Business Fundamentals You Need to Know as an Inspired Money Maker

Somewhere along the process of making the transition towards doing what you love, you’re going to need to address and understand the basic fundamentals of business.

Regardless whether part of your plan is to start your own business, or to work for someone else as an Inspired Money Maker, it will still give you a lot more perspective to understand the fundamentals of how a business works.

By understanding the basic fundamentals of business, you’ll be able to better position yourself for success as an Inspired Money Maker. For example, lets say that your passion is painting beautiful landscape pictures and your dream is to be able to spend your days painting and then to have a gallery or several galleries display and sell your art.

In that sense, you may think that knowing about business is irrelevant to you because all you do is just paint the pictures and sell them to the gallery. However, what you’re actually doing is that you’re outsourcing certain business processes to the gallery. Essentially, you are utilizing certain business processes that the gallery has already established to be part of your own. The challenge with that is that your success then becomes co-dependent on the business practices of that gallery as well.

Let me explain by first describing the basic fundamental functions and requirements of a typical business.

At the very basic level, the function of a business is to provide a service or a product to a consumer. A business is generally broken up into several units which all work together to form the business and allow a product or service to be delivered to a consumer.

What are the basic units and roles found within a typical business?

Owners / Leaders / Management Unit

A business can be owned by a single individual, a group of individuals, or by another business or businesses. The owner(s) of a business may or may not have anything to do with leading / managing the business. In the case of publicly traded companies for example, the owners (shareholders) appoint someone else (a CEO) to lead, manage and run the operations of a business. Of course the task can also be sub-divided amongst many others.

Regardless how many owners there are in a business, there is always someone who owns a business, and someone who leads/manages/runs the business. If you run your own business, then you are the owner, leader and manager of that business.

Sales and Marketing Unit

The sales and marketing unit is responsible for everything involved in the process of getting people or businesses to purchase the product or service of a business. There are many ways in which this is accomplished. Things such as creating an identity for the business, building brand awareness, advertising, conducting research into the buying habits of consumers, packaging, direct and indirect selling, etc. are all part of the responsibility of the sales and marketing unit.

Product and/or Service Creation, Production or Acquisition Unit

This unit is responsible for the creation, production or acquisition of products and/or services which will be sold to the consumer. In the example of the painter above, when the painter paints the painting he is acting as the creator of a product. He combines other products such as an empty canvas and some paints to produce a new product more valuable than the original items he purchased. Someone might purchase his painting for $10,000 even though the cost of the canvas and the paints only adds up to $50.

The gallery that might sell his painting doesn’t produce the product it sells, it simply acquires it for a price and re-sells it for more.

Customer Service and Support Unit

This unit is responsible for providing support and service to the consumers. This may happen in person, over the phone, via email, live chat etc. Customer service and support typically takes over customer interaction once the sales department completes the sale. Of course the sales department may still be in communication with the customer after the sale is done, but typically it is the service / support department that takes over so that sales can focus more on selling more products / services.

The support unit can also function as an internal support unit, such as for example in the case of an internal technical support unit that handles the setup and support of a companies internal computer and technology systems. The only difference being that the customer is an internal company employee instead of an external customer.

Administration / Finance / Accounting Unit

A business will also have a general administration / finance / accounting unit which will be responsible for administering the day to day operations of a business, managing the financial sides of the business and for accounting and reporting the progress of the business.

Other Units

Depending on the size of a business, there are of course many other units that a business may have such as a Human Resources unit responsible for hiring and managing employees, a Legal unit which handles the legal side of running the business, an Investor Relations unit which communicates with shareholders of a business etc.

However, what I wanted to focus on is just the very basic five business units which are:

1. Owners / Leaders / Management Unit
2. Sales and Marketing Unit
3. Product and/or Service Creation, Production or Acquisition Unit
4. Customer Service and Support Unit
5. Administration / Finance / Accounting Unit

Why is it important to understand and be aware of these basic units of a business?

Well, the reason it’s important is because these units allow a business to function and interact with the outside world in a way which allows the business to deliver the product and/or service to the consumer.

It’s important to realize that all five of these units are paramount to the success or failure of your efforts to become an Inspired Money Maker.

Where a lot of people drop the ball is they identify their “Here’s what I love to do” in life which in most cases fits into the #3 unit, and they become really good at that but they completely ignore the other 4 basic units of business.

For example, the painter can paint a wonderful painting. It can be the most incredible painting on the face of the earth. However, if he does not know how to market and sell the painting, it really doesn’t matter how good of a painter he is, his work will never allow him to put bread on the table. Of course sales and marketing are not the only unit that’s important either, because you may be able to produce a product and sell it, but if you can’t support your consumers or manage your finances properly, you’ll never see success either.

If you really want to supercharge your ability to be an Inspired Money Maker, become an entrepreneur that understands these basic fundamental units of business.

Lets go back to the example of the painter. What is he really doing when he paints a painting and then gives it to a gallery to sell for him? Well, he is outsourcing the other business units to someone else. He then relies on the galleries ability to market and sell his product, to provide customer service and support to the consumer and to properly manage, administer and account for the financial side of the business. This allows the painter to just paint the painting and hand it over to someone else to do the rest.

There is nothing wrong with this business model, however it is important to understand that the gallery essentially then becomes part of YOUR business model. It’s almost like you are hiring them to handle those parts of your business enterprise for you. The reason this is important is because your success is then directly tied into their success. Meaning, what if the gallery you give your paintings to is not very good at sales and marketing? What if the owner of the gallery is a painter himself and he’s much better at painting than he is at selling and marketing? Or what if he has a horrible financial accounting / administration system and he is able to sell your paintings but it takes months to collect money from the customers so you’re always left waiting for payment?

These are all important aspects of business that you need to take into account. If you choose to ignore them because you’d rather just keep painting, it could be hurting you big time.

Of course, outsourcing the other aspects of your business model to someone else may be exactly what you need to do because frankly you may be horrible at them, but don’t take the decision lightly. Take some time to find the proper partners in business who will handle these aspects of business for you. Don’t buy into the fantasy that just because you can produce a good product or service, that the sales and marketing and the other parts of the basic business model don’t matter. If you work with a sales / marketing team that sucks, you can be making the best product in the world but starving at the same time. Be aware of that.

As you’re defining and getting clear on what it is that you love to do as an Inspired Money Maker, you’ll need to start thinking how you’ll be able to wrap a business model around your Inspiration. You’ll either need to build a business that contains all those elements or partner with someone else who will handle those aspects of business for you.

Even as a Blogger, all those elements are important. Blogging isn’t just about writing articles. Writing content is the “Production” aspect of the business. All the other parts still apply though. You need customer support and service in the form of answering emails or replying to comments for example, you need sales and marketing in terms of promoting your Blog and promoting advertising on your Blog if you are monetizing it that way, and you also need to administer things like doing backups, tracking your earnings and finances, studying your reports etc.

Where most people fail on their Inspired Money Maker path is failing to realize that we are all individually a little business – even if you’re not incorporated or a sole-proprietor. We each need to be aware of and embrace these very basic business units so that we can maximize our ability to make money doing what we love. If instead of running away from them or ignoring them, we embrace them or partner with someone else who will handle them for us, we can really reach our true potential to make money doing what we love.

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