I recently decided to start my own company and in the process wasn’t entirely 100% sure which way to go. I knew that my team was capable of doing multiple different types of tasks but I wasn’t entirely sure what the best way to go was – B2B, B2C etc. With so many digital marketing tools out there I knew in my heart that it was becoming easier and easier for the end consumer to educate themselves and essentially do much of the online marketing without getting another service provider to do so. With so many do it yourself platforms out there and an ever evolving world wide web, I knew that the digital marketing realm that we know today is not likely to stay in it’s current state for long.
I also realized that trying to be a jack of all trades and a master of none was not the way to go. It was time to focus in on what we do best and something that has and will stand the test of time. Rather than doing one thing really well and something else just ok, it seemed the best way to go was to be true to ourselves, to examine what service we do best and focus on that and nothing else.
So instead of trying to be social media gurus, search engine optimization experts, or web hosting professionals we decided our skill set focused primarily on B2B PHP based programming (hence the cheesy slogan “Easy PHPeasy.”). While low end web design and development has been fairly well commoditized in 2015, web software development (more complicated web dev: API related work, complex functionality, custom work etc.) has been around long before SEO was and continues to be the backbone of almost everything we do on the web. It became pretty clear to me that if we focused on doing one thing only and doing it really, really well that not only would we get better at doing what we already do naturally well but that others would recognize us for that and the revenue would follow. It also trims the fat, and to a degree the liability, of trying to hobble along with offering other services that we just don’t excel at.
It is early days but we have already found amazing relationships with some genuinely talented and supporting partners (thank you guys – you know who you are 🙂 ). The key to doing business well, we are finding, is to focus on what you do best and shooting to be great at it. That, along with transparent honesty, strong communication and fairly rewarding those that bust their hump for you seem to be the key ingredients.
Do one thing and do it well – Let’s see if we’re right :).