Two Essential Skills for Business Success

Transcription of Episode

Recently, it's been kind of obvious that there's these two important lessons that a lot of business owners either are struggling to learn or they haven't become aware of yet that I think are critical.

It's interesting that these two things are kind of the secret. You don't have to be super smart at everything. In fact, you don't have to know a lot of things to be able to be successful, but you do have to know, at least, these two things. There's a couple more, I'm sure, but these two things are really important.

Number one: you need to know how to prioritize. That is, to be able to identify what's truly important and what deserves your focus.

That ability to be able to determine what is truly important in your business for you to focus on as the business owner is one of the number one skills you have to have in order to become successful.

The second is very similar because it builds on number one, which is: once you identify what is the most important thing for you to [00:01:00] focus in on your business, then focus in on it and only work on that thing and fix that thing until it's fully resolved or resolved sufficiently.

Number one is the ability to identify what's most important and number two is the ability to then focus on what's most important and do something about it.

I see people, all the time, running into this scenario where they recognize first, well, I should say, they don't actually recognize what's important, so they end up working on a bunch of stuff that really doesn't make any difference at all.

This kind of harkens back to a previous episode where I talked about the 80/20 rule. Being able to recognize what's actually going to produce results is critical, so knowing and having some framework for identifying what's really most important in your business is very important.

I talk about that in my book, How to Fix Your Funnel. It's five bucks, I highly recommend it.

You need to learn that skill. You need to be able to have a framework that allows you to quickly zero in on what's most important in your business so that you're not [00:02:00] doing a bunch of things that don't produce results.

But then, once you do identify that, what I see happening too frequently as people say, "Okay, yeah. That is important. In fact, that's the most important thing that I could fix or work on in my business right now. Let me find every other thing in the world to do besides that."

I think it's part of our human nature. We tend to avoid extraneous effort. When we find something that's most important, usually we know what's at stake. There's something critical about it.

So either it's a fear of messing up, it's a fear of not getting it right, or maybe it's the fear that it's going to be too much work, that it's going to be a lot of effort, I don't know if I've got the energy for that or the focus power, whatever. I don't know what it is exactly, and it'll be unique to each person.

Figure out, how do you learn to focus on what's most important once you identify it?

Because if you can't identify what's most important and you can't focus in and work on that thing, then [00:03:00] I can guarantee one thing: you will never be successful the way that you could be if you can do those two things.

This doesn't just apply to business. This applies in about every area of life.

If you have relationships and you can't identify which relationships are most important and make sure you're focusing in on those relationships, you're going to have a tough time.

If you don't have the ability in other areas of your life that recognize what's most important and focus in on that and get that thing done, you're going to struggle.

Remember: not all things are equal. Everything has a priority. Priority indicates one thing, not multiple things. That means that, at one point in time, there's one thing that's most important and that one thing should deserve and receive your full, focused attention while it needs to be addressed.

Use these two rules to change the way that you approach your business.

If you've found yourself procrastinating, working [00:04:00] on things that you know really aren't going to make a difference, or you struggle to figure out what is really important, in that case, get my book, How to Fix Your Funnel, and I'll give you simple framework for doing that.

Once you have that, it's just going to be up to you to be able to have the self-respect to be able to work on those things that you know are going to produce the results that you say that you want.

And I think that's another place you can look. If you find yourself not producing the results that you say that you want, look at, why is it that you say that?

Are you saying you want that result because it's expected of you? Or is it something you truly want for yourself?

If you can't get to a place where you truly want it for yourself, then you won't be able to get your focus in on the most important thing because there's a part of you that's big enough and significant enough that is keeping you from focusing on that thing and getting that thing addressed that you've identified as most important.

These two questions are worth your consideration. These two skills are [00:05:00] worth your development.

If you'll do those things, I can guarantee you'll see more success for yourself in whatever way that you define that because you'll be focusing in on what's most important, producing real results, and getting those objectives that you say you want to have.

This is Ryan Chapman from FixYourFunnel. Keep moving forward.