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SHOW NOTES

If you’re a visionary entrepreneur (and if you’re here, you likely are!), you will never, ever have a shortage of ideas. I promise.

Your ‘brand new idea’ or this ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’ might feel like the next best thing, but watch out.

If you keep following every good idea + saying ‘yes’ to every single opportunity… the success you’re building now will fall apart. (Really, I’ve seen it happen too many times.)

Because, scattering your focus stalls (or completely STOPS) your growth.

So, this episode is all about the #1 weakness of entrepreneurs + marketers… your lack of FOCUS. Yes, I’ve talked about this many times before – but this episode goes deep into a few examples you might relate with.

I’m talking about…

  • Why this scatter-brained lack of focus is hard to avoid (especially if you have BIG dreams!)
  • What to do when you get bored with your business or the marketing
  • How to STOP yourself before you fall into the “next best thing!” trap

Listen in, and then head over to Instagram (@emilyhirsh) and tell me if this resonates. Have you derailed your own success (once or twice!) by following an exciting new idea? Or, do you have advice for entrepreneurs who fall into this trap? Come on over and join the conversation!

Key Points:
[3:17] Oh, this is what it’s like to feel unfocused.
[5:27] You’ll never have a shortage of ideas.
[7:57] I’ve literally never seen this work well.
[9:13] Here’s how this applies to marketers

Check out episode 120 for more about the two things that I think have led to my success.
Check out episode 26 + episode 76 for more about the importance of focus in your marketing.

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Episode Transcripts:  

Emily Hirsh: I’m Emily Hirsh, and this is the Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast. Attention, innovators, influencers, creators, and game-changing entrepreneurs: your internet domination begins right here. We are the powerhouse marketers that you’ve been looking for. You’re already making waves in your industry, and we’re here to help amplify those waves of change by creating a connection that cuts through the noise. We take everything you’ve built inside your zone of genius and find its audience. With killer strategy and laser eye for impact, we launch multimillion dollar campaigns and skyrocket your reach online. And now, we are doing the unheard of. We’re unveiling everything we’ve learned, taking you behind the scenes with the Hirsh Marketing Team, and giving away the secrets to our clients’ success. Stay tuned for top converting strategy, ROI reports, and insider knowledge that you won’t find anywhere else. You’re changing the world, and we’re the team to help.

All right, everyone. Today we’re going to dive into one of my favorite things to talk about, but just a different angle and a story behind it, which is, the importance of focus and the power of focus in your business and in your marketing. And this is inspired because last night I was watching a Shark Tank. It was like a more… I haven’t been caught up, so I don’t know when it came out. It’s the most recent season, one of the first episodes, ‘cause I haven’t been watching TV a lot, but was watching an episode, and there was a girl who was pitching her product. It was actually like, a really crazy product. It wasn’t a product, it was a service… It was ‘face yoga,’ and if you did the yoga, then you would look a lot younger.

And so she does it as a service where she does a one-hour training, and then you know the moves and it takes five minutes a day. And she had made like, I think $17,000 were her sales. But then she’s talking, and she’s like, “I have another business, and it does $500,000 a year, but that’s completely separate. I’m just doing this one.” And I just started laughing, and I looked at my husband, and I was like, “You see? Entrepreneurs, they just cannot focus.” I’m like, “Look at this girl on here.” And even the Sharks laughed a little, and then they were like, “So why are you creating a new business when you have another business doing half a million, and you could just focus on that and have that make more money?” And she’s like, “Because I’m an entrepreneur, and I have to have multiple streams of income,” and I was dying. I was like, “Do you see this? This is so common!”

So that’s kind of what this is inspired from. And then the other thing is, I did an IGNITE support call about a week and a half ago, and I was talking through with the student, their strategy, and we were like, “Okay, so we’re going to do the opt-in to get into your funnel, and then you’re going to get them to book a call. That’s the goal.” We were walking through it, we were walking through the retargeting ads. And at the end she’s like, “Is that all? That’s it? That’s all I have to do? There’s not more?” And she was bored of it, a little bit. And so I just find it so fascinating because I do this myself, and I recently had so much going on. I had my book launch and was launching IGNITE, and then I have stuff with the agency. We had some stuff with our sales. We had to find a new sales help, and just, I had to step in and look at our process and kind of own that, because the sales does report directly to me.

And so there was one week where I was like, “Oh, my gosh, this is what it feels like to be so unfocused. Every day I feel like I could go in all these different directions, and so I’m doing nothing really productive, because I’m just overwhelmed, and this is what happens when you have too many balls in the air and too many projects and things that you’re working on, and you’re not focused.” And so I think that the number one weakness of entrepreneurs and marketers is that lack of focus, because it is so hard not to fall into it. Gosh, I could think of so many good ideas, today! …that I could go do and that would probably be successful. But if you keep following that good idea, and you keep going after that as soon as you have it, and you just react on it and you follow it, and you kind of move away from whatever it is you were working on, whether or not it was working or not, or successful or not, it’s really hard to get the really powerful traction that you want.

And I think this is a massive weakness, because we seem to do it without even realizing we’re doing it. And we have to bring this conscious awareness to basically not doing it, and to bringing it back, and maybe even bringing team members or mentors in and saying like, “Hey, if I start to do this, call me out.” I don’t know what it is, it’s like once we have an idea that works or a strategy that works just a little bit, we think the answer is to go do a bunch more things instead of just do more of that strategy.

So my student, for example, she was getting this amazing cost per lead and these people in the funnel, and they were booking calls, and she still had to set up her retargeting ads and the rest of the retargeting in her funnel, but she was like, “That’s all? I shouldn’t go also create a webinar and pitch this other product and do this?” And I’m like, “No, because we haven’t even come close to optimizing what’s working! And so if you put all of your effort into that, it will be so much more powerful than if you go down all these different pathways and all these different options.”

And so, ideas and opportunities, you’ll never have a shortage of those. You’re always going to have ideas. You’re probably a visionary. You’re probably always going to have opportunities. There’s times where I meet with somebody and they tell me about this amazing opportunity, maybe they want to include me in something that they sell or they want to promote me in some way, and I have to white label… all the time I get these opportunities that would seem like really good opportunities. But the problem is, they take away focus, and they take away focus on the projects and the direction that you’re going in, and it will impact your results and your growth.

And same with this Shark Tank girl. She made $500,000. She had a profitable business. And $500,000 is not that much, and she goes to start something new, because that [first] one felt successful. It felt like she made it, so she had to go start something new and have a new idea. And it’s just a common thing, and it’s a huge weakness, and it will hold you back. And so my suggestion is to start noticing… when you get into that place that I was in, which is where you feel like you’ve got all these things going on…

I feel this way a lot during a live launch, because I’m still doing my day-to-day things like this, like podcast recording and… not day-to-day, but week over week, my regular things that I have to do: podcast recording, checking in with team members, working on initiatives for the ads team and overseeing that at a high level… maybe there’s a fire or a problem I have to step in and support with, all of those things. And then on top of that I have a launch, and so that adds a bunch of new things, and what I really should be doing is saying, “I’m unavailable during this two weeks to do any podcast recordings, any videos, any ‘this,’ I should scale back all the team meetings,” (and now I’m saying this thinking I should do that) because I have to focus on the launch.

And so for a couple of days I felt like, “Oh, my gosh, I just have so many balls in the air.” And so it feels like you’re not doing anything very well, because you’re scattered, and you’re working on all these things. And don’t get me wrong, it might feel exciting. It might feel like you have momentum during a time period like that, because you’re getting stuff done, and you’re moving forward, and you’ve got all these ideas, and you’re excited about them. It still might feel good. It’s not that it feels bad. It’s like, “Are you actually moving the needle [forward] and doing things that will really support the company in the long-term and [growing] what’s already working? Or are you creating new variables, new things, and new projects or initiatives, or even businesses that are going to distract you and your team?”

And that’s what you have to come back to and look at, because every single time… I have never seen it work well where somebody creates a new business, or a whole new offer that targets a whole new audience, or creates a brand new funnel, a brand new strategy, because they had one that was working… and it actually worked out well, versus just scaling and really focusing and honing in on what they do have. Because once you “make it” with something and you’re successful with something, it doesn’t mean that it’s just done. You always can improve your delivery, your marketing, your outreach, your brand awareness. All of those things you can always improve. So if you’re going to start new things, you’re starting at square one, and then you start to ignore that thing that was working, and then it declines, and then you’re stressed because it’s declining and you’re like, “I don’t understand why.”

And so, it’s a huge weakness for entrepreneurs and also marketers, because I’ve done an episode on “stop always changing your strategy” [episode 103], because this is a common theme. My student who was like, “That’s all I have to do?” Good marketing doesn’t mean complicated. Good marketing can be very simple. Your strategies don’t have to be super complicated to be a good strategy. Sometimes we envision these strategies drawn out with all these different directions somebody could go and retargeted ads and emails and rules in your CRM software and all this complication… and that doesn’t always equal good. Sometimes it does. Sometimes those types of built-out strategies, over time can be a very great, positive thing. But other times it’s just complicating things for no reason. And you can get results with a really simple strategy in a really simple funnel.

So don’t over-complicate it. Don’t lose focus. And especially if you have a team, if you’re constantly pivoting people, it’s just really unproductive, and it’s a waste of money, as a business, owner to do that. And so, especially with marketing, I find that people have a strategy that works, it starts to work. They think, “Once it starts to work, it’s just going to always work. So I can just leave it.” And then they go create something new. They lose focus. That thing… doesn’t work. Or they create something new, and then that new thing doesn’t work, and they’re like, “What? I thought it was going to work. I had it figured out.” And so, really bring awareness to this. Don’t let this consume you, because it will, without even meaning to, it will.

I guarantee you that that girl on Shark Tank wasn’t like, “I’m choosing to lose focus and focus on a different business than my other business. My other business might go down, but I’m going to make this choice.” She genuinely thought she was doing what would get her the most results, by having multiple streams of income with two businesses. Same with my student. It’s not that she was like, “I want to overcomplicate this, because I want it to be harder, because I want it to cost me more money or because I want to lose focus.” She genuinely thought, “I have to do this to be successful.” It’s like the story that you tell yourself.

So bring awareness to it. And if it feels simple and focused and maybe even a little boring, you’re probably on the right track. But sometimes, I’ve walked through this with people, and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, it feels like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders, because I thought I had to do all of these things, and I was super stressed, and I was worried about this, or I had all these things to do, and I was overwhelmed.” And as soon as you focus them in, they feel relieved.

So if you feel that when you do think about your business and your marketing plan… and we’re going into 2020 soon, so start thinking about your year and what that’s going to look like and what are you going to focus on? And don’t have too many things and directions that you’re going to not do anything very well. Really bring focus, and that will be so powerful for your business this year. Maybe it’s the last quarter of this [year]… we have two more months in this quarter. Maybe that’s what you… really try to see, “What will move the needle the most for me and my team,” (if you have one), “to focus on,” and then do that. And be strict with that and constantly bring awareness to it, and I promise it will pay off so much.

On the last episode [episode 120] I talked about, or maybe it was the episode before, I talked about what I think contributed to my success the most. I did an interview, and I talked about it [there], and there [were] two things. There was focusing on my delivery. So, always delivering something amazing for clients and getting referrals, I think [that] was what was one of them. And then my second one was focus. And I think that I’ve kind of mastered this. I still fall into the trap of losing it, but I’ve mastered saying ‘no’ and focusing and even having to say ‘no’ to my team. Because what’ll happen is your team will start to say, “I have all these ideas” and get really excited if they’re happy to work there, and just be really excited about it. And so, saying ‘no’ to my team even, to be like, “Nope, guys, we got to focus. Here’s the initiatives. I don’t even want you to think about these other things until we accomplish this,” or maybe, “We’re not even going to think about those other things.”

So, super important. I hope you guys found this helpful. I really got a lot… I get a lot out of it when I see it, especially on Shark Tank, because it’s just like this symbol of entrepreneurs… [it’s] really hard for them to focus and to feel a little bit bored, which is where we get when we feel like we don’t have enough going on.

All right, well I have to mention, if you guys want to work with Team Hirsh, there’s two more months left out of this year. We do have a couple of client spots open. Every year, November and December are very busy for us with new clients signing on to launch something during those times or to really ramp up for 2020. So if you’re thinking about it, go to HelpMyStrategy.com. Apply to work with us. Go through the application process, have that free strategy call with my team, and you’ll get something out of just that. And my promise is, we won’t take on a client that we don’t truly believe we can support and help. And that’s why I’ve put so much into that application and onboarding process, so that it’s an amazing experience for both us and the client. And I’ll see you guys next time. Thanks so much.

Thanks for listening to the Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast. Go behind the scenes of multimillion dollar ad campaigns and strategies, dive deep into The Hirsh Process, and listen to our most popular episodes over at HirshMarketingUnderground.com. If you loved this episode of the podcast, do me a favor and head over to iTunes to subscribe and leave a review, so we can reach more people and change more lives with this content. That’s all for now, and I’ll catch you next time.