As I completed my last post, which was about operating principles for my business, I realized that It would probably be helpful to explore these ideas a little deeper. To show you how they might look when applied to my business.

Of course, I consider it unlikely that you will use the exact same operating principles in your business, but if you see what they mean in my business, I hope you will consider developing your own operating principles.

You may remember that one of the operating principles is “Focus on the Core.”  Today, I’d like to take a deeper dive into this principle because it is one of the top-of-mind challenges I’ve been working to resolve for several years now.  Without a major sharpening of my focus, I probably would not be here writing on this blog today.

A Bit of History

Let me just tell you where I was two years ago.  I had over 40 ‘active’ projects.  I was doing small business consulting on a fee for service basis, publishing a daily marketing tip ezine, I was involved in no less than 3 joint venture startups, I was dabbling in information products, and I had a big vision to build a new company around a software tool for Infopreneurs.

Oh, and I still had a couple of clients in the corporate world too. In short, my business was a mess and I knew it. I was working way too hard and the value I was providing was spread way too thin to have any real impact for me or my clients.

When I took a hard look at my business, I realized that there was one part that was bringing in consistent income, one part that made sense as the future foundation of my business, and many other parts that just did not fit at all. That’s when I resolved to focus my efforts on the core of my business, and clear out the rest of the projects and distractions.

Out of necessity, I have gotten much better at focus. Now, two years later, I have just one consulting client, and the rest of my focus is on creating VisiOlo (my #1 project) and making it the best it can be.  So, while my business still has two sides, it is much more manageable and I can build a lot more value for the markets I serve.

So, what I really have is two businesses. One is a high-involvement consulting practice where, at this point, I can only handle one client at a time.  I get deeply involved in their business and develop various marketing projects to help build their bottom line.

I don’t really write much about that business, I only mention it here because it is relevant to this idea of focus.  When I say “my business” on this blog, I’m always referring to the second business I run, which is a digital publishing business focused on software.  The publishing business has launched several products and publications, but VisiOlo is our #1 project — it’s the foundation of everything else we want to do.  More about those other products below.

I realize that my idea of focus is contrary to the way many people approach an information marketing business, especially with my strong belief that 99% of micro-publishing businesses (Infopreneurs) should focus on just one niche.  But this approach has served me well and I think it will serve you well too.

As a refresher, here’s how I described Focus on the Core in my previous post…

I think focus, or lack thereof, is one of the biggest challenges Infopreneurs face — self included . Everyone knows about focus in general, but what I’ve found helpful is to look at focus in my company as having 4 different elements:

• • Audience: Who is our ideal prospect? What are their core needs?
  • Best At: What are we better at than anyone in the world?
  • #1 Project: What is our most important project? Is this project a good combination of what our audience needs and what we are best at?
  • Next Step: What do we need to do next to move closer to completion of #1 project?

Given these 4 elements, let me tell you where I think my company is with each.

Audience

This was one of the things that came sharply into focus right after the ‘turning point’ I described above.  I knew that my entire business would depend on which audience I chose to serve, so the decision was not taken lightly.  It was, however, taken quickly.  I already knew that the place were I could serve best would be with the Infopreneur audience.  I did, however, take the time to run some numbers and do a market analysis.  All of the facts supported my desire to focus on the Infopreneur market.  Since then, I can honestly say that we have a great focus on this market as a company, and it is only getting sharper.

Best At

I have to give a big nod to Jim Collins and his book Good to Great.  This one took a while to define, and it is also a bit aspirational (in other words, we are getting there).  Defining what my company is best at was a bit challenging because we are very good at many things — we have a generalists organizational skill set — but we had not been clearly great at any one thing.  Or at least that is what it felt like at the time. But the answer, looking back on it, has been very clear all along.

What we are ‘best at’ is helping Infopreneurs measure and optimize the effectiveness of their online selling systems (make more money with the same or less expense).  Are we truly the best in the world at this?  I say, maybe… because it’s not really a contest.  I can honestly say, though, that for most of our customers we will absolutely be the best in the world at helping them measure and optimize the effectiveness of their selling systems.

#1 Project

Hooo boy, this has been an interesting one and a constant source of dissonance.  It took me a long time to realize it, but I was addicted to the energy, excitement and hope that comes at the start of a project.  I rarely, if ever, said no to a project.  If I had an idea or someone came to me with one I’d literally go from ‘that’s a great idea!’ to ‘let’s do it!’ without much thought in between.

At the same time, I have known that VisiOlo was my #1 project for five or six years now.  Hence the dissonance.  When you have a clear #1, and don’t really have much time to focus on it, you set yourself up for a lot of frustration.

So, it took all of two years to clear out (most of) the clutter but I can honestly say that my company is totally focused now on it’s #1 project.

I have even made the decision to close every other project and discontinue every other product (more details to come on each specific project, and maybe some deals

Next Step

This principle is clearly borrowed from David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology. GTD contains many components, but the idea of defining and focusing on the next step in a project has been a breakthrough for me.  Without this focus, I would have gone crazy about 6 months ago when it seemed like we would never get this project to launch.  Right now, every VisiOlo team member knows exactly what their next task is. It’s a huge productivity enhancer.  I use a mind mapping software (FreeMind) to maintain all of the task groups and tasks. It’s very easy to see what is next and we are pretty good at staying focused until it’s done.

We still get distracted, and make mistakes, but overall we are mostly working on the next step with good focus.

Conclusion

I hope it helps to see how these operating principles work in my business. As you can see, with these for elements of focus in place, we stand a much better chance of success in our plans.

Just by focusing on these four elements we can avoid common problems like… making a product that isn’t suited to the audience, spreading focus so thing among multiple projects that nothing gets done, getting distracted by shiny objects.  If we constantly re-visit these four elements, we generally stay on track and headed the right direction.

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