Doing Chicken and Doing Chicken Right
Visit KFC’s web site and you’ll see the following statement right on the front page:
In 1939, Colonel Harland Sanders first gave the world a taste of his most famous creation, Original Recipe Kentucky Fried Chicken, featuring that secret blend of 11 herbs and spices. Since that time, millions of people the world over have come to love his one of a kind chicken, homestyle side dishes and hot and fresh biscuits.
Said differently, Colonel Sanders “did chicken, and he did chicken rightâ€, making him in my opinion the poster boy for specialization.
The notion of specialization recently surfaced in my own life. Just over a year ago, after running out of living space, my wife and daughter and I moved from our small town home into a brand new home capable of handling our growing family. Somewhere along the way—between choosing the right neighborhood and finalizing the custom finishes on our new home—we decided to keep the town house as a rental unit. The way we saw it, owning a rental property was a good investment, not to mention part of the American Dream.
Long story short, a couple of weeks ago, after our first our renters moved out because we decided to not renew their lease, Amy and I chose to put the town home up for sale. It took us a year—a very looooooooong year—to figure out that we’re not the real estate investor types. To say that we had problems with our tenants would be an understatement. After spinning our wheels for close to eight months,, we ended up hiring a property management company to deal with the day-to-day issues, but even that was distracting. At the end of the day, we decided to do chicken and do chicken right.
As an entrepreneur, I’m faced with specialization-related issues on almost a daily basis, and while I’m deeply committed in my belief that specialization wins out nearly every time in business, somehow I lost sight of that fact in my own life. I say, find what you do well, and only do that. I am a good leader and a good entrepreneur. I am not a real estate investor. It’s only a distraction to me from what I am good at.
So the town home is being sold, and I now can focus on my specialty (which if you ask my wife is raking the front yard and taking out the trash). I’ll post more about specialization in the weeks to come. In the meantime, I encourage everyone reading this post to find their specialty and focus primarily on that.
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Larry Potter
