It’s a very common new business strategy. Someone starts a new business by copying the product or service that another company already offers. Why? The usually reason is because they think they can provide a better version of the offering.

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The Reason Why Starting A Business

By Copying Another Doesn’t Work

The other day I overheard an aspiring young entrepreneurs say, “We just need to find the successful people who have a video channel, Facebook page, and Twitter following and just copy what they do. We’ll leverage their paths, do it quicker, get our fans and audience, and ramp up sales fast.” This sounds reasonable to most new entrepreneurs, but it rarely ever works.

www.cynthiakocialski.com

The Reason Why Starting A Business

By Copying Another Doesn’t Work

The issue isn’t reverse engineering or re-creating the product or service, it’s copying everything else – marketing, sales operations, vendors, partners, and so on. So yes, you can copycat the content on a video channel, but what did that video channel owner do in terms on marketing that channel to grow the audience.www.cynthiakocialski.com

The Reason Why Starting A Business

By Copying Another Doesn’t Work

It’s also an issue with copying the circumstances in time. Let’s take Groupon. They grew big quickly. At the point in time when Groupon was poised for growth, Facebook was just starting to monetize their audience with advertising.  Groupon was able to get advertising for cheap on Facebook and at a time when few advertisers were competing for the attention of Facebook users. If anyone tried to take the same approach today, it would be cost prohibitive.

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The Reason Why Starting A Business

By Copying Another Doesn’t Work

Retailers like Walmart and Target are the envy of many, but they weren’t the first. General stores existed for hundreds of years. Prior to Walmart generation, there were the five and dime stores. To the customer, the products on the shelves are the same. Walmart and Target succeeded into using new technology to streamline operations. By just copying what these retailers have on their shelves won’t work.

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The Reason Why Starting A Business

By Copying Another Doesn’t Work

In a nutshell, imagine you have a set of instructions for building something. However, many of the pages in the

instructions are missing.

The pages you have are only about 10% of what’s need to get the end result.

That’s exactly why just thinking about copying doesn’t work.www.cynthiakocialski.com

The Reason Why Starting A Business

By Copying Another Doesn’t Work

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