When you’re starting a business, everyone tells you to come up with something groundbreaking. But here’s the reality: you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes, the smartest move is to take what’s already working and make it your own. Think red ocean, as opposed to blue ocean.
Take Richard Harpen, the founder of HomeServe. He didn’t make his fortune by inventing something new. He found a business model that worked—plumbing insurance—and then made it better. He didn’t reinvent the wheel; he took a proven concept, adapted it to fit his needs, and scaled it. Simple, right?
Here’s why this works: When you’re just getting started, you don’t have the luxury of endless resources to burn on trial and error. What you need is a proven strategy that’s already been tested. Why waste time figuring it out from scratch when you can improve on something that’s already working? Richard’s success wasn’t about being revolutionary—it was about taking something that worked, tweaking it, and making it his own.
This is the second-mover advantage. The first mover takes all the risks, makes all the mistakes, and gets things going. The second mover sees what worked, what didn’t, and learns from those mistakes to refine and improve. It’s a shortcut to success because you get to skip the failures and just build on what’s already been tested.
Richard’s story is the perfect example of this. He didn’t try to reinvent the plumbing business. Instead, he saw what worked—offering plumbing insurance—and figured out how to make it better for his customers. He didn’t change the whole system; he made it better. And that’s what set his business on fire.
Bottom line: Don’t waste time trying to create something totally new. Look around at the businesses that are already winning, figure out their strategies, and make them better. Replicate what works, refine it, and scale. That’s how you fast-track your success.
Why make it harder than it needs to be? Copy what works, put your spin on it, and watch your business grow.✌️
Justin Hubbard
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