Gaining clarity and focus in your business it TOUGH. Seriously tough.
In this post I will give you five steps to focus and tell you a little bit about where I have been hiding for the last couple of months….
This January I picked my word of the year – FOCUS. Many people who know me in business will know I am very driven and always busy…however my major fall down as always been my inability to focus on one task.
I have a brain that is always buzzing – it’s super creative and I love to rapidly move between ideas and tasks. Thinking and creating different things – pushing forward new plans. However in January I set myself the task of committing my time to just ONE major thing in my business. That was cut everything else out. Stop the noise. Unfollow anyone or anything that was distracting me from my goal. I put ALL other plans on hold and I set to pushing forward my one business and idea.
I will get to the results of this later on AND how it has affected me moving forward – but first I want to take you through the five steps to regain and reignite your focus….
Step One:
F is for Fear…
Yes it is scary focusing in and putting all of those eggs in one basket – trust me I have had many major meltdowns. However I took it upon myself to write out all of my fears around this project. All of the reasons I could and would procrastinate and I addressed them and combatted them. So if you are struggling to push forward a business, a new product or ideas – ask yourself what are your greatest fears – what is holding you back?
Step Two
O is for Organisation…
I consider myself to be a very organised person however when it came to focusing on one thing I realised a huge part of my journey was NOT organising the plan for it. So I sat with my post it notes and my A3 sketch pad and I planned out everything. Where I want to be – where I am now and all of the steps in between. Then I organised my time to ensure I got there. With not focusing on loads of different things I quickly found I had much more thinking time for my business and clarity of how I was going to move things forward. Organised thoughts = an organised business.
Step Three
C is for Clarity
So I focused in on the one thing I wanted to do. I organised my time and my journey to it and then I got completely clear on my aims and targets. I needed clarity on my business goal. With loads of businesses and ideas this just wasn’t possible – however with just the one ultimate goal I suddenly had complete clarity on where I was going in my business.
Step Four
U is for Understanding
I have spent a lot of my business life trying to understand different clients, their different needs, the different markets and competitors. Suddenly with this new found focus I only had to understand one specific group of people. I had to begin to learn them inside and out. This meant I had to understand the message I was sharing as a business. Putting all of my time into profiling them meant that my social media content was perfectly targeted. There were no mixed messages about what I do or who I am. People began to understand who I am – what I offer and it built up the trust factor and the brand so much more.
Step Five
S is for Success…
So those results. I stayed fixated on my target I wanted a 10% conversion rate (already high for what I was offering) from my launch. I finished with a 25% conversion rate and I couldn’t believe it. Part of what I had always done was set myself HUGE targets and had no clarity or strategy of how to achieve them. However setting a smaller achievable target, drawing my focus in and sticking to my plan It was more successful than I could ever have imagined.
I am still working on this business and its strategy everyday but I wanted to share this with you. I have not disappeared – I have simply been implementing everything I tell others to do with the focus that it demands.
So if you are stuck in your business at the moment – you lack focus and direction try out these steps. Silence the noise of others and stick to your game plan. Trust me it will be the best thing you ever do.
Want support? I do 1:1 Content strategy meetings. I help you set out everything you will need to ensure your product or service gets to the right people.
If you’ve found this helpful let me know – and do check out my other posts too!
Laura x