Hey, did you know the grass is always greener on the other side? If you’re employed, it’s better to be freelance. If you’re freelance, being employed means you don’t have to chase clients for payment or worry about where the next pay cheque (funny Canadians and their spelling eh?) will come from.

Okay we know that’s a lie but we still often believe it.

What you place in front of you gets the attention. And what gets the attention gets better. – One Bed One Bank Account

Where you water

One thing I heard during a course on marriage counselling (while getting my counselling degree) was that the grass is always greener where you water it.

In the context of marriage we were talking about taking the time to communicate properly with your spouse, to go on dates, and to show your kids that the top priority is not them but your relationship with your spouse. So many people let their focus stray to ‘greener’ things rather than their spouse, which of course means they see results in areas other than their marriage.

[Tweet “You get more of what you focus on”]

A few weeks ago I talked about being surrounded by negativity and our topic today also applies to being around negative people — the business owners who spread their focus too thin, then their business falters, or at best, stalls. When that happens, they look for excuses for why their business isn’t successful.

Scattered

Many of the people I talk to who run their own businesses do this very thing. They run around ‘watering’ every possible part of their business.

They try to write good sales emails and follow a few blogs on that.

They try to have great project management skills and listen to a few podcasts about it.

They want to learn to price well, and have read a few books on it.

They run around giving the bare minimum of water/attention to every possible area they can think of. Sure there is some growth but nothing thrives.

Today, pick something to focus on and really dive into it. Spend the next six months reading everything you can about effective project management and build out a solid, repeatable process for your business. Test it with your clients and ask them how they felt it worked.

Only after six months do you bother really digging into the next thing. And since you’ve built a fully documented, robust process for projects — based on your research and client feedback — your business can now run (grow) smoothly, freeing you up to temporarily focus on growing another area.

When your business is strong it doesn’t need your consistent management. Sure you need to check in from time to time to make sure it’s still thriving, but it doesn’t need constant attention.

Stop jumping around — doing so only means that every part of your business is going to take way longer to actually grow.

photo credit: julochka cc