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The Key To Small Business Success

The Key To Small Business Success

Aug 03, 2009 -

For most entrepreneurs, the single biggest business challenge is not finding a promising opportunity to go after.  It is eliminating the dozens of promising opportunities you could go after and keeping your focus on just one or two.


Why?  Because competition is fierce.  The only chance you have of beating bigger, richer companies is to do one thing extremely well. 

And yet, for most entrepreneurs, success at doing one thing well breeds confidence.  And every day brings another half dozen excellent ideas:

  • New products
  • New customers
  • New features   
  • New business lines

Ideas are good, but you need to let most of them go.  Because if you don't, you'll likely doom your company to mediocrity.

No company can do everything well (listen up, Microsoft).  Few companies can do many things well.  Small companies really can do only one thing well--or maybe two, if they're extraordinary. 

As a small company, if you try to do too many things, you'll stop doing one thing well and start doing many things badly--and you'll lose the competitive edge that allowed you to be successful in the first place.

For an entrepreneur who is by nature excited to plunge headlong into the next opportunity, having the self-discipline to stay focused is critical.  It's also hard. 

The good news is, if you're the kind of entrepreneur who just can't do that, it doesn't mean your company is doomed.  It just means it's time to hire someone else to run it... while you rush off and start something else.

Tags: confidence, entrepreneur, henry blodget, success

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Henry Blodget

CEO/Editor in Chief

(The Business Insider)

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