The Forgotten Art of Value Creation (And Why It’s The #1 Priority For Your Business).

The core of every business is the creation of enterprise value. I mean enterprise value in the colloquial sense: concrete, tangible “stuff” that you can point towards and assign a price tag to. A one-person business, though admirable, has very little enterprise value because it can’t live on or continue without input from the founder.

Info-product businesses have managed to circumvent this by turning intellectual capital into forms of intellectual property like courses, books, etc. But most businesses have not created an engine to create value and then sufficiently capture it.

This is an extremely simply idea but, in essence, your main objective as a business owner is to create tangible, concrete value that other people would want to buy. I’m not saying you must one day plan to sell your business, but I am saying that building as if you will is highly advisable.

What is the alternative? Building something that has no lasting economic value is an extremely poor investment if your time, and anathema to building a legacy.

What do this look like in practice? Build a business that lives external to you. Even if you operate in the knowledge economy, put your ideas on a scaffolding. Build systems and processes. Hire teams and codify your knowledge. Make everything transferrable. Create value and capture it. Both for yourself, your team, your clients, and the marketplace at large.