How to Focus Your Business and Make More Money

Most of us are totally unaware of how much our lack of focus impacts our lives and our businesses yet the impact is huge!

Among many things, lack of focus:

  • Damages relationships
  • Results in missing sales opportunities
  • Increases our cost of doing business
  • Derails us from our vision
  • Impacts our ability to achieve goals
  • Results in increased work hours and workload

Essentially, lack of focus is, at best, a drag on our business and, at worst, will bring our business to its knees!

I think all of us can recall a time in our lives and/or businesses when our lack of focus cost us something. If not, maybe some of these examples will jog your memories!

Action Beats Strategy

Strategy without action is just hot air. You cannot strategize your way to success. You must take action and execute the strategy to see any results!

As Brad Feld and David Cohen stated in their book Do More Faster, “David didn’t beat Goliath with a whiteboard.” David beat Goliath by picking up some ammo (a few round stones), taking aim with his slingshot, and hitting Goliath in the forehead with a well-placed “kill-shot!”

This is strategy in action!

It is way too common for business leaders to “whiteboard” a strategy and then never implement it. They simply fail to translate their vision into actionable steps.

So, throw away your whiteboard and take some action!

Implement Your Strategy

How To Build A Business Without A Perfect Product

Most business owners understand that they need to create a differentiated, high-quality product or service to be successful in today’s marketplace.

However, many businesses derail because they are trying to create a “perfect” product. Perfectionism causes them to either never launch or launch too late to capture the market they are after.

Worse yet, many companies think they know what the market wants and they spend millions of dollars creating an amazingly perfect product that no one wants!

The Perfect Product  . . . Is a Myth!

How to Use the Cloud to Empower Your Business

Pretty much everyone today is aware of “the cloud” and associated technologies. From iCloud to Dropbox, Amazon’s personally tailored Kindle library to Microsoft’s Office 365. Cloud enabled software and services are all around us and growing in functionality and usage.

Also, new products and services are continually entering the marketplace. From smart refrigerators in your home that monitor food consumption and automatically order refills through your cloud based grocery profile, to “Wikipedia like books” that contain and share every reader’s markups, notes and cross references.

The cloud is here and consumer adoption is massive and growing!

The Cloud is a Huge Business Opportunity

In case you haven’t noticed, this is a huge opportunity for businesses to get a virtual lock on a customer! Cloud based business models can secure a solid stream of income for a long period of time by offering a compelling and valuable service.

How to Become an Effective and Focused Business Leader

Every business leader must have a rock solid organizational system in place so that they can lead a differentiated business. Failure to differentiate yourself results in a race for the bottom!

In a last week’s post I wrote about how a differentiated leader must have instant access to all of their past and current business notes, data, ideas, and plans. I mentioned that all of this information must be organized and indexed electronically in a manner that allows easy access from anywhere, at anytime, using any platform. Finally, I stated that this is not a product but a system that contains two distinct elements:

  1. a cloud based software tool (see last week’s post for more details)
  2. a systematic approach to organization for an effective business leader

This week we will focus on a systematic approach to organization that will help you become an effective and focused business leader!