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GO IT ALONE!

that you establish is the lever. It is now possible to amplify your own power by creating an effective business system.

For example, my company, Speed Anywhere, operates T1 Anywhere, a fully automated system for channeling potential prospects for broadband to large telecommunications companies that will follow up with dedicated sales efforts. As a consequence, the vast majority of my time and energy concentrates on my marketing activities. And the total business system leverages these activities. If I implement an idea that cost-effectively doubles the number of prospects generated, everything else simply flows through the automated system with minimal increases in cost and no delays in time or efficiency.



DO WHAT YOU DO BEST—LET OTHERS DO THE REST

The idea of the virtual corporation is a myth. The idea of the extraordinarily focused business is the important reality.

Every successful go-it-alone entrepreneur has a very real skill that can range from an expertise in Internet marketing, to a graphic-arts capability, to a gift as a high-energy entertainer, to an expertise in using specific software, to a mechanical orientation, to a talent for routinizing complex activities. What distinguishes all of these businesses is that the founders have figured out a way to focus their efforts almost entirely around their individual skills—around what they do best. These owners have outsourced all other business functions to people who can provide them better or more cost effectively.

In The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less, Richard Koch persuasively argues that most of us “only make good use of 20 percent of our time.” The remaining 80% is typically spent on activities that make little difference to our overall success. Similarly, in Now, Discover Your Strengths, Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton studied the results of

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GO IT ALONE! Copyright 2004 by Bruce Judson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.