Outside the Comfort Zone - Infusing Passion into Your Focus

John D. Hawkins
President & CEO
Employer Services Corporation

How to Develop Your Core

Often, companies will get into profit centers outside of their core and fail. In fact, it is crucial to remain focused on one s core business and never forget what originally earned you success. We have reinvested in constantly improving our processes, people and technology in support of our core. We watched someone close to me have his company invest all the profits of one division (the only profitable one in his company) in the other divisions, which were hurting. The people running the company became distracted and slowly began to shift focus away from the moneymaking division to the loser. Eventually it caught up to them and now they no longer exist. Greg Bauer, co-founder of Employer Services, and I believe that you should do one thing and do it better than anyone else, and you will succeed as long as your value proposition is solid.

In finding new profit centers, we focus primarily on the loyal relationships we have already developed, and then on the relationships to which they are connected. All of our customers spend tens of thousands of dollars each year with people with whom they have no relationship. All we have to do is develop solid offerings ( related to our core), educate our loyal relationships and, once given the opportunity, provide daily value. It is a simple formula. If you owned a corporation which spent tens of thousands of dollars a year on things critical to your business, wouldn t you rather give that money to someone you know and trust, someone who has been delivering for you already, already provides you value, knows your service expectations, knows your family, and enjoys your company? Wouldn t you rather give that money to someone who might even have grown to be a friend, rather than someone with whom you have no prior relationship? Of course you would.

If your strength is relationship building, make sure you choose an industry, which allows you to maximize that talent. Too many people are too afraid to break into existing or create relationships, so afraid that they never try. The key to success is to force yourself outside your comfort zone, create new relationships and then provide value every single day. And if relationship-building is not a strength of yours, that had better be the strong suit of your next hire.

We plan to grow our business by growing existing profit centers and then building new ones which are strategically aligned with our existing core.