Dec 10
3

What Is Your Core Business?

This question seems simpler then it really is. When we start our businesses, we often start out trying to be everything to everyone. We accept jobs of all types, clients of all types; often creating new lines of business and service so that we can cater to a specific customers need. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

And then we start to grow up. And we realize that we can’t do this successfully. We realize that there are just some things we cant be great at. And we realize that we can’t be trying to go in a bunch of different directions; that of we truly want to build a great company while we grow, that we have to start picking a lane and driving it. This is why defining your core business is so important.

But how do you do it? How do you restrict yourself enough that you won’t lose focus? That you won’t try and do too many things that aren’t consistent with your brand? And how do you balance this with driving new opportunities, new areas of growth and new areas that will really help your customers? That is why defining your core business is so important; but also difficult. And the truth is? I don’t think many companies are very good at it.

At Nurse Next Door, are we a home care company? Or a company that cares for seniors in their homes? Or a company that provides any service a senior needs in their home? Or are we really just restricted to the home. What about caring for seniors in hospitals? What about providing the staff to care for seniors in Nursing Homes? What about caring for all of the other people that need our help? We are faced with these choices all of the time. It is easy to say “yes” to everything (and being an entrepreneur our tendency is to do this!).

So we need a system to provide the structure that we need to grow our companies the right way, so we come out the other end (of our growth) being a great company. And part of that structure is to really define what our “core” business is.

As we debate this at Nurse Next Door, I would love to hear from any of you who have gone through this excercise. I am pretty sure that to do this, we really need to go back to our core purpose. That should probably point us in the right direction.

This entry was posted on December 3, 2010 at 2:39 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Core Purpose Entrepreneurship by admin 4 Comments

Brian Buckley says:

December 7, 2010 at 7:06 pm

John,

Interesting timing for our business and this posting. We were just talking about this in our office last week. When we first started out we worked so hard to establish momentum that we would take on anything that came along.

Now we can see that it is not always possible to be great in every sandbox that we have played in. We need to refine, screen our sandbox to get rid of the sand that doesn’t belong.

For me it has to start by reminding ourselves of our Core Purpose. If what we are doing for a client doesn’t fulfill the Core Purpose, we probably don’t have a chance to be the best in the world at it.

Marc says:

December 18, 2010 at 4:19 pm

John
I think every small business starts off that way. We start by looking for any way to earn money. Our clients have many needs and when they find someone that they trust, they trust them for anything.
As a business owner, if you want to grow, you have to become more efficient and effective. A jack of all trades can get a lot done, but at a higher cost and lower quality than a specialist. Also, how do you market a generalist? You have so many marketing messages that your prospects become confused. They don’t know what you do.
The best approach is to decide what you can do best, what makes you unique. Then do that, improve it and become a specialist at it. It will make you easier to market and bring more people to your door. Not only that, but because you are more efficient, you do it at less cost and effort that your competition.
No company ever became successful at being all things to all people.

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May 4, 2011 at 2:14 pm

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January 31, 2012 at 4:32 am

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