What am I focusing on again?

Last week, we read a blog post by Guy Kawasaki on “The Art of Bootstrapping.”  The following points are most applicable to Mark’s and my venture at this point:

·      Aim at small up-front capital, short sales cycles, short payment terms, and recurring revenue. 

·      Ship, then test.  When your service is “good enough,” get it out there.

·      Pick your battles.

I especially wanted to focus on “picking our battles” since focus at this stage is so much easier said than done.  Teri Evans wrote an article called “Critical Stay-Focused Steps to Ensure Startup Success,” which offers some useful tips on how to stay focused. 

Here they are:

1.    Know our destination by writing down what our business will look like in one to three years.

2.     Create a roadmap by way of a business plan or at least one page with our top five goals spelled out in a 90-day action plan that will be updated every quarter.  Rather than getting caught in the weeds, we should focus on “What are we doing to find customers, sell to customers, and then satisfy those customers?”

3.     Ask ourselves every day if what we’re doing right now going to help us accomplish our 90-day plan.  To keep it foremost in our minds, we can even tape it to a computer monitor or schedule a daily reminder of goals on our smart phones.

4.     Stay focused by keeping an activity log – writing down everything we do on an hourly basis in order to realize where we’re wasting time.  We can assign a dollar amount to our time and before every task ask if it’s really worth our time.  Then, at the end of the day, we can take five minutes to jot down the next day’s three most important tasks to grow our business.

5.    Be accountable to someone else. 

Mark and I can benefit from each of Evans’ concrete suggestions.  Honestly, anyone can apply these suggestions to their career…entrepreneurial or not.  What additional tips to you have for staying focused with your venture?