The hard part isn’t always to find inspiration or be inspired. The harder part is to not be too inspired.

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No one should ever have an excuse for not having the inspiration to improve. There are bucketloads of inspirations around us and most of the times, you don't even need to read a 300-page book.

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Hard work always pays off! :)

Tweets like this makes everything so much more worthwhile. :)

WooThemes is a predominately B2B business. We sell products to people that use them in their own businesses or for their personal projects; most of which has a direct or indirect focus on generating a financial return of some kind.

So whilst we have a pretty diverse customer base, they share one characteristic that has been hugely profitable to us: they do not mind spending money on our products.

I guess this is sounding really simple and obvious right about now, but I've got a point here. :) To do so, we just need to back up a bit and look at a very basic example of how a business / entrepreneur operates...

Entrepreneur A invests $100 in his new trading business. He buys $100 worth of goods, sets up a little stall somewhere and proceeds to sell all of his goods with a nifty profit mark-up for $150. To re-stock he again purchases $100 worth of goods and re-invests his profit of $50 in making spiffy new (premium) packaging for his goods. Due to the new packaging, he manages to sell his goods at an increased mark-up and generates $200 in revenue.

Simple take-away from this story: Entrepreneur reinvested the $50 profits (from his first round of sales) in packaging, because he knew that it'd contribute positively to his revenues (and ultimately his ROI). He didn't spend the money on a new office (which may not have contributed to his ROI), but reinvested directly in something that would enhance his business.

Back to B2B

Back to what I said about WooThemes' users... I believe that WooThemes' users are happy spending money on our products, because it enhances their businesses and / or personal projects. Because this is directly or indirectly linked to generating a financial return, the expenditure of buying a WooThemes product could potentially turn into a simple reinvestment in enhancing those businesses.

The fact that the majority of our sales are thus B2B-esque, has meant that even though economies worldwide has suffered from economic recession we've been able to grow our business. Recession doesn't mean that people stop spending money; they're just thinking twice about every dollar that leaves their bank account, which means they're more than happy to spend money on something that will enhance their businesses / potentially generate more revenue.

VC Focus

I spoke with a prominent, US-based VC a couple of weeks ago about WooThemes and asked him point-blank why they were interested in our company, considering that we'd never rack up the kind of user numbers that the "platforms" like Facebook, Twitter & Tumblr can boast. He remarked that they believed there to be a shift in the marketplace where companies - like WooThemes - could profitably provide value-added, B2B-type products to users within those platform ecosystems.

Whether that has influenced their firm's investments, I don't know, but - to me anyway - it made a lot of sense.

B2B products and services just seem to be less sensitive in tough times and I certainly don't think that we have to fight as hard for every single sale on WooThemes when compared to general consumer expenditure.

So if you're thinking about starting a startup, I don't think it's a bad idea to create something that will enable other people to make more money. Even VC's seem to be liking that model.