The key to starting a business is staying focused.

Know what you want to do, know why you want to do it, and have a plan for doing it very well. These three deceivingly simple concepts will unlock barriers to funding, infrastructure and - most importantly - customers.

So let’s say you get it right, right? You do your homework, line up the partners and get things off the ground. Your find a market niche, and it responds favorably. Profits! Growth! Success!

Now comes the hardest part: sustaining your good fortune. Also known as growing your business. Focus is critical to getting things off the ground, but it is absolutely essential to keeping them there. Without focus, there can be no growth.

Perhaps the best, recent real world example? Italy’s World Cup win. Italy and France were evenly matched, but the French team leader’s unsportsmanlike conduct was a shocking example of how quickly a moment’s lack of focus and loss of perspective can destroy years and years of hard work.

Curious also that Google, of all businesses, should be taking heat for its perceived lack of focus. Just goes to show that even vaunted and seemingly faultless Google is not immune to potential consequences of taking an eye off the prize. Still, Google is amazing at what it does, and better than many others at their core businesses. Case in point, “google” is officially a verb.

Not long ago Google was on no one’s radar screen, but the internet economy has hyper-accelerated business evolution. Remember when eBay was the poster child of business success, and the media darling of all? Things change quickly at the speed of broadband - suddenly eBay is pulling down some seriously negative publicity. Some of the reasons why? Executive shakeups, and the $2+billion purchase of Skype.

Of course, being focused isn’t the same as putting on blinders. Amazon has held on to its decade-old model of subscription based email for, oh, about 5-years too long, meaning tough times lie ahead for the seminal web company and smart decisions need to be made, and quickly.

The moral of the blog? Staying focused doesn’t mean getting lazy. It means doing what you do better than anyone else, and making sure you stay that way. The iPod® wasn’t the first MP3 player, but it is now 75% of all MP3 players.

That kind of success doesn’t happen without vigilant focus, and lots of it.

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iPod® is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc.

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