One of the things I want to do here at Silver Mountain Marketing to improve the business and the website is to take some time each week and share with you something that I learned over the last 7 days. I figure that if a week goes by and I haven’t learned something new, then I’m not doing a very good job. So every week, I plan to write a post here on the website and share something with you that you can use to improve your business, your life, and the service you provide to your customers.

For this first installation of “What Did You Learn This Week?” I want to talk about food. Peruvian food to be more specific.

What you probably don’t know is that on top of running the business here at Silver Mountain Marketing, I’ve been traveling for the past three months through the South American country of Peru. And during my travels here I have eaten a whole lot of food. Unfortunately, I can count the number of good meals I’ve had during the past three months using the fingers on just a single hand.

The problem with the restaurants here in Peru is that they try and offer every type of food imaginable. A single restaurant, fr example, will be serving Italian, Mexican, American, Chinese, Traditional Peruvian Food, and maybe a couple others.

While that might sound great to a traveler in search of food from back home, the reality is, this attempt by Peruvian restaurant owners to offer every food imaginable only results in a menu of inedible food items. In other words: The food sucks, because there is no way on earth a single chef can excel at cooking 100 or more different meals. It just can’t be done!

The worst part about the restaurants here in Peru is that they all do the same thing. They think they are competing with one another by each having hundreds and hundreds of meal options to choose from. They think that by offering more meals than their neighboring restaurant, that more people will eat at their restaurant than at their competitors’.

In the end though, no one eats at any of these restaurants because they know that a restaurant serving 100 or more dishes with a variety of meals that spans from Italian to Chinese, can’t possibly be serving anything of quality.

In reality, all it would take for a restaurant to stand out in Peru is for someone to come in and do ONE THING REALLY, REALLY WELL.

Just imagine if you wanted to get some food for yourself. Would you want to eat at the pizza place that makes AMAZING pizza pies? Or would you want to eat at the restaurant that serves every type of food imaginable, has an impressively long menu, but doesn’t do any one thing very well?

My guess is that you’d be eating at the pizza place.

The thing is, this desire to offer up every product (or service) imaginable isn’t a problem found only in Peruvian restaurants. In fact, it is a problem that businesses all over the world struggle with from time to time.

So my question to you is this: Are you offering your customers too many products? Too many services?

What is the ONE THING you do REALLY well? And is that ONE THING the ONE THING you are known for?

Is that ONE THING the thing that your business is centered around? Or are you distracting your customers from that ONE THING by offering them too many other choices?

I’ve just recently announced that I’ve finally figured out what that ONE THING is that makes Silver Mountain Marketing so unique… and me finally figuring that out is going to make a huge difference in how I run this company in the future.

Maybe it’s time for you to figure out the ONE THING that makes you and your business so great… and stop getting distracted by all the other products and services you COULD be offering? Maybe it’s time for you to figure out what you are REALLY GOOD AT… so you can start focusing on that ONE THING?