Questions of the Week

How do you exercise your power of focus? 

What would you have to change in order to magnify your focus 10X?  

Where do you need to focus more, where should you focus less? 

What matters to you most? How do you define what can and can’t be controlled? Where are you living the majority of the time? 

“Don’t dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward toward finding the answer.” - Dr. Denis Waitley 

“That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” - Steve Jobs 

“No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.” – Warren Buffett

Finish What You Start 

A dear friend of mine described me as an enigma wrapped in an enigma. He’s probably not far off that description. I say to my wife Shanna often, “At least you will never be bored,” to which her response is usually, “That’s the damn truth!” As I reflect on the past 45 years, my life starts looking more like an alternative version of Forest Gump than a normal life. We are just missing Tom Hanks sitting on the bus stop bench talking about his variety of life experiences. My first job paid $50 a month plus tips when I was 10 years old delivering newspapers. It is energizing to know that I have that in common with billionaires Mark Cuban and Warren Buffett. In restaurants, I’ve done everything from dishwasher to bartender, I’ve served in the Navy as a Meteorologist, worked as a Paralegal, sweated in construction, went to Nursing school, even worked at a Nursing home, have been a Deputy Sheriff serving on the Dive team and owned a Food truck business (that will go on the don’t do again list). So, sometimes you may have to experience many different paths before finding your thing… Keep going and finish what you start. Fortunately for me in 2003, I found my passion in the Real Estate industry and have been doing it ever since. I have been an agent, speaker, investor, flipper, and the most fulfilling career I could have asked for has been Coaching business owners full-time since 2011. I’m reluctant to call everything I have done as accomplishments since many are lessons listed on the “Lessons I’m hoping to never repeat” list.Typically, hope isn’t a strategy. Yet the only way you truly know if you’ve learned a lesson is simply by not repeating it. 

Recently, I was asked to fill out a Biography for marketing a project and one of the questions was “What is Your Best Quality?”, shortly followed by “What is Your Worst Quality?” My short answer to both is Focus and Discipline. 

 “Focus is always a strong point in my personality. If I get interested in something, I get really interested. I want to read about it, I want to talk about it, I want to meet people that are involved in it.” – Warren Buffett

1st-Rule of Turning Business into Legacy

Focus & Discipline – Keep your eyes on the prize. In order to become the best at something, it’s crucial to be disciplined enough to finish what you start. Even more important is the discipline to avoid counterproductivity. For example, having an affinity to win the National hot-dog eating contest, while working towards completing the Kona Iron-man isn’t the best combination. Next, avoiding distraction in order to stay disruptive requires focus. When you combine focus and intensity on any one thing for long enough, inevitability you’ll reach momentum! 

When Berkshire Hathaway Founder Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft met each other, they immediately realized they would become great friends.

 “Shortly after I met Bill Gates, Bill’s dad asked each of us to write down on a piece of paper a word that would best describe what had helped us the most, Bill and I, without any collaboration at all, just wrote down the word focus.” -Warren Buffett

If you are going to do something, go all in on it. How do you know if focus and discipline is positive or negative? Either way, when you decide to do something, finish it. In 2004, I was finishing my Naval Enlistment and moving into the exciting world of Real Estate full time. I left the Navy with 160 hours of college and yet only had an associate degree. Something interesting happens when you start college in one place, then bounce around schools. The term colleges like to use is, “Residence requirements”, which I prefer to call, “I’m going to make sure I get my blood money for at least 10 classes or 30 hours or you don’t get the piece of paper you are working towards.” I was only three classes, or 9 credit hours shy of earning a Bachelor of Science. My intention was always to go back and finish my degree. Yet, after discovering how much I liked real estate and frankly was really good at it, the days turned to weeks, weeks to months, and months to years. 

 When focus becomes an obsession…

Having been through the housing crash of 2008 and earning a living in the real estate profession, I have a love for movies describing that era. One of my favorite movies is, The Big Short, which caused a fascination with Wall Street. Movies like Boiler Room, Wolf of Wall Street, Too Big to Fail, of course the classic Gordon Gekko movie Wall Street, and The Pursuit of Happiness have all created a fascination with wealth building, finance, and investing. I actually had the privilege to meet Chris Gardner, the real-life person Will Smith portrayed in Pursuit of happiness, and got an autographed copy of his Best-Selling book. 

“The secret to success: Find something you love to do so much; you can’t wait for the sun to rise to do it all over again.” – Chris Gardner

After one-too-many late-night viewings of The Big Short, I went deep on how to build a hedge fund and how to create a financial management company from the ground up. I discovered every license requirement, securities exam, insurance, series this and that, which lead me to start my journey towards this…CFP or Certified Financial Planner. Turns out many of the individual exam requirements can be bypassed if you just get this little certification… (Insert Sarcasm) The CFP is a MONSTER of Financial Designations FYI. Even before the coursework began, I stumbled upon this little blurb in the CFP Qualifications….  

CFP- EARNING YOUR BACHELOR'S DEGREE

You must verify that you hold a bachelor’s degree or higher from an accredited college or university to fulfill the second part of the CFP® certification education requirement. (Disclaimer: At the time of this blog I have not yet completed the CFP Designation nor am claiming to be one)

Arrrrrggggg!!! I don’t want to go back I yelled! Why do I need this thing? I haven’t needed it for anything else! Obscenities were possibly used and, yet, if you are truly focused and you want something bad enough, you finish what you start. While I am still working on the education for Finance with  many exams to follow, I am proud to say after a 15-year layoff, many late nights, and some focus and Discipline, in December 2018 I finished my Bachelor of Science Degree. All it takes is Focus and Discipline and anyone can Finish what you start.