Don’t Focus On Others…Focus On Your Goals
With the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio winding down, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss what I call The Success Triangle. Every athlete who has won a gold medal, has become a student of The Success Triangle whether they realize it or not. In the specific example in the photo above, you have two athletes competing for the gold. One athlete is focused on what the competition is doing, while the other is focused on his goal…winning the gold. Who do you think came out ahead? We will get to the exact finishes at the end of this post, and the differences between the two may stun you.
Now, you may not be a world-class athlete, and neither am I. However The Success Triangle is not just for athletes. In fact, it specifically speaks to entrepreneurs and business owners, just like you and I. The Success Triangle has, you guessed it, three main pillars: Focus, Tenacity, and Flexibility. Today we are going to begin with Focus, as this is the base of the triangle, and without it, the other two pillars don’t matter.
FOCUS
Focus is the base of The Success Triangle, because without focus, you can still have wins, but you won’t truly find success. So first, we must identify what focus means to us as individuals. Once we can define focus, then we can narrow down what it is we want to focus on, our “One Thing,” as Gary Keller puts it. I wrote a post on The One Thing, and in case you missed it, you can check it out HERE.
Focus is defined by the dictionary as a central point, as of attraction, attention, or activity. As individuals, we need to define focus as it relates to our particular mission. Your focus is defined by your big why. For example, if my big why is to become the top real estate agent in my company based on units sold, then my focus would be on dominating my market, and if that wasn’t a large enough area to cover, I would expand strategically until I took the number one spot. Sure, I would need to address more than just units sold, however that would become my ultimate focus. Everything I would do, every decision I would make, every hire, every fire, would revolve around one question: Will this get me closer to my goal of being #1?
Let’s now look at a very specific example…me. Yes, I am a real estate agent. Yes, I am also a real estate investor, focusing on creative solutions for home owners. Yes, I am always on the look out to provide a situation where I can either raise capital, or place capital, while receiving a good return on my money. Yes, I am a small business consultant, with a focus on maximizing profitability in order to create an exit strategy for the owner(s). Yes, I have joint venture partnerships in various projects including affiliate marketing, and other business related promotions. Sure, I have minority ownership interests in various other businesses as well. When you look at all of this from the outside, it looks like someone who has no direction, and is a jack of all trades, master of none. But here is the secret sauce: Only those close to me know of my involvement in all of these various businesses, projects, and partnerships. You see, when you peel back the layers, you can see how all of these actually align with what is my true focus…creating multiple streams of income, both active and passive, to create a lifestyle that consists of financial freedom and location independence. Every decision I make, every project I invest my time and/or money in, brings me back to this one focus: will it add to my net worth, and do I have to STAY local for the long-term in order for it to be successful? If the outcome to those 2 questions are in my favor, I proceed. If either one of those questions goes against me, I pass. That is my focus.
You see, Michael Phelps never lost his focus in the 200M Butterfly finals. The entire time he was determined to achieve his goal, which of course was to win yet another gold medal. For a brief moment, Chad Le Clos took his focus off of winning the gold, and focused on Phelps. The difference between the two swimmers final times was barely noticeable. Phelps finished in 1 minute, 53.36 seconds. Chad Le Clos came in at 1 minute, 54.06 seconds. For those who struggle with math, that is less than a second difference between the two athletes! Phelps took gold. As for Le Clos, he didn’t come in 2nd, or even 3rd. His reward for taking his focus off of the win, was coming in 4th place.
So before we move on to the remaining 2 pillars of The Success Triangle, what is your focus?