Here’s an idea I encountered a couple of decades ago and I wanted to share it with you.
It’s about something that happens to a lot of people, myself included. That something is “too many ideas.”
All of us as entrepreneurs have a ton of ideas. In fact, it’s not unusual for us to have several ideas a day.
You can compare the problem of too many ideas with the sun on a log.
You’ve probably heard this before; the sun can shine on a log for days, weeks, months, even years, and ultimately the log will just rot away.
But if you take that same sunshine and log and you focus the rays of the sun through a magnifying glass, you can actually set that log on fire in just a few minutes.
Same sun. Same log. Different level of focus (literally).
And that’s the difference between having a ton of ideas you casually act on or don’t act on at all, and one idea you act on with total and complete concentration and focus.
Let me give you an example.
I’ve owned two cars in my life that really stick out in my mind. One was a Ford Festiva, the other a Rolls Royce Silver Seraph.
The Festiva is basically the car I bought when I graduated from college.
The idea I used to help me buy that car was “I’m going to get a job and make payments on that car.” I bought the car and struggled to make the payments for 60 months. It sucked.
SIDE NOTE: my wife bought me a similar car, same year, for my 50th birthday just as a fun gift. I love driving around in it as much as the Rolls because it has a 4-speed manual transmission. But I digress…
So that Festiva represents the idea of “I’m going to get a job and I’m going to pay for a car.”
The idea I used to buy the Rolls Royce was completely different.
The idea connected to that car was “I’m going to add value to a whole lot of people’s lives in a very specific area and make enough money to buy that car for cash.”
And one day that car showed up in my driveway, literally, via FedEx.
The only difference between the cars (besides make a model) is the ideas I chose to focus on inside my own head.
The Festiva came from the idea of “I’m going to work for somebody else.”
The Rolls came from the idea of “I’m going to create and sell a course that’s going to teach people how to do something very valuable in their own lives.”
Then I focused on that idea, and that idea only, long enough to actually bring it to fruition.
The Festiva came from a 10 to $12 an hour idea.
The Rolls came from a couple of million dollars idea.
The difference I want to get across to you is that you can have a thousand ideas, but until you focus in on one, until you take it over the hump, until you solve all the problems associated with that idea, until you stick with it long enough to get big results, any idea will never go beyond a $10 an hour idea.
If you want to create the big results, you’ve got to focus in on an idea long enough to create BIG results.
Let me give you one other example.
Six years ago, I decided I needed to lose weight and I needed to get in shape.
I chose to focus on a single simple idea. Every morning I was going to get up and walk for 30 minutes.
That was the single idea I committed to. I walked every morning for 30 minutes.
I lost 15 pounds (down from 256 lbs. to 241).
I then built on that idea with more exercises. Then I added running and weightlifting. And then I continued to build from there.
Focusing on that one single idea, with the intention of getting better every single day, I was able to explode my results as far as with physical fitness in a relatively short period of time.
Not to brag, but the other day I did 33 pull-ups in a row. When I started walking that 30 minutes, I could only do one pull-up, and that was a really pathetic attempt.
So, the point is this: if you want to do something big, it’s not going to be a whole bunch of ideas that get you there, it’s going to be a single idea, well-executed with 110% effort.
That’s what’s going to get you the BIG results you want.
It’s not going in a thousand different directions, it’s going in one direction with all your might, with all your energy, with all your willpower, and making it work.
I hope it resonates with you the way it did with me and others who’ve used this powerful principle to make real change, real fast!
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