An entrepreneur ditched his supplement company's customer-focused strategy to copy competitors and chase market share. A year of zero growth followed. He switched back to building what his core customers actually wanted, growth returned, and he eventually sold the company.
I copied this from another entrepreneur and it nearly tanked my business. In year three of building my supplement company, we started looking at what products were working for other people, and we just started copying them. And our thought process was, they're getting market share. If we launch similar or better products at better prices, then we'll get that market share and it'll be good for the overall business. And that was the one year in business that we did not grow. And the reason was because we no longer were launching products that our core customers wanted. We were just trying to get market share and trying to grow top line sales regardless of what the product was. Once we did that for a year and realized that wasn't working, it wasn't growing the core customer base, we stopped doing all of that and we came back to launching only products that the core customer wanted. And sometimes that meant products that didn't make sense according to the marketplace data, but they were what that group of people that we were in business to serve wanted and would help them on their journey. And then we got back to growing every single year until we had an exit. A lot of people will tell you to look at what the marketplace is doing and do exactly that. But what my experience suggests is that you don't copy what other people are doing. You do what the core customer group wants. And if you do that, then you'll bring unique value to the marketplace, which is the entire reason why your business should exist.
