The power of focus in entrepreneurial ventures

You can replace the word "strategy" with "focus". Where are you going to focus? Understandably, entrepreneurial businesses prefer to refrain from concentrating their efforts because they aggressively explore every possible opportunity. Yet, they have the most to gain from targeting their limited resources instead of following a spray-and-pray approach.

The Consequences of a Lack of Focus 

The problem with not putting enough effort behind a single point is that many ideas remain sub-critical - they never receive enough support to either work or fail entirely. In our experience at Firejuice, doing more of one thing allows the business to get a clear sense of whether it works or doesn't. Unfortunately, in too many cases, a chronic lack of focus often leads to murky decision-making and companies that end up chasing their tails.

Structured Opportunity Exploration

Entrepreneurial businesses will always search for opportunities, but exploration should not be unrestrained. Guardrails should be in place to ensure the hunt happens deliberately, with regular reviews to assess the viability of a specific line of enquiry. When opportunity hunting continues unhinged, it leads nowhere. Opportunities should be explored in a structured manner - a strategy laboratory of sorts.

Case Study: Firejuice's Approach

With Firejuice, I have used our website as a hub for packaging our services and running experiments to see what works and, ultimately, where to focus. I would review the site weekly, make updates, add new services or tweak others, and then promote them on social media or Google Ads to see what sticks. I find this process of focusing on our website as a “strategy laboratory” - a window into the market - useful since it is an inexpensive way to experiment and measure results.

Strategy Beyond Meetings

There's a misconception that strategy is an action - a yearly off-site meeting to discuss a way forward. Although such a meeting can form a crucial part of the strategy-formulating process, it can't be where it ends. Clarity of direction takes time and should constantly be reviewed to potentially change course as new information becomes available. It’s often a good idea to have an outsider walk the journey with the business to formalise learnings, frame the situation, and help to find that focus.

The Central Role of Marketing in Strategy

Marketing is often seen as a nuisance that businesses reluctantly engage with. However, taking a holistic view of the function as the commercial heartbeat of a company places it at the centre of defining a business strategy. It’s why the strategy guru Roger Martin wrote in a 2013 HBR article that “Good marketing and good strategy are both about making choices…that enables the company to outperform its competitors with a particular set of customers.” It’s also why the next ten years of Firejuice will continue to see us focus on the fundamentals of good marketing instead of chasing the latest fad.