Sometimes, finding the right product or service to make your own is to find someone else's version of the same product or service and discovering ways to deliver it in a different way.

Someone once told me that I could not make it in a business because there were already people in that particular business!

The thought struck me as stupid. That is why we have other restaurants right. It was not enough to put a McDonalds in town, we also had to build a Burger King, Wendy's, Carl's Junior, Braums, Sonic and several more all of the local variety. All of them offer us hamburgers, so why do we need more than one of them?

Because diversity sells. They all make hamburgers, but each one delivers the hamburger to us in a slightly different fashion. Every single one of them are successful and have been for years.

Just the other night, I read a story on the history of Root Beer. They stated that in the 127+ years of history surrounding the beverage, that there have been 8,000 documented variations of the same product. They believe that there may have been 100,000 variations of the same product, though they could not verify the larger majority of them.

In today's market, there are just over 2,000 variations of Root Beer on the market. What differentiates one from another? They all have the same basic ingredients, though they offer some small differences in the ingredients. These slight differences in the recipe makes for slight differences in taste.

In the end, it is not the differences in taste that sells more of one than the other. The difference that defines market share is packaging and marketing.

So, make a determination of what your product or service will be, then package it and market it in such a way that people want your version as often, if not more than your competition! Market your differences, not your similarities.

Diversity is the key to success. Packaging and Marketing are the tools.