A Reflection On The Pitfalls Of Being Different In Business

For this blog I want to reflect on my experiences of trying to complete an assignment for my Uni degree. The assignment was basically to generate profit for charity with $5 seed funding in under 4 weeks. Now while I can feel already many of you are thinking right now of brilliant fast money enterprises, there's an issue with almost all of them.

What is that you may ask? Well being different doesn't always pay dividends.

Take for instance the first idea my group had. It was essentially to offer an errand/lunch/coffee service to lecturers and tutors who don't always have the time to get their own food. They give us $1 or $2 and we do a job for them. While this is by no means groundbreaking its definitely a little different to your lemonade stand or raffle. We felt that this model was easy to carry out, required $0 funding to get it started and could easily be managed by the 3 of us. And so we began speaking to customers and finding out what they wanted, got a fairly good response too..

So wheres the issue?

The issues lies in that we barely got any orders. While other groups were doing simple stuff like baking cookies or scones or organizing movie nights and bringing in revenue, we weren't. My group chose to try and do something that was not the norm when it comes to rapid fund raising. To be honest I felt a bit disheartened to see that trying to be a little different made nowhere near as much cash as doing what everyone else does.

So is it wrong to do something generic?

Not at all. Let's not forget that these models are so common because they consistently work well and are capable of bringing in revenue fast and in a relatively easy manner. It's just that when you're told on a weekly basis by your educators to be different, try new things and stand out, it all seems a little pointless. Will this stop me and my fellow students from trying outlandish ideas? Absolutely not, as failure and learning from failure is an essential component of entrepreneurship and business success.

So where does that leave us?

Yes it is true that the most common business models for fundraising are generally the most reliable and successful compared to more left-field ideas. But trying new things and testing out new models is truly the key to making bigger strides in the business world. Therefore I'd recommend using a common business model to get you started on your entrepreneurial path, but always be thinking outside the box when looking towards the future.