Busines 101: Answer these Questions

One of the toughest things we entrepreneurs, with big dreams and bigger ideas (and small pockets) face is FOCUS (don't believe me? See my post on Rant: Idea ADD).

How to focus on one idea long enough to take it to market?
How to focus your concepts of one idea to avoid "scope creep" (a consulting term that refers to when the size and scope of your project slowly grows into this bohemith thing that's impossible to taacklet)?
How to focus your management team (you and the partners) to make sure things are getting accomplished and moving forward? Progress is everything.

The one thing we've learned, especially from our first idea that was subsequently canned (and rightfully so) was that you can not be everything to everyone. You can not be everything to everyone. You can not be everything to everyone. Because everyone does not have the same needs nor does everyone go about solving these needs the same way.

You can not be everything to everyone.

That being said, according to Mike Hirshland of Polaris Ventures (yes, a VC firm), answer these questions about your business:

1. What business you are REALLY in? The answer to this should be short - less than 10 words. We are in the business of _______________ and ___________. That's it. If your sentence is long, contains anypunctuation marks besides the period (at the end) you're thinking to broadly. Because trust that if you can not articulate your concept, customers will not understand the need for your concept.
2. What job do you fill for your customer(s)? What do you do for them that they either couldn't do before you or couldn't do as efficiently before you? We are doing ____________ and _________ for our customers. Again, no punctuation marks. No commas, no semi-colons, no run-on sentences and prepositions. Simple.

Give it a try. Want the full article? [Click Here]

We'll post the answers to those questions in the next week, once we "hunker" a few things done. Moving forward, ya'll, moving forward.