What’s Viable?

Seth Godin talks a lot about the smallest viable market in his newest book This is Marketing, which we are reading and discussing in Thought Readers.

He spends a lot of time focusing on the long tail, the niche market, and the smallest viable community you can serve in your business opposed to trying to serve everyone.

While reading, the question that came up for me was this: what’s the definition of viable?

If you own a business, making enough to get by isn’t viable.

Paying yourself less than a living wage isn’t viable.

Not having a few months worth of operating cash flow in the bank, isn’t viable.

Barely surviving, isn’t viable.

Too many business owners avoid learning the financial aspects of their business, and as a result, they end up serving the largest non-viable market and living on the verge of bankruptcy.

If you want to have a viable business you need to:

1) Understand what financial viability really means to you.

2) Learn how to sell your products and services at a fair market value, priced for profit, not to break even.

3) Know who your buyer is so you can serve the most viable market possible.

In last week’s blog I spoke about the woman who wanted to buy my dishwasher for less than $50 and expected that I had cleaned the inside of it too…

Stop serving the largest least viable market. You’re better than that.

And if you don’t know how to do this, I can help you.

The next Roadmap workshop is in May, and it’s never too late to readjust your business strategy so it makes financial sense.

My mentor told me years ago, if everything you do doesn’t scale to $100k within 18 months of starting, drop it and do something else.

Leave me a comment and let me know, what’s your benchmark for viable?

P.S. If you’d like to join the Thought Readers community to read and discuss more business books, I’d love to have you! Head over to ThoughtReaders.com and we’ll get this months book out to you right away!