Elliott Hulse argues that entrepreneurs should dominate one thing instead of diversifying income streams. Most people diversify out of desperation or boredom, but spreading effort thin leads to mediocrity. His fix: take a strategic job to fund your main business while you build it, or pivot if the business no longer aligns with what you care about.
Good morning, Believe Nation. Today's message is Dominate One Thing. Over to you, Elliott Hulse. I wake up every morning with this bread, so keep me going.
I'm reading a really fascinating book right now called The One Thing. Can't remember the name of the author right now, but you can look it up on Amazon. And this author asserts And I found this to be true in my own experience, and that's why I find the book so fascinating. He asserts that if you put all of your eggs in one basket, like Andrew Carnegie once said, and just watch that basket grow, you will reach your greatest success. And that basically means you choose one thing and you dominate that one thing, and it will, if you choose the right thing, and we'll talk about that in a moment, if you choose the right one, or what I've also heard described as or called the keystone habit, You choose the habit that's associated with dominating one thing, it will inevitably trickle over into all other areas of your life. You will see success in other areas if you just dominate this one thing. It's also been described as the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule, whereby all of your— they say 80% of your results will come from 20% of your efforts. The trick is to try to figure out what is that 20% require, you know, which one of these things do I hack, hack at, you know, put all my time, effort, energy, talent, and faculty into dominating so that it will have a tremendous effect on everything else.
If you look at the people who've had the most success in any field, it's because of their ability to focus on what they're doing. You set a goal for one thing that you want to accomplish, and you don't stop, you don't quit, you don't get distracted until you achieve that outcome. And I see too many entrepreneurs coming to me and say, Evan, I I want to diversify my income streams, right? I gotta find other ways to bring in money. And it's usually coming from two places that I find. One is desperation and one is boredom. And let's talk about desperation because that's the more common one. Really, it's because you haven't made enough money from your passion, from what you're really excited about, from your business, and you have to pay the bills, right? I gotta put food on the table, I gotta pay for my internet bill, right? I gotta pay for electricity, all that stuff. I'm not talking about lavish luxury lifestyle living, just pay the bills, right? And so the interesting thing is you get forced into a situation where you try to find other businesses that you can start and run. But if you haven't had success with the business that you are passionate about and that you know a lot about and that you're improving yourself on, then how do you expect to have success in businesses that you know nothing about and that you're not passionate about and you're doing it just for the money? You're probably not, right? And then you end up in this loop of having to spread your time across all of these different businesses and none of them ever doing really well because you're doing everything in a mediocre way instead of going all in on something and being really successful at it. Now, it can take time to reach your goal, and you will have to learn, and you will have to get better, and you will have stumbling blocks along the way. And sometimes that means you get desperate, need to make money. The solution that I would have is maybe a little off the wall from what you might be thinking, but it'd be to go get a job. Go work for somebody because the reason to work isn't just to make money, and that's the mistake most people make. They work to make money, and that's the worst reason to go and get a job. You get a job, yes, to make money, but to learn, right? Look at your business, look at why it's not working, and see what's the skill that you're missing, what are you just not getting, and how can you acquire that by going to work for somebody who's going to teach you, right? Go find a job at a company that you want to be like in 5 to 10 years. Get the— as close to the founder as possible. Learn from them. You're getting paid to make mistakes, to make connections, to understand how the industry works. Meanwhile, you're still working on your business every single day. 30, 60, 90, 120 minutes plus every single day to move your dream forward. You're still hustling. And so the solution isn't diversify your income streams and start other businesses, because it's a desperation play and you end up not getting to where you want to go. And people see taking a job as a step back. But it's really not if you're learning through that process. I'm not saying go get a job at McDonald's flipping burgers, right, unless you're trying to start a fast food chain. Go get a job where you're going to learn something and make money and make connections and pour that knowledge into your business to make you a better entrepreneur. The second time I hear is when people are bored. Really, if you dig deep down, why are they saying that? It's because they're bored with their business. And it happens to a lot of entrepreneurs who've been around for a while, number of years. Maybe your business has made a lot of money. Maybe it's just provided for you, at some point a lot of entrepreneurs get bored. And it's often because— usually this is what happens— you grow as a person, right? You have different interests, different skills, you have different habits, you want to explore different areas. And when you started your business, that was all aligned, right? What you were excited about and passionate was aligned, and that's what made the business come to life. But over time, you went here and your business kept going on that straight line. And the more time goes on, the more you guys diverge, and the less and less interesting your business becomes. The mistake is that your business didn't adjust as you adjusted as a human being. As you develop new passions and interests, your business needs to sway with you. Your business should always be a reflection of who you are as an individual, right? My business is always a reflection of who I am and what I'm interested in. I wasn't doing YouTube videos 10 years ago because I don't even know if YouTube existed. If it did, I wasn't on it. I was doing only the website. And if I just stuck doing the website, then I would be pretty bored right now and say, I need, I need something new, right? The challenge is you want to have growth. And if you feel you're not growing anymore in your business, then you seek it elsewhere because human beings crave growth. And so your two options are one, change your business with you, whatever you're excited about now, go and do that. Or if it's just, if it's just you got to get rid of it, you know, you don't want to do it anymore, you can't change it to match your needs, then sell it. Find somebody who can buy it, and then you go off and start something new. Because you just hanging on, hanging on, hanging on to the business, it's not going to grow anymore. It's going to start off just going steady, and then over time it's going to decrease because you're not putting the love into it. You don't really care about as much anymore. You're not innovating anymore. And your business is going to start to decline. And so you want to sell it now when the price could still be something high. You get a return on it where in 5 years after it's gone down, you won't be able to sell it anymore. Sell it now. Move on to something else. Always follow your passion. So the real power, the real success, the real domination comes when you focus on one thing and see it through to its execution. And if you can't, then it's often because of desperation or because of boredom. And hopefully we've given you some strategies to be able to attack that. In your business, in your life. Belief. So the question today is maybe going a little deep. Are you desperate or bored in your business? Leave it in the comments below. I'm going to join in the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. I wake up every morning. Espresso keeps me going.
