The newsletter also includes a look at whether startups should use social media, how entrepreneurs can be smarter about raising money, why raising venture capital may not be a good thing for some startups, and the spotlight on Yoleo, a cool alternative to Google Reader.

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Is it timing? Effective marketing and sales? A user-friendly product?

It could be any one of the above but the biggest reason a startup succeeds is it solves a problem. The problem doesn’t have to be big, it just needs to be a problem that people want addressed. If a startup can be a problem-solver, it stands a better chance of resonating with consumers who have a need for it.

Now, this may strike you as an obvious statement but it’s always surprising to see startups that don’t solve problems. Instead, they offer nice-to-have products that could make life a little easier or convenient but people can live with or without them.

Many of these “non-problem” startups are features as opposed to products. They look and feel like something that could be bolted on a startup solving problems. Some of these startups could attract some attention but most of them slip into the night without so much of a sniff of the spotlight.

For entrepreneurs looking to create a startup, the most important thing to do is identifying a problem that people experience. It can be a small problem that addresses a minor irritation but that’s okay if there are enough people looking for a solution.

By focusing on a problem, an entrepreneur has a solid foundation for creating a product. Ideally, the product is accessible, intuitive and user-friendly so it’s easy for people to use and embrace it. It’s a fail and a shame when a problem-solving product fails due to bad design, UX or UI.

With the right product solving a problem, a startup can develop sales and marketing campaigns to drive awareness and revenue.

It is important to note a good product, along with solving a problem, is an important pillar for startup success. As much as you can have great sales and marketing, it doesn’t matter if the product is bad or not needed.

Bottom line: solve a problem to give yourself a shot at success.

Many startups find social media irresistible because the major services are free and popular. The problem is startups forget that social media can suck up their most valuable resources – people and time.

It means startups need to be strategic and careful about how and where they spend their time on social media, otherwise they risk spinning their wheels with little ROI.

At well, startups need to recognize social media is just one part of a marketing program.

The most important consideration is determining what social media services will do the best job of engaging and meeting the needs of a startup’s target audiences. When there are only so many bullets to shoot, you need to choose carefully.

When it comes to social media, I have a two-fold philosophy: walk before you run, and focus rather than spreading yourself too thin.

For startups, this means picking a social media service that will drive the best results, and then do a great job meeting the needs of potential and existing customers who use it.

For a B2C startup, Twitter or Facebook may be the best options. Twitter has value as a way to distribute value-added content, drive leads and do customer service. Facebook can be a good place for a startup to engage with customers, particularly for products used on a regular basis.

For B2B startups, LinkedIn and Twitter may hold the most potential. LinkedIn can be good to play in a specific market or industry, particularly the use of groups. Twitter also has good potential but I would suggest it may not be fertile as it is for B2C startups.

Aside from selecting the right social media services, it is important to have a strong idea about how much time and effort they can to invest to get the expected results.

If there are only a handful of employees, a startup may have an hour or two each day.  Using the right tools, it will still let a startup publish content, monitor activity and engage with customers.

Last but not least, a startup needs to constantly measure social media activity to see if the expected metrics are being met. If the performance is falling short, it may mean a change in tactics or exploring another social media service.

Bottom line: social media can be a valuable tool for startups. But startups need to have a plan of attack so social media doesn’t consume too many resources or not generate enough ROI to justify doing.

Here’s a rough chart about the social media services for B2C and B2B startups

For more thoughts on startups and social media, check out Eric Basu’s column in Forbes.

Some of the other popular items include:

- The struggles of the Toronto Blue Jays’ Ricky Romeo, and the lessons for startups.

- The C100′s infographic of the Canadian startup landscape.

- Breather and OMSignal raising seed capital.

- Mark Suster on why startups need well-articulated strategies.

Get the newsletter delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning by subscribing. As a bonus, you’ll get my e-book featuring 118 of the leading digital marketing tools.

While people might suggest these pages provide little value, I would enthusiastically argue they rank among the most valuable pages on a Website. They may not be slick or glittery but About and Contact pages deliver a lot of utility and value.

What do you mean utility and value?

Here’s the thing: people are busy and they have little patience for Websites that fail to deliver the information needed to make a decision – whether it’s getting more information, buying or downloading something, contacting something, etc.

An About page thrives when it quickly and clearly tells someone what your company does, some reasons why it’s interesting and exists, and  information about when it was started and the people behind it.

It doesn’t have to more than 200 words but it still can deliver all the information needed to deliver credibility and confidence.

Too many startups drop the ball with their About pages because they either don’t have one (Big Fail) or it’s a convoluted, jumbled mix of corporate, product, vision and mission content that drops the ball on all counts.

If you’re looking for an example of a great About page, check out MailChimp, which, not surprisingly, injects a healthy dose of creativity. (Moz.com has a great one too.)

So what about the Contact page?

If a startup manages to capture enough of someone’s attention that they want touch base with the company, a Contact page should make it a snap to, well, contact someone.

At the very least, there should be a phone number, email address and a form that lets people provide information. An address and the name/email address of an actual person would be a bonus. In other words, give people a variety of ways to contact you.

An example of a company that should embrace this approach is Montreal-based OmSignal, which just raised $1-million in venture capital. On its Website, there isn’t a Contact page (or, for that matter, an About page). And if you click on “Press” or “Say Hello”, it fires up your email client, which makes the user do the work.

While there may be good reasons why Omsignal doesn’t have About or Contact pages, it does leave the company a bit of a mystery or somewhat inaccessible.

If Omsignal is looking for a company that does Contact right, it’s Freshbooks, which gives you all kinds of options.

Another approach, which breaks some of my rules but still works, is Wunderlist. What I like is how each need is personalized.

What do you think? Who does About or Contact pages right?

In his last start with the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons, Romero gave up eight runs on five hits and three walks while recording just two outs. This is a stark performance from someone who won 15 games in 2011 and finished in the top-10 in Cy Young voting.

For startups, there are five important lessons to be learned from the rise and fall of Ricky Romero.

1. Success can take time and patience. After being selected in the first-round of the 2005 draft, Romero struggled in the minor leagues. It wasn’t until 2009 that Romeo made the Toronto Blue Jays. Romero had the pedigree and talent but, for whatever reason, it look longer than expected for it to translate into major league success.

Lesson: Many startups have products offering lots of value but can’t seem to get much traction, while rivals have no trouble attracting users and revenue. One of the keys is having faith and confidence in your product. By working hard and staying motivated, success is possible down the road.

2. Success should be savoured and enjoyed. It’s tough to make the major leagues. You need to be the best of the best, and there are thousands of players trying to take your job. Only a few players have job security, while most players only get to spend a few years at the game’s highest level.

Lesson: Only a very small number of startups are successful to the point where they become viable businesses, let alone high-profile success stories that are acquired for billions of dollars. For startups that do attract enough users and/or revenue to become a business as opposed to a project, it’s reason for daily celebration and cause to enjoy the moment.

3. Carpe diem (aka seize the day). For Romero, two successful years were enough for him to get a five-year, $30.1-million contract in 2010. At the time, it appeared to be a great deal for the Blue Jays but now it looks like Romero made the right decision by signing a long-term deal when the opportunity came along.

Lesson: For startups that do have success, a takeover offer has to be something worth considering given the competitive landscape and the fickleness of users. One day, you’re king of the world, the next day you’re forgotten because someone new and shiny has come along. If someone offers you a whack of dough, it might be a good idea to take it.

4. Don’t rest on your laurels. Romero’s demise may be due to many reasons. Perhaps he forgot the things that made him successful or maybe he started to enjoy the good life too much. Between the 2010 and 2011 seasons, something changed for Romero, and he’s never been the same.

Lesson: For startups, success can be fleeting. Don’t take your business or customers for granted. Never forget hungrier and better companies are battling for business and your customers. Even if your startup is humming along, you need to maintain a sense of healthy paranoia to prevent yourself from letting your guard down.

5. Never give up or, at least, never give up without a fight. Romero may appear to be finished but baseball is a funny game. As fast as you can lose it, the magic can reappear. At some point, Romero was among the best in the game but somehow lost his way. With new mechanics or a mental refresh, it’s not impossible for Romero is make his way back to the big leagues.

Lesson: Even when times get tough, startup needs to stay optimistic and realistic. They need to understand the market can behave in strange ways but you need to keep going to live for another day. Just when you think there is no light at the tunnel, a big customer could come walking in the door.

For startups with a product that addresses a problem or makes life more efficient, productive, profitable, et al, one of the crucial elements is having the one-two punch of  user-friendly design and an easy, intuitive user experience.

Good design and UX makes a startup’s product accessible to users. It drives people down the sales funnel, delivers a delightful experience and encourages people to share their discovery. It seems so straightforward but many startups drop the ball on both counts.

So what is good design it’s a subjective topic?

To me, it is a clean and simple look and feel. Accompanied by well-articulated messaging, it is a snap for people to understand what a startup does, why they would be interested and, as important, how they would begin to get into the product.

Weaved within beautiful design is the user experience that makes it easy for a customer to embrace a product without doing much work.

Great UX makes things easy to do. It provides a Website with flow, making each step along the way (be it registration, downloading, e-commerce), a no-brainer. It makes people do things without them thinking they are doing any work.

So how do startups discover good design and UX?

In a recent blog post, Braden Kowitz, a partner with Google Ventures, talked about how startups can improve the design and UX process by creating “stories” around how someone would use a Website.

He said startups should uses whiteboards to create multi-part stories that show the different steps and decisions a user would make when trying to complete a specific task. The strength of this approach, he said, it does the following:

1. It simulates the user experience

2. Team spot problems earlier

3. It clarifies design goals up-front.

When you think about it, every startup should be creating user “stories” to improve its design and UX. By creating the actual scenarios a customer would experience, it is easier to meet their needs and goals. 

The big challenge many startups encounter with design and UX is they don’t take a customer-centric view of the world. Instead, they are focused on telling potential customers what they offer rather than what a potential customers wants to know or do.

It is a slightly different look through the lens but it makes a dramatic difference.

By thinking about how customers behave and what they want to achieve, a startup can quickly and easily improve its design and UX. Of course, it helps to do testing to validate approaches and ideas but starting with what the customer wants is a great way to do better work faster.

Links: For more good insight into Website design, check out this blog post by John Siebert on the “Art of Designing User Driven Websites”.

Note: While I’m not a design or UX person, I consider both to be integral parts of startup marketing because they play an essential role in engaging consumers.

For all the talk about social media, content marketing and the sales funnel, a startup’s prospects hinge on the product.

You can put lipstick on a pig but if a product fails to meet a need, solve a problem or, frankly, sucks, traction is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

It’s something too many entrepreneurs can overlook because they’re so excited about doing a startup. It is painful to run into an entrepreneur who thinks they’re onto something when, in fact, it’s pretty obvious their idea is going nowhere fast.

Many entrepreneurs fail to realize their product isn’t viable because their eternal optimism doesn’t let them think rationally. Maybe their “product” is nothing more than a quasi-interesting feature, perhaps it only appeals to a small niche, or it’s attempting to compete against bigger and better rivals.

Even then, many entrepreneurs will continue a Don Quixote quest to attract customers. This could carry on for months and involve continual iterations, a wave of new features or even a pivot. Still, a bad product is still a bad product no matter have much TLC it gets.

At some point, a startup entrepreneur has to see the writing on the wall. They need to decide whether the product has absolutely no appeal (the worst case scenario), or whether it seems to be resonating with certain customer segments (aka a ray of hope). In the latter case, the product may have shot at gaining some potential if the right moves are made.

To be honest, most products don’t evolve or have the opportunity to head in a new, better direction. Far too often, entrepreneurs are far too married to an idea that simply doesn’t work and, as a result, they’re trying to force their product into a market that doesn’t want or need it.

One last thought: Even with a good product, startups need to execute well from a marketing and sales perspective. It means have a strategic plan, and then figuring out how to pull the right levers at the right time – something that is easier said than done.

Note: The inspiration for post came from Kissmetrics, which published a post “13 critically important lessons from over 50 growth hackers”. Coming in at #12 was: It’s the product stupid.

“In the final assessment, growth hacking, when deployed in the service of a bad product, is a waste of life. Sorry, it needs to be said that bluntly. Engineering growth for something meaningful and important is a noble cause. Pushing a lazy idea, with lazy execution, is not worthy of your energy. Your results won’t be lasting no matter what your charts look like in the short-term. Time breaks all hockey sticks that are not owned by great products.”

This can be daunting for startups looking to establish brand awareness, particularly when most of them have small or no marketing budgets.

So how do cash or resource-strapped startups thrive at marketing when there are bigger, better financed rivals?

One of the keys is thinking out of the box, and I’m not talking about Facebook contests, link-bait blog headlines or buying Twitter followers.

Instead, I’m talking about startups with the willingness and ability to do things differently, even if means taking  risks. These are startups that go against the grain. When everyone is embracing Pinterest, they do something completely different.

This can be difficult because not only does it require an appetite for risk but, in many cases, a lot of creativity and agility. It’s about having a corporate culture and a marketing approach that makes it easy to be opportunistic.

A great example is Fongo, which recently offered to buy Wind Mobile for $1 and a 49% stake in the Waterloo, Ont.-based startup. The “offer” was creative and oozed with cheekiness but it got Fongo and its free mobile service a lot of attention.

It was the kind of marketing that can go either way. While Fongo basked in glory of its “offer”, the marketing gambit could have backfired because there is likely no way the company could afford to buy Wind, which has more than 600,000 wireless subscribers.

But it also demonstrated how living on the edge can reap huge benefits for  startups able to seize the moment. I would estimate Fongo spent less than $1,000 to have a press release put on the wire. Based on the coverage, the campaign had awesome ROI.

During a meeting with a startup client recently, one of their executives threw out a made-up name to describe the service. At first, it seemed like nothing more than humorous but the more I thought it, the more I realized the word could be used as part of a contest r campaign that would ask people to provide a definition.

I’m not suggesting the contest would have been an slam-dunk success but it reflects how different kinds of marketing activities can be effective.

For startups willing to think out of the box, there’s a fine balance between success and failure.

The difference lies in timing, creativity, delivery and luck. And falling flat on your face can happen even if the right creative buttons are pushed.

A good example is Pawngo, which dumped 1,000 Butterfinger candy bars in Boston’s Copley Square after the New England Patriots’ Wes Welker dropped a ball against the New York Giants during Super Bowl XLVI.

The stunt not only irked Patriots’ fans but Pawngo was hit with a commercial dumping violation. At the end of the day, Pawngo wasn’t seen as cheeky and creative as much as a nuisance and garbage dumper.

Nevertheless, Pawngo should get points for trying. It’s easy to take the safe route but more difficult to live on the edge where you’re not quite sure what’s going to happen. But as they say, no pain, no gain

Far too often, however, startups tend to look at target audiences as one amorphous group that has the same characteristics, needs and interests.

The problem with a one-size-fits-all approach is while “the customer” may appear to be the same, they may actually break down into several target segments with slightly differently needs and interests.

A startup’s product may serve all customer segments but the messaging to reach them can’t be the same. What works well for one group, may not resonate with another.

To get a better handle on your customer segments, a valuable exercise is persona creation.

This involves discovering and drilling down into the different types of potential buyers. It means answering questions such as:

• How old are they?
• What are their specific needs and interests?
• Where do they discover information about your products?
• What would solve their problems or make them successful?
• How would they look like a hero to their boss?

In creating personas, startups may discover there are several distinct groups of customers. As a result, the startup may have to change its marketing and sales strategy and tactics to effectively pursue them.

This scenario happened with a client recently that was targeting social media managers. In creating personas, it became apparent that while social media managers were a target audience, other customer segments included digital marketers and chief marketing officers and PR/digital agencies.

Each of these customers could be served by the product but their needs and goals were different. It became obvious that having a single marketing and sales approach wasn’t going to work well.

So how are personas created?

It begins with being open to the idea there are different kinds of customers. Then, each customer has to be personalized. The easiest way is giving each of them a name, and then layering on characteristics such as age, job title, experience and responsibilities.

Let’s look at a small business owner looking for accounting products. One customer could be “Mary”, who runs a 10-person small business. Mary does her own accounting using Excel but needs accounting software to accommodate growth.

Another group could be “John”, who handles accounting and HR for a 25-person business with $5-million in sales. John is using basic accounting software but needs something more powerful and able to integrate with the company’s CRM system.

Mary and John could use the same accounting software but their needs are different. It means the messaging has to be personalized rather than generalized.

For startups, the big challenge is having a balance between having corporate messaging that embraces different types of customers and, at the same time, being able to speak to these customers in different ways.

The creation of personas is not only important but it could reveal surprising and valuable insight to jump-start your marketing and sales efforts.

There are many ways to create personas, including an online service called personapp.

Pebble is the lead story in the newest edition of “This Week in Canadian Startups”. There is also two items about incubators: a Financial Post suggesting incubators are failing because they don’t spawn enough successful startups, while Mark MacLeod counters that incubators are doing a great job of nurturing entrepreneurs.

To get “This Week in Canadian Startups” in your inbox every Saturday morning, all you need to do is subscribe.

There are a couple of reasons why this is the case. First, good stories are interesting, attractive and compelling. Second, brands will need to become better storytellers as content marketing becomes table stakes. When everyone’s telling stories, you need to be better at it to rise above the crowd – something we’re seeing in social media.

So, how do brands tell good stories?

It starts by being customer-centric, which means looking at what the customer wants to read, listen and watch as opposed to what a brands want to tell them. It’s a slightly differently perspective but surprisingly difficult for many brands who think that consumers like it when they babble on about features.

Truth be told, consumers really don’t care about your products, other than whether they help make their lives better, easier, more profitable, etc. There are many choices for consumers who can pick from products offering  the same features.

What consumers want is how you’re going to help them. What are the most biggest benefits of using your product? Mint, for example, helps the consumer “understand what’s going on with your money”. Freshbooks “makes billing painless”. WattPad helps you “connect with stories”.

For good storytelling to happen, it starts by taking an inside out perspective. Then, brands can begin to create narratives that are engaging and add value.

Once a brand embraces this approach, they can start to create content that resonates. Depending on the target audiences, it could be blog posts, videos, case studies, white papers, e-books or slide decks. And, of course, brands need a Website that tells an easy to understand story with clear benefits and calls to action.

Not not all content has to be dramatic or have a bad guy or hero. But it should be accessible and engaging in some way, and easily flow so it doesn’t feel like work. Some of it has to do with good writing and video production, and some of it has to do with design and production quality.

There are a few other considerations for good storytelling.

One, you need an editorial strategy that takes into account a company’s goals and objectives (e.g. drive leads and sales), the resources and budget, and how much content the target audiences are willing to consume.

Second, brands need a realistic tactical execution plan that lets them create a steady flow of content that makes storytelling a persistent and sustainable part of how the business operates. It makes no sense to come out of the gate swinging, and then lose your storytelling enthusiasm.

Third, brands can never lose sight of the fact people like stories. And, like children, they will read the same story over and over again if the stories are interesting and compelling.

For more thoughts, here’s a blog post by David Meerman Scott. For people attending the mesh conference, Knock Twice’s Kyle Monson will be doing a keynote presentation about brand journalism on May 16.

The author, Clifford Oxford, opined that consultants should mostly be kept away:

“This is the human factor of growth, and quite frankly, most consultants contaminate the whole place. Keep them out of this part of the business. Think about snakes in a wood pile. In fact, go back and find that 10-foot pole and grow without them.”

As a consultant who provides marketing services to startups, I think Oxford is wrong because it doesn’t reflect the value that consultants can offer at the right time for the right price.

One of the crucial considerations for startups, especially early-stage ones, is they need to be strategic and selective about how they spend money. There are parts of the business that demand a full-time employee because they’re core to the company’s operations. At the same time, there is a lot of stuff that needs to get done but doesn’t necessarily need a full-time, part-time or contract employee.

Instead, a startup can look to a consultant to fill an important gap on a project basis to achieve a key deliverable or milestone. In hiring a consultant (or hired gun), the startup can tap into someone’s experience, expertise and network to get exactly what it needs when it’s needed. It does not have to be a long-term or expensive relationship but it can provide both parties with what they need.

So when should a consultant be hired by a startup?

For many startups, the interest in a consultant begins when they have a problem to solve or a task that has to get done. At this point, they can try to have someone internally do it or look to hire someone if the position needs to be filled right away. Another option is finding someone (aka a consultant) who can come in for a set period of time (let’s say one to six months) to provide strategy and tactical assistance.

The key is determining what kind of help is needed, and then finding someone who has the experience and track record to fill that need. And you have to find someone who shares your values, passion and vision. That’s the first big step.

Next, a startup has to find a consultant who thinks strategically and performs tactically. A startup does not, under any circumstances, need a consultant who puts together fancy strategic recommendations, and then leaves the startup to execute. To me, that’s a half-ass job that provides little value, and gives consultants a bad name.

Third, a consultant needs to drink the Kool-Aid. While they don’t work for the startup, they need to feel like they’re part of the team, even if it’s for a short period of time. As well, the startup has to feel and know the consultant has a vested interest in their success, not just getting paid for consulting services.

So what about fees?

The image of consultants is they’re blood-sucking, money-hungry wolves. That may be true for some but it’s a sweeping generalization. A good consultant who wants to work with your startup should recognize the budget limitations and accept the reality that working for reasonable fees is part of the opportunity cost.

If a consultant wants to make large hourly rates, they should work for a big corporation. If they want to work with startups, they need to take a different approach – one that takes into account a startup’s potential and the buzz around their business and sector.

Truth be told, it can be hard for a startup to hire a consultant who meets the above criteria. The reality, however, is there are a lot of good consultants who can meet the needs of startups and, in the process, deliver a win-win proposition.

It’s a difficult to answer question to answer because many startups think that anything spent on marketing is a challenge to justify, whether it’s $100/month for a digital tool or $25,000 for an extensive media and blogger outreach program.

The reality is most startups see marketing as a luxury or something that solves a point of pain, rather than a need-to-have or an exercise that has solid ROI. As a result, establishing a marketing budget can be a daunting exercise.

The easy answer is how much to spending on marketing is do more than nothing. Every part of a startup requires an investment in time, money and/or people, so spending on marketing is a no-brainer.

So how much makes sense?

This depends on a number of variables based on your budgets, objectives, target audiences and where your startups sits within the growth cycle.

For early-stage startups with limited resources, a reasonable budget could be $250 to $1,000/month. This would involve using a handful of free tools such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite for social media monitoring and publishing, social media services (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and Website optimization tools such as Kissmetrics, MixPanel or SEOMoz.

A budget of this size doesn’t involve having a part-time or full-time marketing person but it  provides ground cover and establishes a solid marketing foundation that can be built upon as growth accelerates and a marketing plans expand.

Over time, the marketing budget can expand to $1,000 to $10,000/month by adding  a part-time or full-time marketing person to handle social media and create content for blogs, case studies, white papers, press releases and marketing and sales collateral. This kind of budget lets a startup use premium services such as Hubspot or InfusionSoft. And it may accommodate having a PR agency on a project basis or on a small retainer, although I’m not a fan of early-stage startups having monthly retainers for PR.

As a startup accelerates it growth and begins to drive brand and product awareness, it is not unreasonable to be spending $10,000 to $25,000/month on marketing. At this stage, a startup has expanded its marketing team to two or three people, it is aggressively leveraging social media and content marketing, it’s sending people to conferences and perhaps sponsoring key events, and it has a solid media and blogger outreach program.

As much as spending money on marketing can be difficult for a startup to grasp and make happen, marketing is a key and necessary part of running a business. If customers don’t know you exist or understand what you do, it goes a long way to undermine the growth and success of your business.

It can be intimidating to have another startup with a strong foothold, not only with customers but in terms of awareness and media/blog coverage. It can look like an uphill battle in which a fledgling startup is scrambling to gain traction and credibility.

So, what does it take for a startup (aka David) to battle a Goliath, even if the Goliath is another startup?

At a high level, it means taking a different approach that can separate a new startup from the pack in some way. It could be better design, UI, UX, customer service, marketing or pricing (although pricing is a short-cut). It could be a matter of being more creative, flexible, agile or opportunistic.

One of the realities for many market leaders is the danger of complacency. With large market share and a strong brand presence, it can be easy to lose your competitive edge. This can open a window of opportunity for new player to move quickly to move the ball forward. The wins may be small but as long as they keep coming, they add up over time.

The most important thing for “David” startups is recognizing that having a good product at the right price isn’t nearly good enough. It gets you in the game but it’s table stakes. To battle Goliath, you need to be better, faster, more user-friendly and flexible.

At the end of the day, it could see David become a strong player but still be a David.  This isn’t a bad thing because it means you have a viable business that always has the potential to close the gap if Goliath stumbles, loses its competitive focus or stops improving and evolving its products.

The bottom line is not to be daunted or afraid of Goliath. Instead, focus on what you do best and then make it a mandate to do even better.