If it makes CENTS: You have a golden business opportunity

Lamborghini Countach, MJ Demarco’s dream car

MJ Demarco is an entrepreneur and best-selling author who wrote some of my best business books, including Millionaire Fastlane and Unscripted.

The author has been known for his “aha” moment, at an ice cream shop, as a 12-13 year old kid growing up outside of Chicago.

As he was heading into the ice cream parlor, he saw his dream car, a 2-million dollar Lamborghini Countach, parked in front. 

Demarco assumed the owner was a famous athlete, entertainer, musician or someone well known enough to be driving such a luxury sports car.

When he encountered the car’s owner, it happened to be a 20-something young man, and responded, “I’m an inventor. An entrepreneur,” when Demarco asked what he does for a living. 

From that moment on, Demarco realized that one could get rich from not being a famous athlete, movie star or from being well into retirement at age 65.

He was infatuated with becoming an entrepreneur.   

Demarco encourages entrepreneurship as a way to break out of society’s routine 9-5 in exchange for freedom.  

But how does one know if he/she has a potential business idea? 

Demarco says you have a golden business opportunity if it embodies the following criteria: C.E.N.T.S.

CONTROL: As a business owner, do you have full control of your selling platform? 

In other words, do you own your domain and are not at risk when the platform in which you built your business gets the plug pulled?

Many businesses and dreams have gone down the tubes when the site’s policy changes or your business account gets banned for one reason or another. 

This could happen at any time as Amazon sellers, Youtube channels, and other platforms could ban you or your business for violating any of their company policies. 

Therefore, you need to make sure that your business is independent of this risk and that you are the owner with full control of where you build your business. 

ENTRY: If the barrier of entry is too low for any industry, then Demarco says that might not be the best business to get into.

For example, if everyone else could open the same kind of business as you with just a small fee, an application, and internet access, then the long-term business viability would not be that great.

It wouldn’t be too long before oversaturation would be the end result.

NEED: Is there a genuine need for your product or service? Is there a demand in the marketplace that you can fill?

Demarco wisely tells us it’s better to fulfill a need than trying to create demand for a product or service that may not exist.

TIME: In order to run a successful business, it needs to operate without you

In other words, your time needs to be delineated from your business operations, otherwise you are just trading in your time for money, which leads to the final criteria, 

SCALE: Can your business grow and franchise? Is it able to experience exponential growth to make it worthwhile?

Again, if your business is unable to then there might not be enough upside to make it worthwhile. 

So there you have it. 

Knowing if you have a solid business opportunity, as Demarco outlines, might not be as difficult as once thought.

Remember: If your business makes C.E.N.T.S, you are onto something.