Focus
"Well, if I have to."
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
As an entrepreneur, focus is not one of my strengths. I am wired more for ideation, the opposite of focus. I understand the need for and benefit of entrepreneurial focus and have discussed it with many of my startup coaching clients. Today, I find myself applying it to my own business.
Currently, I am resetting and spinning up a new version of my personal business. I’ve used this as a way to rethink …
The fields I know very well (the ones I am at good at or expert in).
The fields I love (the ones that bring me energy and don’t even seem like “work”).
The fields in which I can make a positive impact in the world (the ones that bring purpose to what I do).
The rethinking process has been very successful.
I could identify my answers to all three areas
I have strong hands-on expertise practicing innovation, particularly the very front end invention part: researching and understanding customer needs, organizing piles of qualitative information into a usable form, drawing insights about value from it, and using those insights to ideate breakthrough product solutions.
I also have strong hands-on expertise as an entrepreneur or startup coach, having started around 10 ventures or programs and having coached roughly 4,000 entrepreneurs over two decades. I know what works and have established multiple venture accelerators.I love both of those fields and was missing the invention work since I’d been working mainly in entrepreneur coaching.
I know my purpose: “Enabing the next generation to build a better tomorrow.” That emerged years ago when I was coaching high school student entrepreneurs. I discovered the personal value of using what I do to make the world a little better off.
I used that to formulate a new set of products for my personal company. It first started off very broad, but I narrowed it down. I felt really good about focusing my business model to that more narrow view.
And then I talked with a friend.
The first thing he said after hearing what I proposed was, “It looks like you want to do two related, but different, things. Have you thought about focusing in on one?”
Hmm, I thought I had focused it already.
Well, he was right.
After a bit more thought, I decided to focus (there’s that word again) on the invention side of my product offering.
That is where the greatest need sits. Even though markets, customers, and technologies continually change, companies don’t usually understand how to create an internal process to produce a continual flow of new innovations. I can equip them with that missing process.
Plus, I can get to market quicker than building out the broader ideas. Now I just have one to build out. That translates into revenue sooner.
Also, I don’t trip over my own tongue trying to explain what I do. I can zero in on, “I help companies invent breakthrough next generation product concepts.” The second half of my prior approach would have added, “… and get them to market”. By the way, could I still do that second half if the demand is there? Uhh, sure. However, there are also plenty of others in my market that can do that, just not very many of us with expertise in the process of invention.
TL;DR Summary
Given my being wired for ideation, openness, and choice (the arch enemies of focus), but intellectually knowing the benefits of focus, I rethought my personal business with what I believed was good focus.
The first thing a friend who looked at my business model said was, “Can you focus this more?” LOL
I did, and I found it strangely refreshing to be focusing inward rather than ideating outward.
Maybe I’ve turned over a new leaf. We’ll see!