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Episode 356 · Mar 24, 2021

Focus vs. Diversification: How to Pursue Both and Win

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George Wright III tackles one of the most persistent challenges for entrepreneurs: the tension between chasing new opportunities and maintaining the focus needed to actually get results. In this solo episode of The Daily Mastermind, George shares a framework he has used across multiple companies to stay on track without closing the door to growth.

Why Entrepreneurs Struggle with Focus

Most driven people are wired to spot opportunity. That instinct is valuable, but without a system around it, it turns into what George calls "shiny object syndrome." The pull to start something new, pivot, or add another project can quietly undermine the momentum you have already built. The good news: focus and diversification are not opposites. With the right framework, you can pursue both.

Focus means follow one course until successful.

George breaks the word down as an acronym: F-O-C-U-S. Follow One Course Until Successful. The real question, he argues, is not whether to focus but which course you are following.

Start with Vision Clarity

The foundation of everything is a clear, high-level vision of the life you want to build. Not a specific task list or business plan, but a genuine picture of what you want your life to look like. That vision becomes your filter.

If someone says, hey man, I got this amazing opportunity, you could say, does that align with where I'm going? Could it in any way, even diversified, help me get there? If not, it's a no.

When you know your destination, every incoming opportunity gets a quick test: does this move me toward the life I want? If not, you pass. If your vision is unclear, you have no filter and every shiny object looks equally valid.

Diversification with Synergy

Once your vision is clear, diversification becomes a tool rather than a distraction, but only when the new pursuits share synergy with what you are already doing. George draws on his own experience running companies across personal development, financial education, marketing, coaching, and even an apparel brand. Each one connected to a shared audience and reinforced the others.

The test is simple: do your ventures feed each other toward your goal? If you are running an online marketing business on one side and door-to-door sales for an unrelated product on the other, you are dividing your energy without compounding it. Synergy means your diversified efforts point at the same target.

Drive Depth Before You Spread Wide

When a new area starts showing promise, resist the urge to go all-in immediately. Explore it lightly first. Once you can see that it genuinely aligns with your vision and contributes to your overall goal, then drive depth into it. Invest serious time and energy at that point, not before. This sequence protects your focus while keeping you open to real opportunities.

Six Keys to Staying Focused

George offers a set of practical tools he has used across his businesses:

1. Clarity of vision. Write down what you want your life to look like. If someone asks and you cannot answer immediately, you do not have it yet. 2. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Identify two or three metrics that tell you whether you are on track, such as lead acquisition cost, revenue, or new customers. KPIs act as your compass so you are not constantly in the weeds. 3. Set weekly priorities. Do not wake up deciding what to work on. Your priorities should already be set before the week begins. 4. Time blocking. Tony Robbins, Robert Stubberg, and many of George's mentors recommend blocking dedicated time for each task. George suggests 60 to 90 minutes per priority item. Multitasking kills focus; time blocking protects it. Robert Stubberg uses a CPR model: concentration time, preparation time, and recovery time. 5. Accountability. Set deadlines and make commitments to others. Accountability creates urgency the way training for a competition does. 6. Track progress weekly. Keep a scorecard. The goal is not to reach a destination but to make consistent progress.

As long as you're making progress, which accountability helps you to do, then that'll really make a difference in your life, and you'll feel more accomplished, you'll feel fulfilled, you'll feel productive because progress is the key.

A final note on simplicity: if your daily list has thirty items, you are not focused. Pare it down to what actually matters and protect your attention for the work that moves you forward.

Action Steps

  • Write a clear, specific vision of the life you want to build. Practice articulating it until you can answer instantly when asked.
  • Identify two or three KPIs that tell you whether you are moving toward your vision. Review them every week.
  • Set your priorities for the coming week before the week starts, and block 60 to 90 minutes for each key task.
  • Before committing to any new opportunity, ask whether it has synergy with your existing goals and whether it moves you toward your vision.
  • Build in accountability by setting real deadlines and sharing your commitments with someone who will hold you to them.

The entrepreneurial path is rarely a straight line, but it does not have to be a scattered one either. When your vision is clear and your diversification is intentional, every move you make works together. It's never too late to start living the life you were meant to live.

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

All right, welcome back to The Daily Mastermind. George Wright III here with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. We got the middle of the week, so I hope you're having a good week and things are off to a good start. Today, I want to talk to you a little bit about this concept of focus. And as entrepreneurs, I know a lot of us struggle between finding new opportunities and pursuing new business and ideas, sort of that shiny object syndrome, and finding focus to drive success and results in your life. So before I get started with that, I want to go through the quote of the day. The quote of the day in the Daily Mastermind mobile app is by Napoleon, and it says, a leader is a dealer in hope. A leader is a dealer in hope. I love that idea because I think there's a key differentiation between leadership and management. Management, you know, you're driving priorities and managing tasks and people, but leadership really is about hope. It's about driving a vision for people. And so that's a great, great quote. Now, let's get to this concept of focus or diversification. This is something my whole life I've kind of both struggled with and found solutions to. Because if you think about it, you really get the greatest success when you focus. But at the same token, you want to be able to drive new business and new ideas. I mean, most projects and companies that people have started, they didn't know what it was going to be. And if they were closed-minded to opportunities that were coming along the way, they wouldn't be open to the true potential that they could have. So my answer to whether you should diversify or create focus is both. You know, it's one of our prosperity pillars. You know, I think win-win. And that's why you need to think about it from sort of a different paradigm. See, focus means follow one course until successful. That's an acronym, F-O-C-U-S, follow one course until successful. And so I guess the question boils down to what course are you following? The key, in my opinion, is to have a real clear vision and have real clarity on that vision at a high level. In other words, not specifically to the task or the business, but what are you trying to create in your life? What do you want your life to be like? Because if you have a clear vision of what you want your life to be like, you don't need to be wrapped up in the details that get you there to a certain degree when you're looking at your vision. See, when you have a great vision of what you want your life to be like, then you can create some diversification and yet still focus. So how do you do that? Well, one of the tricks that's really helped me a lot, because I've had multiple companies for coaching and mentoring and marketing and financial education, everything from apparel to a mobile app developer for Android and for iTunes, Apple. When you diversify the key is this and listen to me carefully the key to diversification in the things you doing is to make sure that they have synergy that they align together In other words, if your goal is to create a certain life and have a certain income, and for example, my focus has always been personal development and financial education, well then when I do financial education events, I can still work with personal development ideas. We still have lead generation. We still work with partners that go in all these different areas. When I created an apparel company, we created motivational messages and things that helped to synergize and build a community for various direct selling companies. So you can create diversification and yet still be focused on your ultimate goal. So diversification with synergy, with synergistic things. In other words, you can't be out doing door-to-door sales for some product and then over here trying to do online marketing for something completely different. You've got to find synergy in the things that you're working on so that they feed together to get you to your goal. And then what you can do is you can drive depth in the areas that you focus on. It's always okay to be looking for opportunities and to, you know, in certain periods of time, I'll talk about that in a second, look and explore new opportunities that might take you to your ultimate goal, your ultimate vision. But don't drive depth and put a lot of time and effort into those until you know that they will contribute to your total vision, until they contribute to what you want. Once you have that idea or that area or you see a little bit of success in a certain area that might be diversified, then you can drive depth into it. Then you can go really deep into that area because it aligns with what you're looking for and it's a good use of your time. So what I want to do is I'm going to give you just a handful of keys that I feel are going to help you create success in diversifying but staying focused. The key is focus. These are keys to success that I've used. There's probably a lot of other ones. These are just ones that have worked for me. The first is to make sure that you drive clarity in your vision. And I know we talk about this, what do you want your life to be like and what's your vision a lot? But that's because so many of you haven't done anything about clarifying it. You've got to sit down and you have to be super clear. If someone asks you what you want your life to be like and you can't answer that immediately, number one, you don't know what it is. Number two, you don't obsess and focus on it all the time and you just don't have clarity. So you've got to get clear on your vision because once you do, the vision is your litmus test. It's your filter for all the opportunities and things that come your way. You can say, if someone says, hey man, I got this amazing opportunity, you could say, does that align with where I'm going? Could it in any way, even diversified, help me get there? If not, it's a no. You're not going to spend time on it. But you're constantly looking at new ideas and you don't know where you're going, you're not gonna know whether or not to say yes or no. You just constantly chasing shiny objects The second thing is once you clarify what your vision is you gotta to have some really really specific and just a couple of key performance indicators KPIs Most successful businesses have KPIs. As a CEO of multiple companies, I always have KPIs. This might be your lead acquisition cost, your revenue, your numbers of new customers or enrollment. It might be your metrics of whatever it is, whether it's sales, marketing, operations, your turn time, your customer wait time. Your KPIs are critical to knowing whether or not you're on track with your vision. It's sort of your compass to get you where you're going. And a true successful leader and CEO, if they have a couple of really, really strong KPIs, they know whether they're going and they don't have to be in the weeds to figure it out. They don't have to be down in the detail. So know what your KPIs are. And that might be even just in a general sense for your life, your overall income, your overall net worth, your overall debt, your amount of time and your dollars per hour you're getting for your time. Because we can talk about that a whole other time. But what you're going to find is if you track your income per hour, you're going to find what you focus on grows, what you focus on grows. So clarity of vision, KPIs. The next thing is you've got to have priorities. Once you've set priorities, things won't get you away from your focus. And I always recommend setting your priorities on a weekly basis so that you're not thinking about what your priorities are during the week. Set those priorities. Another suggestion would be time blocking. Tony Robbins and Robert Stubberg and a lot of my good, good mentors have always talked about time blocking. You've got to have time, like my partner Robert Stubberg talks about a CPR process, concentration time, preparation time, and recovery time. You've got to have time that you have for each of these areas, but also more importantly, if you're going to do a task, block time out for it. Multitasking is not a good efficient use of your time. It's a terrible way to stay focused. Have time blocking. If you have four things you got to do today, block out, I recommend, between 60 to 90 minutes for each of those tasks. Limit the number of priorities you have, but block out time for those priorities and make sure that you have those on a weekly basis already set. Don't wake up in the morning and wonder what you're gonna work on today. Don't wake up in the morning and have a whole list of things without having your schedule already set or you are set up to fail from the beginning because if your schedule's not set, people will set it for you. So that's a key, time blocking. So we got clarity of vision, KPIs, priorities, time blocking, which will really help you create focus. Then you've gotta have accountability. You've gotta have accountability. Now this might be in the terms of making a commitment to someone that you're gonna get them something. It might be a deadline. A lot of times we work on projects but we're afraid to set a deadline. Set a deadline It better to work towards a deadline It like training for a marathon or a competition or whatever it is You got to have a deadline because it push you rather than most of us that procrastinate to the very last minute without a deadline, things don't get done. So accountability is key. And then you've got to track your progress. You got to keep a scorecard. And I recommend doing a real evaluation once a week to find out, have you made any progress? how much progress the whole goal in your life should be to make progress not to get to a destination but to make progress as long as you're making progress which accountability helps you to do then that'll really really make a difference in your life and and you'll you'll feel more accomplished you'll feel fulfilled you'll feel productive because progress is the key no matter how little or small like Steve Jobs says you know a lot of us underestimate the power of what can happen over five years but we overestimate what we can do in a short period of time so that's what I would recommend on progress and then the last one is really work to create some simplicity in your life if you're going into your day with a list of 30 things number one you're not going to be focused number two you're probably not going to accomplish as much as you want or or you've got a list of things that are super easy to do and you're just driven by being able to check the boxes and that's not productive either so these These are all keys to success on being focused and creating results. I really, really, really believe that you can create focus and still diversify as long as that diversification of areas and opportunities are synergistic to help you focus on getting the life that you want to live. So create some clarity, use key performance indicators, KPIs, set your priorities, time block to create real focus create accountability check your progress weekly and then really simplify the thing you want to do each and every day if you'll do that I think you're gonna create focus you're gonna create more opportunity and you're gonna create more progress in your life so that's my message for today I want you to do me a favor and if you got some value out of this share it with a friend share it with someone that you know we don't we don't have sponsors we don't take money on this show I just do it to create value and if you'll help us to share that message, that would be great. And I look forward to talking with you a little bit more. For those of you first time joining, go ahead and go to the Google Play or the Apple Store and download the Daily Mastermind mobile app. The mobile app's got a ton of free stuff, eBooks, audio books, meditation, the quote of the day, 4K pics, galleries of motivation and inspirational photos. I think you'll get a lot of it. It's a great on the go to keep you focused when you're an entrepreneur or business owner or even just trying to create your life in a better way. A lot of personal development and financial education there. So that's my message for today. I hope you have a great day. Once again, this has been The Daily Mastermind and my name is George Wright III. We'll talk with you soon.

About the host
George Wright III, host of The Daily Mastermind

George Wright III

George Wright III is an entrepreneur, investor, and the host of The Daily Mastermind. Over more than two decades he has founded and scaled several multimillion-dollar companies and built a renowned seminar business that put some of the world's biggest names and brands on stage. With 25+ years across marketing, sales, and executive leadership, he's made a career of turning bold ideas into results — and momentum into lasting growth.

Today his mission is singular: empower driven entrepreneurs everywhere to master their mindset, unlock their potential, and live their ultimate destiny. Through The Daily Mastermind, George shares the Prosperity Principles and strategies that help people create massive change — in their business and in their life.

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