What If “How Do I Make Money?” Is the Wrong First Question?

"How do I make money?" Or "can I make money from this?"

Legitimate, valid questions to ask before launching a business, because bills will not be paid with good intentions. 

The problem isn't asking it. The problem is asking it first, and worse, asking it alone, with nothing else behind it. 

Most people lead with it because it's urgent, and because hustle culture has trained everyone to lead with it. Nobody posts a reel about spending three weeks figuring out your value proposition, unique selling proposition, target audience, and long-term strategy, etc. 

What Happens When You Only Ask the Money Question

Different timelines but same root cause: money was the first and only question, so nothing else ever got decided.

The Hidden Consequences of Building a Business Just for the Money

Building a business solely for the sake of making money, often referred to as a purely profit-driven or transactional venture, can yield immediate financial rewards, but it frequently comes with significant long-term downsides.

• Fragile foundations: When the first market shift, bad month, or ad-cost spike hits, no deeper mission or resilience is keeping you attached to the ship.
• Short-term shortcuts: You constantly favor quick cash grabs over sustainable growth, cutting corners on quality and system-building.
• The commodity trap: Customers leave the second a competitor drops their price, because you offer no unique brand value or emotional connection.
• Reputational rot: The temptation to squeeze margins leads to shady marketing, hidden fees, and a quick loss of trust in the market.
• Transactional culture: Employees and freelancers feel like cogs in a machine, breeding low morale, zero innovation, and constant turnover.
• The "yes-man" exhaustion: You spend years saying yes to any paying work, waking up a decade later with a steady income but total creative burnout.
• The hollow victory: You finally hit your financial targets, only to realize that chasing a moving number left you feeling empty because money lacks a soul.

While profit is the lifeblood of any enterprise (without it, a business cannot survive), building a business solely for money is like building a house with no foundation; it might look fine in good weather, but it collapses under the first major storm.

Successful, enduring businesses typically treat money as fuel to achieve a larger mission, solve a meaningful problem, or serve a specific community, rather than treating money as the destination itself.

The Right First Question to Ask Before You Launch a Business

Instead of "how do I make money," ask this first question instead: 

Who, specifically, has a problem you're genuinely suited to solve, and does it matter enough to them that they'd pay for it?

So here we have two questions hidden inside one: 

• Who has a problem you can fix?
• Why should they pay you for it?

Here's how to actually work through it:

Start with a paper and pen and let’s brainstorm!

Write down whatever comes to mind; it doesn’t have to be a polished idea- actually, it shouldn’t be a polished idea, just words that first come to mind. 

Then start thinking about what you’re good at, and what people often ask your help for or your opinion on. 

There are no bad ideas or stupid thoughts. That is data, your data. It's the closest thing you have to proof that a real problem exists, and that you're the one people already turn to for it. It will take time, and you will feel ridiculous; stick to it, PLEASE.

This exercise is not a matter of an hour, and we are done; it’s a process that you need to stop and go back to after days to continue. 

At some point, a few paths will start to form ahead of you, and this is where you start testing your ideas by asking the people around you, doing some research, and seeing if this is worth pursuing or not. (if not, we continue the brainstorming process)

Why Asking This Question First Actually Works

Building around clarity instead of "whatever pays" isn't the slower, nicer option. It's the more resilient one.

It gets people to talk about you. Nielsen's Global Trust in Advertising study (one of the largest and longest-running of its kind) has consistently found that around 88% of people trust recommendations from people they know above every other form of advertising, more than branded websites, more than ads, more than anything a company says about itself (Nielsen, 2021).

=> Referrals only happen when someone can repeat back what you actually do. Vague positioning doesn't get repeated. Clear positioning does.

It matches why people actually start businesses in the first place. Guidant Financial's Small Business Trends survey found the top reasons owners give for starting a business are wanting to be their own boss and dissatisfaction with corporate life — not "to get rich" (Guidant Financial, 2023). 

=> Building around a real problem you're suited to solve isn't a detour from what most founders actually wanted. It's closer to it than the money-first version ever was.

None of this means money stops mattering. It means treating it as the only goal is the part that quietly breaks things later, and treating it as the byproduct of solving something real is what tends to hold up.

Where I Come In

For nine years, running a digital agency across 17 countries, I watched founders show up wanting a website, a rebrand, a content calendar, with no strategy: no real answer yet for who it was for, or why they were the right person to build it. 

The visible work always got hired first. The honest question always got asked later, usually after the money was already spent.

I intervene earlier than that. Before the designer, before the niche gets picked off a trend chart, before the business gets built around what looks profitable instead of what's actually true. I help you answer the question that decides whether any of it lasts.