|
| One Word of Advice ................................................................................................................................................................ |
|
If you had one word of advice for people just starting out in their own business what would it be? Focus. I’ve seen many people going into business with lots of passion, experience and great ideas. Unfortunately they tend to want to incorporate all of their ideas into the business right from the beginning. While this can help communicate enthusiasm to others around, it can also lead to a lot of confusion about what business you’re actually in. By focusing on one product, profession or audience, a new business can establish itself and its reputation and then start to branch out to the other areas that were part of the original idea. The two places where I often see this kind over exuberance are with small retailers who want to sell quirky and unique products and creative people who want to sell artwork or start a design agency. The issue with retailers is that they often try and be too many things to too many audiences. Their shops tend to be full of a huge variety of tchochkies and knick-knacks from wooden jewelry boxes to gag gifts and funky colored furniture. This creates two immediate headaches for the new business owner, inventory management and inventory expense. Inevitably these shops end up selling as much as half their merchandise on clearance within six months. The focus issue for these proprietors is audience. If you go into the business understanding who shops in nearby stores, what kind of things they buy and what your competitors sell, you can go a long way toward reducing your up front costs and headaches. If you are thinking of opening a shop for selling unique gifts, there are a couple of different routes you can take. One is to consider getting experience as a franchisee for one of the national chains such as Hallmark. If franchising is more than you want to tackle, there are generally both general employment and management opportunities at these stores that can provide invaluable experience in both understanding your customers and how a gift shop operates. Once you have made the decision to open your own store, start with a relatively limited inventory of products or product lines from well known, but offbeat brands such as Dirty Girl. Even if the store starts out with a somewhat sparse sales floor compared to the traditional crowded gift shop, it will help establish the store and give you room to selectively add new lines as they emerge. With the extra floor space it also allows you to test small quantities of various new products and see which ones do well with your customer base in a setting where the new products aren’t crowded out by tons of other things (that will most likely end up in the clearance bin in six months). As for artists and creative types, the issue of focus is establishing themselves and their reputation. Just about every artist that I have ever known is really good at a number of different creative endeavors. The successful ones have built their initial reputation as a specialist. Even if the artist is an outstanding painter or illustrator and can create beautiful works of any number of subject types, they are almost always known for a single style of subject such as watercolor landscapes, oil paintings of birds, or portraits of children. The key as an artist for them has been their ability to focus on a single area where they both excel and there is a ready market for the type of work. On the commercial art side where someone is looking to start a one-person agency or freelance business, there are equal challenges. Many of the artists and designers I’ve met who strike out on their own try to claim they can do it all for their clients. In many cases this is true, but it tends to overlook one critical factor of their marketplace. Most of the time when a company or individual is looking for a single designer or small agency, they are only looking for them to do a single thing such as design a brochure or create a flier. With this in mind, I generally recommend that individuals promote themselves as having a specialty and then branch out from there. ECS|DC is a great example of a company that has grown this way as we initially built our reputation as a Web design company that had other services available. Now we have new clients coming to us for print work and branding support because of the good things our Web clients have told them. We have always had these full service capabilities, but made the decision early on to focus on building Web sites for small businesses as an entrée into the broader design marketplace. In the end it all comes down to Focus. By focusing on a single aspect or opportunity for your business early on, you are able to establish yourself in a marketplace. Once you are established you can grow into the other areas that you originally envisioned. If done right and managed carefully, early focus can provide a strategic foundation for success. If you’re having trouble understanding how to focus, or what to focus on there are a couple of questions to ask yourself:
The answers in Andrew's Advice column provide personalized feedback and opinions regarding the questions we receive. It is not intended as a complete solution to the specific situations, but merely as a thought starter for those asking the questions and individuals and companies with similar issues and concerns. For complete solutions to your unique business needs, we recommend you get advice directly from a communications professional. |
 If you have any comments about this column, or have a question you'd like answered, you can write to Andrew Hayden. |