On a Daily Basis?
What do you do/use 7 days per week?
Thinking about successful businesses… the most successful are those that have products or services that are used every day. Especially those that get paid for every use, or which wear out from use. Can you name a dozen of these in your daily life?
1. Electricity. Half of the people on the planet don’t have the convenience of flipping a wall switch to turn on the light. Half of the people on the planet couldn’t imagine living without that service. Such a necessity and such an expensive piece of infrastructure to build out that this is generally a regulated utility.
2. Water. The same story for having a tap that provides fresh water upon demand. Even more of a necessity that this is generally provided by governments, not businesses.
3. Central heat / Air conditioning. I’m lumping these two together. They are each less common than running water. The first of these necessities on my list that are generally provided by products sold in stores.
4. Mobile phone. There are three items most people will not leave home without. Keys, wallet, and mobile phone. A product and service that most every adult on the planet owns, even those without heat, water, or electricity in their homes.
5. Internet/WiFi. The 21st Century must-have utility. Most of the world accesses these on their mobile phones. Again they are far more popular than 1, 2, or 3, and adding in all the laptops and computers in the world, more common than even mobile phones. I’m lumping social media and search into this category, two services that earn hundreds of billions of dollars not from users, but from advertisers.
6. Car/Bus/Train/Airplane. I’m one of the rare Americans that lives in a walkable city and neither drives nor rides public transit. Billions of people own cars and more billions ride buses, trains, trams, bicycles, scooters, and motorcycles at least every weekday.
There is only one other big category I can think of beyond these six that I use every day. I don’t interact with my bank or brokerage on a daily basis. The garbage gets picked up once per week. The mail gets delivered six times per week but these days I don’t even check my paper inbox every week. I brush my teeth daily but buy toothpaste maybe twice per year and get my teeth cleaned and checked twice annually. I only interact with a lawyer for business contracts a handful of times per year, never in a good year. I’ve only hired a plumber twice in the last decade. What else am I missing except for…
7. Food. I eat multiple times per day. Of the 8+ billion people living on the planet, nearly everyone does the same, and those that don’t, want to. I’ve spent days without electricity and running water, sometimes by choice. I live in a city that doesn’t require either heat or AC for many months per year, and prefer that. I do love my phone, but have traveled to places where it’s just a clock, and survived. I’ve chosen to not check my email inbox for a week and live without the newsstream, and also survived that too. Outside of a religious fast or hospital recovery, in 55 years I don’t recall a single 24 hour period without eating at least once.
Looking at this list, this does explain why my investment company focuses on food. Of these seven categories of businesses, food is the one with opportunities for small companies to jump in and (after a ton of effort) grow into big success stories.
I’ll leave you with the challenge of naming five successful businesses that sell or provide infrastructure for electricity or water. That challenge is far simpler for mobile phones and internet services. But for food companies you can probably name two dozen brands, nearly all of which were once independent companies, even if today they are part of one of the 11 big food companies.