am in a charitable institution, and there is need all around. the temptation to try and solve all the world’s problems is great sometimes, but as you correctly pointed out, when we try to do too much, we do not finish anything well. the thing is to make a TO DO list and delete from it what not to do, that way, you are left with what you can actually and realistically do. that’s a great tip that i have shared with my colleagues. thanks for doing what you do, so many of us (here in kenya) are benefitting as well.

It was great talking with you the other day.

Focus is key! What can be particularly difficult is when you are dependent on an existing business model for revenue that you know will not take your business to a desired level. But yes, you are totally right. It was difficult when we had to clean shop and let go of 10 people to refocus our energy on the bigger opportunity. This is never fun, but ultimately is the answer to reaching success in the long term. Being candid with those that are not going to be part of the new focus is the best approach. They need to know where they stand. For the most part people are understanding as long as you are honest and upfront with them.
Expanding on the first part of this comment, a lot of entrepreneurs don’t make the change because to some degree their business is working. Over 9 months ago we decided to drop the website dev and laser beam focus on the bigger opportunity even though we were profitable, it is a nice feeling once you get through the transition and start to gain momentum. Big things to come!

So, let’s rephrase the “Who doesn’t risk, doesn’t win” to “Who doesn’t focus, doesn’t win”. It’s a more positive way to express the same.

Up unitl October 2006 we were a traditional real estate agency. we did both residential sales and property management. We were a part of a major australasian real estate franchise. We had seen strong growth in our property management division, so the decision was made to sell of our sales division and focus 100% on property management.

Since we have focused we have grown the business from 1200 properties under management to over 2000 and have gone from a single office opertation to four offices and a staff of over 40.

Simon, keep up the blogginf and good luck in your new ventures.

The most important sentence in this post, I think was:
“What differentiates the effective people from the rest of us is that they decide what they are not going to do and this decision is based on the goal that they are striving for.”

Cheers.

What’s interesting is that many people know this at an intellectual level, but for various reasons, focus seems to be hard to achieve in practice (see my post on this at http://www.latentfuture.com/blog/why-is-focus-so-hard.html).