The Banana Stand is for people somewhere between ‘I could make a business out of this’ and having a business that reliably pays them.
Maybe you have a skill people already value. A service you’ve provided a few times. A product you think has legs. A side project making its first sales. Or simply an idea that has survived long enough to deserve a proper look.
None of us need a hundred more things to think about.
How about you work out whether there’s a real business here, what gets your attention now, and what can safely wait.
That’s my wheelhouse. It’s what I write about.
The subjects are ordinary because running a small business is mostly ordinary. Find customers. Make an offer people understand. Set a price. Sell without making a performance of it. Deliver what you promise. Keep enough of the money to make it worthwhile. Build simple systems before disorder sets in.
I spent much of my working life around businesses, from engineering and sales through management, consulting and boardrooms. The same problems appear at different scales. Small businesses simply have less room to absorb them.
The Banana Stand applies those lessons at the beginning.
If you’re still working out what your opportunity actually is, start with What Is Your Banana Stand?.
If you have an idea and want to know if anyone will pay for it, read How Do You Know?
If customers have already started paying you and now you want to step up and make the thing dependable, go to How Do You Make It Work?
Everything here goes deeper into those conversations you have with yourself.
There are articles about starting small, getting your first economics right, making sensible decisions with limited money, finding customers and putting basic operating disciplines in place before you need to launch the lifeboats.
You don’t need to build something enormous. Small can be very satisfying. And lucrative.
You do need to build something that works. If you can offer a quality service, that does what your prospects want it to do, at a price they can afford to pay; you have something worth running with.
That’s what The Banana Stand is about.
