Focus on What You’re Good At

By Graham Acreman

Earlier in the year I wrote an article, 10 Powerful Business Tips for Owners and Entrepreneurs.

Last week we went into more detail on the first item, “The Importance of Having a Big Vision and today I'm going to elaborate on the second item, – Focus on What You’re Good At.

Now this might initially seem like a bit of a no-brainer after all, who would want to focus on what they’re not good at?   

The reality is, owners and entrepreneurs often get distracted and end up wasting time and energy on things that they’re not good at or not part of their core service offering.  Why?  Because for your core business, you already know how to do the things that you do – you have the knowledge and the processes down pat because you’ve them countless times.  When you go down the path of considering jobs outside of your wheelhouse, you’re inevitably going to spend more time and effort than you would on one of your “Standard” offerings.

 Focus is a matter of deciding what things you are not going to do.   

Think of a lawyer. There are many specialties out there – family law, corporate law, tax law, employment law, immigration law - the list goes on.  If you had a labour law issue, who do you think would handle it more efficiently – an employment lawyer or a family lawyer?  The family lawyer could probably so it but it would take them a lot more time than an experienced employment lawyer. Extra time that you probably wouldn't want to pay for.

Think of a cake maker who makes fabulous cakes. One day they’re asked to make meat pies.  Could they do it?  Of course they could. Should they do it? Probably not.  Though they probably have everything they need for baking the next cake, if they were going to cook meat pies they’d have to get many ingredients they didn’t already have as well as supplies. They’d also have to determine how they were going to charge for meat pies whereas for cakes they already knew the answer.

Guess who would usually end up absorbing the extra time and have their profitability impacted?  The cake maker.

Focusing on what you’re good at allows you to hone your expertise and perfect your craft. Focus on what you're good at.

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