The Power of Radical Focus (When Everything Screams 'Do More')
Kerry Morrison
Build the business that fits your life, not someone else's rules. Take control of your time, build work around your life, and join others who are done playing by the old rules.
The Power of Radical Focus (When Everything Screams ‘Do?More’)
Ask people what they want, and they’ll lie to you.
Not intentionally, but consistently.
There are two things I think about when I’m working with people, and we’re trying to drill down to what problem their product ( or service ) is solving.
You’d think this would be easy.
But in more than 15 years of working with startups ( and more than a few brands ), I’d bet 5% of them knew, with absolute clarity, the problem they were solving and the audience who needed that solution most.
Sidenote: if you find yourself working with an early-stage startup, try this. In one-on-one conversations, ask the founders ( or senior leadership ) what they’re building, and who they’re building for. The number of people you talk to will equal the number of unique answers you get.
This isn’t a knock on the people I’ve worked with.
The problem lies in how we’re taught to do business.
And the tales we’re told about the big successes.
Because bigger is better.
It isn’t. Not until you reach a certain size.
In the early days, when you’re just launching, or you’re trying to achieve product-market-fit?—?that magic moment when what you’ve built solves real problems for users, and they’re happily paying for the privilege?—?…focus wins.
Every. Single. Time.
Focus Saved What Is Now the Biggest Company in the?World
In 1997, when Steve Jobs made his celebrated return to Apple, the company was 90 days away from insolvency.
Their product catalog was a mess. Endless versions of products, variants on variants to appeal to the widest possible market opportunity, and hundreds of products in total.
Finally, after having meeting after meeting after meeting, trying to grasp where the company was going, and where their product lineup fit…he yelled “Stop.”
“This is crazy,” he said.
Then he got up, walked to the whiteboard and drew the simplest graph you could imagine, and set Apple’s future. This is that graph.
Four products. Two audiences. That’s it.
Now endless genius went into those products, between world-class industrial design, technological breakthroughs, and genius marketing, we could talk all day about how the Apple we know, came to be.
But it never starts. It never happens, without that chart. Without radical focus.
Don’t tell me what you’re doing is more complex than Apple Computer in 1997. If they can focus, so can you.
Like Apple, The Business of You Wins With?Focus
Ok, you’re not Apple.
You’re the solopreneur.
Trying to make it in this cold, crazy world.
You need to focus more than Apple.
I often refer to this as: One Problem, One Audience, One Solution.
Think about it this way: What do you know better than most people? Now take that expertise one level deeper, and ask yourself which specific audience needs exactly that knowledge.
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For me, it would be like this.
I’m a marketer ( or I know a lot about marketing ). One level deeper, I love writing emails, so email marketing. My focused audience: I write marketing emails for e-commerce
That’s focus.
It’s not that you can’t help more than one audience ( I write emails for at least four different niches ), but I’m also 20+ years in and have people who come to me for help.
If you’re starting, you have to carve out your audience.
And the one problem, one audience, one solution concept, means one story to tell, and to repeat over and over and over into the world, to make it crystal clear who you can help, and how.
By focusing you’re making it easier for people, who need what you have, to find you.
And that will make your life selling that thing, infinitely easier.
Infinitely.
Then, like Apple, you can branch out, find new offerings, and fill new needs and markets.
But you have to nail the first one, or you’ll never have the cash-flow, the audience, and the rep to expand.
So be like Apple, focus.
Simple Can Be Difficult
Just yesterday I had a call with someone who is struggling with this.
A talented writer, trying to find her voice, and her place in the market.
She knows who she wants to work with, and the things she can do.
But it’s the packaging of an offer, especially when you’re doing it for yourself that can be so difficult.
So, we went through this same exercise.
Answer these three questions:
Some examples ( and this is for any business )
See what I’m getting at?
The world is full of personal trainers.
But if I’m a woman, over 40, who wants to get in shape, and your offering speaks directly to me, my concerns, my hopes, my challenges, who do you think I’m more interested in working with? The generalist, or you, the specialist?
Whatever you’re doing, whatever offer, product, or service, that you have, sit down today and think about how you bring focus to what you’re doing.
It will make it easier to grow. Easier to tell stories about, to create content for, and to build a following.
If you are stuck, or want another set of eyeballs on what you’re doing, drop me a DM, or a comment wherever you see this post, and I’ll happily take a look.
Until then.
Keep building.
P.S. I think about this Jobs quote a lot.
“Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, “A faster horse!”’ People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page”