What Does Your Business Do?


By Anthony Hernandez


At this point in the business startup (or reinvention) process, you should be clear about your life’s mission. Your next step is to determine what goods and/or services your business should offer that will best contribute to that mission. Never forget that your business must exist to serve your needs, never the other way around. Far too many entrepreneurs trade the “oppression” of the 9-5 workday for the “freedom” of the 6-midnight at a job they can’t simply walk away from. You don’t want to be in that position.

Resist the temptation to offer too broad a spectrum, especially in the early stages. Focus on doing one thing extremely well instead of many mediocre things. I’m not saying you must only offer one product or service. You should, however, make sure that everything you offer falls into the same narrow range that will greatly simplify your marketing and management. Keep in mind that the actual things your business offers are almost afterthoughts compared to the many things that must occur for the business to remain open. For example, if you are opening a bakery, then the actual baking will be a very small part of keeping your doors open every day. Every variable you add to your offering mix ha s an exponential impact on management.

So you’ve determined that your business is the right one for you to be in and have settled on a suitably focused range of offerings. Now it’s time to look at the other businesses in your area that offer similar things to determine how your business will stand out from the competition. This process involves the following three steps:

First, get out a blank sheet of paper and a pen (I strongly recommend doing this by hand instead of on a word processor). On this sheet, list every conceivable benefit to customers of doing business with you. Don’t confuse benefits with features. What’s the difference? A feature is a “what” (a bell or whistle). A benefit is a “so what”, (what customers get from doing business with you). Be brazen! Hey, if you’re not your business’s loudest advocate, who will be?

Second, examine the competition. If you’re opening a traditional “brick and mortar” business (storefront or office), then take a good look at your local area. If you’re opening a virtual (online) business, then your search must be much wider (nationwide or even worldwide). Each of these businesses offers benefits, many of which duplicate yours. Find and eliminate these duplicates from your list, which will soon bear an almost painful number of scribbles and deletions. Fear not, because this is a good thing. In fact, it’s a very good thing.

Third, look at the remains of your once-proud list. If you did your job correctly, then most of your work will be obliterated. How can this be a good thing? Take a closer look and you’ll see a few things that you haven’t deleted. This is what sets your business apart. This is where you are going to hang your management, marketing, and planning hats. This is the foundation upon which your business will be built or rebuilt.

What about you? Now that you have the raw blueprint for your business in hand, you need to start thinking about your ideal life (the life you’d live if freed from all constraints) and life’s mission and start figuring out what your role in this business is going to be. How will you balance the three competing forces of forward-looking visionary and dreamer, present-day technician who actually does the work, and backward-looking manager who constantly tries to apply some logic and order to the whole endeavor? Chances are very strong that you are a technician, a very grounded live-for-the-moment person who loves doing whatever your business does (such as baking). I’ve lost count of the number of people who tell me “I’m a _______, not a businessperson!” The time to start defining your role in this business is right now. If you are in business or are thinking of starting a business and you have not read Michael Gerber’s The Emyth Revisited, then I urge you to run, not walk, to your nearest bookseller.

By now, we’re fairly far along in the process of defining your business and how it fits into and serves your needs. Notice that I haven’t talked about a business plan yet. Starting with a business plan makes the whole effort revolve around the business when it should revolve around you, then around your customers. Next week, we’ll start talking about how to make sure your business revolves around its customers. Stay tuned!

Anthony Hernandez is a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Association Business Coach with over 20 years of business and marketing experience. To learn more about Anthony and the services he provides, visit him on the web at Coach Anthony (http://www.coachanthony.com/index.htm) and The Enlightened Savage (http://www.theenlightenedsavage.com/). Anthony lives with his family in Ashland, Oregon.


More Resources

Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting

More Management Information:

Related Articles

Top 7 Methods to Empower Employees
How many times have you asked someone to do something like "draw up a plan for such and such project"? Your employee completes the plan, but then you say, "That is not what I wanted" or "That is not how you do it". And so the employee thinks: you didn't tell me exactly how you wanted it done.
Implementation the Catalyst of Change for Management to Reach that Next Level of Success
From the personal and professional experiences of other colleagues and myself, one of the more critical success factors for management is implementation. Through my observations, I have discovered that people and organization spend a great deal of resources including time, dollars and the cumulative total of the energy generated from these efforts to create business or strategic plans.
Make Change Easy - Get Involved!
There are wild variances in how much involvement organisations are brave enough to offer their people in change. From those organisations where they just 'tell' (sometimes by text message even!), to the most enlightened extreme, where they enable wholesale contribution to the change process.
The Seven Cs: Partnership Danger Signs - Communication Breakdown
An ongoing series of articles exploring the seven critical areas that can indicate a partnership is in trouble.COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWNThe "Seven Cs" are the danger signs that indicate your business partnership, or any partnership for that matter, is in trouble.
Managing People - Why Is It So Difficult?
Managing, supervising, being a team leader is the hardestjob in the world and I'll tell you why.Imagine what it's like to drive a car.
Reducing the High Cost of Absenteeism
Employers pay a high price for absenteeism, often more than they may realize, in terms of both financial and production losses and employee morale. Managers may view the tasks of finding a substitute employee as a short-term inconvenience; however, absenteeism frequently has more serious long-term effects.
On The Job Training is Something You Can't Afford to Skip
Trained employees are more productive employees; there's no doubt about that. Whether you're your only employee or whether you've got a growing staff, put OJT (on the job training) at the top of your To-Do list.
Knowledge Management - Lessons Learned and How To Identify Them
Many organisations use the term "lessons learned" to describe the way in which they avoid repeating mistakes, or ensure that they build on past successes, yet a lesson can only be applied if it has been successfully identified, and captured first. Even in "learning organisations" who profess to be good at knowledge management and knowledge sharing, the process for identifying lessons learned can lacks rigour or depth.
Bye-Bye Boring Meetings! Make Yours Remarkable!
It's the middle of the night. You've woken up with a brilliant idea on how to improve the way your business product is delivered to your customers.
Focus on Outcomes to Keep Your Business On-Course
Did you know that an airplane in flight is off course nearly 98% of the time? No flight is completed in a straight line from Point A to Point B. Gravity, side winds, updrafts, and downdrafts are continually moving the plane off course.
Parenting Your Employees to Better Performance
Have you ever worked for someone who was such a micro-manager that it drove you crazy? And have you ever worked for someone who was so hands-off that you felt like a lone warrior on the battlefield? These are examples of you working for leaders who did not adapt their style based on the employee's needs. I would venture to guess that you were not entirely motivated to put out your very best effort every time when you were feeling such frustrations.
Provisioning/User Management System Upgrades: Part II - Building Awareness And Building Approval
Somewhere in the world is a person who wants to see their provisioning/user management systems get a sorely needed upgrade. But they seem to be getting nowhere.
How to Manage Your People Well: Tips for Managers of Training
As a training manager, there are two important aspects to managing your people well: hiring, supervising, and motivating (managing with your people) and building up corporate support for your department (managing for your people). Unfortunately, training is not well understood by some executives, and its benefits can be hard to assess.
Hiring Tip -- Picking The Best Candidates
I often hear leaders from all types of organizations ask questions about hiring the right person. Their questions usually sound like these:? What if their resume looks great but they have a bad attitude?? What if they put on a good act and then don't work hard?? How can I tell how they will perform after I hire them?A great way to answer these questions starts with a well-defined interview process.
Recruitment - Pick People Who Think
Old style management doesn't encourage personal mindcontrol, employees aren't encouraged to think. That wascertainly the case when I started work back in the bad olddays however it's still prevalent in many businesses today.
Got A Meeting Planned? Ask This Question
Meetings - they are a fact of our business lives. And while the number of meetings and the amount of time you spend in them may vary based on your job title, it is hard to argue that they are a significant part of business life today.
Nine Steps to Help You Develop Your Potential
Go into any bookstore and you will find a big selection of self-help and personal improvement products. Most everyone (and I'll bet everyone reading this) wants to improve.
Solve Problems Permanently - Ask WHY
As Albert Einstein said:-"The significant problems we face today, cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."Problems don't go away unless you get to the cause - the source of them.
When Being A Facilitator DOESNT Help
I talked with a group of internal consultants last week - they felt they had to wear too many hats in their work. They had to be consultants, facilitators, coaches and trainers - sometimes in the same one-hour session.
Multiple Channels, Multiple Times
I've just been reading about the frustrations of a Human Resources manager. He's tired of having to answer the same questions about benefits over and over again.