10/04/2026
One Mistake People Make When Looking at a Business
A lot of people start with the same question:
āHow much can I make?ā
But thatās actually not the first question I would ask anymore.
Because before you can understand the income, you need to understand where the money comes from.
Hereās the simple version. ā¤µļø
1ļøā£ Start with the customer.
Every real business needs someone willing to pay for a product or service.
No customer means no customer purchase.
And without a purchase, thereās no revenue from that customer.
2ļøā£ A customer purchase creates revenue.
This is where people sometimes get confused.
Revenue is the money coming into the business from sales.
But revenue is not automatically profit.
A business can have $10,000 in sales and that does not automatically mean the owner put $10,000 in their pocket.
3ļøā£ The business has expenses too.
Products can cost money.
Marketing can cost money.
Technology, operations, services and other parts of running the business can cost money.
So the number coming in and the number remaining are two different things.
4ļøā£ Whatās left after expenses determines profit or loss.
Thatās why a big revenue number by itself doesnāt tell you the whole story.
You need context.
5ļøā£ And commission is another number entirely.
In some business models, a salesperson or distributor may receive a commission from a qualifying customer sale, based on the companyās compensation structure.
Thatās compensation for a qualifying transaction it shouldnāt automatically be confused with the businessās revenue or profit.
So before I get excited about āHow much can I make?ā
Iāve learned to ask three simpler questions first:
Who is the customer?
What are they buying?
Where does the money come from?
Understand those first.
Then the income conversation starts making a lot more sense.
Tomorrow, weāll go one step deeper because revenue, profit and commission sound related but they are not the same thing.
