“As an entrepreneur, you love your business like a child, and you’re taught to be laser-focused on the business.”~ Daymond John

In a small town, two businesses had served the same clientele for years. One of them was a grain and feed store, and the other was a hardware and tool store. Each business owner wanted to capture extra sales by dovetailing new categories of goods and providing a one-stop shopping solution for their customers. They had both heard that this tactic was being employed by chain stores and tried to emulate that formula. So, the feed store started stocking hardware items and hired an employee to oversee that category. The hardware store did the same with feed and grain items.

Both owners encountered the same problem, each from his own perspective. The feed store’s clients who wanted tools were not happy with the small selection. The hardware store’s owner often heard complaints from his customers about the scant inventory of grain and feed. This went on for a couple of years, and neither business owner understood why the add-on categories weren’t as successful as they would have liked.

Finally, at the local meat and three, the hardware-store owner came up to the table where the feed-store man sat and said, “We need to talk.” The feed-store man agreed, and by the end of lunch they worked out a solution. Each of them would not try to do something the other one did better, and each store swapped their one employee who managed the competing category. Soon, sales and customer satisfaction were up for both store owners.

Find out what you are good at, and be the best at that one thing. Diversification, if not properly executed, can be a grave distraction to yourself and your team.

Consider this …

1. Take a moment to brief y describe your core business.

2. Now describe the component of your core business that you are the best in the world (or in your market) at doing, which no one else can match. What other things are you trying to do that are distracting you from your core capabilities?

3. What partnerships might you develop to enhance your core business, without creating unnecessary distraction?

For more, check out The Top Performer’s Field Guide, The Innovator’s Field Guide, or visit www.JeffStandridge.com.

(Originally published in The Innovator’s Field Guide..)