Focus is sometimes a difficult task for an entrepreneur. Unfortunately, for these same entrepreneurs, focus is also a necessary component for execution and making your business work. You must be able to not only initiate an idea but also be able to see it through to completion.
For most entrepreneurs, the thing that they love most is starting a new venture. It seems like most of the entrepreneurs that I have worked with have one eye on their current business and the other eye on their next project. This is a tremendous strength but when not managed can be a huge liability as well. Some business owners just don’t seem to have the staying power to see things through due to boredom, short attention span, being overwhelmed by the complexity of their business long term etc.
Some of the by- products of not focusing on your business are lack of planning, incomplete vision of the company and failure to develop your team and business processes. This causes your business to run into problems when your business starts to experience some growth.
The way to overcome this is to decide to master one thing in your business before you move on to another product or service. This problem doesn’t just exist for small businesses either. Even large, well established firms run into this problem. The auto industry as well as the financial services industry would have done well to heed this advice. Both industries stretched themselves way too thin with product lines and offerings and are now suffering for it.
Having a singular focus on mastering what you initiate allows you to learn how to take a product from start to finish and what it takes along the way to do it successfully. Once you have that mastery, you can feel more confident in branching out because you now have a road map of what is needed for you to be successful. This is essential for team building and filling in the gaps of your personal deficiencies.
Have you been able to master a certain endeavor? Is your business trying to do too many things at once? How have you been able to overcome a lack of focus in your business?
I totally agree with your insights. Lack of focus is certainly a time waster. I had big plans for this year with respect to my internet businesses and it is almost year end and I haven’t accomplished what I had planned to do because I kept jumping from one project to the next. I will definitely try to focus on one thing at a time next year.
I think a good way to get some instant feedback is to review your last week. How you have you done in regards to the questions you ask at the end of this post in the last week? That is a good indicator of whether your on pace to achieve your goals. Brandon, thanks for this post and your others, very insightful and refreshing. I have gotten many ideas when I ask myself the questions you ask in your posts.
aaron- Thanks for stopping by. I definitely think that doing a weekly review of what you are doing can be a powerful tool to help keep you on track. That is provided that you know where you want to go so that you can measure it. For some entrepreneur’s, I would take this a step further and review daily.