The Key to Good Business is to Diversify Into Your Core Skill

Does that sound like a contradiction in terms? How can you diversify into your core skills? A florist in Rosebud is a perfect example of exactly this.

What are core skills?

For some people, their core skill is knowing tax laws, for others its programming cell phone apps. For our florist in Rosebud, their core skill is knowing and understanding the plants and flowers native to their area and then combining them with an unerring eye for making a display.

How do you diversify into your skills?

Most businesses start with one function; such as being a florist. But if the florist is popular and vibrant its customers will start wanting the florist to do special events. If you needed a wedding planner in Mornington Peninsula you would look for someone who was going to be involved in the wedding anyway, someone you know can work to deadlines and knows that things need to happen to a timetable.

It’s not a big leap for a florist from Mornington Peninsula to begin coordinating the whole thing and unless you’re planning an event for thousands of guests, this is probably ideal.

What else can you do?

Another point of diversification yet remaining true to how you are is to capitalise on current trends. Activities have become very much a ‘thing’. The idea developed from children’s birthday parties, where taking them and the mess somewhere else was a great idea but then they needed to have something to do.

A Flower workshop in Melbourne is a grown-up development on the simple theme. Plenty of people want to know about flower arranging. Doing it with a bunch (ahem) of friends in a relaxed atmosphere sounds fun. Coming away with an idea of what to do when you next get some flowers from the market is even better.

Diversification opens the door to a healthier business

Small businesses especially need to have more than one ‘string to the bow’ so to speak. Where small business fails is when they fall out of their natural skills. Imagine a florist from the Mornington Peninsula who opened a coffee shop on the premises. That could work, but the danger is one overpowers the other, and if suddenly your competition is coffee shops you could be out of your depth and unsure how to compete.

That’s why a wedding planner on the Mornington Peninsula works so well. It’s tied into the base business. The same is true of a flower workshop in Melbourne.

Where better to use yesterday’s flowers than in a workshop where there’s lots of fun but having the freshest of fresh flowers is not an essential.

Diversifying into the skill set makes sense

Where you can expand into other areas of the same business you have all sorts of positive side effects. Your average cost of goods drops, potentially you have the opportunity for increased margins, and your reputation broadens. It’s great for all sides of the business.