Be Better Than Your Competition

Still trying to decide on which business to go into?  Forbes cites data on the Ten Most and Least Profitable Businesses to Start. (Hat tip to Business Opportunities Weblog.)  Unsurprisingly, the list of least profitable businesses includes Real Estate Related Services. But it also includes others that might surprise you, including Beverages Manufacturing, Bakery and Tortillas Manufacturing and various categories of Retailers.

What if you've already opened a business in one of these potentially unprofitable industries? You'll need to be better than your competitors if you're going to succeed.  Along comes Seth Godin with a post covering an admittedly different topic, but which lists eight ways of making something worth charging for. You can also think of these as eight ways to be better than your competition. Here are the eight, but I recommend you read the entire post to understand what he means and get ideas of how you can put one or more of these traits to use in your business.

• Immediacy
• Personalization
• Interpretation
• Authenticity
• Accessibility
• Embodiment
• Patronage
• Findability