Here’s a simple definition from Donald Miller to help you understand what a business really is:

A business is a for-profit entity that solves problems for paying customers.

Let’s break this down:

For-Profit Entity

Without profit, a business can’t survive. Yet we’ve tied some evil stigma to the idea of a business making a profit. If they don’t make a profit, they can’t do the thing for which they are created. And what’s that?

They Solve Problems

THIS is the purpose of a business: to solve problems for people. And is that really such a bad thing? Wouldn’t you be happy to pay someone to solve one (or several) of your problems? Of course you would.

Now, there are numerous businesses out there that don’t solve problems for their customers, yet they still make a profit. Those exist only to get as much money from people as possible without providing any real value. That’s theft, and it’s both unethical and immoral.

The good news is those businesses tend not to last very long. How often did you do business with a company that gave you no return on your investment?

PAYING Customers

Paying customers… This is the hard part for a lot of us. We’d all love to be non-profits, helping as many people we can without them paying us a dime. But you can’t fill someone else’s cup if yours is empty.

Customers need to pay for what you’re offering them. Here’s why:

• It lets you help more people because you have money to grow.
• It incentivizes the customer to use what they paid for.

That last point is important. When someone pays for something, they are more likely to follow through with it. Whether you offer education, a service, or sell a product, the thinking goes, “I paid for this, so I might as well get my money’s worth.”

This simple definition of business has a lot of meat in it. It definitely helped me overcome my own issues with making money, because in the end we’re helping people.

We’re just doing it in a way that lets us keep the lights on. And lets us grow so we can help even more people.

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