Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

The Extraordinary Power of Focus

Mike Michalowicz

When you were a child growing up did you ever take a magnifying glass and concentrate a sun beam on an insect? If not, you lived quite the unprivileged childhood. But if you were like me, I’m sure a few ants and other bugs suffered a terrible fate. It’s amazing that with all the force and power of the sun it alone does not scorch the earth. Yet, when a magnifying glass no bigger than a fist concentrates a beam of light it has the ability to spark a fire in seconds. That is the power of focus.

When my eyes drifted away from the smoldering ant to the next victim, a dried up Oak leaf, I had the propensity to drift the magnifying glass in the direction of my foot. As I pondered the new object to ignite, often my flip flop exposed toes began to burn from the magnified beam. When the burning pain registered, I would leap into a cartoon like jig on one foot as I tried to blow out the fire on the other. That is the power of improper focus.

If there is a single factor that most determines someone’s success it is focus. The subject of focus comes in many flavors such as goal setting, The Law of Attraction, psychokinesis (this is a new big word I learned recently), visualization, meditation, incantation, affirmation, the list goes on and on. Information and education on the subject abounds. And as I become an astute student of focus the sources on the subject seem to become ever more abundant; but of course that is the inherent result of focus, greater abundance.

In the entrepreneurial landscape I don’t believe there is a single company that launched to success without focus. Look at Microsoft; they skyrocketed to success on DOS, a simple program that made a computer more functional. Today they are a different animal, making software, making video game systems, making computer hardware. But when they took off it was due to their focus on DOS.

Google launched on a search engine, now look at all the stuff they do. Intel did it on processors. Cirque du Soleil did it on circus acrobats. Ford did it on the Model T. Procter & Gamble struggled with candles and then launched when they focused on soap. I challenge you to find any company that grew exponentially by offering a large varying mix of products and/or services. Maybe once they plateaued they introduced a mix, but I can’t think of one company that launched on it.

It seems that common sense would dictate that the more products and services a business can offer the more revenue it can dictate; the proverbial “one stop shop”. If you can lock a customer into one service or product, they will likely buy more things from you because they trust you. The only problem is that the more you do, the worse you will be at what you do. The old saying goes, “Jack of all trades or Master of one”. My version goes “Jackass of all trades or Master of one”. “Jackass” is most appropriate because that is what your customer will be calling you as the quality of you products and services suffer.

To be a market leader your company must excel in one laser beam focused area. You must be better than anyone else and must continue to focus on improvement in that area or you will be left behind. As you examine your business, can you imagine how less variety in what you do will result in a greater ability to do what you do? If so, it is time to start doing less. If you can’t see your business improving with greater focus; Congratulations… you are obviously the world leader at what you do.

A word of caution: focus, like many things in life, is a double-edged sword. If you’re not careful you could end up burning your foot with a magnifying glass. When applied appropriately focus will result in rewards beyond your imagination, but conversely, focusing on the wrong thing can result in a dangerous downward spiral. Unfortunately, many people elect to focus on the reasons for their problems as opposed to focusing on a resolution. Others elect to focus on fixing weaknesses as opposed to focusing on exploiting strengths. Focus on the wrong thing and you get burned.

This danger may be best explained by example. I recently had the good fortune of being trained by a race car professional on how to navigate a hairpin-turn race track with a 500+ horsepower sports car. He trained me to focus on the next turn as the best way to navigate the exit from the current turn. When focusing on where I was going, I was able to navigate the car most accurately and fastest to that location even while navigating the current turn through my periphery vision. The driver also taught me that should a car going to spin (believe it or not, I was able to spin out the car a record number of times) to focus on where I want to go and not focus on the wall I was trying to avoid. Sure enough during my first few spins I panicked, looked straight at the wall I was heading into, and steered right toward it. But after a few spins, and a few nearly very expensive crashes, I learned to focus on where I wanted to go. And when times were worst, read: about to crash, the intensity of my focus on where I wanted to go was the most important.

The same is true for your business. Narrow your focus on the best products and services you have to offer. Focus on and exploit your strengths. Focus on where your business is headed. Business in a spin? Focus on where you want to go, not on what you are trying to avoid. Do this and you’ve all but guaranteed your success.

About the Author
Mike Michalowicz is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of Obsidian Launch, a company that provides business coaching to entrepreneurs. Michalowicz has been highlighted on entrepreneurial topics in Inc. magazine, the New York Times and the Daily Record. He can be reached at mikem@obsidianlaunch.com.

Posted on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Marketing, Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.