From: bizjournals.com

“This is a football. These are yard markers.” As legend has it, Vince Lombardi said this to the Green Bay Packers when he, as the new coach, realized that his professional athletes needed to focus on the basics.

I find this also true in my practice. It can get uncomfortable having my successful clients go back to the basics, but focusing on the basics can get you clarity in your business like nothing else.

I interviewed Joe Herres, co-founder of H3 Solutions — an IT solutions provider and a leader in SharePoint mobility — at our Strategic Business Forum (you can watch or download the interview here). We discussed a range of topics from innovation to mobility, but one of the strongest themes was focusing on the basics.

Here’s a quick list of the some of the things he and I discussed:

1. Going after investment is not free

The time you invest in pitching investors is time away from running your business. Now, that is time very well spent if you need the money, but you need to really think hard about whether or not you really need the money.

2. Bootstrap as long as possible

This is not entirely about giving away equity. Getting money can cause other problems — a subtle but powerful one is that having money reduces your inspiration to innovate and work the long hours. There’s nothing like desperately needing that revenue to drive work ethic and innovation. Remember that the lower your number of customers and cash flow are, the higher the equity piece your investors will take. That doesn’t make getting investment bad, it just means there can be a big cost to going too early.

3. Executive presence is optimal

Hey, I spent years in the “encouraging telecommuting” business, and I think it is one of the best solutions for traffic mitigation, energy consumption per capita, increasing personal productivity, etc. That being said, telecommuting can be detriment to growing a company if you’re one of the leaders of that growth. The CEO and key executives of a growing company should be in the office as often as possible.

4. That hockey stick probably isn’t coming

Be realistic about the adoption of your product or service in the marketplace. Every entrepreneur thinks it will be a hockey stick; that’s almost certainly not going to be the case.

5. Don’t rely on partners to sell enough to meet your financial obligations

Yes, certainly sign up affiliates and partners, but the revenue they generate should be gravy. If they’re selling several other products or services, their focus will naturally be on the most profitable (likely their own). Make sure you have enough staff dedicated to meeting your financial goals.

6. Creating a market can drain cash

Plan and act carefully when you develop a product that will create a new market. Educating the market will cost money, and then other entrants can take advantage of your education efforts and crush you. You may just need to let great ideas sit for a while until your go-to-market strategy is sound.

7. Relationships are critical to starting, leading, and growing a business

Give managing those relationships the attention it deserves.

8. Fastest way to kill your business is to stop focusing on revenue and profitability

Apart from your grand visions, if you’re not focused on growing and maintaining revenue, and doing that in a profitable way, you’ll kill your business. Never lose sight of why any business exists: to make money. “This is a football.”