Setting up shop - Chapter 1: Defining your purpose, brand, or product

The "Setting-up shop" series

"Setting-up shop" will be a series of posts about how I have come to define my business and am setting it up. It is a personal journey that will highlight the use of some common approaches used to set up a business, brand or product. It will hopefully be of use to you and inspire you to review your own trajectory and setup.

First in line: Defining your purpose, brand or product.

What is today about?

Whether you have decided to step out on your own into the world with your own business, start a brand, a product or a services company as is my case, the initial question is the same for all: What to do?

Some among us have such a strong drive that they have known for a while what it is that they want to do – it is usually a passion, or even a vocation. Whichever it is, it is always rooted inside of you, in your values, in your view of the world, in your strengths and competencies. All of us are however not as lucky and we need some guidance to find our path.

When I decided to go out on my own I had a "pickle" I needed to solve: What to do exactly? In my professional life I have come across many disciplines and have gained a number of skills and competencies. My main issue was that I was confronted with the fact that there is too much of what I can do. Doing everything isn't a solution as you cannot be sharp and unambiguous when you present yourself and your company to potential clients. To draw a parallel to daily life, it is the same as when you are about to hire a service that can offer absolutely anything, at any budget and within the desired deadline – sounds fishy, right?

I firmly believe that in order to be truly excellent and to truly enjoy what you are doing you have to recognise what your strengths are and build on them. You have to be aware of your weaknesses as they may create blind spots, however trying to improve your performance in your weaknesses to the level of your strengths is just an exercise in futility. It won't get there, it will make you frustrated, it will waste your time and energy instead of putting it to good use in amplifying your strengths.

Know your weaknesses, be aware of them, but build on your strengths.

So how do I get to knowing what my strengths are? I will show you below an exercise that I have done for myself and that others have found useful in order to distill their areas of excellence.

The exercise can be applied to other aspects of your professional life – for example to define the next role you would like to have, to prepare for a personal development workshop, to prepare for a team performance meeting, the applications are many.

Identifying your strengths

Task 1 – list your skills and competencies, without any order or prioritisation. When you are done add two columns: "How much do I like to do this?" and "How good am I (objectively!) at it?". As much as it can hurt, I would suggest to ask some of your trusted peers to rate you on the second column and to give you feedback on why it is so. It is much better to receive a reality check now and not later when you find out that your assessment was too biased.

Here is a list of mine as an illustration.

Task 2 – Plot the skills and competencies along two axes: "How much do I like to do this?" on the X axis and "How good am I (objectively!) at it?" on the Y axis.

Here is my two by two.

Task 3 – Try to define what it is that you do based on the skills and competencies that land in the top right quadrant.

Based on the above I have created my company Root Node. (I have to give full credit for the name to my wife. When I came to her with the idea she was reading a book on data structures and game theory. She said it spontaneously and it stuck!)

Chances are that you already had an inkling of what the outcome of the above exercise was going to be as you know yourself already. It is however good to crystallise it and put a name to it. There is also no limit to how detailed you want to be, you can literally put any individual tasks that you know how to do, or certain skills in IT. The approach is universal. In case you want to create a product or brand, this will also serve as a good inspiration for you.

Task 4 – Find the market for it. Or if you are one of the lucky ones to be a true innovator – create it! In my case, I have started a private consultancy business. It also came as a self-fulfilling prophecy as I had been toying with the idea for a while.

What next?

In the next steps you will have to brush it up, review it, reframe it, give it for feedback to peers / colleagues etc… Work it until it is good enough but don't paralyse yourself seeking perfection - it is more important to get started than being perfect. You will brush it up as you go.

Good luck! I hope it was useful for you. Let me know what comes out for you in the comments below. If you would like to reach out and discuss the results, please do, I would be more than happy to give feedback or be a sounding board.

Until next time when we will be mapping out customers and stakeholders and how to reach them in Chapter 2.