October 21, 2016

Strategy is focus

It’s no secret that I think specializing (in combination with value-based pricing) is the surest way to dramatically increase your profits.

But, I know that specializing is counter-intuitive to the majority of folks. They resist if for a number of seemingly rational reasons.

In my quest to change your mind about this, I’d like to share this excellent definition of the word strategy from Michael Porter of Harvard Business School:

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

Strategy is focus.

Doing everything for everyone is not a strategy. It’s indecisive. It’s lazy. It’s unremarkable. 

If your revenue growth is stuck in neutral, I promise you that the solution is to embrace a strategy. To pick a focus. To give yourself a framework for deciding what opportunities are a good fit and which are not. To differentiate yourself from your competitors so thoroughly that you’re virtually in a class by yourself. 

Once you make this leap, you’ll wonder how you ever landed a project before. 

Yours, 

—J

P.S. Once you start to become a recognized authority in your area of expertise, you must price your work based on the value instead of hours. Your narrow focus will allow you to do better work faster, and you can’t raise your hourly rates enough to keep up. For more info, check out my book Hourly Billing Is Nuts.

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