Lacking focus in your business is like going to work in a dead end job. That might appeal to some of you (and I’m not knocking it, but it just ain’t me)
If you are the owner of a window cleaning, pressure washing or soft wash business and your goal is to grow and build a business, then you need to focus… if you want to be super successful you need to be SUPER FOCUSED.
All successful window-cleaning businesses I know are focused and it is interesting to see at what level of focus gets you those big bucks! Oh yeah, there are levels too.
Focus will buy you success and success comes from believing you can do it.
To become successful you need to really want it, you have to be so focused that your critics do not even get a look in, you have to BELIEVE in yourself and your mission. You have to have conviction.
In the next issue of Window Cleaning Magazine (Jan/Feb 2017) I write about my personal experiences on FOCUS. I have been on both sides of the fence. That’s right, I had focus and at one point in my business life I also lost that focus. I talk with real time experience in the hope that others can take something from it.
So the first question to yourself should be where do you want to be?
If it is to be comfortable and not ever worry about bills, take two or three holidays a year, then start to focus on those goals that will take you there. If it is to be the biggest in your geographical area then start that focus NOW!
To be a HUGE business, you need the power of SUPER FOCUS. You need to research your business, your goals, your demographics so hard like you only have 24hrs before that really important BUSINESS FOCUS TEST.
The test that will decide if you will succeed or not in business. The test that will make you or break you.
I don’t care if you sweat as hard as Paris Hilton playing Sudoku, if you want it.. You will get it. And you will work hard!
Back in 1991 I picked up a book for a very different reason called The Midas Method by Stuart G Goldsmith. This was years before I started a business. The book taught the reader of visualising your goals and adopting successful goal getting.
I spoke briefly about this with Josh Latimer on his Quick Talk Podcast.
I remembered about visualising goals and becoming focused from that book when I started my window cleaning business in 1999. I would apply these methods, without even thinking about it.
(I will explain in more detail in my article due out in the Jan/Feb 2017 issue of WCM)
In the coming article I will tell you about how my friend laughed and mocked me and I still remember the words to this day… he laughed and said, “ You think your going to have lots of people working for you and lots of vans”… I felt knocked!
But I ignored the critic and continued with my focus to build a business with 60 staff.
As I said earlier I have been on both sides of the fence and the past couple of years I have refocused all of my projects with a further SUPER FOCUS in 2017.
My cleaning business currently has 26 staff, with a new window cleaner hired just a month ago and I expect to pick up more employees along the way throughout the coming year.
As a business owner you are always learning, and I think to taste both success and failure is another key element in the progress to your goals.
I had chosen the wrong managers in the past to run my teams, I left the wrong people supervising my contracts, again you learn. You never will know it all. (Now that’s another article I can write all together, right there)
Recently I had a window cleaner say to me, “Why do you always make out the window cleaning side of your business is bigger than what it is?”
At first I was defensive. It was never my intention to give a false impression.
What was he reading into me? My website (it looks professional)? Pictures of my vans (I have had a few over the years)? My use of the word ‘WE’ as opposed to ‘I’? Is it because I think big?
Do you know what? It didn’t matter.
FOCUS and BELIEF and THINKING BIG are the ingredients to success. I’m hoping he has got that now.
So, success only costs £00.01? What is that all about Lee? I hear my readers chime.
Well I took the liberty of searching the net for the book I told you about earlier in this blog, The Midas Method and I have found USED copies on sale at AMAZON (click here). Fill your boots.
I just want to end this blog with this: Success comes in different shapes and sizes. Just because your business might not make the million pound mark does not make your business a failure, far from it! It makes you proactive in your own destiny. Something a lot of us would kill for.
Enjoy the read, find your FOCUS, and ignore the critics.
