To succeed in business, you just have to be brilliant at one thing. In many cases it’s a skill, such as art, coding, engineering or hair styling. But that one brilliant attribute can also be a personality trait or a business process, such as product development, selling, customer engagement, or leading people.
No business will be successful unless it is at least adequate, and preferably superb, in all these other categories — not to mention finance, planning, marketing and recruiting. But I see too many entrepreneurs trying to do all these things themselves, when they should be doubling down on what they’re best at and leveraging the rest.
In my perfect vision of entrepreneurial Canada, half of all businesses would disappear. They wouldn’t fail; they would just merge with similarly minded companies to gain the critical mass to get better, fast, at all the tasks they’re ignoring or undervaluing.
Suddenly, a creative carpenter would team up with another contractor who has better selling skills. Now the carpenter can spend more time doing her best work, while her partner worries about next month’s contracts. A struggling tech startup might ally itself with a business-services company that has many clients with technology needs but doesn’t know how to write code.
Great products don’t sell themselves. Producers need distributors, marketers need products they can believe in, operations experts need innovators or networkers. And of course, visionary entrepreneurs need people who can keep them focused.
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