How To Focus Your Life
Secret from one of the richest man on earth…
Paying the bills is a constant struggle. You know that feeling when you open your bank account and it’s almost nothing there? That’s my feeling every time I logged on-line to check my bank account.
Where can I get this to pay this? The garage door is not working, another bill to pay? The exhaust fan in the guest bathroom stopped working, I need to factor in this payment in my budget.
I got tired of it, so I decided to do a side hustle.
Long time ago, maybe 20 years, I been reading the book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.” I know you are familiar with the quadrants in his book, the cash flow quadrants.
His advised was to move from employee to be a business owner.
Unconsciously, I believe, I followed his advise. I started with paper assets. Stocks, then options. Although I was learning and making some money, in the end, I lost some. It was frustrating. To be honest, I still have stocks (Intel and CVS), but not that much.
I lost money in eBay selling too, or probably I did beak-even. But the worst thing was my investment in Amazon Private Label business.
In Amazon PL, I would source products from China and then sell it on Amazon. I lost money. Plain and simple.
Losing money stings. A failure, But in hindsight, although I lost money or failed, I gained an experience and an essential business skills in my next journey. This is not sugarcoating. I really learned from the failures I made.
From my failure in Amazon PL, stocks and options, I gained other skills such as business skills in general. I learned copywriting skills and outsourcing some of my work to Serbia and India through Fiverr.com or Freelancer.com.
Today, I’m focus on selling digital products on-line using sales funnels (specifically, ClickFunnels).
This week, I’m selling all the products I bought from China that wasn’t sold on Amazon. These products are sitting in my garage for a year now and my wife is always asking me what to do with it.
So here I am focusing on selling, writing my ad copy, messaging people from Fiverr if the book cover for my squeeze page is already made, and then emailing an Indian guy (also from Fiverr) to set up my Facebook ad.
I’m ready.
But here’s the thing — I have a hard time focusing on my task.
My mind would wander, the old “Shiny-Object Syndrome” struck me. You know that feeling when you want to learn Photoshop to make your business logo or study Facebook advertising on YouTube, and two months later, you’re still learning and haven’t sold anything?
This happened to me before. I will be stuck in a learning cycle, learning how to set-up a Facebook ad or write the free guidebook in my squeeze page, and nothing is sold.
Every business is about selling. That should be my focus.
It was a struggle.
As I was concentrating on what to do next, my co-worker was telling me, he was learning how to speak Mandarin,
I asked, “What for?”.
His reply was, “I just want to learn it.” He added he own a Rosetta software that he follows to learn Mandarin. He also added that he is learning Cybersecurity. I didn’t even bother to ask why.
However, that conversation shook me.
I was like him in terms of my business. I love to learn and consume stuffs from the internet and YouTube. But it has to stop if I want my business to move forward. Focus on the most important thing — selling.
I will end this article with a conversation of Warren Buffet and his helicopter pilot. The story goes that Warren Buffet asked his chauffeur what his ambitions were.
“I know you don’t want to drive me around for the rest of your life.” Buffet said.
Nobody knows how the conversation transcribed but here’s Warren Buffet’s advice to his pilot.
List 35 things you want to do in your life, and choose the 5 most important. The five things should be related.
Here’s the kicker, Warren Buffet advised his pilot to “Avoid the remaining 30 with all your energy.”
When I tried the exercise, at first, I question myself
“Who has 35 things to do in their life?”
But when I started writing the things I wanted to to, it was more than 35. I have to trim it down 35,
Then, I circled the 5 most important thing that I wanted to do. Believe me it was a struggle to cut it to five.
But here’s the most important thing — I constantly fight not to do the other 30 in my list. I mean I need all my energy to avoid the other 35. I summon all my energy to avoid things such as “learning how to speak Mandarin”.
Try it, you’ll be surprise how this exercise unfold.
