Last week we received a nice note from a person who works for a large retail clothing company with hundreds of locations. He believed Schedulefly could be a great solution for his company, and told us he wanted to help us win the business. Using pricing info from our site, he determined it would be something along the lines of a $162,000 deal for us. That’s an annual amount, so if you look at these things in terms of five-year chunks, we’re talking about over $800,000 in revenue for our small business of five people.

Yet I didn’t pause even a second before sending the guy this note, which I knew we would all agree with wholeheartedly…

“Thank you very much for the nice note and the offer. We really appreciate it.

We are 100% focused on serving restaurants. We know our software works well in restaurants and makes life easier for people that work in them. Schedulefly may work in your organization, but it may not. We find the non-restaurant users sometimes have different needs than restaurant users, and may prefer tools or features that we don’t provide, causing them not to love the experience of using Schedulefly – and we want people to LOVE the experience and be happy every time they log in. We know we can provide that to restaurants – we have no idea whether we can in other types of businesses.

My guess is most companies that do what we do would jump at the opportunity you are offering, so I recommend checking out other providers in our space. Somebody most likely has the perfect fit for y’all – it just doesn’t happen to be us.

Take care and best of luck finding a good solution!”

Five years ago we likely would have pursued this opportunity. I would have jumped on a plane to go sit in a board room and present to a team of decision makers. I would have worn a suit and a tie, and I would have been nervous about the presentation and anxious to win their approval.

And I would have been making a mistake by even being there. Pursuing the opportunity would have been a distraction for us. Winning the business would have been short-term financial win, but a barrier to Schedulefly’s long-term success. It would have blurred our focus and kept us from narrowing in to build a business that is the perfect fit for a specific group of people, not an average fit for anybody who needs help with staff scheduling. So, it was easy to write that email, and I am thankful to be a part of a team that is unified in our purpose and that doesn’t want to let any distractions get in the way of building our dream business.

Thanks for reading,
Wil