The several gears, which gear are you in?
Headlight cleaning, chatteling, are FIRST gear operations.
You do. Then get paid for the doing. Very common.
A second gear is where you might have a helper, they clean the headlight, you get paid, then you pay the helper. The more helpers, the more you can clean and although your profit is lower than first gear, there is leverage which can make you a lot more dough than DOING it yourself.
Third Gear could be when you set up others to do, maybe start a regional headlight cleaning business, several locations with multiple doers. More leverage, more money.
Fourth gear could be a National Franchise, where you get a lump sum to set up someone in the headlight cleaning business and collect ongoing revenue from their doing the work. Much more money, because the lever has gotten longer.
There are UPPER gears, which most never attain, and actually don't even know about. Here are some upper gear business models.
LICENSING. Think Walt Disney with Mickey, Goofy and Donald. Think Charles Shulz with PEANUTS, think of your favorite football, or sports team, and if you buy a hat with their logo, THEY get a fee. Licensing is a specialized business but one that can be learned.
There are other upper gears. Flipping companies. Sure, you could buy the local auto repair shop and sell it for a profit...or Charter Communications could pay 78.7 BILLION dollars to buy Time Warner Cable.
And so much in between. There is also, added on marketing...taking that mom and pop autoshop doing 500k a year, to a 2M a year business.
Upper gears don't get talked about by most people because they seem complicated but in reality, the legal stuff is handed by lawyers, and they are in effect worker bees, whom work for you. A clearly defined idea of what you want to do and how gives them direction to work with.
Entrepreneurship is great in that you can stay as small as you want, iffin you want to fly low and collect the dough, or grow and build to as big as you desire...all is possible.
But there requires a foundation to build on. Knowledge, awareness and details. You first, have to know of the opportunity.
You have to have the knowledge to ACQUIRE (or Create) and you must get into the weeds of the details to make sure you aren't getting into quicksand.
What gears are you in?
Gordon
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