I partially stole this idea from James Clear’s Atomic Habits. Clear coined a term called “habit stacking”.
The idea is you take a habit that you already do everyday. For example, brushing your teeth. I hope you do this everyday you sickos.
Then you take a habit you want to start, i.e. 5 minutes of daily meditation and do that directly after your already established habit.
Your habit of brushing your teeth becomes a stacked habit of brushing your teeth and then 5 minutes of meditating.
I’ve seen businesses employ the business version of this in multiple ways. I call it business stacking. Here are a few examples:
Trace.com provides genealogy research services for anywhere from $1,000-$5,000. Plenty of people are willing to pay for this service, but after a while the team noticed there was a small section of potential users who declined because they wanted to DIY it.
Instead of missing out on those potential customers, they developed a course that allowed customers to learn from professional researchers for only $199. The DIYers were all about it, and it accounted for an extra $200,000 in annual revenue.
By stacking another revenue stream onto the business it accounted for a significant portion of additional revenue at a much higher profit margin.
Another example:
In Salt Lake City, Utah, there is a radio station that has existed for over 100 years. They’ve grown significantly and currently own over 20 stations across 5 different markets.
The problem is, radio is widely considered to be a dying industry that is in decline. Knowing that they couldn’t rely on revenue for radio forever, they launched a digital marketing agency to help their existing radio clients with social media marketing, SEM, SEO, Youtube ads, email advertising, and all sorts of digital marketing.
Because of this new business stack, Bonneville Communications has continued to grow despite their main business declining.
Remember, “the jack of all trades is the master of none.”
Running any business requires incredible determination and focus. Being able to push through a plateau and grind it out when other’s would normally give up is an incredible advantage. But that doesn’t mean that periodically you shouldn’t take the blinders off, look around and see what other opportunities are available.
As friend of the newsletter John Linford says:
“Use time in creative endeavors to sit and be bored. Inspiration comes when you allow the brain to just think and be in a creative space.”
Tomorrow watch for an idea posted with an example of business stacking to build a business from a simple service, to year round profit.
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