Once you have an established plan of action, the next step is focus, and this is often missing in organizations these days. You have to develop intense, unapologetic focus on your plan of action in order to achieve the business growth you are looking for.
Distractions are everywhere these days, and they will prevent you from sticking to the path to your desired future. Most people I meet underestimate the power of focus. You can have a great vision, strategy, and plan, but if you don’t bring focus to it, then you’re not going to get where you want to go.
It’s important to evaluate the highest and best use of your time and talent. It goes back to that old 80/20 rule: 20 percent of our activities generate 80 percent of the results. Time, energy, and money are limited resources. Nobody can make another minute of time; that’s why evaluating your use of time is so valuable.
I’m finding that many business owners are distracted by their cell phone and social media in particular. We’re reading text messages and checking in with Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. All that takes us away from being intensely focused on the plan of action that we want to achieve our vision of the future. Every time we get distracted, it takes ten to twenty minutes for us to get refocused. We’re allowing ourselves to be robbed of time!
EXPERT TIP | Gary Furr, Organizational Development Consultant:
Intense focus looks like a story I read about Richard Branson. An organization offered him $100,000 to come and speak at their event. He declined. Then they offered $250,000, yet he declined again. They offered half a million dollars, but he turned that down as well. Finally they approached him and asked what it would take, and he said that no amount of money would take him away from what he was currently focused on. This is the kind of focus we all need.
It’s valuable to learn to block off periods of time to be productive, and to eliminate distractions during those blocks of time. Turn off your phone and all of its notifications. You’ll be surprised at how much can be accomplished in two hours with no distractions. I recommend to my clients that they don’t check their email first thing in the morning because email is somebody else’s agenda for you. Block off time later in the day to answer phone calls or emails or text messages. Take the first few hours of the day to be intensely focused on your priorities.
It helps to consider what an hour of your time is actually worth. In other words. If you want to make $75,000 a year, you have to generate $36 an hour worth of value for your clients. That’s $3 every five minutes, or $9 every 15 minutes. If you want to make $125,000 a year, you have to produce the value worth $60 an hour. That’s $5 every five minutes. Oftentimes I’ll ask clients, “What’s an hour of your time worth?” They’ll tell me, “Oh, $150,” or, “$200 an hour.” Then I ask them, “Then why are you doing $15 an hour work?” Why are you doing the bookkeeping that’s worth maybe $40 an hour when you could pay someone else to do that?
You can create the business and the life of your choosing, but you have to have the courage to step up to the plate and say, “This is what I want.” To download your own reference copy, fill out the form below. You’ll receive a PDF of this episode of Seven Steps to Accelerated Business Growth and continued access to information that will help you grow and prosper.
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