Having Something To Sell

What is happiness? Most of us feel it in about the same way. Pleasure. Enjoyment. Contentment.

But different things make different people happy. Riding a motorcycle. Being with family. Watching an action movie.

Happiness would make for a great thing to sell. If you could bottle it as an emotion. But no one has figured that out.

However, plenty of people have figured out how to sell happiness. You sell a thing. Or an event. Or an activity. Something that indirectly makes people feel happiness.

That’s the joke in the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. There’s nothing on Calvin’s stand. He wants you to buy nothing. Which is why HE’s smiling. It costs him nothing to sell you nothing. His gross profit is 100% – if anyone actually paid him for nothing. It’s Calvin’s happiness that you create when you pay him 10￠, not yours.

Calvin has no customers. We know a 6 year old selling happiness from an empty stand really has nothing to sell.

Most people do have something to sell. Or an idea of something. And that’s the challenge of a start-up. When it’s an idea, it’s in your head. You can envision it. You can see it, touch it. You can believe how great it will be. And you know once you have it built, lots of other people will think it’s great too.

But no one else is inside your head. No one can see what you do. You may be able to describe it, or think you can describe it. But until people actually see it, touch it, feel it, use it, they have an imperfect idea of what you mean.

The trick for a start up is to get to the point that it has something to sell. It’s then that people get it.