519: The Power of Focus: Creating Momentum in Your Business

It’s easy to get distracted in a world screaming about the next new tactic or shiny object. However, real progress in business comes from consistent, focused execution of the fundamentals. Thus, the power of a concentrated approach is unrivalled.

In this episode of Influence by Design, Samantha and Tim unravel the power of focus: creating momentum in your business. Focus in the business context translates to setting clear plans and aligning actions toward their achievement.

Lack of focus trips many business owners. Without a clear, strategic plan in place,  it’s simple to lose focus and jump between different ideas without making progress and wasting time.

Don’t miss this episode as Samantha and Tim share their tried and tested strategies that will help you stay focused on your destination amidst the many distractions.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:

• How lack of focus manifests on a daily basis (02:20)
• Why sticking with the boring things is actually beneficial in business (03:33)
• How to balance seasonal variables and sticking to a plan (05:38)
• The impact of daily habits on business success (11:08)
• The importance of holding people accountable to execute plans (16:38)
• The significance of frequent reviews (20:57)

QUOTES

• “It is the boring things strategically and consistently being done well that are going to move the needle in your business, rather than a new tactic.” -Samantha Riley  
• “There are things that we don’t like doing in a business. There are also things that we shouldn’t be doing in business, and we need to be held accountable for these as well.” -Samantha Riley 
• “If we’re not looking at the daily habits, we’re not communicating them with our team, and most importantly not holding them accountable for it, we don’t get to where we want to go.” -Tim Hyde
• “If you have your planning process in place, but you don’t hold people accountable for executing that plan, you’re wasting your time.” -Tim Hyde

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Influence by Design episode 503: 11 Mistakes Preventing Business Growth

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TRANSCRIPTION

Samantha Riley Snipet (00:00):

The very first piece of this is you actually need to create a plan before you even start. The plan is like your GPS, it really doesn’t matter what your method is for planning, as long as it works for you, and you stick to it

Tim Hyde Snippet  (00:14):

Constantly coming back and looking at what you’ve been doing, looking at that plan and going well, what worked? What didn’t work on what can I do differently next time. 

And it can be even looking at the structure of the plan itself. Is the plan. still accurate? Are the things I’m using to measure, still the right things to you to measure.

Samantha Riley Intro (00:34):

Welcome to the Influence By Design Podcast. I’m Samantha Riley, authority positioning strategist for coaches and experts. If you’re ready to build a business that gives you more than just a caffeine addiction, and you dream of making more money, having more time, and having the freedom to be living your best life, then you’re in the right place, it’s time to level up. 

Welcome to today’s episode of Influence by Design. I’m your Thursday co host joined as always with the lovely Tim Hyde. We’re gonna do some really awesome conversations today.

Tim Hyde (01:07):

I hope we are Sam  

Samantha Riley (01:09):

Actually just in I listened back to myself, we’re gonna do some awesome conversations,

Tim Hyde (01:13):

We will have an awesome conversation. There we go. And then we’ll have another one a bit later on. And then another one after that.

Samantha Riley (01:20):

Sounds good. But today, we’re continuing on with our theme that we’ve been talking about for the past few weeks. And it’s one of the things that we see or one of the mistakes that we see business owners making. 

Today we’re going to talk about lack of focus, which is funny because that a lack of focus around my words just then. But we’re not talking about like a focus on choice of words, we’re talking about lack of focus in the business. 

And this is something that I am really passionate about, as my clients will tell you, this coffee helps

Tim Hyde (01:55):

you focus.

Samantha Riley (01:56):

So here’s the thing, I drink coffee, but I drink decaf. I actually don’t take caffeine, I turn into a shivering mess otherwise.

Tim Hyde (02:06):

Yeah, like, you’re absolutely right, that lack of focus, I think it manifests in all sorts of way in our business it, it manifests in a way I think, as entrepreneurs, we’re, you know, we’re prone to chasing down shiny baubles, okay. 

And that can be a lack of focus as we go from oscillate from one thing to another thing to a third thing, it can certainly manifest in what you do on a day to day basis. We’ve talked in previous episodes about the idea of having an ideal perfect day. 

And, and what does that look like? Or does you just let things happen to you, things happen to business. And that’s how, you know, we see this lack of focus manifest. But there are what I think are just a couple of really simple strategies that we can put in place to make sure that we retain focus and direction of where we’re going, and actually get somewhere and I think I was just sharing a story with you just before we hit record, Sam, you know, a client of mine who’s been, you know, setting out the sort of high six figure business for the last 10 years. 

And that can be quite reasonable, you know, they earning a pretty reasonable sort of income and take home each, but they’ve never really been able to grow, again, because of lack of focus on what they should be doing to turn that six figure company into a seven, eight, and nine figure business.

Samantha Riley (03:33):

Absolutely. I was having drinks with a good friend of mine a couple of weeks ago, and she’s quite new in her business journey, she had taken a contract. So she’d been out of her business, she’d taken a contract. 

As a consultant, she had just finished up that she was coming back into her business full time. And she’s like, Sam, like, just, you know, what, what is that thing that I need to do? What is it that I need to focus on now? 

And I said, Well, here’s the thing that most people don’t do. And it’s, you know, stick to the boring things. Because it is the the boring things strategically and consistently being done, and done well, that are going to actually get you to move the needle in your business rather than a new tactic. 

And by tactic, I mean, all someone’s talking about the new, you know, Instagram algorithm or YouTube strategy or insert other, you know, seemingly fun looking thing here. 

Really being able to focus on sometimes what are seen as boring things over and over and over is actually what’s going to get you into a place where your business is doing well. And then you’ve got the time and the space and the money to be able to spend on doing some of the other tactics that are a little bit more fun.

Tim Hyde (04:52):

Yeah, look, I think that you’re absolutely right. The latest one we’ve seen in 2023, of course has been AI right, everybody jumped onto the AI bandwagon. And of course, in true social media form, there’s been a lot of if you don’t get on it, you’re gonna be left behind and your business won’t run and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 

It’s all rubbish. Really, you’re right, there are some fundamentals that we build a business in. And doesn’t matter what business you’re in, it doesn’t matter what you coach, what you deliver what your service what your product is, there’s some fundamentals that work repeatedly. 

Regardless of business, regardless of what stage in business you’re at, that if you put in place, you will get to where you want to go.

Samantha Riley (05:36):

Absolutely. So let’s start to really have a look at what this focus looks like. And I think the very first piece of this is you actually need to create a plan before you even start the plan is like your GPS, you can’t get to where you want to go, if you don’t put your GPS on or look, you know, old school look in your MacBook to be able to get there because you you don’t know where you’re going to end up. 

So I know I plan in six weeks sprints, you plan in 90 day cycles, it really doesn’t matter what your method is for planning, as long as it works for you. And you stick to it.

Tim Hyde (06:16):

Yeah, absolutely. Right. I think Sam, you know, it is having that plan. What I see a lot of as well as is that people kind of paint these big picture goals. Right? So, you know, in 10 years, I want to make, you know, 100 million dollars and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, okay, you know, and then we kind of break that plan down into sort of, you know, annual goals and quarterly goals and weekly goals and so on. 

Sometimes, you know, sometimes it’s just the big picture plan and says, I will make $10 million in 10 years. Right, but the five years in and the goal is still I will make 10 years $10 million in, in 10 years, right was that from when? So you know, being more specific about that plan is really important. 

But also recognizing that plans when executed will are exponential? Absolutely, you’re the expectation. And this, I think why a lot of planning fails, if I say 10 million in 10 years ago, 1 million in one year ago, you know, 250,000 in the current quarter $80,000 This month, if I’m starting from scratch, there’s no there’s almost no chance of the making 80,000 in month one, and then you get them up to when they aren’t you I need to make 160 By the end of month two and you even further and further behind. 

Yeah, and then you just give up, you give up the whole plan because it doesn’t recognize that like driving a car, it takes time to accelerate. So most of the gains you’re gonna see are the back end of that execution of that plan. Absolutely. Not at the front. Absolutely. 

So you know, when we set our plan in place, whether it’s again, whatever timeframe that you you know, allow for your, your sprint or your cycle, it is about actually sort of making sure that we’re tracking and adjusting accordingly to seasonal variables. 

know, how far along my journey Am I do I have a million clients already or none. We need to adjust accordingly to what those expectations actually are.

Samantha Riley (08:16):

But definitely need to break it down to some smaller timeframe. i We ran 90 days for years. And what I personally found for me, was I’m a bit of a procrastinator, you know, I’m a human being, as as we all are. 

And I used to find that because 90 days was quite long for me that I used to not take the foot off the pedal a little bit at the start of the 90 days and then really kind of leave everything to that second half of the cycle, where six weeks for us is better because I feel like it’s short enough that I just need to jump straight into it and get it done. 

So yeah, that’s why we moved into a six week sprint, and we tried a 30 day sprint before we settled on six weeks. And that was too short. It felt like we were constantly sprinting every month. And that was exhausting. So yeah, we gave it a little bit of a try.

Tim Hyde (09:13):

Do you in yours? Do you take a sort of a break before you try to replan and do the next one.

Samantha Riley (09:19):

So the eight weeks cycles, we will do a six week sprint and have a two week cooldown. And in that cooldown. That’s when we will book our holidays. That’s when we will take time out that’s where we will, you know, do bougie all day lunches, or we will tidy things up. We will also sometimes plan depending on where we’re at. 

There are some two weeks cooldowns we’ve done a lot of planning, you know, maybe it’s a time where we’re super excited or had lots of energy and sort of you know it did a lot of research or planning for that next six weeks sprint but just take it on what’s going on. How are we feeling? How about you?

Tim Hyde (09:56):

You look it’s time for me. I’m still kind of working on in 90 days. We have done that for a while, where I’m finding a challenge at the moment. And I don’t mind sharing this with our audiences actually kind of making sure that some accountability is in place around what the execution of that looks like.

Because when we, you know, when we’re sort of tracking, you know, what I do this week, what to do that week, you know, and then what did I do over the course of the month, it kind of throws everything out a little bit with your standard account, or days. 

Like, earnest, it’s not quite working for me at the moment, but it is, you know, the key, whatever the cycle happens to be for you is actually making it short enough that we can start to track and measure and give yourself time to put in actions? 

Absolutely. Because if you say, well, we need a new website, guess what, if your if your cycle is, you know, seven days, you’re going to find it very difficult to build a new website, you’re constantly going, Oh, we did we get to that goal? 

No, we get to that goal now. So it needs to be short enough that we can see momentum, and we got impetus to go towards that particular goal, but not so short, that we can’t actually see any progress on some of the bigger activities.

Samantha Riley (11:06):

Absolutely. Well, let’s talk about that a little bit more, because once you’ve set the plan, you do need to break it down. And this is where I see most people getting tripped up, it’s not setting the plan, most people that I speak with have got some sort of goal, some sort of projects that they know they’re working on, where I see the trip up occur is these daily habits. 

And this is where I was talking about, you know, the boring things that need to be done strategically and consistently, well, with consistency being the major part here, the daily habits that are going to get you there. Because you know, you and I were talking before we hit record, every single one of us has thing in our business that we dislike doing that we will do anything to not do it. 

And some of us will do absolutely anything to get out of doing it. You know, there’s those things on my list that have been there for a really long time. But there’s the daily habits, I know you have in your whiteboard that you track your leads, and your calls, and your revenue every single week.

Tim Hyde (12:15):

I’ve got a I’ve got a Google sheet that we track, you know, leads appointments, presentations, and, and sales proposals and sales every single day. And I’ve I see a week where we’ve got no leads, right, no new people need to buy database, I’m going to find at some point, in the coming weeks that I’m going to see a dip in the number of appointments, different number of proposals we’re sending out, and correspondingly a number of a dip in the number of sales that we might make.

 So that’s a good a good lead indicator for absolute rights. And if we don’t measure what it is we’re doing, we don’t set some daily habits, even around the things we don’t necessarily do. And we’ll talk about that more in a sec. We don’t get momentum, we kind of just avoid it.

I don’t really want to do this today. You know, I’m gonna go and do something else. But by having that accountability to it, it can just be you know, walking through Office, get a post it note, you know, dekat post it notes, right, the one thing that will make today successful and stick it to the you know, stick it to your computer screen, and do not leave your office until that thing is done. 

Absolutely right, you will find you get way more momentum doing that, then, you know, just kind of firefighting and reacting to whatever.

Samantha Riley (13:34):

Totally. Now, you mentioned a Google sheet before, we also have a Google Sheet. But here’s what I noticed with a Google Sheet. It’s great because everyone in the team can see it. Because for you and I we both have teams that work remotely. So that’s great that everyone has access to it. 

But I personally find that setting these daily habits in an analogue way work way better for me. So let me explain a couple of the things we do here. Sometimes, I have used a system where I’ve got a job with a certain number of paper clips in it. I think I got this idea from Wolf of Wall Street, you know, where he had to put a paper clip into the cup. 

And if the all the paper clips weren’t in the club by the end of the night, like he couldn’t leave till they’re all over. I’ve used that before. Leon and I have both got these little manual clickers like what they use to count people onto a plane. 

We do that for the amount of you know different things that we do live chat starts a day, we will do that. We know at the beginning of our six week sprint, how many clients we need to sign because we already have set our revenue goals.

So we know how many clients are out assign. We actually put a number on the poster, we create a nice, let’s just say we need 20 new clients in a sprint. We’ll get 20 post it notes and put a number on each one, put them on the wall. 

They need to have a name on all of them by the end of the sprint. These are the kinds of things that we do because it requires not only that we can see it, but an action around it. And that’s a lot for us, it feels a lot more accountable than just having a Google sheet that if you’re not feeling great about yourself, you can just hide not open. Yeah,

Tim Hyde (15:14):

I think that there’s, there’s two parts of that, right, your Google Sheet, you know, a few metrics is really important, historically, right? Because that will start to identify bigger picture trends for your ideal, it’ll work out seasonal factors, you know, you’ll know that in November, you get lots of leads, in January, you get none, whatever the thing is, happens here, but I really love that idea, Sam of, of making some sort of physical thing, whether it’s a journal, whether it’s post it notes, whether it’s shit on your whiteboard, whatever it happens to be, you know, and I’ve done that with clients as well, we fought right, rather than actually keeping them on the board, I literally, you know, 10 987-565-4321, etc. 

And when you sign a client, you take it off and throw it into. And then this tells me exactly how many clients you still need to design. And what I find that does, and particularly if you start communicating that back with your team, it really galvanizes the direction to go, Well, we haven’t reached that goal yet team, you know, you’ve been doing stuff. 

But has that stuff actually delivered? The outcomes we were looking for? Absolutely. That’s where it comes down to, I think those daily habits, and if we’re not looking at that, we’re not communicating that with our team, and most importantly, not holding them accountable for it. We don’t get to where we want to go

Samantha Riley (16:30):

100% 100%. So that’s the daily habits. Now, you know, I did just mention that there are things that we don’t like doing in the business. And that’s where I think accountability is really, really important. 

Now, you you mentioned a really great metaphor about accountability. And I’d love you to share it because I think it’s fantastic.

Tim Hyde (16:53):

Well, I think, like, it’s like I gave the example of putting in a CRM system to manage your pipeline of opportunity. But if you don’t log into your CRM, what’s it therefore, again, if you don’t log into your Google Sheet, what’s what’s there for? 

Likewise, you wouldn’t go and invest money in buying a car, and then leave it in the driveway and not use it and go to plenty cars fault, it’s, you know, it’s so expensive to have that car, like, it’s on you. 

Yeah, this is the thing that can take you from A to B much faster, when you would otherwise be able to do it under your own steam, if you use it. Right. And so there’s so much of these systems, again, we talked about, you know, post it notes, useless, if you don’t use it, right, your Google Sheet useless if you don’t use it, if you have your planning process in place, but you don’t hold people accountable for executing to that plan, you’re wasting your time, totally, just stop doing it altogether. 

And if you can’t do it yourself, get somebody to hold you accountable for that. You know, if you need an external business coach, like like, Sam, you or me to come in and hold you accountable for execution of functions, get one? 

Absolutely you can’t do it yourself, if you’re the CEO of your business, but you don’t like confrontation. Get somebody else who can do that for you, and do the things that you are genius at. 

But we talked before Sam about doing stuff that we don’t necessarily like doing in our business? Guess what, if you don’t like doing it, and you’re the person holding yourself accountable to do that, it’s very easy to slide under the radar, give that function to someone else and get in you hold them accountable for it.

Samantha Riley (18:40):

I just want to touch on what you just said there in a different way to there are things that we don’t like doing in a business. There’s also things that we shouldn’t be doing in business, and we need to be held accountable for these as well. 

We’ve got two new coaches on our coaching team. And I’ve been onboarding them the last few months. And you know, it was a completely off the cuff kind of comment where someone said, Oh, look at my coaching notes. They’re so they’re so messy, I will rewrite them and then send them to, you know, the person on our team that gets the email out to the clients. 

And I said, No, no, no, you’ve been hired because your zone of genius is being a coach, it is not to rewrite coaching notes. That’s, that’s an admin task. That’s not what I hired you for. So I made my team accountable to be constantly in their zone of genius as well. So it’s not just for us to be in the zone of genius as the CEO, but it’s also to hold our team accountable to make sure that we’re moving the needle in the best way forward.

Tim Hyde (19:41):

Yeah, let’s look it’s doing stuff just because you can do it better than somebody else. Doesn’t mean to say that that is the best use of your time.

Samantha Riley (19:49):

Totally, totally. I want to share one of the questions that Leon and I use in our business to help as we’re doing our you know, we talked about setting our six week plan or a 90 day plan, but we also set a weekly plan in our business. 

So on a Sunday afternoon, we’ll usually have quite a casual conversation around what the theme or what the big projects are that we need to be doing for the week. And a question that will often ask ourselves is, okay, I want you to put your CEO hat on right now, and duplicate yourself and see yourself also as the employee, if you were standing there as the CEO, ask yourself, what would I be saying to that team member this week? 

What didn’t they do? Well, what did they do? Well, what do you need to do more of, and sort of like remove yourself from being that person and it can be really helpful to, you know, see yourself in the third person and go, actually, you know what, I do need to do X Y, Zed this week, or have more focus on that or make sure I get x y Zed done. So it’s really important to be able to do that.

Tim Hyde (20:54):

Yeah, I like to last step, I think is review. Right? going back and looking at what you’ve been doing, looking at that plan and going well, what worked, what didn’t work? And what can I do differently next time. 

And it can be even looking at the structure of the plan itself. Is the plan still accurate? Are the things I’m using to measure? Still the right things to you to measure? Is my post it notes system still working for me? 

Yeah, right. Totally. Yeah. Do I have the right people on the bus or not? Doing that review becomes really critical in kind of working out whether you’re executing whether those daily habits are serving you whether that accountability framework is serving you as well.

Samantha Riley (21:39):

Absolutely. So if you’re someone that at the end of your cycle, or your sprint says, Oops, didn’t get them done, I’ll just put that on the next sprint, Oops, didn’t get it done. I’ll put on the next sprint. 

And three years later, you realize that you’ve been working on the same three projects for the last three years straight, then, really, you need to hone in on this piece, review it, why isn’t it working? 

Because there’s no point just putting something that’s not working straight back down again, for the next quarter, or the next sprint, you need to be able to analyze why it’s not working and decide what needs to be done differently.

Tim Hyde (22:16):

Yeah, to me, this is an area that I think it’s really valuable, a to use your accountability partner in, right. So again, if it’s your business coach, get them involved, but also get your team involved as well. Because the more they own it, the more likely you are to get the outcome you want.

Samantha Riley (22:34):

Absolutely, absolutely. Imperfect Action beats waiting for perfect execution.

Tim Hyde (22:42):

Yes, copyright 2023. Turns out,

Samantha Riley (22:45):

absolutely. At the end of the day, it’s execution, that’s going to move the needle forward. So just quickly recapping, to get focused, you need to set that plan, set the GPS, so you know where you’re heading, get really clear on what these daily habits need to be and make sure that you execute them at consistently.

Make sure you’re accountable. Your team is accountable to you and that you’re accountable to yourself for your growth, and review, review the data and the KPIs before you set the next plan. Anything you’d like to add here, Tim,

Tim Hyde (23:18):

pulling back the hood of what we’ve seen working with 1000s of businesses, you know, collectively. We talked very early on about you know, it’s not necessarily the product or service or, or size of your business. 

A lot of it is this is if you get this piece, right. You know, it almost doesn’t matter what else you’re doing this will guarantee momentum in the right direction.

Samantha Riley (23:41):

100% I agree. I think this is probably one of the most important pieces really do. Thanks for riffing with me on this topic. And if you got value from this topic, if there was an AHA or something that stood out, we would love you to share with us all the links to our social profiles are in the notes wherever you’re listening. And thank you for joining us. We’ll see you on the next episode of Influence by Design. 

Samantha Riley Outro

Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Influence By Design podcast. If you want more head over to influencebydesignpodcast.com for the show notes and links to today’s gifts and sponsors. And if you’re looking to connect with other experts who are growing and scaling their business to join us in the coaches, thought leaders, and changemakers community on Facebook, the links are waiting for you over at influencebydesignpodcast.com