The power of focus
The talk I gave earlier this week (here were my notes) was to a group of about 20 successful entrepreneurs. They were currently running businesses and the point of the event was for them to hear stories of passion and building momentum.
One topic that they asked me a lot about was around focus. I told the stories of how we didn’t see real growth at either Spunlogic and Engauge until we were able to focus on who we were and what we were great at. After we locked in on that, we experienced tremendous growth.
We’ve been working on focus at Dragon Army as well, which is part of why we pulled together a few pop-up advisory boards recently.
Why is it important to have focus at your business?
- It allows you to really be great at something. If you are trying to do all things for all people, you’ll never figure out what you’re really great at. And you’ll never create a great company.
- Focus allows you to be pickier about the type of customers and projects you seek. And when that happens, you will win more customers.
- Focus helps build a cohesive culture. Everyone starts saying the same thing and understanding their part in helping success happen when a company truly knows who they are.
If you can’t clearly describe what your company is great at and what type of customers you are looking for, I suggest you put that at the top of your priority list to nail down. It won’t be easy, but it will be incredibly impactful on the future of your business.
Agree. I’ve been working through that building the digital end of DeMoss. We have tried a lot of things and it’s taken a couple of years to figure out where we best provide (digital) value for clients. Once we nailed that down, getting new business seemed to get easier.
Focus to a fault. It’s entrepreneurs’ tendency to want to do a lot of things and they end up mediocre at them all. A lot of times it is not until the going gets tough- a down economy, lack of funding, tragic event- that requires the focus and that is when break-through milestone moments occur.
Dave, completely agree. Focus is often only achieved when its required for survival. I’ll have this issue with Dragon Army going forward and I’ll have to be disciplined about it. At Spun, we basically didn’t grow for 5 years, then we doubled for five years and were simply fighting to keep up with that growth, so there was no time for distractions. Engauge was the opposite – lots of non-growth and therefore, lots of distraction. At DA, as we hit solid growth and profit this year, and with our ability to build actual products, “focus” will be instrumental in our ability to succeed.
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