One of the first decisions for many businesses is the same one Eitan faced: whether to embrace a high-cost, high-margin strategy or a low-cost, high-volume one.

don’t ever bother going big. There is safety in smallness.

of services the client requested at a price that feels right; a lower tier, which subtracts some of the services but has the advantage of a lower price; and a higher tier at a higher price for far more access. This frames the pricing conversation with your clients, showing them that if they want to pay less, they will get less in exchange.

The same forces—technology and trade—that destroyed the widget economy have given birth to what I call the Passion Economy. The Internet allows people who want to

Passion businesses never sell commodities. By definition, a passion business differentiates itself from others so that it can charge a unique price that represents its unique value.

Economists call it production-side growth, which means that most companies, most of the time, made their profit by cutting the cost of production.

sell a unique product or service to find customers all over the world. Automation makes it possible for people to manufacture their unique products without needing to build a factory first. Advances in trade mean that those unique products can be delivered to the people who most value them, wherever they happen to be.

When Jason asked why they kept these clients, Meghan said it was simple: the clients paid them $500 a month each. It wasn’t a lot, but every little bit helped. Jason pointed out that now that he was their accountant, they had to accept a rule: any client who is invoiced for $500 should be cut off. It cost Meghan and Rebecca more in effort and

after two decades of carefully studying who succeeds and who fails at starting a new business, the key difference between new businesses that succeed and those that don’t is strategy. All the other issues are important, but they are tactics, and tactics matter only if the strategy is right.