Everyone is looking for the one who got it right, with hopes of duplicating the formula.  NEWS FLASH:  There is no such thing.

“One can learn from a successful business model, but copying it verbatim almost never yields a similar result.”

You cannot copy and paste another person’s full business success for several reasons:

  1.  You’ll never know everything about another business–NEVER.  There are intangible assets and trade secrets that help make up everyone’s secret sauce and if you’re not privy to that, you don’t have all the ingredients.
  2. Within your company, you don’t have the same skillsets, knowledge, people, or personalities as any other company.  Your “mixture” of these items is unique to your company and will be a differentiating factor in how you achieve success.  You don’t have the option to duplicate people from another company–impossible, unless…never mind.  You can’t clone people (legally anyway).
  3. Your stack is different–your technology stack as well as your paper stack (finances).  You don’t know what they are working with and chances are your bank accounts don’t have equivalent balances.  Even if the finances were indeed similar, the amount of cash in the bank is not a predictor of future success.  You can have stacks and still have failure.

You cannot copy and paste another person’s full business success Click To Tweet

Just think back to the success of Uber and then everyone creating their version of “The Uber of X…” and assuming success was imminent.  Just because you say it’s so, doesn’t make it so and many have lived to tell that story.  Read this article from FastCompany on the topic.  It’s sure to be eye-opening.

Ultimately, just remember to focus on your business.  Here’s the cliche:  Mind Your Business.  

Here’s also a popular quote from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio: “Winners focus on winning.  Losers focus on winners.”

focus on winning

Have questions?  Message us.