What’s More Important than Profit When Starting a Business?

There are tons of people out on social media giving business advice. Some of it is good advice, but most of it isn’t good. In this new series watch CapForge’s owner react to different advice videos. He’s an expert in all things business and has 20+ years of experience under his belt. Some of the things he reacts to might even surprise you!

CapForge Founder and Owner Matt Remuzzi reacts to business advice being shared on the internet. In this video, he reacts to the question of what’s more important than profit when starting a business. 

Video Transcript: 

Business Advice Video:

About purpose as well. Of course, without profit, the company cannot sustain itself, but at the same time without purpose real why the company exists also cannot sustain. Just because having a profit you lose the momentum, you lose the culture, you lose many things when it’s just about prophets.

Matt’s Reaction: 

Okay, I think this is a great video too, in that it really speaks to what’s important. If you decide, “I want to start a business because I want to be rich”, I’m going to say right now your chances of succeeding with that dream of being rich are low. One, because rich is an ephemeral sort of target. What is rich? More money than you had yesterday is richer than you were yesterday. But is that what you want? Or is it about fancy cars and fancy watches and fancy vacations and trying to live that Instagram influencer lifestyle? If that’s what you’re after, that’s really totally different than wanting to run a successful business. You just want to spend money. I get it. I’m with you. I want to spend money too. But that’s not really the recipe for success in starting a business. So this kind of hits it on the head. You want to have a reason for starting your business that’s not just being rich. You want to hopefully figure out a customer base that you want to serve. And you want to figure out a way that you can serve them better than other alternatives they have. Or more specifically, you want to niche down and serve a specific group of customers of some kind. And you want to do it because maybe you had the same experience or, you know, you can provide a better outcome, you can provide a better service, you can build a better product than anything else they can get anywhere else. And that passion and interest and desire to do better and offer something more is what drives you. And the byproduct of that is you can have sales, you can have profits, you can make money, and you may even get rich. But it’s not because you just want to have money and spend money and look cool and impress people. It’s because you have a reason for doing what you want to do that you dive into your business. And that’s what sustains you through all the times when it’s hard, when it seems like you might fail, when you have a rough day, when your biggest customer cancels, or the bank turns you down for the loan, or your best employee quits, or whatever else happens. What gets you through all those lousy times is the desire to continue to build and serve and grow and produce something amazing and not because of the bank balance that you’re trying to get to.