The Value of Focus
All of us know what it is like to be distracted. With our smartphones buzzing in our pockets at least once a minute, it’s hard to keep your focus on the things that really matter. In this coaching session Pat Precourt hones in on why the issue of focus is so important, both for your overall success and for the profitability of any business endeavors you involve yourself in. You won’t be able to profit or reach the level of fulfillment and satisfaction you desire if you’re constantly distracted. This one is about the value of focus.
Are you crystal clear on your main area of focus? If not, how can you expect to STAY focused? Click To Tweet
Before you can be concerned about maintaining focus, you have to know what you are trying to focus on. That means you have to be crystal clear on your main area of focus. What is the one thing that you were aiming at in every activity and responsibility you’re involved in? Answer that question and you will be able to determine what doesn’t fit within that framework – THOSE are the things that distract and keep you from your focus. Listen to Pat’s insights and how he uses the game of rugby to illustrate the incredible value of keeping your focus clear.
When you can’t stay focused in your business, you lose money. Period. Click To Tweet
In business, focus is everything. The things that move the ball of profitability forward are the things that stay aligned with your primary goals. Any time you bounce away from the things that move you toward success, you decrease your momentum and inertia – and at the very best, you take longer to achieve your goals. But in most cases, losing focus causes you to lose not only traction but also money. Find out how Pat addresses the issue of focus and learn ways that you can increase the self-discipline needed to maintain your focus, on this coaching call.
You can’t just whine, you have to discipline yourself to keep to your commitments. Click To Tweet
Much of what Pat shares in these coaching calls come from real life experiences coaching business professionals who are trying to up their game. He hears a lot of whining, excuses as to why people are having a hard time maintaining focus. He understands, but he also knows that excuses don’t create success. Only the people who are willing to overcome the excuses and barriers are the ones who will reach their goals and accomplish great things. In this call, Pat has a handful of tips for how you can increase your self-control and get to your goals without fail. Be sure you watch.
If you’re not in love with what you’re doing, it will be hard to be successful. And if you’re not in love with it, why are you doing it? Click To Tweet
One of the main reasons Pat has seen for a lack of focus in the real estate professionals he coaches is that they’re involved in things that they don’t love to do. If you are not in love with what you’re doing, it is going to be hard to stay committed to the point that success follows. And that begs the question, if you are not in love with what you’re doing, why are you doing it? Life is too short to be busy with things that don’t bring satisfaction or fulfillment. Maybe your problem with distraction and lack of focus is actually a simple matter: You are not doing what you love. Find out more in this coaching call.
Outline of this great episode
- [3:35] What happens when brilliant people can’t stay focused?
- [5:12] The game of rugby as an example of staying focused
- [13:22] How often do you leave your lane?
- [21:13] There is a time and place to change lanes, but it shouldn’t happen every day.
The Monday Mindset & Wednesday Wisdom calls are group coaching calls included in the REWW Academy. These live calls are hosted bi-weekly by Justin Colby and Pat Precourt and cover a specific topic each session – ending with live Q&A at the end of each call.
These calls are designed to empower students to be effective entrepreneurs, creating business that thrive and make money through real estate investing. Students are encouraged to attend the calls and bring any struggles or questions they have about business or real estate.
The REWW Academy program combines our complete suite of software applications with our personalized coaching and a community of like-minded entrepreneurs to provide you with the most comprehensive real estate investing program available.
If you would like to learn more about the REWW Academy, attending these calls live, or learning fast effective ways to get involved in real estate investing, go to academy.reww.com and follow the link at the bottom to apply today.
Below is the full transcription of The Value of Focus Presenter Monday Mindset call with Pat Precourt.
Pat Precourt:
I don’t know why it’s anymore risky to look at the sun today than it is any other time. But hey, if that’s what the media tells me, they must be right. Kinda funny. The [inaudible 00:00:15] is not yet on this side either. It’ll be here. It must be in east coast [inaudible 00:00:20]. Cool, alright getting ready in a couple minutes to pop on a call here. What I’m going to do today for you is I’m going to share, through metaphor, a great example on creating success in our lives. A lot of the trainings, let me take a step back here, a lot of the trainings that we do re tweak are a direct result of conversations and coaching that I’ve done during the days a week leading up to this call.
What I’m going to talk about today is just something I see very commonly, it’s almost like I don’t know, a disease that a lot of people caught, and I want to share that it’s hard to express the value of focus in words. So I’m going to use a bit of a metaphor today to show you in real life the value of focus as it’s expressed in a certain sport near and dear to me, and then we’ll bring it back to how it applies to us and our business, okay?
[inaudible 00:01:32] says the eclipse hasn’t happened. No, its happening now. Cool. To me the eclipse isn’t that big of a deal but, hey, you know I don’t know I guess the fact that it only happens once in a while makes it a big deal. I don’t know, don’t know for certain. What are you going to do right? BAM. Hold on let me just finish getting this camera adjusted it’s driving me nuts right now. I don’t know why…so, we’re going to do one other thing here. What if we…guys be patient with me for like 13 seconds. Be patient, one second here. We’re almost there. Almost there!
While we’re doing this let me ask you guys if anybody’s got anything exciting you want to share, or any challenges in your business you want to share. I love challenges. It’s where my expertise comes alive, solving something that’s going on in our businesses, alright? Almost there. I’m putting the camera on a new stand that’ll work a little bit better for this presentation here. Alright, so let’s see what that did for us here. There we go. Alright now you guys are where you belong. Now we can bring it up a little. Perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect, okay. “Your eyes can’t focus on it without specific glasses.” You know, I’m not going to look at it anyways. I wouldn’t look into the sun. Well, whatever alright let’s get rocking rolling here. So, presentation.
It is important to focus in your business, because I’ll tell you right now, I’ve dealt with 1, 2 ,3, might be some I’m forgetting, three people in the last five or six days that I work with one on one that are brilliant, talented, got great potential, but they can’t freaking stay focused. They’re like all over the place, and I’m like losing my mind. One of them, because we’ve been at this a little while, I said, “listen, love you to death ,and you’re awesome, and I can’t work with you anymore, because you won’t listen to an effing thing I keep telling you. We’re not going to make any progress. If you can’t discipline yourself a little bit here, get really truly committed then you’re wasting your money and me, and I’m not going to sit here and take your money if I can’t help you, and I can’t help you if you’re unwilling to help yourself. Alright? Kind of makes sense?”
So I want to share first what I call staying in your lanes metaphor or analogy. I don’t even know the difference between a metaphor and an analogy but I’m going to share what I call staying in your lane. So you’ll hear me say, if I’m working with you ever, you’ll hear me say all the time, “stay in your lane” or “you’re out of your lane.’ I’m going to show you what that means. Then we’re going to show you and that’s why I’m going to pull my whiteboard here so that you have a visual that you’re going to be able to pull back on. It does start with identifying what your lane is. You know, what your primary objective and cause is. What is it that you’re working towards/on? What’s your role? Alright ?
The game of rugby. I’m going to use rugby as the metaphor or analogy here, okay. In the game of rugby, our job is to possess the ball and advance the ball. Because, ultimately if all we do is posses the ball and advance the ball we’ll score, and if we’re the only ones who posses the ball it means nobody else can possess it. Then they can’t score and we win. Possess the ball and advance the ball. What does it take to do that? Well, in the game if rugby man, like life, like business, it requires we stay in our lane. I’m going to show you what that means. While we’re going through this I want you to ask yourself the simple question, and when I say, “what’s your thing?”, don’t come up with a nine page..”this is my thing.” No, that’s your problem. That ain’t your thing. Your problem is you can’t identify your thing. Rugby, to advance the ball and maintain possession. My gym. My fitness center. It’s one thing, provide an outstanding experience for our clients every time they walk through the doors. That simple. Your thing has got to be that simple. If some of you want to share your thing, that’d be cool.
Let me show you how the game of rugby is easily won. All you got to do is, two things. Maintain possession. Advance the ball. So real quick, I’m not going to spend too much time going through that, all bout rugby. But to give you a little idea, this is like the end zones, right? Two ends of the field like a football field. Rugby is played north and south, okay? We go up and down the field. Now you can run any way you want. There’s no rule, you have sidelines, you have to stay within the field, but you can run any way you want. But, that’s not how the game is won. Okay?
A couple things you need to rugby. Your entire team is behind you when you have the ball. The ball is an onside/offside line. So let’s say hypothetically, I’m here and I have the ball. My entire team is going to be behind me and it would look like this. A guy here, guy here, guy here, guy here and I could have some guys out this way. And it’d be relatively in this capacity and typically you’d have some guys in here okay? Going up the field.
Follow me on this, I’m going to make this really simple, okay? The guy with the ball is the onside/offside line. The only way the opposition can stop the guy with the ball is to tackle him, okay? That’s it. BAM. And usually they’ll be lined up like this, man for man. Marking your guys, right? Guy for guy. Fifteen guys on a field.
My objective here is to run straight at this guy. Commit him. Get him tackle me. Hopefully, maybe run a little through him a little so that this guy here gets pulled out of his lane and has to help him to tackle. Cause if he does that, right when I’m going to get tackled, this guy here is running forward as I run forward and I pass the ball, he catches the ball and keeps running forward. Now, if this guy is pulled out of his lane he’s free to score. He advances the ball. If he’s not pulled out of his lane, he engages, the tackle is made. This guy comes up, same thing, ball gets passed, makes a tackle. Guy comes up, ball gets passed. Maybe he gets pulled out of his lane, he opens up to score. And you keep going back and forth across the field. Pounding and pounding until you create a weakness.
Here’s the interesting thing about rugby, okay? There is massive barriers/obstructions along the way of the game. That’s these guys. But the difference between rugby and, say, life or the way some of us engage life, in the game of rugby we take on the challengers on our terms. In life we avoid challenges and if they happen, sh*t, we’re stumbled by them. Instead of going right at them, attacking them, creating a weakness, an opening. Right? ‘Cause the second this guy overpowers him he’s got to come assist the tackle. This man’s already advanced a little pass and he’s going on to score through the gap. That’s how rugby is played. That’s why we play it in lanes.
Now, let me show you a little difference here, okay? We’re going to screw up as little of this as possible, not to rewrite the whole thing. Alright, hang on. I showed you the right way to play rugby and the very simple objective. Maintain possession. Advance the ball. Rinse and repeat. Maintain possession. Advance the ball. Maintain possession. Advance the ball. If you do that you will score. You will win the game. This is the opposition.
Now, I’m going to show you how to screw up the game of rugby. Remember we got this guy and this guy and this guy and this guy and this guy and this guy and this guy and this guy and this guy and maybe we have some support guys, right? He’s got the ball. He starts this way. Everybody advances, right? But, he thinks he’s faster than the opposition. He thinks he’s stronger than the opposition. He thinks he can run his a** around him so he does this. Makes a left hand turn. Runs out here. He leaves his lane, he gets distracted, he looks for an alternative path. Something that looks better. A better opportunity. This guy intimidated him, whatever it may be.
Let me show you every guy, every lane you cross here, eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. Eliminated, eliminated, eliminated, eliminated. When all of these guys are simply now, you eliminated your whole team, you left them behind, you pulled out of your lane, they can’t support you. And all these guys are simply doing this, loop it over. Right? Cause they’re already out in front of you, and they’re coming in like this. You’ve got nowhere to go. You’ve eliminated your support. You eliminated your strength. You pulled away from your plan and you empowered the opposition, because you left your lane and got distracted.
You thought the grass was greener over there. You thought there was a better opportunity. You thought you weren’t good enough to run in your lane so you decided to chose another lane. All of those reasons are lies and all those reason will leave you stranded out at the wing with the entire force of the opposition bearing down on you, and nobody left to support you because you ran away from them. That’s what happens when we lose focus of business.
Now think honestly, how many times have you been distracted? How many times have you left your lane? Are you even crystal clear on your lane right now? Maintain possession. Advance the ball. Maintain possession. Advance the ball. Provide an outstanding experience for our clients every time they walk through the door. That clarity. You need that to stay within your lane. How else would you know the boundaries of your lane if you can’t define the lane? How would you know if you’re cutting across your own support, eliminating your support, and empowering the defense? How would you know? They’re like, “oh I got to learn how to talk to sellers.” No you…that’s not the hang up.
This kind of clear to you guys? Does this makes sense, this metaphor? Just say yes or no. I said these trainings come out of real life struggles I see on a regular basis with our base of students. And this one frustrates me because this is a discipline issue. This is a commitment issue. You can’t just want it, you got to be committed to it. You can’t just be interested in it, you got to be willing to discipline yourself to it. If you’re not passionate about what you’re currently doing the chances of your getting through the defense, pretty slim.
Passion is what takes mediocrity to awesome. And if you’re doing this for some weird other reason but you’re not wholly passionate about it man, you’re driving a lamborghini on some very low octane gas. If you get what I’m saying. May all look good on the outside but its going to run like crap. Never going to be able to develop the horse power it’s capable of. Wanted to share that message with you.
A couple things I’ll end on here. Okay? Just a couple things. I already kind of shared this with you but I wrote this note to myself, ” if you’re not in love with what you’re doing, it’s going to be very difficult to be very successful at it and if your intent is not to be very successful at it, why. Why would you be doing it in the first place?” Does that kind of makes sense? If your intent is not outrageously successful, why would you do it in the first place? Last thing I’ll share with you, okay? Once you’re clear on your lane, once you’re crystal clear on your lane, maintain possession, move the ball forward, crystal clear. That defines what you should be doing. Alright?
Once you’re there, scream it to the world. Be the loudest person screaming that intention. The world will step up, fall on a place, help you support your outcome. It was kind of funny, we were out in Montague, New York. Montague is the tip of Long Island, dubbed the fishing capital of the world. We’re at this little breakfast place, my wife and I, and one thing I realized, because there’s a million breakfast places yet this dude’s always jamming. You know what occurred to me? He never stops selling but he doesn’t sell like, “hey buy my stuff”. He sells by telling you what awesomeness he’s serving and ruthless, ruthless about it. But describing, from the bread to the way they bring in their locally raised bacon from the pigs, how the cheese is also from a local farm, how it’s never frozen, all this kind of stuff, never stops selling. He’s the loudest guy in the, its not really an island, well it is kind of an island. He’s the loudest guy in Montague talking about his lane. That’s why he’s so successful and if you, quite honestly, your hangup’s about bragging about what you do, if you can’t stand behind it, its going to be hard enough for someone else to stand behind it. Does that make sense?
So, comment here says, “this helped a lot when you said focus on number of leads you tweaked.” That’s it, simple. So thank you, that was from Dan. Yeah, how simple is that? What if your issue is right now you got nobody to talk to? Then forget everything else. Focus on generating leads. I say this many times, business and business in general can be broken down to a very simple statement. All you need is three things. Be able to generate leads, that’s what you were talking about Dan, be able to convert leads to clients, and then assist them to rinse and repeat. That’s it. That’s it. That’s it. He’s all, “Pat I’m not making the money I want yet.” Well which one of those do you not have yet? One or two or all three? And if it’s all three start with the leads. Once you get the leads focus on converting. Once you’ve got them converting a good conversion rate, now focus on developing a process behind it. But at least you know what the freak to focus on. Now you can change the result and the outcomes. You don’t just keep doing the same thing.
One thing I like about rugby, love about rugby that’s why I played it for 17 years right, rugby’s not a wait around kind of sport. And this is such another great comparisons to life, right? Those who succeed in life do not wait, they create. They don’t wait for opportunities, they create opportunities. They don’t wait for luck, they create luck. They don’t wait to learn, they create an education by doing. Those who don’t reach out cause they desire, they wait around. They see what will come their way. Like a jellyfish waiting around freaking for a fish to float by to sting or something. Whereas like a giant mako just goes out and eats everything. Be the mako. That was pretty funny.
Alright gals and guys I’m going to let you rock and roll on out okay. When you hear me refer to stay in your lane, that’s what I’m talking about, okay? Get focused. Know what your lane is. Know the boundaries of your lane. If right now it’s leads then that’s your lane. Don’t do anything but get leads, get leads, get leads, get leads. “But Pat there’s a webinar about rehabbing houses.” So what, that’s not in your lane right now, you’re going to cut off your support and load up the opposition. Get in your lane. Get leads. Get leads. Get leads. Ball possession and advance the ball. Provide an outstanding experience for our clients every single time they walk through our doors. Get leads. Create your lane, stay in your lane. There’s a time and a place to change lanes, no doubt, but know that time. Don’t just run haphazardly across the field cutting off your support, losing your focus, and inevitably running into the heart of the opposition. Peace guys, always a pleasure. Have a great day.
