Page 85 - Paulisms: Gold Nuggets for Small Business

importation to the end sale. We were exclusive on our winner product, yet with the second product there were zillions of competitors.
It’s so easy to come into a business, particularly when you have a national installation network, to try and throw other products into that channel. It doesn’t always work. If you apply the 80/20 rule (see Part 3: Chapter 2) to diversification, it often opens your eyes to ask, ‘Why do it?’ There is no need to follow the crowd.
From my experience, it’s best to focus and specialise on an area of your business and resist the need to diversify unless a lot of research says, yes, it’s a winner. Say no and don’t diversify into other areas for the sake of diversifying. If it matches your model, then find other people to do that without diluting the existing resource or model you already have in place.
Then there is growing for the sake of growing. I remember being driven to diversify by a professional advisor. It was like a repeating record. It’s not that easy. So we decided to buy two companies in a short space of time. One was remote, which was a challenge in itself. Ego got in the way as well. If I had stuck to our model and specialised and not expanded for the sake of it, it would not have cost us as much money as it did. Both businesses were poor choices and now don’t exist.