreams aren’t easy to remember because they are an incoherent string of images – there are no clear patterns to make connections with.

That makes a lot of sense. Think about which of the two strings of words would be easier to remember:

1. “The young entrepreneur got rich because he was determined to do so”
2. “so was do to determined rich got entrepreneur young remember the”

Obviously the first string of words is much easier to remember because each word directly connects to the next. When things add up, they automatically have more value in our minds. We are able to remember them. We are able to make sense out of them. And it removes all the guessing and confusion.

I believe that the same concept can be applied to our businesses. When you start a company, your subsequent ventures should have some sort of relation to the previous one as opposed to creating something that can’t directly empower the “original” concept in some way.

So for instance say that you started a business around pornography. People came to your site to see naked pics of beautiful women and they even paid for a monthly subscription to see premium images. Now what would make more sense as your next move: creating a magazine focused around the women on your site or starting a vegan recipe website?

If you answered the former, then pat yourself on the back. If you answered the latter, then please proceed to unplug your computer and throw it out the nearest window, go to bed for the night, sign back onto my blog tomorrow morning on your friend’s computer, and re-answer the question.

As a young entrepreneur, you have to understand that you’re not playing a simple game of checkers every time you start a venture. Wake up, you better be playing a well thought-out game of chess, my friends.

When you start a business your next move should increase the position of the move prior. This isn’t a game of checkers where you can jump all over the board.

So to return to the example of starting a porn site, as you now know, your best move would be to create something that is going to leverage your original service, which would be to create the magazine. Then maybe after that you’d create a line of clothing that had images of the hot women from your site. Then maybe you’d start a podcast with interviews of the women from the site. Then maybe you’d start a blog for each woman of your site so that your readers can stay in touch with them.

So you see where I’m going with this? There is a common denominator here, and that’s the “original” service of the “women” that model on your porno site. Each service is building upon the other and reinforcing the other. Synergy, my friends!

So even though your business is focused on naked women, you know have many “mini-businesses” focused around that original idea. And it’s beautiful because each service is inter-connected; it’s all a part of the same web.

Now when someone thinks about your business, they aren’t going to be confused as to what you do… they’ll easily understand that you’re in the porn industry. There will be no second guessing, no wondering, and no pondering.

That’s what creating a strong brand image is all about. The entrepreneur who builds an empire of inter-connected businesses is the entrepreneur who is going to have the largest and most powerful business.

Keep your businesses coherent and connected in meaningful and logical ways and watch more people flock towards your company and watch the beauty of such an amazing interplay unfold into something great.