Today, I want to talk about one thing to win. It’s something that I really didn’t understand. For so many years in my business, I worked way too hard and had small results. Now, as I’ve focused my energy on one thing at a time, it’s made everything so much easier and so much more abundant.

Let’s break this down…

As a young entrepreneur (19 years of age), I wanted to have freedom. I saw how my family members worked hard for many years and didn’t have the life they wanted. That freaked me out. So, I worked hard to have that not happen. I decided that “I’ll put in the time then I’m going to be rewarded!”

Now, that was useful. To a limit. Because as I look back today, I probably worked an equivalent of 30 years in a 10-year period, which is three times the average worker.

This gave me the gift of being willing to put in the work. But I was inefficient about it. Had I channeled my energy in a more focused way, I could have achieved 30 years of success with just a few years of effort!

That’s what I want to talk about today: focus.

When I started, I heard from people that you need multiple sources of income. Which is true. But no one told me to build them one at a time.

I always had multiple things going on at once. I was building my production company that turned into an advertising and marketing agency. And I added more streams of income to my firm including creating PR campaigns, commercials, and branding etc.

Meantime, I was also attended film school. I completed three different film festivals, the Chicago International Film Festivals first, the New York International Film Festival, and the Serve City International Film Festival. When I was starting my second film, we even started a publication because we couldn’t afford to market it. I made a magazine and got other people to pay for ads so that I could promote it.

Okay, you would think building a business with multiple streams of income, and producing movies was enough to fill my plate.

But I didn’t stop there. I also ventured into other businesses. I created other partnerships to make more money such as real estate.

Eventually, I crashed and burned because I was splitting my time so much, increasing my output, and not receiving much input. There were moments when I was losing everything, and I’ve slept on an air mattress in someone else’s house to be able to recover from all those things.

In those moments, I finally learned from having the right mentors, “Focus on one thing.” One thing.

Build one revenue stream first.

When you think about a gap between banks on a river you might want to build a bridge. If you’re trying to build multiple bridges, and you’re working on all of them, and you have a small crew, they get built much slower, and your crew gets burnt out.

I went into a restaurant once when there’s a bed in the back. I’m like, “Why is there a bed right here?” The owner responded, “Because I don’t go home.” The owner said, “I don’t go home.”

I’ve worked with restaurant businesses. When they are going well with their current food menu, the first thing they think is, “I got to open another restaurant.” But they didn’t have this first one systematized and sufficiently staffed. Eventually, they ended up working 18 to 20-hour days.

You don’t try building multiple bridges at once until you build a team and delegate. Once that one bridge gets across, yay, it’s paying you, so you can build a bigger team. Then, you’re ready to go invest your time in another bridge.

This dramatically changed my life. When I started having that focus, it started exploding my business because I was taking all that energy and focusing it on one thing. Now, I’m able to build more things and have more teams. It started to duplicate my efforts. Now, it’s even magnifying the success that I have.

In your business:

• Do you have four or five target audiences?
• Who are the right people to talk to?
• What product or service do you put the maximum amount of effort?

You might have many services. You don’t have to eliminate those in your business, but put all your business development, all your sales force on one thing. When that can be delegated and automated, then you can start increasing with another service item and another product.

Let’s break this down into an action.

• What’s the one business or career point you should be focusing on?
• What’s the one area in your business, service, or product that you should be focusing on?
• What is the one thing you can do to increase that product, or service, or opportunity to make it better for your customers or clients?
• Where is the one place you should be looking for to WOW clients?
• What’s the one thing you should focus on this month coming up or in this month?
• What’s the one thing you focus on this week?
• What’s the one thing you should focus on today?

If you pick that thing and get it done, you start every day to make a difference in your life.

I hope this post has been useful. And if you have any questions, comments, or requests, please do so below.

As always, until next time…

Choose Gratitude Create Freedom

Steve Napolitan