Focus On What Matters Most
Now, as you can probably tell, if you’re watching this, and certainly if you’re listening to this, you can hear the noise. I’m actually in my adventure van heading on a trip, but I wanted to give you this insight. I just got back from talking to one of my coaching clients, and they were facing an issue in their business. Now, you can extrapolate this to any area of your life, but for this particular person, it was the area of their business.
Now, they hired me to help them out with several key areas, but one of the areas was revenue. They were down on their revenue, and they needed a way to actually pay the bills. We formulated a plan, and they finally got to a point where they were exceeding their revenue more than ever expected, which is great; however, they’re not consumed with such minutia, such little details about their business that they are losing the main picture.
What I mean by that is, they’re missing what brought them back to this point, the point of where they wanted to be, which is making a lot more money to provide security and income for not only themselves but also for their staff and their employees for many years to come.
I’m going to tell him what I told you, or I’m telling you right now, is what is the main area to focus on? Are you getting caught up in the details? What this business owner was getting caught up with and what they wanted to ask my advice was, is they had recently been asked by several people to start new revenue sources within their business. Not a bad thing, right? In fact, the more successful you become in my experience, the more business opportunities you actually get. You get more demands on your time, and people like working with successful people.
The problem was is all of these areas that he was now focused on, I know it sounds like an oxymoron being focused on more than one area, but all of these areas that were consuming his time, his brain power, and that of his staff wouldn’t have brought him in the amount of income that bringing in one actual normal client would’ve done, the thing that he and I had been focused on for the past 90 days. Now, we had a successful plan. It’s proven. He’d already hit his goal, but he wanted more. He wanted to provide more stability; however, he was focused on doing that by focusing on minutia.
Now, I gotta admit, I’m a creature of habit. I got caught up doing this too. I’ve done this in the area of my relationships, I’ve done this in the area of my mind, I’ve done this in the area of my body where I’ve actually been focused on the little small details that aren’t actually moving the needle to get me to my desired outcome. This is something I learned a long time ago, was starting with the outcome in mind.
What I asked him was, what is the outcome you want? He said, “Well, Doug, what I want to do is actually make enough money to be able to have reserves in the bank that I know if something happened, a downturn in the economy, I got sick, something happens, that I can support my family, but also my staff,” and that’s what I love about him. He actually really is caring and concerned about his team, the people that work with him.
He’s not there yet, so what I told him to do, I go, “That’s a great outcome. What’s that number?” He gave me the number. “How far are you away from hitting?” He’s not too far away from hitting it, and so then we said, “Well, what’s the fastest path? What is the fastest path for you to get there?” As it turns out, it was none the minutia. He simply needed to focus on getting two new clients into his business.
Now, this is something that he was able to do and put a system together, putting two new clients into his business pipeline every single week; however, he had taken his eye off the ball and hadn’t had a new client in several weeks because he was focused on making really small micro charges for these new business ventures.
Now, I’m going to ask you this question. Where in your life, where in your Five to Thrive are you focused on the focused on the small, incremental things that won’t get you to your outcome? Then also, write down what is the one thing, maybe two, but no more than two, things that are going to allow you to hit your goal in the fastest most efficient manner?
Now, once you have identified those two, what I want you to do is go ahead and calendar out the time necessary to complete those tasks, to complete those goals, and see what that looks like. That should be your focus for the next 90 days, or for whenever you hit those goals. Focus on those big targets that are going to move the needle and get you the success that you want, no matter what it is.
Now, for a lot of us, it’s not money, it’s some other area of our life, but whatever it is, make sure you don’t get lost in the minutia. All too often, we get focused on the minutia, the minute details that aren’t going to help us out, and we miss the big picture.
That’s it for me today. I’m pulling in. Have a great day. Remember, go to authorofyourownstory.com where you get the latest tips, tricks, and techniques delivered right to your inbox each and every day. Have a fantastic day. Remember, go out and be the author of your own story.