Oh, Man! That Goat is so Cute!

Almost every day when I drive down my driveway past the neighbor’s pasture, I see their goat with the floppy ears hanging out with the horses. Sometimes he is perched on top of the wood stand, and sometimes he is lying on top of the horse, his legs dangling down on each side. It absolutely cracks me up every time I see it. I hear goats are pretty easy to take care of, so why not get one? I mean, they eat blackberry bushes, and we have plenty of those. And now that we can manage our chickens, why not try out some other farm animals?

My husband has also decided we should raise a lamb. (I just found out a lamb is a baby sheep. I know, I know, I didn’t learn my farm animals when I was younger.) But then, why stop at a lamb? Maybe we should get a cow? I mean, if we are going to go in, let’s go all in.

At some point along this line of thought, a voice of reasons calls out, “What are you thinking?” Chickens are relatively easy to care for, and it took me nearly 3 years to figure it out. And do we really want to spend all our time caring for animals that, in the end, we will probably eat? Well, except for the goat with the floppy ears. I could never eat him, he is too cute.

The fact is, for a while there, my husband and I were chasing shiny edible objects. Until I realized what we were doing. Learning how to raise chickens for eggs does not translate to raising larger animals for food.

That’s when we had to come to an agreement regarding what we wanted to focus our attention on. And I’ll be honest, it was hard for us to agree. Mike, a Midwesterner who grew up on meat and potatoes, thinks we should use our property to raise animals to eat. Julie, a city girl who just recently started living in the country, is very proud of her ability to pick up a chicken with her bare hands.

For now, we have agreed to stick with animals that fly. We currently have lay hens, and in the future we will likely get fryers and turkeys. It is something that we both agree we can focus on and succeed at in the short-term while leaving time for our other interests, including hiking and traveling.

I often see this type of struggle from my clients. They lack clarity around what the true focus of the business should be. It’s easy to want to do too many things at once. When my clients start building their vision, I tell them that nailing the core focus will take somewhere between 45 minutes and 2 years. If the team can’t agree on the core focus of the business, they will start (or continue) chasing shiny objects, possibly even cute goats with floppy ears.

An organization’s core focus is its sweet spot. It is where the purpose meets the niche. Or where the “why” intersects the “what.”

If you take a step back and look at your business, have you ever wondered why some of the work you do is so easy and some of it is so hard? When you are operating in your sweet spot, everything just seems to flow. The hard work doesn’t seem as hard, and the output is top-notch.

One of my clients went through a tremendous growth spurt, and business was great – until it wasn’t. All of a sudden, projects weren’t finishing profitably, customers were unhappy, and it seemed just so hard. When the team finally took the time to slow down and think about why some projects were going great, and others were not, they realized the easier work was right in their wheelhouse. They realized they had a choice to make: continue to grow, knowing that some of their projects would be outside their sweet spot and therefore harder and less profitable, or start turning down that kind of work and focusing on what they truly enjoyed and were really good at.

Nearly every one of my clients has had to decide if they want growth for the sake of growth. Not everyone realizes it’s a lot harder to run a $40 million company with 10% profits than a $20 million dollar company with 20% profits. So, what kind of company do you want? Will the leadership team say no to accepting work that falls outside their sweet spot? Doing this requires an abundance mindset, as well as trust that if you do great work, more will follow.

As you look at your company, what do you see? Are you crystal clear on your sweet spot? Or are you chasing shiny objects because you can’t say no and you think you need the revenue? Answer that question honestly, and if you don’t like the answer, email me. I can help you and your team gain clarity around your core focus.