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The Value Creators Podcast Episode #34. David Kong’s Entrepreneurial Voyage from Finance to Fine Glassware

March 21, 2024/0 Comments/in The Value Creators Podcast /by Hunter Hastings

David Kong discusses his transition from Finance to Entrepreneurship and the process of building a supply chain for a product with exclusive features, such as thin, and handcrafted glasses. He explains how he searched for manufacturers, tested samples, and addressed production issues. Despite challenges with finding warehouses and improving packaging, Kong emphasizes the importance of creating value for customers. He shares insights on the emotional value of Glasvin stemware, its impact on the drinking experience, and the evolution of consumer preferences in the wine industry. Additionally, Kong discusses his direct-to-consumer (DTC) model, marketing strategies, and the significance of inbound sales for Glasvin.

Throughout the conversation, Kong underscores the value of efficient operations, strategic partnerships, and customer-centric approaches in building and scaling a successful business like Glasvin.

Resources:

Database and Analytics company: SOMM.AI
Glasvin (Manufacturing company)
David Kong on LinkedIn

Shownotes:

Knowledge Capsule

Origin of Somm.AI (Wine List Aggregator):

Initially conceived as a personal tool to find rare wines.
Evolved into a software business after experiencing success with user engagement.
Adapted business model from B2C to B2B due to changing market conditions and opportunities.

Value Proposition for B2B Users:

Offers benchmarking capabilities for restaurants to assess performance and competition.
Provides analytics and insights to identify trends and target opportunities in the market.

Market Dynamics and Competition:

David Kong shares that Somm.Ai targets on-premise wine data, serving a niche yet valuable segment.
Faces competition from established players like Nielsen but focuses on unique data sets and pricing strategies.
Recognizes challenges in entering the market due to technical complexities and limited entrepreneurial interest.

Global Reach and Expansion:

Capable of expanding database globally based on client demand.
Acknowledges regional variations in wine list availability and penetration rates.

Transition to Glasvin (Glassware Business):

Explored entrepreneurship opportunities beyond software due to the time-to-revenue constraints.
David shares how he identified the market gap in affordable, high-quality wine glasses and opted to start his own brand, leveraging importing experience and existing demand.

Challenges and Opportunities in E-commerce:

David Kong recognized e-commerce as a viable business model with the potential for success.
Found opportunities to offer quality products at competitive prices.
Successfully launched Glasvin as an e-commerce venture in 2020, capitalizing on market demand and personal interest in wine accessories.

Product Development and Supply Chain:

David reached out to multiple manufacturers via email to find one willing to produce the desired glasses.
The process involved requesting samples, evaluating quality, and addressing production issues.
David shares the initial challenges included finding manufacturers capable of meeting specific criteria, such as glass thickness and weight.

Value Creation and Marketing:

David emphasizes creating value for customers through product quality and pricing.
Packaging and branding were initially less polished but did not hinder sales due to the product’s perceived value.
David Kong’s primary focus was on enhancing the drinking experience, making wine taste better with thinner glasses.

Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Model:

Glasvin sells primarily through its own website powered by Shopify.
The decision was made not to sell on Amazon due to potential mismatches with the target customer base.
Inbound sales, driven by word-of-mouth referrals and brand reputation, are a significant aspect of Glasvinl’s sales strategy.

Restaurant Sales:

Glasvinl targets restaurants as a marketing channel, gaining exposure and credibility through partnerships with prestigious events like La Paulée.
The company provides glasses for rental at events, leveraging its association with high-profile wineries and events to expand its reach.

Evolution of Business Opportunities:

Participation in La Paulée led to the development of a rental program for the glasses, diversifying revenue streams beyond direct sales.
David identifies market gaps and opportunities, such as the demand for alternatives to Zalto glasses, and offers tailored solutions to meet customer needs.

Future Growth:

Despite current success, David emphasizes the importance of continuous adaptation and improvement to drive future growth.
The pursuit of growth involves remaining competitive, evolving the business model, and meeting evolving customer demands.

140. Samuele Murtinu: How Low Time Preference Elevates the Investment Returns of Family Corporate Venture Capital

October 19, 2021/0 Comments/in Economics for Business Podcast /by Hunter Hastings

Family businesses play a major role in the US economy. According to the Conway Center, family businesses comprise 90% of the business ventures in the US, generate 62% of the employment in the nation, and deliver 64% of US GDP.

And, they’re good at venture capital. Samuele Murtinu, Professor of Law, Economics, and Governance at Utrecht University, visits the Economics For Business podcast to share the findings and insights from his very recent analysis of venture capital databases.

Key Takeaways and Actionable Insights

Corporate venture capital is a special animal.

There are many types of venture capital. Professor Murtinu focused first on the distinction between traditional or independent venture capital (IVC) and corporate venture capital (CVC). Independent venture capital funds are structured with a general partner in the operational, decision-making role, and investors in the role of limited partner.

Corporate venture capital funds are fully owned and managed by their parent corporation. The CEO or CFO of the corporation typically appoints a corporate venture capital manager, who selects targets, conducts due diligence and so on from a subordinate position in the corporate hierarchy.

The important difference between IVC and CVC lies in objectives and goals. IVC goals are purely financial — the highest capital gain in the shortest possible time. CVC funds often have strategic goals in addition to, or substituting for, financial goals. These strategic goals might include augmenting internal R&D capabilities and performance, and accessing new technologies and new innovations, or entering new markets.

Another form of CVC licenses patented technologies to startups in cases where the corporate firm does not have the capacity to exploit the IP, but can oversee the implementation at the startup with a view to further future investment or acquisition. This is the method of Microsoft’s IP Ventures arm, for example.

Typically, IVC investments are easy to measure against financial performance benchmarks or targets. CVC’s strategic investments are harder to measure. Goals such as technology integration are too non-specific to measure, and normal VC guardrails like specified duration of investments are not typically in place and so can’t be used as benchmarks. On the other hand, CVC investments often expand beyond the financial into strategic support via corporate assets such as brand, sales and distribution channels and systems.

Corporate venture capital out-performs traditional venture capital in overall economic performance.

Professor Murtinu’s performance metric in his data analysis was total factor productivity — performance over and above what’s attributable to the additions to capital and labor inputs. IVC’s performance for its investments was measured in the +40% range, and CVC’s was measured at roughly +50%. IVC performs better in the short term, while CVC performs better in the longer term. This difference reflects the lower time preference of CVC. It extends to IPO’s: corporate venture capital funds stay longer in the equity capital of their portfolio companies in comparison to independent venture capital.

Family CVC is another animal again — and even higher performing than non-family CVC.

Professor Murtinu separated out family-owned firms (based on a percentage of equity held) with corporate venture capital funds for analysis. Some of his findings include:

They prefer to maintain longer and more stable involvement in the companies in which they invest.
They prefer to maintain control over time (as opposed to exiting for financial gain).
They look to gains beyond purely financial returns, including technology acquisition / integration into the parent company and/or learning new processes.
They are more likely to syndicate with other investors, for purposes of portfolio risk mitigation.
They target venture investments that are “close to home” both in geographic terms and in terms of industries closely related to their core business.

The resultant outcomes are superior: a higher likelihood of successful exits (IPO or sale to another entity), and a greater long term value effect on the sold company after the IPO or exit. Further, there is evidence from the data of a higher innovation effect for Family CVC holdings, as measured by the post-exit value of the patent portfolio held by the ventures.

Family CVC is resilient in economic downturns. During the last economic downturn, family CVC invested at double the amount of corporate venture capital, reflecting family businesses’ preference for long-term investing and for control.

The lower time preference of family businesses and family CVC is crucial for the achievement of superior financial performance, especially in the longer term.

Family CVC’s lower time preference and longer investment time horizons result in beneficial effects. Ownership in the venture companies is more stable, and the value effect after IPO (when family CVC stability continues because these funds stay in the post-IPO company longer) is significant.

Professor Murtinu relates this phenomenon to Austrian economics. The longer time horizon permits a closer relationship between investor and entrepreneur — it develops over time — and their subjective judgment about the future state become more aligned. Frictions and information asymmetries are reduced, and a shared view of the future emerges. This stability can scale up to the industry level and national level when there are more family CVC funds at work. Instead of pursuing unicorns and gazelles, an environment more conducive to duration and resilience is created.

Additional Resources

“Types of Venture Capital” (PDF): Download PDF

“Families In Corporate Venture Capital” by Samuele Murtinu, Mario Daniele Amore, and Valerio Pelucco (PDF): Download Paper

123. Sergio Alberich on Capital Structure and Capital Flexibility

June 23, 2021/0 Comments/in Economics for Business Podcast /by rick

The proper selection of a firm’s financial source does not guarantee its success, but the wrong one assures its failure.

Austrian capital theory delivers actionable insights for business. Austrian theory emphasizes capital’s economic role in generating customer revenue flows. Since these flows are variable, entrepreneurial capital must exhibit a capacity for agile and flexible combination and re-combination to keep revenue flows refreshed and current, Since capital structure plays an important role in entrepreneurial judgment, decisions, and action, it must support fast, flexible and unconstrained decision making. Businesses can benefit from their understanding of capital through this Austrian lens. Sergio Alberich helps the Economics For Business podcast listeners, and business practitioners in all kinds of businesses at all stages for their development, to Think Austrian in matters of capital structure.

Download The Episode Resource “Austrian Capital Financing” (PDF) – Download

Key Takeaways & Actionable Insights

Entrepreneurs designing a firm’s capital structure should view their choices through the twin lenses of ownership and control.

Ownership and control are tradeable assets for the entrepreneurial firm. In order to obtain capital financing, one or the other or both might be offered up by the entrepreneur or requested by the financier.

How will shared ownership play out now and in the future? Will ownership imply only a share in any future returns? How great a share is the entrepreneur willing to trade? What will it feel like to receive only a portion of the return the entrepreneur worked for? How much more ownership will be given up in future financing rounds?

Can ownership be traded without any loss of control over decision-making and future investments? Alternatively, how much control should be traded? A board seat? An investment committee? The financier wants the entrepreneur to be free to make the decisions for which he or she is best-informed and most capable, and yet wants to be protected from managerial error.

There are many factors that can stand in the way of capital flexibility, and organizational issues of ownership and control become paramount.

Debt and equity are the basic choices as building blocks of capital structure.

Debt and equity are basically different kinds of contracts between the individuals managing / operating a project and those funding it. Debt is a fixed claim with a known annual return to the debt holder. Typically, the debt holder has no control over management decisions and is not involved in managing the company (although there are some covenants that can be written to provide some distant control).

The return on equity for the financial investor is residual, after debt repayments are made, leaving entrepreneurs relatively free to allocate costs and direct operations. But equity holders typically hold voting rights, and can therefore exercise some control in some circumstances. They may also exert strong influence on management decisions based on relationships. For example, family and friends investors may exert special relationship influence.

There are some debt-equity hybrids — most notably convertible notes, debt that is convertible into equity at some future stage or event. The negotiation of this instrument brings more complexity to the ownership-control debate, while giving the entrepreneur leeway to consider issues of valuation in the future rather than at the current financing.

Entrepreneurs must also consider human factors, especially the number of people in the capital structure.

Another major consideration for entrepreneurs is whether to raise debt or equity from a few people or many (e.g., via IPO or a bond that hedge fund investors can buy). Raising capital from large numbers of investors creates categorically different situations for the entrepreneur. An IPO, for example, can not be a highly tailored instrument. Institutional conventions and regulatory rules impose many requirements about how entrepreneurs and their managers communicate, how they frame financial risk, and about the nature of widespread shareholder engagement they take on. Just think of the interaction of Elon Musk on Twitter, with the SEC, and with short sellers.

In general, the fewer the number of investors, the greater the operating flexibility for the entrepreneur. There are fewer people to convince when business seeks to make a major change, or to pivot.

Sergio Alberich outlined 4 levels of consideration for the financial investor providing capital to the entrepreneurial firm.

Level 1: How are the factors of production combined in the firm, and how might the combination change in the future? Elements of this level of consideration include the stage of business in its growth journey and the assessed maturity of its business model, industry, and competitive set; the nature of the business’s relationship with partners, suppliers, channels and customers; and the state of knowledge regarding product, service and market development.

Level 2: What is the nature and scale of cash flows now and in the future? Are there mature, reliable cash flows? Is one part of the business a drain on cash resources? Is cash coming in from investments for operating expenses (which are not really flexible).

Layer 3: What are the possibilities for returns? Both entrepreneurs and investors seek profit – not just accounting profit on the P&L but returns on equity. At an early stage, a company may worry about generating future cash flows and less about the cost of equity (in terms of sacrificed future returns) to finance growth. A more mature company with cash flows in the present pays much more attention to the cost of equity, and to cost of capital in general, seeking to preserve as much return as possible.

It is often the case that entrepreneurs give up too much equity in order to secure early stage venture capital funding, whether directly of via convertible loans. To keep the entrepreneur motivated with equity that promises future returns, it is best for them to deal with just a few investors who understand this motivation.

Organizational design is relevant, too. For example, a law firm with 100 partners, each of whom own 1 share, and limit their business model collaboration to sharing real estate costs and IT expenses, while effectively running 100 projects, might be creating a politicized nest of vipers. A partnership with shared equity in one business, where everyone stands to lose a lot if there is a bad decision, is likely to be much more collaborative, conducting a unified business, rather than acting as a co-operative of individuals sharing costs.

In the end, subjectivism in entrepreneurship prevails.

As we emphasized in episode #108 (see Mises.org/E4B_108), businesses perform best when entrepreneurs are free to make subjective decisions. The proper source of capital is one that most enables this subjective freedom, which may not be the optimum source based on spreadsheet calculations. Subjectivity and entrepreneurial judgement are not math. The best economic role of capital finance lies in helping entrepreneurs make better human subjective decisions. This is the essence of the means-ends calculation for both entrepreneurs and investors. Austrian economics gives by far the best guidance on this economic role of capital.

Additional Resources

“Austrian Capital Financing” (PDF): Download PDF

“Austrian School vs. Neoclassical School” (PDF): Download PDF

66. John Tamny On America’s Uniquely Productive Entrepreneurial Flywheel

May 19, 2020/0 Comments/in Economics for Business Podcast /by Hunter Hastings

The flywheel is a robust and powerful mechanism so long as restrictive regulation by government and failures of imagination by capitalists do not slow it down.

John Tamny speaks articulately with Hunter Hastings about the uniquely American entrepreneurial flywheel in Economics For Entrepreneurs podcast #66.

Key Takeaways and Actionable Insights

A growth business is what John Rossman, in episode #50, termed a flywheel. Using amazon.com as an example, he gave us this simple image.

The flywheel looks simple, but in reality it’s quite nuanced. Lower prices and a great customer experience will bring customers in, Bezos reasoned. High traffic will lead to higher sales numbers, which will draw in more third-party, commission-paying sellers. Each additional seller will allow Amazon to get more out of fixed costs like fulfillment centers and the servers needed to run the website. This greater efficiency will then enable it to lower prices further. More sellers will also lead to better selection. All of these effects will come full circle back to a better customer experience.

John Tamny sees the American entrepreneurial economy as a beautiful and productive flywheel.

Why are Americans so entrepreneurially focused? We descend from “the crazies” – the other thinkers who came from around the world, dissatisfied with their lives, and willing to cross oceans and borders to get to a place that offers no security but offers freedom. They took the ultimate entrepreneurial leap. We got the nut cases. Steve Jobs, for example, was of Syrian descent. Could he have started Apple in Syria? No.

Click on the image to Download the PDF

Entrepreneurs lead us to a better place.

John’s definition of an entrepreneur is someone who has a vision that everyone else thinks is ridiculous, yet they follow it anyway. They have no time for the way things are done today. They want something different. And to win consumer acceptance, what’s different must also be better. So they quite literally lead us to a better place. Horse-drawn carriages weren’t enough, so Henry Ford gave people something different. Everyone wanted Blackberry phones when Steve Jobs brought out the iPhone, and he quickly demonstrated its superiority. Every entrepreneurial act is speculation – there is never certainty that people are going to want the new product. That’s what is so important about entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs need to attract intrepid finance and intrepid financiers.

Silicon Valley is littered with VC’s who turned down Facebook, and turned down Amazon. Founding entrepreneurs think differently and have a vision that is far out of the norm, and they need to be matched with financiers who can be strong supporters and collaborators on the path to a better place. Irrespective of whether it is from Wall Street or Sand Hill Road, or from visionary friends and family, it’s critically important that we figure out a way to get financing to brilliant people. Government restrictions on entrepreneurial activity are certainly barriers to growth, but so is failure of imagination on the part of capitalists.

Intrepid lending takes place far away from banks. Unspent wealth is the source, and the more unspent wealth one person has, the more risks they can take.

We tend to complain about the antiquated and sclerotic banking system, but it has nothing to do with entrepreneurs and innovation. Banks make loans to entities they know will pay them back. Entrepreneurs fail 90% of the time. Banks want nothing to do with innovation.

Those with unspent wealth are the most crucial people in the economy when they match their unspent wealth with entrepreneurial talent and vision. The more unspent wealth they have – and the less the government takes away from them in taxes – the more intrepid they can be in investing it. When we tax away the wealth if the richest, we tax away the most important wealth of all. – that which has the highest odds of being directed towards new ideas that, while they look promising, have high odds of failure.

More and more of us have the opportunity to become entrepreneurs, if we harness the flywheel of original ideas that attract intrepid capital.

One of John’s many books, The End Of Work, describes how we are all now so enabled with interconnectivity to resources that we have the chance to make money by doing what we love. Our passion can become our job. If we are able to imagine a future place that is better – that improves the lives of individuals – we can create a growing business. The more of us who can do this, the more we grow the whole economy – which, after all, is made up of individuals. If we can also attract that intrepid capital that John refers to, growth becomes faster and higher.

Besides The End Of Work: Why Your Passion Can Become Your Job, John’s books include Popular Economics: What The Rolling Stones, Downton Abbey and LeBron James Can Teach You About Economics, and Who Needs The Fed: What Taylor Swift, Uber, and Robots Tell Us About Money, Credit, and Why We Should Abolish America’s Central Bank.

Free Downloads & Extras

“John Tamny’s Entrepreneurial Flywheel”: Our Free E4E Knowledge Graphic
Understanding The Mind of The Customer: Our Free E-Book

Start Your Own Entrepreneurial Journey

Ready to put Austrian Economics knowledge from the podcast to work for your business? Start your own entrepreneurial journey.

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63. Dusty Wunderlich on FinTech Financing: Entrepreneurs Helping Entrepreneurs

April 28, 2020/0 Comments/in Economics for Business Podcast /by Hunter Hastings

Key Takeaways and Actionable Insights

FinTech sounds like the latest over-hyped tech bubble. But it has a much more fundamental importance in entrepreneurial economics. It brings entrepreneurs the best-priced capital in the marketplace. Dusty Wunderlich explains on the Economics For Entrepreneurs podcast #63.

Consider these findings from a 2017 report from the G20 Global Partnership For Financial Inclusion, titled Alternative Data: Transforming SME Finance.

Access to financing remains one of the most significant constraints for the survival, growth, and productivity of micro, small and medium enterprises (SME’s).

Digital SME finance, using alternative data, offers an extraordinary opportunity for addressing…this problem.

The world’s stock of digital data will double every two years through 2020. Every time SME’s and their customers use cloud-based services, conduct banking transactions, make or accept digital payments, browse the internet, use their mobile phones, engage in social media, buy or sell electronically, ship packages, or manage their receivables, payables and record-keeping online, they create digital footprints. This real-time and verified data can be mined to determine both capacity and willingness to pay loans.

A rapidly growing crop of technology-focused SME lenders are putting the use of SME digital data, customer needs and advanced analytics at the center of their business models, setting forth new blueprints for disrupting the SME lending status quo.

The report refers to 800+ innovative digital SME lenders. Colloquially, we can refer to them as FinTech.

Dusty Wunderlich, a subject matter expert and seasoned investor in the FinTech field, discusses this lending landscape.

Entrepreneurs need capital in the present to deliver goods and services to consumers and customers in the future.

Entrepreneurs take scarce resources and apply them to what they believe the consumer will want at a future date. In order to do that entrepreneurs need capital in the present so they can deliver on those goods and services to the consumer in the future in the hope that their forecasting is correct.

That’s why entrepreneurs need to understand capital financing and modern day capital markets.

Access to capital has historically been difficult and expensive. Today, it’s becoming easier and less expensive, aided by the digital data revolution referred to in the report quoted above. It’s important for entrepreneurs to be familiar with the new field of FinTech and how to navigate it.

Dusty Wunderlich suggests that entrepreneurs map out the financing alternatives on the axes of their own business stage versus the cost of capital.

Cost of capital refers not just to interest rates and fees, but to the requirements that lenders can impose on entrepreneurial borrowers. At the very earliest stages, “friends and family” lenders, angel investors and seed stage venture funds will all require equity stakes, and ratchet up those stakes via deferred interest and debt-to-equity conversion requirements. These early investors perceive themselves as taking a high amount of risk, and the start-up entrepreneur typically has little or no collateral or leverage in negotiation. The best negotiation stance is to generate competition among investors with the quality of the customer value proposition and the business plan and revenue model.

Fintech financing is now available at the earliest of entrepreneurial growth stages.

Today, from the very outset of the business journey, start-ups and small businesses can access a range of financing types – debt, convertible notes, equity and SAFE’s (Simple Agreement For Future Equity) – via crowdfunding platforms like nextseed and others like it. Marketing your business to investors on platforms like these taps into your existing skills in marketing and social media, and doesn’t require you develop capabilities in pitching your business that you might not have mastered.

As you advance along the growth curve, FinTech options expand and may offer you the best-priced capital on the market.

As a result of the expansion of FinTech based on alternative digital data sources, the potential for connecting your particular business to a well-matched and well-priced source of capital is greater and more precise than ever. Dusty cited a couple of examples like Kabbage (where, incidentally, entrepreneurs can currently get help with PPP loans). There are several more. Because of the competition in the FinTech market and the quality of the information they utilize, capital from these lenders is well-priced – probably approaching Mises’ originary rate of interest, Dusty observes, in a testimony to Austrian free market principles.

It is when your business represents the least risk to lenders that big banks offer their high-requirements business loans.

At a later stage of your business journey, banks will lend money against collateral and will impose additional onerous requirements and loan covenants. The entrepreneurial embrace of uncertainty is not for them! Bank financing is at the top when it comes to cost of capital and is to be approached cautiously. It is with bank financing that entrepreneurs become entangled with the negative effects of Federal Reserve repression of interest rates, that can mislead them into making incorrect investment decisions.

The cost of bank financing for mature companies revolves more around terms and covenants than interest rate percentage points. Banks are transactional, whereas entrepreneurs are operationally minded. This can cause a lot of friction if covenants, terms and triggers are not properly set. Entrepreneurs must pay attention to every detail in the loan contract. Great businesses can be ruined because of draconian covenants and triggers banks put into their loan contracts.

Indicated action: Entrepreneurs will be well-rewarded for fully investigating and understanding the emerging world of FinTech and digital SME finance. Be sure to calculate the full cost of capital – not just interest rates – and weigh all options.

Free Downloads & Extras

“Financial Capital Options for Businesses At All Stages”: Our Free E4E Knowledge Graphic
Understanding The Mind of The Customer: Our Free E-Book

Start Your Own Entrepreneurial Journey

Ready to put Austrian Economics knowledge from the podcast to work for your business? Start your own entrepreneurial journey.

Enjoying The Podcast? Review, Subscribe & Listen On Your Favorite Platform:

Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify

48. Chris Casey’s Journey To A Distinctively Austrian Financial Services Business

January 14, 2020/0 Comments/in Economics for Business Podcast /by Hunter Hastings

Learn how directly Austrian Economics can be applied in entrepreneurial business design. A creative founder of a financial services firm demonstrates to customers how an understanding of business cycle theory and monetary theory can be applied to investment portfolio design.

Key Takeaways & Actionable Insights

Click to Download The Full Version

Innovation often emerges from the combination of existing components in new ways.

In Chris’s case, the new combination was his knowledge of Austrian Economics – specifically Business Cycle Theory and Monetary Theory – and of Finance. He invested a great deal of time and effort in mastering both parts of this knowledge combination.

Chris Identified An Unmet Customer Need, A Dearth Of Available Solutions, And A Potential for Market Growth.

There were a few – probably a very few – customers for a financial services offering designed with recognition of the relevant principles of Austrian economics in mind. But the fact that there was at least some customer need provided evidence of potential. Then external stimuli such as the 2008 financial crisis and the Ron Paul Presidential Campaigns caused a growth in demand.

A value proposition naturally emerged.

For a narrow but highly receptive target audience, the value proposition that “Austrian Economics is vitally important to designing investment portfolios” proved to be very effective in generating a value anticipation.

Communication skill is a critical element.

A value proposition doesn’t sell itself. Chris utilized – and continuously polished – his communications skills to help customers fully appreciate the direct link to their desired value: a feeling of improved financial security because the uncertainties identified by Austrian Economics are accounted for in portfolio design.

Chris’s implementation was consistent with the value proposition, and capable of delivering.

In portfolio design, the product of Chris’s service firm, the inputs from business cycle theory and monetary theory are top-down elements. Chris added the bottom-up element of personalization of the design process to the individual customer. This is classical Austrian entrepreneurship: understand the customer’s needs, empathize with them, and customize the service so they feel individual satisfaction of idiosyncratic needs. In subjective value analysis, portfolio performance is not the sole criterion for the value experience. Customer feelings are far more significant.

Chris keeps an eye on the competitive frame of reference to maintain the uniqueness of his offering.

Chris’s competition is not other investment advisors. It’s the general demeanor of Wall Street sales-focused firms. “Stay fully invested” and “Don’t try to time the market” are typical sales communications of these firms that don’t truly have customers’ best interests in mind. He can always utilize this contrast as a value frame of reference.

Chris’s success exemplifies the clarity that results from candid entrepreneurial self-assessment and the embrace of the entrepreneurial process.

Self-assessment = In what field am I best resourced to enter and do business?

Entrepreneurial process = Identify opportunity by identifying customer dissatisfactions in that field.

Visit WindRock Wealth Management at https://windrockwealth.com

Free Downloads & Extras

Chris Casey’s Entrepreneurial Journey: Our Free E4E Knowledge Graphic
Understanding The Mind of The Customer: Our Free E-Book

Start Your Own Entrepreneurial Journey

Ready to put Austrian Economics knowledge from the podcast to work for your business? Start your own entrepreneurial journey.

Enjoying The Podcast? Review, Subscribe & Listen On Your Favorite Platform:

Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify