A Focus on the Right Things

How to Make the Turn You Need?

Living A Life of Focus

How we plan to promote what and who we are?

Be an agent of change by creating and using actionable “focus statements.”  What’s a focus statement? A focus statement is the smallest marketing component.  It’s the action you plan to achieve within a year. It’s the stuff you can act upon daily.  For more than a decade we’ve accumulated twelve such statements we can share with you. 

The Thought or Concept:
Defining the Focus Statement.
Each year we come up with a single statement to devote all our actions and attention.  It’s like a rally cry (mantra) for our family. The benefits of drafting one leads to impacting change in an area of your life in a single focus. 

The focus statement is all about growth.  It’s the one area in which you target for intentional growth for a year.  By using a focus statement it means you’re improving as well as securing your ability to lead others in this area of focus.  Stop growing and see how your life begins to shrivel up and die.  

Putting the focus statement in action looks like this.  Repeat it, say it aloud each day. Talk about it as often as you can.  Find books, articles, podcasts, etc. on the topic. Get to know it, learn it, and most importantly grow from it.

The Practice:
Defining a focus statement is one thing, but seeing it in action is another and will inspire you to act accordingly.  Before we get into a single focus statement, I’d like to summarize the 12 we’re going to share over the next few weeks.  Here are our 12 focus statements:

1. Welcome the rain. Before I knew that having a focus statement was a practice, I’d started it by accident with a book called “Welcome the Rain.”  It’s because of this book that we learned to have the right perspective regarding life in any situation.
2. A deadline is a deadline.  This statement taught us and those we influence how to get serious about setting deadlines and adhering to the deadlines that have been set.
3. Everyone is a leader to someone.  When you take a year to place your attention on any topic, growth is inevitable.  We discovered that everyone is a leader (including you) and we now understand why.
4. Under commit and over deliver.  If you want others to think well of you and the service you provide, learn how to under commit, but wow them by over delivering.
5. Create margin in everything we do.  We’ve learned to get control of our life by slowing down what I call “the pace of life.”  Margin means that you can breathe.  My mentors taught me this lesson.
6. Change incrementally just by taking the very next step.  In order to go somewhere, anywhere, you must put one foot in front of the other.  Everything to be accomplished in life takes deliberate incremental steps.
7. Building and helping others, helps me.  The best way to help yourself starts with helping others.  You want to ensure you’re planting a huge field of helping others so that you will reap a bountiful harvest of the help you need to produce in your life.
8. Everything is a trade off, what am I trading?  This statement might be my favorite.  It taught us that saying “yes” to something means we’re saying “no” to everything else.
9. A love affair with my words.  When you love something, you give attention to it.  I believe that our world is shaped by our words. The life we live today is a result of the words we spoke yesterday.  It’s imperative to have a love affair with our words because our world depends on it.
10. Do something.  This focus statement is simple like the Nike tagline, “Just Do It.”  We have to take action on a priority. I like people who are doing something.  It also implies that the majority are doing nothing, which is life’s default. 
11. Promoting the gift within us.  Life gets easier when you focus on what you do well and are gifted in doing.  When you operate outside this area, your life is a struggle. We decided to promote the things that we have within us so that we can make a huge splash in the world.
12. Stop talking and start doing.  I’ve been around too many people who say a lot.  They are always going to do something great. When I saw this normal habit begin to rub off on me, we made this statement our focus.  Let’s just stop all the talking and get to work.

This “focus statement” practice has been a huge game changer.  As you can see I’ve had years of practice. Each statement represents a year of focus.  If you want to improve the life, which is your business, it will require a focused effort.  Start with something simple like a focus statement.

Today is Friday!

I’m introducing you to a marketing practice Pamela and I have had for over a decade.  It works. Don’t put off this simple habit, start one today. In a year or by the end of the year, you’ll see a significant change in your area of focus.

Do me two favors: 1) share your focus statement with me and 2) pass this information along to one of your friends.  Thanks for visiting Kerry A. Clark & Co. 

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