Lack of focus can kill your startup in the first year
It’s understandable that a small business owner, faced with the need to make a living and put food on the table, may want to use a shotgun approach to selecting services and/or products on which to base the business. This is particularly prevalent in some service oriented professions, like business and human resource consulting, organizational development and training fields. Let me share an example.
Some time ago a organizational development and training consultant I worked (both employed by same employer) was downsized. This was a year or two after I had left the employer. We had some discussions about work, since both of us ended up as independents.
In looking at his promotional material, which was quite slick and glossy in look and feel, one thing came across to me as a bit of a mystery. He was offering a grab bag of services to potential clients — a shotgun approach. However, I knew from working and talking with him that for many of those services he was neither experienced or competent to deliver them.
My opinions, of course, can be wrong, but in this case I received several calls from the “client community” querying me on this exact issue and this consultant. They wanted to know what I thought of his expertise (I don’t really answer those questions directly), but the common thread was “How can he be good at all those things”? Or, “Has he ever done these things before?”
His demeanor and materials were such that prospective clients wouldn’t go to him to ask directly because they believed
that he was so desperate for business (which he was) that he would lie. The didn’t trust him. And thus, they didn’t hire him either.
The results were decidedly unfortunate and sad. He went from independent consultant to getting another job, losing it or leaving for some reason, trying to consult, and back and forth, always desperate. In the process his wife of only a few years filed for divorce and he lost his house. Of course there were other contributors to this meltdown — major ones, in fact, but the desperation and the lack of an understanding of his marketplace made it pretty much impossible for his business to succeed.
