What are you building?

It might seem like we are all building completely different businesses. You might be a trainer, I might be a coach and others might be running retail stores or affiliate marketing campaigns. And, whilst they are different businesses in lots of ways there are three things that every business must build to be successful.

The good news is if you are already in business then you’re already building all three of them. The challenge is whether you are building them deliberately and powerfully, or poorly and unconsciously.

The Essential Thing

If you’re in business, any business, then you’re building capital. That’s it. All businesses build capital. We’re all capitalists regardless of whether you’re running a not-for-profit, a listed company or working as a sole trader.

Capital is any resource that enables you to build wealth.

All businesses are like trees and capital is their seed. You need to plant it, nurture it and care for it if you want it to grow.

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The Three Essentials

The three main types of capital that each business builds are: money, ideas and people. To build your business you need a combination of all three:

• Without money you don’t have a business.
• Without ideas you have no product or services
• Without people you have no clients, suppliers or employees.

Your business model reflects the balance of these three types of capital.

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Money

When we talk about ‘capital’ most people insta

ntly think about money. Financial capital is generated as a payment in return for the value we provide others.

Your business model is based on how you create, capture and deliver this value. As you might expect, the more value you create the greater the potential income you can create.

Here are three questions for you to consider to grow your Ideas Capital:

• Q: What value do you create for your clients?
• Q: How do you deliver this value?
• Q: How can you increase the value you provide?

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Ideas

Every business starts with the same idea: I’m going to start a business. And, from this fleeting moment of genius or madness we create and build numerous other ideas. For instance:

• I’m going to call my business…
• I think I should write a book!
• Let’s turn that into a business system.
• On our website I’ll write a blog…
• I think we should create a product for business experts…

Ideas are part of our endless stream of thoughts. I bet you just thought of something after reading that! And, again! The key to building your idea capital is to give them some ‘form’. Like our business model, we can create, capture and deliver the value from our ideas when we turn them into something. For example:

• At the least write down your idea to capture it
• Perhaps discuss it with a colleague to expand it
• Maybe it deserves to be turned into a plan so you can build it
• It might need to become a physical thing like a printed report to share the value with your client
• Or it might become a digital tool like your website or an app to deliver value to your community of fans

Here are three questions for you to consider to grow your Ideas Capital:

• Q: How can you create more and better ideas more often?
• Q: How can you capture your ideas more effectively?
• Q: How can you deliver value from your ideas more effectively?
  

People

At the end of the day, business is all about people. I help you, you help me and the world goes around.

The obvious aspect of people capital in business is our team and our clients and customers. This is the essential part of marketing and selling your products and services.

Whilst most of us engage in sales activity on most days, there are other aspects of building your people capital worthy of your attention. For instance:

• Meeting new people
• Hanging out with more of the right people
• Having powerful conversations to deepen relationships
• Helping people without trying to sell them
• Providing value to the communities that you are part of

Again, it all comes back to value. What value are you providing other people is a question that is assessed by them, not you. And, that’s the key to growing your people capital – find out what other people want, need and desire and help them fulfill this.

Here are three questions for you to consider to grow your People Capital:

• Q: How can you meet more of your ideal audience?
• Q: How can you deepen the relationship with more of the people you already know?
• Q: How can you partner and collaborate with the people you know and trust?

COMMENT: Which of the three essential elements of business capital are you most focused on? And, what can you do to grow all three?