Focus on the things that make your company money!
The great thing about entrepreneurs is that they have a lot of cutting edge ideas. The bad thing about entrepreneurs is that they have a lot of cutting edge ideas. They frequently try to do too much, too fast, too soon. They stretch their organizations too thin and never focus on the things that could or are making them successful. How do you balance focus with cutting edge ideas and opportunities you should exploit? What about the following scenario:
- Is the new idea currently within the scope of what your company does? An example – if you are an accounting firm, should you also provide car washes – answer is easy: No! but what if the new service is tax preparation? If you have no tax experts in your shop and your specialty is book keeping services the answer may be no as well.
- What if you have one person that knows taxes but that person is currently your best skilled bookkeeper managing a great and growing client? The answer may still be no.
- What if that one person is serving your best client and you can see that bookkeeping services are being off shored to India? Then the answer may be yes.
- What if your firm does bookkeeping and you are growing at 35% a quarter and there are clients who want your services but you just can’t serve? The answer should be to focus on growing your current business instead of adding a new one.
The scenarios are many – there are a few key questions:
- Is your current business growing at an acceptable pace? If yes, then stay the course.
- Is there some systemic threat to your current business that requires you to look for profits somewhere else? If no, why divide your attention?
- Do you have the resources to adequately serve the new initiative? Can you get them? If no, then don’t stretch.
- If you try and fail at the new services, do risk your current clients and business? How great is that risk? If yes, and the risk is great don’t do it.
- Is the adjacency or new initiative within the perceived scope of your current business? If it is outside do not tie the business together.
In all most of the time you should not move too far afield. A start-up should focus and give the original model time to grow. You should be worried if you are spending too much time thinking about expanded services and not growing the core.