Find Your Market Niche and Stay FocusedJim A. says one of the key things he’s done that has contributed to his success is finding a market niche that no other baker occupies. “We’ve positioned ourselves as having a unique product. We don’t have a lot of competitors, and that has allowed us to maintain fairly high wholesale prices.”

Though Rebecca S.’s company provides a wide range of food service-related products and services, they are all focused on pasta. “We have been asked to do a lot of things that are very far off our path,” Rebecca says. “We think the way to survive is to become an expert in something. We’ve seen places that go too far out on a limb from their core business and get lost, and then they can’t be distinguished from others in the marketplace.”

– Jacquelyn Lynn in Start Your Own Restaurant (and Five Other Food Businesses) (Entrepreneur Magazine’s Start Ups).

As these two food folks point out, focus is about marketing and focus is about management. The marketplace understands a focused business. When customers understand who you are, they know when to use you. If you’re too many things, the customers won’t understand any of them.

And management is stronger in a focused business. When your business is tightly defined, you can get very very good at what you do. When your business is a mile wide, you’ll never get more than an inch-deep of smart about any of it. And an inch-deep of smart usually doesn’t generate much profit.