Seven Key Elements of Success: Element 3 Staying Focused
Staying Focused, stick to your plan.
If you’re following along with me so far you should now have some ideas written down ready to develop a Plan.
You may even have some initial thoughts on how you can start Taking Action to get your Plan and ideas up and running.
So moving on to another Key Every Successful Marketer Follows… Staying Focused And Sticking to Their Plan.
Thousands of would be marketers do get this far. Then it all starts to fall apart for them. One of the main reasons is because they lose their focus and don’t stick to their plan!
They stop taking action when their focus drifts. The net result is that it all becomes just another ‘tried & failed’ scenario.
Why?
There could be many factors involved, and hey, if something personal came up with family or work, well there’s not a great deal they can do. To be honest, in those cases, based on my experience, most committed marketers will just take a break until they can recommit to their Plan and recommence Taking Action.
So what happens to the rest?
Hard work usually… Many people suddenly realize that if they are doing things on their own without any guidance from a mentor, they have everything to ‘learn the hard way’… Trust me, I’ve been there, it’s not easy to stay focused when nothing seems to be going right!
It can really test the resolve of many… So the right Attitude can help a great deal.
That will open your eyes to a new way to think about the reasons you may be struggling.
It’s vital to stay focused when things seem down for some, because as they go about their daily Action Steps required by their Plan, they are drawn to all the emails and websites they come across that promise easy riches, and quite innocently they end up “just having a quick look”
That “quick look” can often result in a total loss of focus on what they are supposed to be doing, which in turn results in less and less being accomplished until finally they begin to believe they had the wrong Plan.
You must have heard the term…
“The Grass is Always Greener on The Other Side”?
Meaning so many other opportunities can suddenly look as if THEY would have been the better one to work at!
That’s the big problem that kills so many great ventures before they’ve even got off the ground!
Successful Marketers will train themselves NOT to be distracted from what they are supposed to be doing, by keeping their head down and focused on Their Plan, they’ll never notice the supposedly greener grass…
Lets be honest, the whole point of the quote is to teach people that grass is green, and there is no greener grass, it just looks that way from a distance!
So if you and I know that, then we should be able to do what the Successful marketer does and ignore the distractions… Remain focused on our own plan and stick with it taking the necessary action until…
It produces the results we have planned for…
I’d like this lesson to stick in your mind…
Let me explain a little about a water pump!
Have you ever seen any of those old western films where there’s the trough to water the horses in the high street? That’s the sort of pump I want to talk about … the ones where there is a big arm that needs constant pumping up and down and then water gushes through it into the trough.
Well, as I understand it, that pump is sitting above a well of water deep in the ground, so when someone comes and wants a drink they have to pump and pump for what seems like an age.
In a way, it’s like a new business sometimes… A massive amount of work going into it, Planning and Taking Action…
As the thirsty person keeps pumping, initially nothing seems to be happening… They pump and pump and nothing… If they didn’t really need the water, it would be quite easy to get distracted and think it was never coming, and what if they lost focus and gave up pumping?
That tends to be similar to what so many do with their plans… They take a certain amount of action but with no immediate result, they lose focus and don’t stick with it.
Well, what if they had kept focus and stuck with it?
The person on the well would have realized that although nothing seemed to be happening. In fact the water beneath had a long way to come up…
All the pumping was steadily expelling air from the pipes and forcing the water to climb to the surface. Had they stopped that water could have been just a few more pumps from gushing through!
Now do you see why you need to stay focused and stick to your plan? Taking action until your success finally gushes through.
This is what the successful marketer knows… It could just be that next half dozen pumps, those next few actions, that brings it all to the surface.
Imagine stopping just before it all came gushing?
Thinking the pump down the street may be a quicker pump, when all the while yours was just 6 more pumps to a river of success!
Don’t let that happen to you!
Summing up so far.
1. Make a Plan
2. Take Action
3. Stay Focused, stick to your plan.
There is no greener grass, keep your head down and focus.
Don’t stop and release the pressure or the success will run into the ground just as quickly as water back down a pipe!