The Focus Discipline

David Heacock's advice about focus comes with a specific example. While building FilterBuy, he started a freight business during COVID. It appeared to fit with work the company was already doing. In hindsight, he describes it as a mistake.

I started a freight business during COVID that made sense given other things we were doing. It was a huge mistake that I wish I had not taken, but it was just purely from a lack of focus and a commitment to a focus and a bigger vision.

An adjacent opportunity is especially easy to justify. The customers are familiar. The company already has some of the equipment, relationships, or expertise. The financial case may account for the new costs while giving little attention to the existing work that will slow down.

That is the question worth asking before the opportunity becomes a project: whose attention does this require, and what will they do less of?

Count the management work

Hiring someone to run a new activity helps, but it does not remove every demand on leadership. A new manager needs decisions, context, and help when the plan meets an exception. Those demands tend to arrive alongside the problems in the main business.

Jason Ciment describes an approach to new ventures that gives them separate owners and budgets. That makes the commitment easier to see. It still requires a realistic account of the founder's involvement, particularly when a venture underperforms.

A proposal should name the people it needs, the decisions it will bring back to leadership, and the work being deferred to make room. If nobody can identify what gives way, the plan may simply assume more capacity than the company has.

Focus also means choosing customers

Mark Josephson describes narrowing attention to the customers most likely to buy, renew, and benefit from the product. His point is uncomfortable for a sales team measured on pipeline: some opportunities consume considerable effort without becoming good business.

A prospect can be willing to buy and still be a poor fit. Custom work, difficult onboarding, or persistent service demands may make the revenue less attractive than it looked at signing. The sales conversation should include the people who inherit the customer after the deal closes.

Review a few recent wins alongside delivery effort and retention. Then compare them with the opportunities taking up the team's time now. This is more useful than declaring an ideal customer in a workshop and leaving incentives unchanged.

Allow useful work to become routine

Jake Thompson emphasizes the value of repeating basic work and making small adjustments. There is a practical leadership issue here: the work may become less interesting to the founder before it stops being valuable to customers.

Routine is not a reason to stop improving. It is a reason to examine results before replacing a working approach. A new campaign, market, or service should have a stronger case than the team's fatigue with the current one.

Experiments still belong in a focused company. Give an experiment a clear question, an owner, a limited commitment, and a review date. Decide what result would justify more investment and what would lead you to stop.

Heacock's freight example is a useful reminder that a plausible fit is only the beginning of the case. Before saying yes, name what the company is already trying to accomplish and what this opportunity will cost it in attention. Leadership should make that trade deliberately.