Hi 👋 - Bruce here.

Happy Friday!

This week’s article is a little different - I didn’t write the main subject of this one. It comes from another weekly newsletter from Farnam Street. With that said, I’m really excited for you to read it along with my notes below and I hope you share it with someone who might also benefit from this.

Back to the article, it’s about something so many business owners (and frankly all of us) struggle with - focus.

When it comes to a business, focus can be the difference between success and stagnation or worse, failure. Actually, let me rephrase that.

Focusing on the right things can be the difference between success and stagnation or failure.

First, read the short article here (look for the highlighted title called 'Tiny Thought'), and then come back. I’ll bring this back to how it relates to being a business owner.

...........

Welcome back. Good read, right!?!

Now let’s talk about some of the statements made in the article and how it relates to business owners. I'll paste some key quotes below and respond to them with my observations and how it applies to business owners.

Everyone knows that focus matters. Most people don’t know where to focus.

Most business owners don’t where to focus, because they

don’t know where they want to go
don’t know how to get there and
don’t know what to work on that makes a difference in their business.

Not all focus is equal. Some focus is asymmetric. Knowing where to focus makes a difference.

I just touched on this above, but this is important. Focusing on the wrong thing is busy work. Focusing on the right thing is where progress is made.

How do you know where to focus? The answer is a deep fluency in the problem. You need to embed yourself in the problem and the details.

As a business owner, you need to understand your numbers and what drives your business.

If you’ve been here a while, forgive me for sounding like a broken record, but we use revenue, profit and cash flow drivers. These are what business owners should embed themselves in to understand the problems in their business which will create the right focus.

A lot of business people treat all decisions the same, no matter the implications. They’ll spend as much time trying to decide a trivial decision as a major one.

An example of this might be a business owner focusing on investing time and money into SEO or paid advertising when their primary source of high-quality leads comes from referrals, partnerships or content generation. We often see business owners dedicate the same, if not more, time in small issues when there's big, needle-moving issues just begging for attention. It's stepping over dollars to pick up dimes and it happens all the time.

Backing up to the last point, understanding what is really driving your business is how you understand what deserves your true focus.

The visible problem might appear to be a lack of focus, but the invisible problem is often not knowing where to focus to get the best results.

I’ll take this a step further. Another visible problem might be “I’m too busy” or “I have too much going on to work on the business”, yet the business is struggling to make progress or survive. The invisible problem is often, as said above, not knowing where to focus to get the best results.

In any field, a few areas of focus make an asymmetric difference. Often they’re hiding in plain sight and ignored by most.

This one made me chuckle because of how true it is. I mentioned the revenue, profit and cash flow numbers above. This isn’t a secret of our or any rocket science we’ve invented. When we show business owners these numbers, they’re often floored how this basic data can give them so much insight into what is working and not working in their business whether it be marketing, sales, operations, financial strategies such as pricing, efficiency of their team, etc.

Armed with this new information, we’re able to help them focus on the RIGHT things in their business to improve.

What looks like a lack of focus is often a lack of understanding.

I’ve lived it being part of executive teams - it couldn’t be more true. It could be:

a lack of understanding where you’re trying to go...
…how to achieve it
…where you stand in the journey (your financial and key business numbers)
…or what’s working and not working…and why.

So there it is. We’ve written a past article about how to use the revenue, profit and cash flow drivers to better focus yourself as a business owner, but I had to share this article, along with my comments to add context for business owners.

If you feel like you struggle with focus, you’re always busy barely treading water, or just feel like you constantly guess at what to work on yet never seem to ‘get ahead’, reach out to us. This is ultimately what we help our customers do.

Too Long; Didn’t Read

There's a difference between 'focus' and 'focusing on the right things'.
You cannot improve your focus, therefore improving business results, without embedding yourself in what creates those desired business results.
Revenue, profit and cash flow drivers are what creates business results. They're your 'levers' to pull to improve.
Most of these drivers are in plain sight on financial statements, but not all. With that said, they're not difficult to track down. You're likely already tracking some of them today, you're just not sure what to do with the data.
The less you and your team understand, the higher chance you're not focused on the right things.

That's today's message.

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See you again next week.

-Bruce

Ascendwise

The difference between focus and focusing on the right thing

Too Long; Didn’t Read

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