The Paradox of Choice
“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful”. John Maeda wrote this quote in his book “The Laws of Simplicity” and it has stuck with me ever since. Seems like a basic concept, right? Downscale to prioritize the important stuff. But so many of us get caught up in the expansion of our business that we lose sight of our core services. And these core services are the heart of our business.
Focusing on these core services and scaling down allows you to maintain your business and all the hard work it took to build it. Scaling down lets you stay in the game and pick up steam at a later date without going back to the starting line.
If you have young kids at home, my recommendation and to drop most of your products and services and focus on selling one thing.
I understand that you may think I’m nuts. Every business consultant out there is selling you on the ways to scale a business up. You may be thinking, “Why on earth would I want to scale down and only focus on one offering?”.
There’s a lot of reasons to scale down your offerings.
- It will make your clients happier.
Happiness studies show that multiple choices actually make people unhappy. It’s the paradox of choice. When we have too many choices, our confidence in our choice decreases. “What if I made the wrong decision?”, “Did I just waste my money?”, “Should I have purchased the other product?”. All these doubts can creep up and create stress. We are simple creatures. Make the decision for us, make it seem like we did the deciding, and we are happy. So tell your prospective clients you have the one thing they need. Don’t give them a menu of options, steer them towards your one thing.
- It will make your business easier to run
You won’t be building new services and offers. You won’t be trying new marketing tactics. You’ll be in maintenance mode. Maintenance mode takes your core offer, the one you do best, and makes that your business. You do one thing and you do it well.
Since you only do one thing, you have every process and system built out to execute your service. You know exactly what marketing works best to sell your one thing, and you use that marketing channel over and over again. You know exactly how much of your one thing you need to sell to hit your revenue targets each month and you know exactly what you have to do to sell that number.
- You’ll be able to focus on the areas of your life that are the most meaningful.
With your business easier to run and your clients happy, you are able to focus on your family. Soak up all of those precious baby and toddler moments and shift your energy back to your business when the time is right. You will do less work for a clear, consistent stream of income.
Sound good?
Take the time to review what you offer, figure out what you’re best at, how it solves the needs/problems of your core audience, and shift all of your efforts to selling that thing.
Want some help brainstorming this shift? Schedule a free call and we can work it out together!