Thus spoke a client a while ago: "Shouldn’t building a business be easier?"
This client recently gave up a successful job and career where he’d get sent to work with Fortune 100 companies, in order to build his own venture instead.
And he was working hard, trying his hardest: To identify his ideal client, test messaging and value proposition and get traction… but it was slow going and he was frustrated.
Of course it’ll alwasy be hard work to build a business – it’s not easy, and it never will be.
But it gets easier, bit by bit, over time, so long as you play the game right.
And that means a couple of rules of thumb:
1: Focus. Choose one thing.
One audience segment, one value proposition, one core message, one strategy, one channel:
For each of the components that go into the mix, choose one thing that reasonably and logically stands to turn into traction, revenue and profit, and work that angle either until it works, or until you’ve proven that it doesn’t work.
The worst thing you could do is to try something, see no traction, try something else, see no traction, try something else… and thus, churn through your time and your resources.
2: Make your goto market top of mind
Sure it’s good to build things (programmes, products, software, AI automations, what have you) but every decision as to what you’re building should pass the following test:
Does building this thing directly and demonstrably contribute to better marketing, visibility, positioning and audience-alignment? Can I make a reasonable and compelling argument – without wishful thinking or unicorn-solutions – that doing this thing is going to shorten my path to landing clients?
If it doesn’t: don’t build it.
Let your audience and your marketing research and the intel you gather in your sales process influence and determine what you will or won’t build.
3: Simplicity rules
And that’s the big secret, the thing that can make ‘hard’ and ‘difficult’ into ‘easier all the time’.
Fact is, we love making things complicated – and the more intelligent and creative we are, the easier it is to fall into that trap. Especially if we also like building things, because then we end up falling into the builder-trap and that’s a great place to build lots of stuff and get no sales.
But that’s the curse of intelligence, and you need to be wary of it: you see patterns, connect dots, and see integrations & opportunities, and you can easily invent massive and complex structures and visions and plans.
Sure, if you need to raise money to develop your business, you can go out and look for a VC, but then you’re selling a part of your company, instead of selling your product, and you lose focus on the one thing that actually makes a business grow: enrolling buyers.
You add massive layers of complexity to what is already hard to do, and even if the goal is to invest in improving your marketing and sales, you’re making it even harder than it already is because of the sheer added complexity.
And, again, you take focus away from acquiring customers.
So.
Business hard, want it to be easier?
Focus. Marketing and sales first. Keep things as simple as possible, and be very specific about choosing what to work on and what to avoid.
Every project should pass the test of "Does this directly and demonstrably contribute to my primary goals?"
If it doesn’t: park it and work on those things that do.