Everyone needs a strategy before they can start building their own business. Without a strategy your business is going to struggle. As the saying goes, “fail to plan, plan to fail”, so to avoid wasting a lot of time and money, why not take a bit of time at the beginning to develop you strategy. 

The key first questions you are where are you going to play and how are you going to win? 

These are important first decisions for any entrepreneur to make and something anyone should ask themselves as they go through live. You can’t be good at everything and even if you can you can’t be in two places at once. 

Similarly it’s very hard to play in multiple arenas with your business. Although some large corporates are managing, some better than others, (i.e. Amazon), usually businesses thrive more, when they are focused on doing one thing really well. 

That is because if you or a business in this case, have a single minded focus, it requires you to fully immerse yourself in the field (of play) and to become an expert, which is how you can beat your competition (win).

Just like the world famous painter Monet who focussed his works predominantly on landscapes, you should firstly decide what you are going to focus on. Only once you have answered where you play, can you decide how you are going to become and expert. 

Claude Monet, the Master of Impressionism, for example, created the famous water lilly ponds and his incredible Japanese Bridge at his home out in Giverny, France, close to Paris. His incredible garden behind his house, served as inspiration for some of his best works. Today called, the ‘Monets Garden at Giverny’, which is now open to the public, you can still see how the magical flora and fauna (image above) helped the Master to develop his expertise and produce such extraordinary works. 

Now I’m not saying it might be possible for you to literally live in t your field on excellence, but figuratively speaking most experts actually do. That is because once you have decided what to focus on, you almost can’t help it but to spend most of your time thinking about field. 

That of course has the added benefit that you become really knowable about your field and ultimately can’t help but to become very good at what you do. 

Hopefully this explains why it makes sense to pause first before running off to start your business to ask you self a few fundamental questions about what you are going to do. 

It also hopefully demonstrates, why focus will actually make you a lot more likely to succeed in your endeavors as you become a subject matter expert and how immersing yourself within your field will lead to you winning with your venture.