Focus is extremly important when starting a company. It is easy to think that the best thing to offer your customers is everything they need. I mean wouldn’t you want to be the one stop shop for someones needs so they can keep wanting to come back for more? Unfortunately, that always sounds great in theory, but in practive its a concept that kills. McDonals does burgers, and even though now they have a fish filet and a Mc Rib now and again they are a burger joint and when they started and took off they did burgers better then anyone in the biz. After a while they added more products to stay currnet and further saturate their market but they had to start somewhere, and dig into the dirt. Creating a business on the side lines often give people a chance to improve on a big companies ideas, but they neglet to realize how long it took for the company toget their and build their brand off of doing one thing great.

The miss-hap is much like a sub shop that notices that people on their lunch break often needs copies made, so they become a sub shop and copy center. Would you eat at a sub shop that does copies when you wants subs and vice versa? The problem is every time you add an “and” to a sentance about what you do you when you are a growing company you are devaluing each individual thing in that claim by half. I mean if 1 person is great and flipping burgers and they put all ther time into that skill what happens when that same person makes shakes….well you can hire another person for the shakes, but the problems still trickles up — now the manager must be great at spending half his time on managing burger flippers and half on shakes makers. Make your core your focus and do that one thing better than anyone in the world. If you find yourself using the “and” in your value prop raise a red flag.

Another way to think about it is that often times you try to increase value with increasing your offerings. So you say we are a company that focuses on the very best linens (but then you think how do i get the linens to the customer so you continue on) … and we deliver the linens to your door. What just happened there is once you started thinking about alternative ways to increase the value of your company you have inadvertently admitted that the “fine linens” part of your companies offerings isn’t good enough to stand on its own. I have the finest linens – [period]. I am so focused and great at making fine linens you will want them – [period]. It rings stronger and internally, in every conversation and meeting that comes up if the discussion doesn’t ultimately improve the quality of your fine linens dont waste your time talking about it. every new offering (if you want it done well) deserves all the attention it needs and will suck attention from another offering unless you have the brand, management, money, exposure, customer base to help carry you unto something else.

You just can’t avoid it no matter how smart or hard working you are you will give your customers mixed signals, employees diffused objectives and passion, and a mitigated product that can’t compete with a rival that coud spring up and do everything they can to be better at one thing than you. Information gets around quick and people know how to manage multiple systems, if they can save time by finding someone who does something important better than anyone they will use them in no time.

note: I should make one more point. This doesn’t mean that you can’t have new ideas, just recognize that the new idea will need focus and attention and if you think your original idea/business isnt good enough to stand on its own you should decide whether to keep the old business or shift focus completely to the new one.

For years employees would hire vetrans becuase after x mount of years experience an employer knew you they were getting a knowladgable person based on track record, but that is kind of a lazy way to hire. It just like football, you hire skill and lose potential, you pay to mitiagte risk. Employers would then hire young people at a low salary if they were bright, once again to mitigate risk. “You seem smart but you dont have a track record so we will have to pay you less.” Much like foot ball you are not setting your team up to win a super bowl in the coming years. (This also sounds similar to VC world)

What FaceBook, Google etc well in addition to hiring smart vetrans was they flipped the script a bit. They started hiring young people with allot of potential and paying them allot of money. A few years later they are winning super bowls. And the old employer style is having a hard time finding talent. Now everyone wants a young genius and they are in short supply.

Time and time again this risk mitigation strategy is a red flag and one should be sure they are mitigating for the right reasons. Also, when you save time by mitigating it is a red flag because in away you are being lazy, and when you are lazy you give opportunity to those that aren’t lazy to move ahead. (not lazy cause you dont work hard but lazy because you are using a systems to think for you and when you do that you get further and further from being different and different equals success because not everyone can be successful)