Why always focusing on success can make you unsuccessful?

unsuccessful

Why always focusing on success can make you unsuccessful?

Author: Mayur Bardolia


 

What if someone tells you that you should not to pay complete attention to your business for success?
Well, it’s true because it keeps you away from success even if you think you are successful.

In fact, you need to pay equal attention inside as well as outside of your business. You need to have the complete and even no focus to your business simultaneously. Find out how.

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Nokia emerged as one of the most successful manufacturers of mobile phone in the early days of its success.
In October 1998, Nokia was the best-selling mobile phone brand in the world. By 2007, it had 50% of the share from the mobile phone market. In the year 2013, the same Nokia Company that was enjoying a 50% share in the market dropped to less than 5% share of the total market.

This was the time when the management, shareholders, and the customers of the company expected Nokia’s bankruptcy.
The bankruptcy was nearly certain, but the intervention of Microsoft in the market helped the company in getting back to a better position. But it never reached the position where it was before.

Nokia was too busy living in its own world ignoring what’s happening around.
In October 1998, Nokia became the best-selling mobile phone brand in the world. Nokia’s operating profit went from $1 billion in 1995 to almost $4 billion by 1999.
The best-selling mobile phone of all time, the Nokia 1100, was created in 2003. In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone. By the end of 2007, half of all smartphones sold in the world were Nokias, while Apple’s iPhone had a mere 5 per cent share of the global market. In 2010 Nokia launched the “iPhone killer” but failed to match the competition. The quality of Nokia’s high-end phones continues to decline. In just six years, the market value of Nokia declined by about 90%.

How did it happen?
Well, it’s because Nokia’s technology was inferior to Apple’s. But the biggest reason was the ignorance among top-level managers. They were far too focused on what they were doing and they completely ignored the storm of Apple iPhone covering the entire mobile phone industry. They were working hard but they were not doing something innovative.

We do a similar mistake in our business too.
You work with focus and you get success. You get success and you get motivated to focus more on getting more success. But along the way, you can’t see things happening around you. You get lost into our business and don’t bother to look around more and better opportunities.

You are probably thinking, “Hey, we need to get committed and pay attention to our business, right?”
But there is something really interesting thing we are going to talk about some weak areas. These weak areas are keeping you away from success even if you think you are successful in your business.  We will be talking about how two opposite beliefs you need to have and how can you have two opposite beliefs to run your business.

In this podcast, we will talk about 3 things.
Part 1: Why you should not be completely focused on your business?
Part 2: It’s almost contradictory, Why should you not focus on everything around you?
Part 3: How to have the complete and even no focus to your business simultaneously?

Let’s start with the first one.

Can you believe that a little more than two decades ago, Amazon was still one man, a light bulb idea and a home garage?
In 1994, Jeff Bezos began working on a business plan (yes, in his garage) for what would eventually become the largest internet retailer in the US. In 1995, the company made its official debut. Since then, a lot has changed. The marketplace that originally started as an online bookstore now produces consumer electronics, cloud computing services and the world’s most competitive delivery services.

Now, past its 20th birthday, Amazon is going stronger than ever.
They initially started with selling only books online. He started delivering books at a much cheaper rate. They started with books but they didn’t stop there. Now, Amazon is the giant online store where you can buy thousands of goods. Many companies tried to beat Amazon but most could not stand against it. Amazon even went so many steps ahead and invented an ebook reader called ‘kindle’. They invested millions of dollars to create a device where you can read the book the few seconds after you order.

They also made some of the products that were complete failure such as a mobile phone called ‘Amazon Fire’.
Their services such as amazon destination, wallet, local, music importer etc.They started many things and they stopped doing something that didn’t work.  Amazon wanted to dominate the internet market and they are still doing it even though some of their products miserably failed. They were quite focused on delivering something that makes people’s life easier.

They focused on taking all the complexity of their customers.
We will discuss this in some other podcast. Importantly, They also focused on what other things Amazon can do. You can’t stick to the same strategies. Things which are working right now, they will most probably not work for a longer time. If Amazon would’ve just focused on selling physical books only, things would’ve been different. I know people who exclusively focused on only one or very few ways of marketing and sales, they are out of business because they didn’t create the alternative methods and sources of marketing and sales.

Things that are looking cool nowadays will not be cool later on.
You need to keep looking around and find out what are the other things you can do.  We need to relook our strategy.
Focus is a great thing, but things can change around you and you’ve got to be watching for what’s happening around you. So, keep looking around and keep moving on. But what if get too preoccupied with a lot of choices and options to do? What if we have to focus on many things around us? That takes us to the second and exactly opposite to what I just said in the first part. Let’s find out. 

In the early stage of my business, I was delivering training programs.
Then I also started focusing more on creating online courses and doing consultation online. Simultaneously, I was producing more videos. So, I have been pretty much into training and education for the last 10 years consistently. I have been given the choice to do many things and I did choose those things. Many things were successful where some things were just miserable failure.

So, it feels like maybe I shouldn’t have wasted my time doing those things.
But on the other hand, there were many things that I feel thankful to myself and thank others who recommended me doing those things. For example, doing online coaching and consultation to serve people from all over the world.

So, the question is, “How to know whether we should focus on the work or new things or not.”
Every day, you look at the internet, everyone is giving you ideas to do new things. When you start promoting your business, people start telling you that you need to SEO, Logo design, Facebook ads, google ads, funnels and Snapchat. All those fancy things. But they don’t work. They work for few but they don’t work for all of us.

Still, You stop doing what you are already doing and shift your attention to try new things.
When you want to do new things, you have to figure out the problems and challenges in the execution of the new strategies. Before you decide to do something new, you have to be prepared to enjoy doing it. Because every new thing you do, it takes painstaking efforts to learn and apply initially.

If you do something wholeheartedly with love, you will never feel bored and tired.
I didn’t write my first article 10 years ago because someone asked me to do it. I started writing because I wanted to understand deeper what I already knew. When I write an article or make this podcast, I actually learn more about the topic than before. That’s why I have been writing articles almost every week for the 10 years.

I have been thinking to create the podcast like this for the last 5 years but I was focusing on creating text-based articles and videos.
I actually created a podcast 4 years ago and it was horrible. I didn’t do well. I created a few episodes and then I gave up. But now, I love doing it. I love writing, recording, editing and publishing my education to people. It’s painful and it takes 6-7 hours to publish this podcast 20-30 minutes long podcast but I still love it. It’s getting better and appreciated. People love to share because I love to share what I create with care and focus.

When you do something new you need to be prepared to do something for the next few years at least.
Then you must be willing to run for a long time. You can modify things as you go along but as you move on, you need to be able to enjoy what you do. And for that, you need to know whether you will enjoy doing it or not.

Things will be irrelevant after some years but you are going to learn a lot of lessons along the way and you will build assets.
Commit to focusing for the long run. It will help you to master the work that you do. This mastery level is achieved when you do things consistently. Things will be effective or not effective in the long run but it’s not possible to be successful when you do random things every now and then.  Now, what to do? Should we focus completely on our business or should we focus on other things outside too? Let’s find out the answer, How can we get focused and not focused together, shall we?

If you visit a fine dining restaurant, you are sitting and enjoying your meal.
It’s all nice and comfortable environment. But leave your dining area, and go into the kitchen, you will see the chefs and their team running around and doing so many things at one time. If you focus on one chef, he checks so many things and cooking a few things at the same time. They start doing one thing, then jump on second, then the third thing and they go back check the first thing. And they focus on the third thing. Yet, they don’t compromise on the quality and taste. They focus on one activity and shift their focus on different activity quickly. They do a lot of things with focus and still deliver the best.

That’s exactly how we should run the business.
Focus on one thing and make it perfect and keep it running. Then move to another, make it perfect and keep it running. You can move to another and keep checking the first thing.

When I first started, I was writing articles and started sending articles to very few subscribers. I was also delivering training programs on various skills, NLP, hypnosis, productivity and leadership. Then I started writing books and created online courses. The online courses did very well for me. I started consulting people online from all over the world since the 2014-15. And, It’s a good thing. 

I did so many things but I was focused on connecting all of my other services together.
Rather than doing only just delivering training programs, I started doing more things. I also shifted my focus on different things. I created my youtube channel and created around 90-100 videos. And then I started doing a podcast like this and it’s called ‘Love Your Business’ podcast. And I am loving it.

Is it tiring? Is it boring? No.
If you look around, most people do the same thing. Start one thing, do it until you get your hands on it and do another thing. Add more things without affecting other existing activities. You can stop doing what doesn’t work. 

If you look at Bruce Crevier and his sister Tanya Crevier who can spin multiple basketballs.
They start spinning one ball at a time and gradually add more balls. They can spin 10-12 basketballs at the same time. If you wonder how Bruce Crevier and Tanya Crevier do, watch their videos on youtube and you will know how to start focusing on one thing and add more things. Watch the videos of Bruce Crevier and Tanya Crevier. They can answer our question of how we should focus on our business as well as out of our business. That takes us to the end of the podcast.

Let’s summarise what we have covered so far.
You work with focus and you get success. You get success and you get motivated to focus more on getting more success. But along the way, you can’t see things happening around you.

You get lost into Your business and don’t bother to look around more and better opportunities.
You are probably thinking, “Hey, we need to get committed and pay attention to our business, right?” But there is something really interesting thing we are going to talk about some weak areas. These weak areas are keeping you away from success even if you think you are successful in your business. We talked about how two opposite beliefs you need to have and how can you have two opposite beliefs to run your business.

 We started with Why you should not be completely focused on your business?
You can’t stick to the same strategies. Things which are working right now, they will most probably not work for a longer time. If Amazon would’ve just focused on selling physical books only, things would’ve been different.  Things that are looking cool nowadays will not be cool later on.

You need to keep looking around and find out what are the other things you can do.
We need to relook our strategy. Focus is a great thing, but things can change around you and you’ve got to be watching for what’s happening around you.  

But what if get too preoccupied with a lot of choices and options to do?
What if we have to focus on many things around us? That took us to the second and exactly opposite to what I just said in the first part. Whatever you choose to do , You need to do something for the next few years at least. You must be willing to run for a long time. You can modify things as you go along but as you move on but you need to be able to enjoy what you do. But for that, you need to know whether you will enjoy doing it or not.
 

Things will be irrelevant after some years but you are going to learn a lot of lessons along the way and you will build assets.
Commit to focusing for the long run. It will help you to master the work that you do. This mastery level is achieved when you do things consistently. Things will be effective or not effective in the long run but it’s not possible to succeed to do random things every now and then.  Now, what to do? Should we focus completely on our business or should we focus on other things outside too??

As we talked about the example of a chef and his team at a restaurant.
You need to start one thing, do it until you get your hands on it and do another thing. Add more things without affecting other existing activities. You can stop doing what doesn’t work.  If you look at Bruce Crevier and his sister Tanya Crevier who can spin multiple basketballs, they start spinning one ball at a time and gradually add more balls. They can spin 10-12 basketballs at the same time.  They can answer our question of how we should focus on our business as well as out of our business.

 

Next: How do you feel when the customer doesn’t understand what you mean no matter how precisely you say? This is exactly what happens with miscommunications.

Find out, Why people don’t understand you and what can you do about it?

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