Make Your Business Matter To Someone

Wanting to start a business that will provide everything you can possibly imagine in a given field is bound to failure. Don’t try to be everything to everybody. That won’t work. But if you can just offer one thing relevant to a small group of people – then you have the base to succeed.

One of the most common mistakes I hear all the time is wanting to build an “all inclusive” type of business.

What’s really interesting to me is to see the exact same misconceptions and mistakes so widely spread. Literally anyone who ever talked to me about starting a new business has had a similar approach. No wonder most businesses fail within the first year!

I also always hear the same examples: Amazon, Google, or some other giant! You can’t start a business trying to mimic companies that have matured over 10 years and became huge because of a myriad of reasons.

Focus on focus

A new business needs focus. The more focus you have – the better off you’ll be. The smaller your niche, the easier it’ll be for you to actually reach your target audience; The more you are able to limit the scope of what you do, the better you’ll able at it; etc.

If you’re unable to simplify your idea and focus only on the very core of it, chances are your idea isn’t very good. Chances are that your concept is yet another “aggregator” type of idea.

Even Amazon and Google started as niche businesses

Amazon started by selling books online. At the time that was considered a very specific and narrow business (with a lot of focus). Selling just books – and only online! At the time you couldn’t get any more specific than that!

Google started as a search engine alternative, with a different approach than the other existing scripts of the time. Again in the context of 1996 it doesn’t get any more specific than that!

Every journey, long or short, is made of small steps

So if you find yourself saying that you want to do a business that will do this and that, and this and that. Try to see if you can narrow everything done as much as possible until you get a very clear, simple, and focused concept. So simple and focused you could start working on it right now just with the time and resources you currently have. Then go ahead and develop your business one step at a time .

Thanks for reading! Make sure to check out these other common pit falls:

• Worrying too much about the competition (or thinking there is no competition)
• Planning instead of doing
• Rushing to make sure you’ll be “the first business like that”
• Thinking you’ve got a golden idea