Focus One One Thing at a Time!

That’s been one of my mantras – focus & 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. ~Steve Jobs

I spent several days last week considering where my focus should be right now in terms of my marketing efforts. I thought about quite a few things I would like to promote since I have a lot of products, events, and courses. Each one is exceptional and offers tremendous value to my clients, so I want everyone to know about all of them.

The trouble is, if I tried to promote all of them at once, or several of them within a small time frame, the message of each one, no matter how good, would get watered down. As a result, less people would benefit because without focus and a concentrated message, fewer people would discover or understand clearly what I am offering!

My Best Successes

In my business, the times I focused on marketing a single product or event for a designated time frame were the times I had the best returns and the most success (80/20 rule).

In YOUR business, if you want to make significant sales and introduce many people to the products and services you know will really help them, you have to FOCUS, and by focus I mean focus on marketing just one thing at a time and leave the others for a later date (I know it hurts to read that)!

One Thing at a Time, Just for a Time!

If you are like me, you have many interest areas and many skills, and you want to move within your business with true, authentic power, and be fully who you are in all areas. What you have to know though, is that focusing on one thing does not mean you have to give up anything! You don’t.  You just focus on one thing at a time!  Talk about EMPOWERMENT!

Why Don’t We Focus?

When you have a lot of interests (related or not) it’s easy to want to be involved in all of them at once, so you don’t miss anything, and so others will think of you as a multi-faceted expert.

I think sometimes we are afraid to focus. We fear we will get bored, or we fear someone else will do the thing we set aside for a time, or we fear we will be labeled by what we are focusing on at the time, or we fear focusing will limit us. The alterative though, is to be fragmented and ineffective, with poor results in our marketing, sales, and influence.  Not focusing can leave us confused and frustrated, and often, broke!

Again, having a focus for a time does not mean you drop forever the rest of the things you love. NO. Instead, you do one thing at a time with clarity, simplicity, and power.

Think About an Actor Who Plays Many Roles

Consider an actor who plays an enormous variety of roles over his or her career (or even in a 2-5 year period). What a mess it would be if in just one single year, that actor tried to master all of the skills and take on all of the personas needed for every part he would normally play in his lifetime!  Or what if in a single movie that actor played out all of the roles? There would be no character development at all. It would be a hodgepodge of messages and personalities, none of which would make any sense.  It would be utter confusion for both the actor and the audience.

However, if that same actor took 6 months or one year to develop and refine the skills and the personality of each character, and then played each role one movie at a time, both the audience and the actor would be much more likely to benefit. The audience would attend one movie, and excitedly anticipate the next movie and the next role, knowing they come one at a time!

It’s the same in business. We can have a lot of interests, products, and ideas, but we can only focus on one at a time if we want the quality and the audience connection to be there. We must give each thing enough time to develop. Then we must play it out, and allow our audience time to understand and enjoy it and to look forward to what’s comfortably coming next!

What to Focus on

It’s really not rocket science to know what you should be focusing on RIGHT NOW. Listen to your gut or to that “still, small voice” within you! What’s the one predominant event, product, or idea that keeps coming to your mind over and over and over again, or that comes to your mind and then eventually comes back to your mind in a way that makes you take notice? Or, if you don’t have one of those, what one event, product, or idea has brought you your greatest success (or a good amount of success) in the recent past? Pick one, and focus there (and once you pick, don’t second guess yourself)!

A Challenge for YOU!

Once you discover that one thing that is burning in your heart (or just tapping at your heart’s door), focus on it for 4 weeks, 8 weeks, or 12 weeks, or however long it will take to be productive, effective, or successful with that product, goal or endeavor (and make the decision about “how long” in advance, and then stick to it). You may also want to give yourself a few more weeks (or months) than you think you will need so you can fully capitalize on the project, event, or marketing (or all three if they relate to one thing).

So for example you can promote your newest product or package over the next 2 months. Or take the next 4 months to plan, create, and market your next live event (with related “sneak preview” tele-seminars or online events in the interim).

You create the plan and then take action on it for a predetermined, designated amount of time, with your main focus on that one thing! Once you are successful in that, you can then move on to the next product, promotion, project, program, event, niche, or activity (phew, you see why we have to focus)!

Take it from someone whose brain jumps around like fireworks on the fourth of July, FOCUS is necessary, FOCUS brings clarity, FOCUS empowers, and FOCUS WORKS!

Have a Wild Week of Focus!

Margo