I’ve attended many business conferences over my thirteen plus years in business.
I love attending conferences.
I always come away from a business conference with one idea that makes a big difference in my business.
The key for me is to just pick one idea to implement from the conference.
Back in March of this year, I attended a business conference.
Something that Bill Gates said perfectly sums up the lesson I relearned at this March business conference.
Bill Gates said, “My success, part of it certainly, is that I have focused in on a few things.”
The one idea I brought back from that conference was to reimplement my one hour a day focus on doing one thing to improve my business.
I say reimplement the one hour a day focus because I had stopped doing my one hour a day work.
Here’s the story around my one hour a day activity.
In the second quarter of 2018, I began the Profit First Professionals Certification program.
I was super excited about being involved with Profit First Professionals and decided I was going to devote one hour a day to working on my certification.
All summer long, I plodded away on the requirements to become certified.
I made tremendous progress because every day I spent an hour working on the certification.
Then in September of 2018, I finished the certification and also finished my one hour a day of focused work.
I realized during my March business conference that I had stopped the one hour of focused work.
I’m not sure why I stopped.
I guess I assumed that I, for some reason, what brought me success didn’t need to be continued.
I realized while I was at that conference that I had made an enormous amount of progress in my business by spending one hour a day
Tim Ferriss stated, “Being selective—doing less—is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.”
By reflecting on my past, I was able to see the actions I took that provided me with results.
That’s why I decided to reimplement spending one hour a day working on one project that will improve my business.
Day in and day out, I spend one hour a day until I complete that project.
Once that project is complete, I start the next project.
When that project is complete, I start the next project.
Something amazing happens when I spend an hour a day working on a project that will dramatically improve my business.
I complete the project, and I dramatically improve my business.
The challenge that so many people run into is being constantly distracted by all the shiny objects and urgencies we all face every day.
I can’t tell you how many times I talk with people and they share with me that they aren’t making the progress in their business that they want.
More often than not, I can tell they are not progressing because they lack focused work on one thing that will dramatically improve their business.
Steve Jobs said, “That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
Last month, I was speaking with a Realtor, and she told me that her sales pipeline was almost empty.
I then made the comment to her that most of the times when Realtors are not selling homes it is the result of the activities (or rather the lack of activities) they were engaged in three months ago.
When a Realtor goes through a yo-yo, up and down cycle of selling homes, this is a clear indication of a lack of consistent lead generating activities.
This Realtor then shared with me that she didn’t want to call her friends and ask them if they knew anyone who was looking to sell their home.
I responded to her, “Then don’t do it.”
I then said the following, “You had a tremendous first year in real estate. How many homes did you sell in your first year?”
She replied to me that she had sold more than 40 homes her first year.
I then began to inquire of her what she did that got her leads to sell all the homes she sold.
She shared with me a number of marketing activities she did that worked.
I then asked her when she had last done any of those marketing activities.
She replied that it had been several months since she had engaged in those marketing activities.
I then asked her to calculate the return on investment for each of the marketing activities she performed.
Each of the activities had astounding returns on investment.
She was printing money every time she did the marketing activities.
I then told her that her lack of consistent monthly home sales was due to a lack of consistency in lead generating activities.
I concluded that her first step was to start a consistent marketing program that will keep doing marketing activities over and over and over and over and over again until they stop producing results.
She had already figured out something that worked.
Now the first step is to do more of the activities that work.
To reinforce the power of focus, I’m sharing some great quotes about focus.
“The successful man is the average man, focused.”
Unknown
“It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?”
Henry David Thoreau
“To be everywhere is to be nowhere.”
Seneca
“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”
Alexander Graham Bell
“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.”
Bruce Lee
“I don’t care how much power, brilliance or energy you have, if you don’t harness it and focus it on a specific target, and hold it there you’re never going to accomplish as much as your ability warrants.”
Zig Ziglar
“When walking, walk. When eating, eat.”
Zen proverb
“Energy is the essence of life. Every day you decide how you’re going to use it by knowing what you want and what it takes to reach that goal, and by maintaining focus.”
Oprah Winfrey
“It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world. The great man or woman is the one who never steps outside his or her specialty or foolishly dissipates his or her individuality.”
Og Mandino
“Focused, consistent effort on activities that produce results is the key to having outstanding success.”
Damon Yudichak
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