If you’re just starting a new venture, I would urge you to focus on those things you’re good at. This may mean turning away business when you’re most in need of it. However if the business won’t advance you’re strategy and doesn’t fall within your area of expertise, you’re best to just refer it to someone else. Timothy Faley said it well:

“Chasing lots of ideas diffuses your focus–chase those ideas that fall along the path to your envisioned future. Learn to live by the axiom: admire ideas, worship execution. Superior execution of a decent idea will always win over poorly executed great ideas.”

Here’s a checklist for getting focus.

• What is your vision? Where do you want to take your company? Where will you be in five, ten and 25 years?
• What are your five most important values? Narrow down your values to just five items (or less) that define how you want to do business. These values should support your vision.
• Are your business processes designed to support these values? Everything you do should support your vision and values. We live in an age of cynicism — if your customers and employees don’t see you living your values, they’re likely to take them as BS
• Who are your customers Be specific. You have to exclude potential customers (a lot of potential customers) to gain focus.

When you’re first starting out and times are tough, it’s really, really hard to turn business away. While I was running my first online business, early on we got mentioned in a high profile magazine. We were immediately flooded with calls for our catalogue. The trouble was that we didn’t have a catalogue. Rather than focusing on our online presence we set out to create a catalogue. We didn’t have the money or the expertise to pull it off and the catalogue reflected that. It was a flop. For some reason, I never forgot the lesson our first catalogue taught me.

There’s an opportunity cost to every endeavour. Try to make sure you’re always pointed in the right direction. Don’t let the short-term struggles derail you.

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