Staying Within the "Wheelhouse"

I don't use the "wheelhouse" buzz word that often, but I get what it means. I spend a lot of time making sure that every dollar or minute spent is on something I understand how to do or at least understand that I don't know how to do and bring in someone smarter than me to do it . After all, we are in business and making money because we understand something well and can monetize on what we understand either via products or services.

It is very easy to get wrapped up in lots of news, buzz, and SWOT charts. All of this stuff is good to take with a grain of salt, but it can become self-doubting poison to that confidence that made you want to start your business in the first place. When it takes root, it can start to evoke fear. From fear comes panic. Once panic sets in, epic failure is right around the corner as you now have zero ability to make reasonable business decisions.

I recently talked to an old business partner. We were reflecting on the 12th anniversary of our catastrophic failure of our first business. Our idea was to build simple ad-supported small business websites. We actually built this technology, were confident in it, and started rolling it out to customers. Somehow, we allowed ourselves to believe that what we did was not good enough. The end result was that we burned all our seed capital over 60 days reworking something we completely believed in at first and ended up right back where we started...with no capital for growth. The business shut its doors.

Had we simply stuck with what we knew, we would have been early adopters of  what would become Google's AdSense/AdWords products. We would have had 500 small business websites paying us $30 a month and we were collecting ALL the ad revenue off those sites. Yes, not sharing a dime with our customers. At the time, they had no interest. They simply wanted a cheap website. Do the math on that one.


I have to spend a lot of time with founders and presidents of companies trying to get them to stick to what they know how to do best. It was what they knew best that gave them the confidence to start a company. It is what they know that sells their product and service. Customers buy stuff from them (even at a premium) when they are confident that both they and their product can do what they tell them it can do.

If you are finding yourself in a quagmire of business decisions and nothing seems to make sense, then you may be caught up in all of this. Take a step back and remember why you got into business in the first place. Have the courage to bring everything back to your "wheelhouse". From there, execute with bullish confidence on what you know.