The trick is to find an attractive market that interests you enough to keep you improving your offering every single day. Finding that market is a matter of patience and active exploration.

Becoming a Mercenary doesn’t pay—don’t start a business for the money alone.

If the only thing that interests you about an opportunity is the money, you’ll probably quit well before you find the pot of gold at the bottom of the landfill.

Make money your god and it will plague you like the devil. —HENRY FIELDING, EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NOVELIST AND SATIRIST

As a paying customer, you get to observe what works in your market and what doesn’t before you commit to a particular strategy. Learn everything you can from your competition and then create something even more valuable.

The best way to observe what your potential competitors are doing is to become a customer.

The existence of a market means you’re already on the right side of the Iron Law of the Market,

When any two markets are equally attractive in other respects, you’re better off choosing to enter the one with competition. Here’s why: it means you know from the start there’s a market of paying customers for this idea, eliminating your biggest risk.

One of the most common experiences of a first-time entrepreneur is discovering that your brilliant business idea isn’t as original as you’d thought: other businesses are already offering similar products or services.