You have this great idea for a business and lot’s of energy to get started. During a start up you will meet many people and you will pithch your idea. Maybe your idea is so unique that people start contacting you to find out if you could work together. It can be overwhelming at the very least but unfornutaly also pretty interuptive. Because it is fun all these options that you see and come your way it is easy to get off track
Loosing focus
Loosing focus is probably the biggest business mistake but also the easiest one to make. Only a part of developing your business is really the fun stuff so how great it is if opportunities arrize that give you more ideas to discover for your business. Unfortunatly many opportunities are not helping your business in going forward and the can even take you off track. If you do it too often it is guaranteed that your business won’t succeed.
Five tips for staying on track
- Keep your goal at hand. You do not have to put it on a poster in your workplace but making a screensaver could do the trick. In words or a mood board whatever works best for you. As long as you see it often enough, it will help you stay focuses.
- If you plan your route to get to your goal
- Create a shortlist of criteria that you can use when opportunity arrises. Does it fit my goal and my plan to get there should be on there for sure. Other criteria could be; does this opportunity make it easier/ quicker/cheaper to reach my goal? Does the opportunity create easier access to my prefered market? And some that are more specific for you business development. The more criteria an opportunity meets, the better. If it does not meet any criteria have the gutst to say ‘thanks for thinking of us, let’s stay in touch’.
- Also keep in mind that you are the opportunity someone is looking after even if it sounds like they are offering you one.
- Plan time for freewheeling and for seeking inspiration. Even when you know an opportunity is not really an opportunity it can be inspirational to dive into a bit or a learning experience. If you have allocated time for these purposes you can use this to explore a bit further. And if you write down what you want to get from these invested hours it may enable you to add parts to your plan towards your goal.
Keep in mind that opportunities should not have you alter your plan to reach your goal, the should support and improve your plan. And if that is the case: change the plan.