Lack of Focus is a Lack of Greatness | On the Homefront with Jeff Dudan #91

Hey, everybody. Jeff Duden here, and I want to spend some time speaking with you about the concept of focus and share some different things that I've learned in my career from some incredible mentors and some incredible lessons about the concept of focus. And I'm also going to kick in a few book recommendations here so that you can augment your thinking about focus while we go through this. So I want to start this by sharing something that Jerry Seinfeld said in this incredible show, Comedians in Cars, Getting Coffee. I know I probably shouldn't get all my inspiration from Netflix, but, like, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and Jerry Seinfeld has spent a lot of time thinking and looking at the world and really analyzing it. So, you know, I put a lot of credence in what that guy's got to say. And there was an episode where he said, our lack of focus is leading to our lack of greatness. And that really landed with me. I thought about that with my kids. I thought about that with myself. Getting distracted every day and just so many opportunities. I think one of the challenges today with kids is the fact that they have so many good options and so many good opportunities. And then any idea put into Google or Perplexity AI and thought about is just like, oh, my gosh, here's all the options that I can do with this idea. And all of these things are attacking our ability to focus when we need to focus on the things that matter the most. I had a great mentor. He's the CEO and chairman of First Service Corporations. His name's Charlie Chase. And I was meeting with him at one point in time, and he shared with me that, hey, Jeff, when things are going really well in your business, you can then take that time and you can look farther out on the horizon into the future. What's possible for the business? Where might we want to go? Where are opportunities that we're missing? But when things aren't going well and you have challenges or you've got struggles, bring your focus tighter in, right in front of your face, and focus on. On issues or challenges in your business. So when you're. When you're. Things are going well, you're up on top of the water, you're on your water skis and everything's going well. Look farther out and, you know, ask yourself these questions. Am I thinking big enough? Am I thinking broadly enough about my business? Am I putting inputs into my brain that are helping me see possibilities or see trends? Am I having the right conversations with people? Am I reading the right books? Am I giving myself enough time away from my business to really think creatively about it and to think expansively about it, or am I even solving the right problems? I mean, maybe the business that you created has changed subtly in the problem has changed. Maybe the target has shifted a little bit. So, you know, looking at what you're doing, the problems that you're solving today, and then laying that against, what are the current trends, what are the current opportunities in the marketplace? And then, you know, am I really working? Am I investing my time and focusing my time, energy and money in places that are going to really create an abundant and unlimited future for me, my business, and all the stakeholders that are involved inside of that? This is also a time where you can diversify your thinking. Nothing is 100%, anything can go to zero, and your business is a function of probability. So are you spending enough time looking at alternative scenarios saying, okay, well, if everything went away today in my business, or if this happened and this piece of my business went away, what would I pivot to that 8020 rule? You know, looking across your customer list and seeing, you know, who are my best customers? Why are they my best customers today? Looking at divergent futures, maybe you need to take your company and split it into two different departments because you've got two different focuses and both of them have merit, both of those focuses have credibility. I want to share with you now if you really are doing a good job about stepping back and looking far on the horizon, there's some things that you can do to inform your thinking or at least to help you stretch your mind a little bit. And somebody had sent me, actually Joe Polish sent me this book just last week, and it was Ray Kurzweil's book called the Singularity Is Nearer When We Merge with AI. Now, for those of you who have heard about the Singularity and you don't know where it came from, it's from this guy, Ray Kurzweil, and he wrote this book, the singularity, back in 2005. And what's incredible is that if you look at his predictions for how information and the speed of information and speed of intelligence changes and how that is now morphing between the human brain and the artificial intelligent brain, he predicted everything that's going on right now. And his timing is actually really, really good. So what he did was this year he went and updated that book with where we are currently. And it's really very, very thoughtful. So if you, if he got the last 20 years right and he projects by, he projected originally by 2045 that we would be in the singularity, you know, then I put a lot of credence in his prediction. So if that's true, and if that's where we're going as an information society and a artificial intelligence society, then what opportunities, what's the impact going to be on your business? So that's an extreme example. But like, look, you know, if, if you're not focused on possibilities, if you're not focused on a divergent future for your business, if you're not focused on like what might be and what might that mean to us, that's when you get blindsided. So if you're laser focused on making the widget and you're not paying attention to external factors that are absolutely going to impact you, then you're not changing your focus frequently enough or with enough intention to make sure that you're driving. I think it was at the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland said that if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. Well, look, it's your job as a business leader to pay attention to the possibilities of the future of your business. In addition to making sure that things are getting done on time and on schedule today, now. So that's, that's broadening your focus out into the future. Now when you bring your focus back up close right in front of your face like you do that when in a couple of situations you've decided that there's a project that a build or a transformation in your business that is on accelerated time frame, you better bring your focus in close and make sure that everybody is focused on every little step of that transformation. Because you're, you're putting, anytime you're changing your business, Even if it's a 5% slight change in your business, there, there is risk in that business. You might want to bring your focus closer into your face. When things are going less well, your profit is eroding. Your EBITDA is either less than it was last year or it's off target or off change. Maybe the people piece isn't going so well. Maybe you're having some turnover that you didn't expect or you don't understand. When things are going less well, you need to bring your eyes back in and really get laser focused on the matters at hand. You also might want to do this when maybe an external factor creates great near term risk to your business or to a project that it's on. Look, you need to. The moment you realize that you're going to Lose money or the moment you realize you're going to lose momentum is the moment that you need to act and you need to make a change. And if you're out there horizon thinking and you need to be sitting thinking close term, then you're going to be slow to respond to that opportunity and you're going to take some losses continuing to increase your focus. There's another area that's really important and it has to do with this concentration versus diversification that we're going to get into. But like when you're on something and the outcome of this particular business or this particular project is outsized, and what I mean by that, let's just say that you've decided to do a business and you've put 90% of your net worth into it. Okay? The outcome of that business, it could impact you by 90% of your net worth. And if there's other risks that you've created, it could be 150% of your net worth that you put at risk. You better pay very, very close attention to the fine details of that project because the outcome is outsized in importance to you. So understanding what needs to get done, understanding who needs to do it, and understanding what good looks like and what it's going to take to get there, those are all the things that you as a business leader need to set up and make sure that you're paying close attention to you. Now if, if this is an everyday affliction for you and you know, you've sensed that maybe you're, you're focusing on the wrong things and, and you're in the business of the demand of the business or it's just seeming to, to go more out of control and you're struggling with this. I'm going to recommend a book to you here and it's by a guy named Dan Martell. It's a great book and it's called Buy Back youk Time. And there are some very simple tools in there that will help you get your head on straight about your time and understanding. Like what do you need to replace in your activity, what do you need to produce, what do you need to delegate and then what do you need to invest in? So some very simple tools there. If you feel like you're spending 110% of your time focusing on all the near term problems, you've got to get out from underneath that so you can spend a little bit more time focusing out on the horizon. Because it's the bullet that you don't hear is the one that kills you. So if your business gets killed because you weren't paying attention and you never pulled your head up from your desk, then that's on you too. It's not hard. Business is full contact. It's not easy doing this. But again, the intentionality around where you put your gaze and where you put your focus is something that I found great entrepreneurs do. Now I want to move on to kind of the next phase of this focus piece of it. And it's this concept I mentioned earlier about concentration versus diversification. All right? First time wealth. If you're not wealthy, if you haven't had an exit or you haven't had a business that's created financial freedom or financial stability for you to the extent that you desire it, you are going to be able to do that through concentration. Concentration in what? A business that you built, a technology that you've created or technology that you leveraged, maybe some intellectual property, maybe you, you've created a patent or you've created a patentable business process or invention of some sort. Maybe it's IP in the form of a book that you wrote that can help a lot of people. Maybe it's. Which could lead to events, which could lead to relationships or collaborations, or maybe it's a television show or a podcast or a YouTube channel or something like that. If you are on your first attempt at wealth creation, then you probably need to focus very deeply on making sure that whatever the core of that project is or that initiative, that it goes well. Now, if you have wealth and you've created it, wealth is protected and expanded by diversification, which is simply taking your focus from a concentration perspective and focusing it on broadening it to make a whole, to have a more holistic view of your assets, of the things that are creating cash flow, but most importantly, maybe the risks across your portfolio and diversifying the risk so that no one bullet can kill you, right? And if you have 10 different assets that you're diversified your wealth across, you might not hear the bullet that gets, gets one of them, but you know, you still got your other nine assets that are intact. So again, that's very similar to this concept of, of gazing your focus out on the horizon and spending some really intentional time there and then when appropriate, bringing your focus back close, you know, six inches in front of your face there when it's appropriate, focusing on your concentration of asset, your concentration of wealth building and then bringing it, you know, that's right in front of your face and then going out a little bit farther from a diversification Perspective, you know, balance inside of your business life. Diversification, understanding, like where you apply your time, your energy and money. These are all things that great business builders do that understand it's an infinite game. And you're going to be going through this exercise, you know, from now until you're done. I've also learned that your focus really manifests itself inside of inflection points. And I know we've talked about it before, but inflection points are these times in your life where, you know, you, you made a decision or you took an action, where your Life took a 90 or 180 degree change or a swing or an opportunity. And there are three things that manifest inside of these inflection points. And usually you only see them looking back at them. Number one is people. People that you're responsible for, people that you care about, people that want to do something with you. Or maybe sometimes it's people. Maybe you want to do something without certain people. It might be getting away from certain people, but people are always involved in these big inflection points. Decision process decision points. Number two, there's an adventure or an opportunity at hand. There's a chance to create some real upside. It might be upside in your life, it might be upside in your quality of life. It might be upside in creating more time inside of that. It might be creating leverage inside of that, or just a big old whopping opportunity where you can really take all of the things in your life and create leverage and take advantage of an opportunity. Maybe that's. It might be new to the marketplace, or it just might be new to you. And then the third thing is there's a risk of loss. What does that mean? Well, I've very rarely been able to get something, take advantage of an opportunity without giving something else up. So there's always going to be a trade inside of something. You can say everything's upside for everybody, but that's really not the case generally. So, you know, I, I've. I've learned to, you know, understand how to evaluate, like, what am I giving up and what am I getting for this? And is that a good trade for me? So those are the three things, people and adventure and the risk of loss inside of an inflection point. Look, I've burned the boat in my life and given up a huge chunk of what I had worked for five distinct times in my life, one of which I might as well share. I'll share one right now. So I was early in my career and I was building a national company, and we Historically, and I think it was because of the makeup of the partnership group. Historically, we really focused on this one revenue stream, this one aspect of business. And it was large construction, complicated construction projects. And you know, it was it just because, I mean, we had two master's degrees in building construction that had historic, that had historically worked inside of the commercial construction industry. So, you know, the, the camp, the company had taken on the personality and the skill of the leadership. And so that's what we knew how to do. That's what we ended up doing. I thought from a strategic perspective that we were doing the wrong service lines. I wanted to franchise the business. I wanted to be a national company, but we were so busy doing all of these other things that we could never get these other service lines off the ground because we were focused on, on these other things which were paying everybody's salaries and bringing in the money. And, you know, just we, we kind of naturally and maybe lazily followed the business into where, you know, what our skill sets said we, we were good at. So I, I, I one I got so tired of us not being able to launch these other service lines that I came into the office on the weekend and we had 33 customers that, that were giving us 95% of our work. And this was time when you would send faxes. So I got our letterhead and I crafted a letter correspondence to these 33 customers. And it basically said, in a nutshell, we are no longer we thank you for your business. You are a incredible partner. We are no longer performing any of these services, and these are the services that we will be performing, effective immediately. So don't even send us any more of these other types of jobs. Signed me and I stuck it in the fax 33 times. Changed the header, of course, stuck it in the fax 33 times. And then I laid them all out on the conference table with the little fax confirmation that I had actually sent these out to all of our customers. So when the team came in on Monday morning, they basically saw that I had just murdered the entire business. Now, that was a little excessive. I was a little impulsive, but maybe I didn't have the skills to figure out a cleaner way to do it. But I was just like, look, we can make it on these other service lines, but until we create the time to focus on it, it's just not going to happen. And sure enough, phones went dead. We went dead for about three weeks. And in that time, while we were wrapping up our other projects, I mean, we still had a Pilot pipeline of work, because these were big projects. So we had a pipeline of work and a pipeline of money coming in for some number of months. But we didn't have any new opportunities coming in for our estimators and our salespeople to go out and do because we basically said don't send us that work anymore. All right, well, inside of that, what happened is our estimators and our salespeople, we had all day long to focus on these new service lines. And within a month we started getting the types of jobs that we wanted. We needed to learn how to, how to advertise a little differently. We needed to go directly to the consumer for a few things. So we had to figure that out. But ultimately, because I was able to say we are going to stop focusing on this and we are going to change our focus to that, it led to the business that I was ultimately able to franchise, keep our franchisees safe and grow that into a national brand with over 240 locations and ultimately sell that business. So had I not done that, I think we would have just, we would have muddled along, which is the worst place to be inside of a business. So again, you know, I understood how important focus was. I probably couldn't articulate it at the time, but I understood how important focus was. So, so the, the, the, the point that I want to make as I wrap this up is, is direct your focus with intention. Don't let the business of the business and the problems of the business dictate what you focus on. Be incredibly intentional and be incredibly protective with your focus as the business leader because whatever it is you focus on, that's what you're going to get. And the last thing is find ways to go deeper. Go deeper and focus more intensely on things that matter. And I'm going to give you a couple of book recommendations here for when you find some time to really think about improving your focus. First of all, the book Mastery by Robert Greene. This is incredible book. It's one of the most highly recommended books by people that are incredibly respected for the way that they think and the way that they've built business. And, and it will help you think about dedication and patience and learning from mentors. That's Mastery by Robert Greene. And the other one, I haven't heard that much about this book. I, or I don't know why I ordered it at some point in time, but it's called the Talent Code by Daniel Coyle and it's fascinating and it talks about how deep and careful, deliberate and purposeful practice leads to mastery of different things. So both of those would tell you that if you want to be great at anything, how you focus and what you focus on is the only way to get there. So with that, I hope you guys got something out of this. This is something that I work on, my focus on a daily basis. And it is absolutely paramount in creating the future that you want for yourself, creating the life, in creating the business and creating the outcomes and leaving the legacy. So again, Jeff Duden, give us a like, give us a share, give us a subscribe and I appreciate you listening. Thanks for joining me on the home front.