This is an exciting time of year. We transition from the holiday whirlwind into the clean slate of January, and it feels like the world is at our fingertips; the opportunities are endless. We’re finally going to go to the gym, write that novel, lay off the sweets, spend more time with our families and less money, limit the number of television shows we watch each week, market every day like Jackie says, start meditating, wake up earlier…
Right?
The truth is, when you make 20 New Year’s resolutions, you’re probably not going to keep any of them—or at least, you won’t keep any of them very well. And you know what? The same thing goes for your business.
You see, I have not seen people do very well when pulled in two (or more) different directions. After 30 years of working with small businesses and solos, my experience is that most people are easily distracted and have a hard time settling in to focus on one thing. But let me clarify: focusing on one thing doesn’t mean you don’t do anything else. Rather, it means you lead with one focus that clients can easily understand in the 4.2 brief seconds of attention that strangers grant us
In addition, I find that focus leads to the development of profound knowledge and expertise, which in turn leads to higher pay, which means you’ll be able to stay a solo and also afford to pay for the help you need to make your enterprise successful. If you aren’t charging enough money, you can’t afford the support you need to do a really good job–so you try to do it yourself and do a not-so-professional job, OR you get too overworked to provide quality. To me, focus, niche, expertise, and higher pay all are different facets of the same diamond and all those elements work together to help the solo find financial success.
So how about this: as we get ready to move into 2014, let’s all resolve to make only one resolution. Let’s all resolve to FOCUS. When you dive down into your deep and narrow niche—and forgo the distractions—you’ll come back with the profound knowledge that people pay for.
