Business owners and operators are the ones stuck perpetually making smaller, metered sales. Even when they’re selling massive items, the margin potential at any given stage in the supply chain is pressured by competition, such it’s minimized at every value-add stage of the chain. Can’t be defeated - if anyone tries to make too much at any step in the process, a competitor evolves to do that step at a lower cost to the downstream buyer and the attempt at drawing excessive margin corrects itself. Doesn’t matter if you’re selling lemonade on a street corner or billion dollar aircraft - competition opportunity compresses margin opportunity. Being good in this model means being consistent, and consistently less expensive to keep improving margins so razor thin doesn’t become razor thinner…
Alternatively: Business Developers - entrepreneurs - are those of us making the big sales on lesser volume. We can create opportunity for OTHERS to become business owners and operators, and our margin on the business is only limited by THEIR ability to make those margins with the proposed business at scale. So we do 20% of the work to get the businesses 80% to commercial maturity, and sell it on massive margin, possible because those folks want that competitive timeline advantage to make their margin ahead of others. Yes, there is greater turmoil, but in every instance, it’s these turnover opportunities which offer the greatest returns - so being good at this just means having a great BS filter, so you don’t chase dogs which don’t hunt, and having the ability to create returns for VC’s and IEI’s which lay the seed money…. Who naturally get the sweetest deal out of all of us - no labor, just an appetite for risk (and a bunch of capital on hand), and the only burden is to have an even better BS filter than everyone else so their money doesn’t get pulled into dumpster fires and tarpits, but rather into rocket engines.
Or, of course, you can be a bank/creditor… lending at 25% to borrow at 0.7% is a pretty sweet gig…
