Are your eyes bigger than your stomach? Narrow Your Focus.
It’s not uncommon when chefs first think of starting a Personal Chef business to try and be everything to everyone. ‘I want to do meal prep, give cooking lessons, and do pop dinners.’ All of these are possible; however, we need to get you (the Personal Chef) to discover the most important service for you and your business to start building upon.
One of the most difficult struggles I’ve had to learn as a new entrepreneur is narrowing down my options and finding focus. Starting out, I was all over the place. And this benefitted me at the time because I was exposing myself to many new ideas and ways of performing my business. But there comes a time when you must take a step back and find focus.
The first, most important, and most difficult step to finding your focus is setting priorities. Prioritization forces you to decide what YOU really want out of your business and therefore what you can possibly live without. This could be a specific service that is not gaining traction in your market or possibly a persona of clientele with a similar problem.
Prioritization is the step where you face your limit. Life is like a giant buffet of more tempting alternatives than you can ever hope to taste. So, you have to learn to manage priorities. Learning to reject having things you want in order to get other things you want more.
Some people fail at this point, afraid to reject a good alternative for fear that the loss will deprive them of some essential ingredient to their future happiness. As a result, they pursue too many things at the same time, achieving few or none of them.
This was where I was stuck early in my business. I was afraid to let go of ideas and focus on a clear path for fear that I would make the wrong choice and miss a great opportunity. I was spreading myself too thin, so I wasn’t having success with anything.
Questions to Ask Yourself:
1. What is the most important to you right now?
2. What will set up your base revenue the quickest?
I know, we have a big difference to make in this world but when you are starting a business, it’s important to think about how you will be making an income and what you will charge. You have to know how many clients you need to be able to pay your bills, right?
3. Of all ideas, what sparks your passion?
There are a number of ways to build your Personal Chef business, but you only have so many hours in a day to make it happen. Knowing and choosing what you are most passionate about will assist in driving the success of your business
At the start, some days you’ll fail and won’t make any progress, and you’ll need to start over again the next day. Once things are tremendously improved, you can put them on autopilot and just keep going. There will come a point when you’ll realize that it’s very nice to have a singular focus and that you’re going to follow through with this focus until you find success or at least until you’ve given it a really great try.
Spreading yourself too thin and not choosing a direction/focus for your business will not gain you the rewards you seek.
As you make progress, the fear of “am I doing the right thing…?” will leave. There will be a calm about you and what you’re here to do with your business. It’s a nice feeling. Narrow down and find focus.
P.S. What’s one thing you really want to have happen in your Personal Chef business in the next 3–6 months?
Author:
Membership and Partnership Manager
aprather@uspca.com
