What if I told you trillion-dollar companies share the same patterns? Yes, companies like Apple, Amazon, meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, they all share similar patterns. And what if I also told you most small to medium businesses completely ignore these patterns. In this article, I'm going to reverse engineer the trillion-dollar ecosystem and show you how these trillion-dollar companies make their customers addicts!

The first pattern that I'm going to show you is called reinforcing value loop. For this one, we will use, let's use Apple. And before I use Apple, I always put out a disclaimer, I'm not an Apple product owner or services owner. I don't use their services either. I just use Apple as an example, because they have a great business model, and a lot of users or viewers have Apple products, so they understand the business model. It's easier to explain. For me, it is not personal, it's business. Always remember this.Let's say we have the iPhone, we want a little bigger version, so we go out and purchase the iPad. Let's say we want to do conduct some business, so we end up getting a MacBook. Let's say we want to track our steps, and we end up buying the Apple Watch. We want to save all our data, so we end up getting the iCloud service, for storage purposes. We want to get some apps, so we go to the Apple Store. That's pretty much the loop, along with other services and products that Apple offer, this is the loop. Each product and service within this loop strengthens the other. You are continuously staying within the loop. Apple keeps you in the loop. Also, with the products, they always upgrade, or they update, so you want to have the latest and greatest futures, so you upgrade with the latest model or version, which also keeps you in the loop, so customers buy more over time with the reinforcing value loop.

The second pattern that I want to share that trillion-dollar companies have is integrated data. Some of the videos you watch are because of integrated data. This is what YouTube uses to put videos in front of you. They use information that you've searched for. They use information that you viewed previously to put the right videos and the right articles in front of you, as well as Meta. Meta uses this with Facebook and Instagram. That's how they know how to target ads towards you or target you to certain information based off of what you've looked at previously. They use the data and more data. The more they can improve their personal experience, the more they can improve the interaction and the more they can keep you on their platforms. Integrated data is a good pattern to have within your business ecosystem as well, and this is a pattern that these trillion-dollar companies use.

A third pattern is low friction entry point. Low friction entry point. What is this? This is essentially easy access. You can get in easily. It doesn't really cost you much to get in. It's either free or it's a minimum cost. How much does it cost you to watch a YouTube video? Does it cost you anything? Unless you have a YouTube premium membership. How much does it cost you to do a Google search within a Chrome browser? It doesn't cost you anything. It's a low entry point, right? How much does it cost you to open up a Facebook account? It doesn't cost you anything, easy access, low entry. Some companies do what they call trial periods so you can get in. They do a seven-day trial period, 14-day trial period, or 30-day trial period, to get you locked into a service or the product that they have. If they do have a fee, they'll make it low, and they'll start out with a trial period. Some companies do that. Microsoft does that with Office products. They do that with their Azure product. They'll do a trial period for a little while, for a little bit of money, so you can get access, you can get acclimated and get in, and once you're in, then you'll be using the services. They feel like you'll be using the services for a significant period of time, because you'll like the services or products.

The next pattern that we're going to share is lock-in without force. Now, this is an interesting one, and when I give you some examples of this, you're going to say, "that's me, all right. Locking in without force is pretty much a client getting so accustomed to the product and services of a company, and it just makes it inconvenient for you to leave or for you to move to another product or service. Let's take Apple for example, you got the iPhone. You got all your information on the iPhone. You have all your information on the Apple products, all your information on iCloud, all your information on the watch or Mac, or other Apple products or services that you may use. It would be extremely, extremely inconvenient for you to move to another service or another product that's called lock-in without force. They're not forcing you to stay, but you're going to stay because it's convenient. It's inconvenient for you to move. Nobody wants to go through all the work to transfer your data. Nobody wants to go through all the work, knowing you may lose data. You have the potential to lose data because you move into another system, you move into another product. That's a powerful, powerful pattern that trillion-dollar companies use.

Another pattern that trillion-dollar companies use is network effect. Network effect is essentially, the more people join, the more valuable the product or service becomes. Take Facebook in their earlier days, everybody said, “follow me on Facebook”, follow me on Instagram, follow me here, follow me there, subscribe to my channel. And the more people join, the more people network, the more valuable the platform becomes, because now you're getting more recommendations, now you're getting more people advertising for you. You are getting a more valuable product as well, because you have more information, you have more data. Network effect gets more valuable the more the people join.

The next pattern I am going to highlight is monetization. Monetization is essentially multiple revenue streams. You are not dependent on just one revenue stream. You're not dependent on one type of product. You're not dependent on one service. You have hardware, you have software, you have services, you have accessories,you have licensing.  You have quite a few areas that you can draw revenue from, so you're not dependent on one area. In some cases, you have one of these areas, which is your biggest area that you draw revenue from. Apple’s biggest revenue generator is the iPhone. Amazon, it’s the online store. The biggest generator for Microsoft is the Microsoft OS, because they partner with a lot of products.

The last pattern I'm going to share with you, which is probably the most important one. It's called the partnership magnet. A good example of this is Amazon. A lot of people want to sell on Amazon. They want to partner with Amazon because they know they can gain a large customer base if they partner with Amazon. YouTube is another good example. A lot of people partner with YouTube because they know that it has a lot of viewers, and they can attract a lot of clients, a lot of customers, if they partner with YouTube. These are some essential patterns that these trillion-dollar companies have within their ecosystem that cause their customers to become addicted. It causes their customers to stay on their platforms. It causes their customers to stay within their ecosystem. Their customers are spending more, they're doing more, and essentially, these companies are raking in cash like never before because of these patterns. I hope something that was shared will help you within your small to medium business, and always remember it's not personal, it's business.