Focus

'Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody is willing to die to get there' - there is a heaven you can find in life, but first you need to understand focus & more specifically how to recognise when you aren't focused & what the lack of focus does to your life.

Focus is something that I've struggled with a lot over my life in general but I've especially noted it in my business journey, I recognise it is one of the most important factors to take you to where you want to be. Focusing on one subject at a time is difficult for me, my mind often wonders into things ahead of what is currently happening & I can get very bored of the same thing, very quickly. Anybody that knows me, knows I am my own worst enemy - I try to build Rome in a day, everyday. I think that's played a major factor in how far I have progressed in business at such a young age, but I also think it's had its major downfalls & I'll explain why.

As an entrepreneur, I built my business model around finding solutions. I'm a inquisitive person, meaning I question everything. This made me successful, in that I can recognise problems in the world and can find solutions for them rather quickly. The first major problem I noticed in business became a useful tool for making money - I noted some of the businesses I knew of were prisoners of their own assets. I assessed their problem, sought methods to manage them assets, consolidated their stock into catalogued lists, acquired methods for valuing their stock & proposed the most cost effective way to market their stock to maximise returns for them. I grew the business taking on further consignments of stock that was otherwise not going to be sold unless the owners sought proper methods to market the material correctly. At the beginning, I took the business from being in a position of financial deficit to producing more than £1,000,000 in revenue in the first year.

Over the years, I found more ways to make money and this is where my problem with focusing on a subject comes in. I took on more staff to keep up with the demand including financial, stores, engineers - I took on a bigger building, then another building. This amounted to more work, more management, more responsibility, more expense & a reduced amount of focus on what I was trying to achieve. It had its toll - customers sent less enquiries, which resulted in less sales, less money coming in, but the outgoings remained the same. The more people that came into the workplace, the more channels were opened for distraction, more questions, which lead to poor efficiency & this tired me out more, which lead to poor decision making & eventually to a lack of respect from the employees. I decided to take time off because I was getting tired, I began to pursue a personal life. The personal life lead into relationships that never flourished due to me becoming a overstretched tired, exhausted, negative & very volatile individual. The anxiety (which came from worry) that ran through my body was poisoning me, making me very sick, restless and sleepless. Then I became more exhausted. The less money was made, the more I pushed myself to exhaust options to make more money & the circle continued. .

With everything above in mind, focus was greatly lost.

The problem with the above is that, with the loss of focus with the particular subject my business was built around, I overstretched my capabilities as a human being. Nobody see's the overstretch, they see the successful person they think you are, so they want more from you. People want more from you like your money & they bring you more problems, because you've proved yourself to be good at finding solutions. The overstretch leads to burnout, burnout leads to feeling more pressure. While all this is happening, people will want your time like family & friends, because they care about you, these people can't see inside your mind of believing you are an under-achiever or how you see yourself failing. You'll then be put under even more pressure. The pressure leads to desperation. Desperation leads you back to a position of poor strategizing. The strategy will never be clear, so you're likely to make mistakes. If you do push through this, you'll have saved your business. This process is vicious and easily becomes a circle, if you don't learn to focus. You'll likely have problems built up and unless you learn to reconcile your existing problems & refocus back onto what made you money in the first place, it will definitely continue until it spirals out of control. At the end of it all, your the failure & no-one will be there to help you put it right.

I'm the first to take responsibility for my faults, I built the beast so its my place to tame it.

Recognise how far your abilities really can be stretched. You're better to go a mile deep and an inch wide, than an inch deep and a mile wide. Imagine you had 50 ideas you were trying to succeed with at the same time, chances are you'll forget half of them. In Buddhist mythology, this is known as the monkey brain. You jump from branch to branch without a clear view on which tree you are going to fixate to. For any human, 1 task conquered at a time will be easier to complete, than 2. Make sure you have a clear focus on each task and make a plan for how you are going to conquer each plan to ensure it is attacked and finished off with time efficiency in mind. You can list them all and prioritise them, but just stick to one at a time.

I'm going to conclude on this section with a tip for you. If you're anything like me this will help you out so much in life going forward. If I were to consider a 5 year plan, I would probably list a whole load of crap that I wanted to do & a lot of goals I wanted to achieve. However, if I reviewed what I said I wanted to achieve 5 years ago, I know that most of things on that list never actually happened or went the way I planned. A lot happens over 5 years. The people you were friends with 5 years ago, possibly aren't still around. Relationship views from 5 years ago, most probably aren't of the same view now. My advice, is to shorten the length of the plan. Lets say to 30 or 60 days. In this way the plans become bitesize and concise. Have a goal, but plan in increments. Let's say in 30 days, you wanted to have your website built for your business, or rebuilt if it needs refreshing. Stick to that short plan & don't do anything else until its complete. Spend 30 minutes every morning before you go looking at your Instagram feed of distractions or before you turn on the news reviewing your progress. The 30 minutes, give you that small amount of time to review changes in the game plan, changes in the criteria of what a customer is looking for and changes in your business, but also the opportunity to see progress. A lot happens in 30 days, so spend that time & you will conquer your goals 1 by 1. Set dates in your mind, and do not let the date change. This way, you won't be monkey braining, you'll be working towards something else considerably beneficial to you or your business.

Mastering Focus is a key to achievement in itself, and one that should be at the forefront of your business strategy.