In the next 60 seconds, you’ll see why having tunnel vision in business is actually a GOOD thing.
Here’s a quick (true) story…
A friend-of-a-friend started a
company back in the early 90s
selling school supplies and various
maps.
He did ok. Made a few bucks.
He thought that by expanding his
product line, he would increase
sales.
This approach works for Wal Mart and big box stores.
More product SKUs = more sales
It must work for small businesses too, right?
WRONG.
A few years later, this school supply guy wised up. He looked at what products were selling best, had the highest profit margin and least amount of competitors. What was the sweetspot?
MAPS.
Then, he decided to focus all his attention on becoming the best supplier of maps.
But, he didn’t stop there… He became ultra focused. He dropped selling globes, huge wall maps, map pencil cases, pocket maps and ONLY focused on map guides (the spiral bound type) and fold out maps.
In other words, the kind of maps you use in the car or when planning a road trip.
The end result?
His business SKYROCKETED.
You see, once he applied tunnel vision to his business, it flourished. His business became instantly less complicated requiring less admin, with less breaking points, less staff and (most important) less headaches.
I know that most people claim tunnel vision in business is a bad thing.
You often hear comments like, “My boss has tunnel vision. He’s not looking at the big picture”. Or… “Take the blinders off buddy. You are suffering from tunnel vision!”.
Well, in my books… tunnel vision = massive success
So, how about you?
Are you suffering from a LACK OF tunnel vision with your online business?
Ask yourself this…
How many different online businesses have you tried to start within the past few months (or years)?
Were they ALL successful?
Rather than start 4 (or more) different businesses, why not focus on just one and give it 100% of your focus, attention and effort?
Also, rather than start a new business and bailout 5 weeks later (because you are not rich yet), why not give it some time?
Successful businesses don’t happen overnight.
First, it takes some time for you to develop the necessary skillsets to nurture a successful business.
Example: An actor doesn’t win an Oscar award after buying an acting book and 4 weekend acting classes.
Then, once you apply your skills, it takes time for your business to be a smashing success.
Example: The owner of Subway subs struggled to make a buck running his first sub shop. Look at the conglomerate Subway is today.
Your mission is (if you choose to accept it)…
One business + tunnel vision
That’s it.
That’s the key to massive success online.
Forget the latest new Google trick or guaranteed easier way to make you money online.
If Affiliate marketing intrigues you, DO IT. But, don’t try and promote every product — or offer — under the sun (weight loss, dog training, forex robot).
The more narrow your focus, the better. And while you are at it, hold off on creating those 2 new ebooks and forget about writing a sales page for that public domain product you got a great deal on.
Pick one thing, execute and stick with it.
There are no shortcut secrets to success. The only secret is HARD work, focus and total and complete dedication to progressively building your online business. ONE online business.
Then, once you’ve built a successful online business. Rise, Repeat, and develop another revenue stream.
Of course, you also need to be smart about failure too. Every seasoned entrepreneur has a few failures on his resume. You just need to know when to call it quits on a new venture and not become stubborn or foolish optimistic.
Remember that story I told you earlier about the map guy turned millionaire?
What lesson can you take away from it and apply to your online business?
It can all be summarized in two words…
TUNNEL VISION
Once you give this a try I guarantee you’ll realize something.
Tunnel vision in business is actually a GOOD thing.
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Too true, Jason.
I went through a stage with my on-line business building a number of blogs in different niches and they bombed. Now they are gathering dust!
I’m sure I could be even more “tunnelled” in my niche now.
Andrew
Interesting approach Jason. As they say “The winner did not do different things. He just stuck there longer.”
Applied with a responsible attitude and professional handling of failures, tunnel vision can be quite useful for the business. Micro-niches comes to mind.
Arun
I will be happy to help you with the upgrade and designing of your blog if you want. You already have my email address.
Great post, I can definitely connect with this scenario, over the last couple of days i have reorganised and streamlined my workload to concentrate more on one or two niches. Having built up a small network of 55 blogs I now need to work out the best strategy to bring in traffic and revenue. Thus far most of the traffic is coming through RSS and social networking.
Need to find a cost effective link building program to bring in organic search traffic. PPC and content network advertising is next on my conquest list. The day is never long enough! Thanks’ for the read…
Sorry but this is ‘just think positive marketing fluff’.
Beware of online marketers marketing…………
Jason says: Marketing fluff? I guess you missed the entire point (and lesson/real world example) of the article and instead decided to look for some marketing hook or pre-launch warm up that simply is not there.
Great post Jason!
Quite inspiring actually. Reading this has given me a much better idea of where I should be focusing my attention right now in regard to some products I’m working on.
Cheers,
Glenn
This post is so true and good job giving us a little inspiration.
I agree with this principle all the way. I wish I would of considered this a long time ago.
One of the reasons why I went off in so many different directions, is because I could not decide just one niche, so I picked one niche, kind of, per blog.
I think entrepeneurs are naturally that way, they have so many ideas it’s a struggle to keep your business focus just to one area.
But I’m going to try
Hi Jason
I completely agree. Too many people chase the next shiny clickbank product that promises untold riches for just 4.5secs work a day!
The reality is that success is the result of the application of focused thought and focused action.
The more I say No to new ideas the better my business decisions and the more my business works for me (rather than the otherway round!).
AJ
So Jason, why do not you apply this to your bussines?
You have loads of product,sites and methods you are making money.
It is crucial to focus on more things at a time to be successful (as you do) and outsource most time consuming things.
Why?
Simply because it is very important to diversify your sources of income.
Jason says: I do apply this to my business. I try to work on one project at a time and maintain a consistent focal point/theme with all new products moving forward. Example: I released my first product (EzineAnnouncer) for ezine publishers back in 2001. Since then, 95% of my new products/services have been focused around “content solutions” — software and information to facilitate creating, publishing, syndicating, submitting, and using content to generate traffic, leads and sales. So, there is a consistent theme there throughout my products.
Great post. It really got me thinking.
PS- Your blog is fine. Fancy blogs are sometimes way too much sensory overload:)
Great post. The lack of tunnel vision that you describe is a matter of taking the attitude that, “The more mud I throw against the wall, the more of it will stick.” And I think we fall into that thinking because, deep down, we don’t believe that anything we focus on will work.
We figure that we need something outside of ourselves to “save us.” We need some outside tool or strategy that will attract and win customers. If it relies on what we put into it of ourselves, we fear it will fail and we’ll be to blame.
But, hey, if all we’re doing is throwing mud against the wall and it doesn’t stick, at least our failure isn’t our fault. We tried, it’s the mud that failed.
In reality, though, the only way to success is through the unique effort, knowledge, and passion that we bring to it. Those maps did well for him, but cutting back to just maps was probably pretty scary for your friend’s friend.
He probably heard more than one person to told him he was crazy to move away from being a nice, generic store to a tight niche. He knew he would have to bring his whole knowledge, passion, and perseverance to making it take off. It would all be on him, not on the product, for him to have success.
But by making the choice to move away from throwing mud at a wall and bringing all those dabs of mud together and shaping it into a single, artistic sculpture, he finally had something that others would really want.
I believe that you are right. You have to try many things. When you find what will work, concentrate on that one thing instead of using a shot gun approach. With concentrated effort good results should follow.
Hey Jason,
Great post, very inspiring, and oh so true. I also just read the F-U account post, and that is great advice as well. I know this is a generic comment, but I just wanted to let you know that I appreciated your writing. And don’t listen to the jerks who say ‘this is just think positive marketing fluff’ because those are always the ones who simply don’t have the mindset for success. I’m sure you know that though
Best,
Conrad
It’s much agreed Jason. I’ve found in my marketing efforts over the years that trying to do too much gets nothing accomplished.
Catering to every market is too hard to do because someone will always be unhappy. I think the recession will help streamline companies and force them to have tunnel vision, or go bankrupt.
This post is so true and good job giving us a great inspiration inspiration.
I agree with you on many of these pints. Tunnel Vision is a good thing to work with. It is best to focus on just one niche and if it is a broad niche to focus on just one aspect of that niche at a time. As you describe doing in some of your responses. I have not been in this business as long as a lot of people but the one thing that has got my attention is that most of the really successful marketers are those who have similar product lines within the same niche.
By (Focusing) “Tunnel Vision”, they seem to be getting the most bang for their buck. I have fallen victim to this throwing mud at the wall syndrome and it has gotten me way out in left field and very poor results. You are not the first to bring up the subject of focus in Internet Marketing, however you did bring home the importance of using Tunnel Vision to get yourself headed in the right direction.
Can a person have totally different niches that they are working in? I believe it will work but they must be kept separate from each other and that one must be some what matured before starting the next. I could be wrong in this thinking but I do not believe that a person can truly focus their attention on more than one project at a time with the best results.
Thanks for the reminder. It is time I put the “Tunnel Vision” to work.
This post is very true. I too bounced around trying to make many things work. The internet can be very distracting with a strong ability to pull you away from “tunnel vision”. The one thing that really helped me the most was to follow my passion. I found that if I had not much interest, belief or knowledge on the product I lost interest, hope and determination. I would start out gun ho but soon my efforts would wain and I would be pulled in another direction.
It was not until I focused on my passion and searched for ways to make a business around my passion, then I was able to maintain tunnel vision. By putting my passion as my focus, I’ve found tunnel vision and success to be much more obtainable.
Hi Jason
Thank you for your post. I believe, those that can help others learn the steps in building a successful online business versus just continually promoting other people’s products is what most new internet marketers need.
Joel Comm recently produced: elevateblueprint.com and the mindset of learning how to build a ‘media’ business is useful; knowing what type of staff members you need with you locally, and knowing what else you can outsource.
The following is NOT a plug; however, I met Erica Douglas; erica.biz at the Internet Income Summit; and she’s got a great attitude about Internet Marketing; which is a wise lesson for all of us; sincerely wanting to help others succeed.
Therefore, if more Internet Marketers can start to share their business model, teach it’ and yes, even charge their customers, this could be a long-lasting revenue stream for Internet Marketers because they’d be teaching their customers, clients, twitter followers, etc. the do’s and don’ts of internet marketing.
That’s a win-win attitude; and your blog post reflected that about you; I wish you all the success!
Motie Omari
HoHoHo! That was the best mailout I’ve seen for a while. I just had to see why this blog was so UGLY.
OK, at first site I might add some small things like social bookmarking and the RSS feed was not that obvious and …
But, heck! Just a minute! The post above was available in the first page of Google’s SERPs before I could spell out U-G-L-Y.
And that spells out B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L to me
FTC Disclaimer: I haven’t yet received the check for this comment.
Hey thanks! Just what I needed to hear (read). Instead of growing a few businesses a little bit, grow one a lot…
@Jonathan Scott, I haven’t received my check either, but good idea to stay safe! LOL
Wel-l-l-l,
You kinda, sorta make a point. But your key in the post about the foaf (friend-of-a-friend), was that he had one particularly successful product/area.
Without having some such similar point of success, tunnel vision is usually detrimental to success.
Yeah, if ya have an area of success, concentrate upon it. But you gotta have it before tunnel vision will work.
F’r instance, I could concentrate on, say, women’s undergarments–Victoria’s Secret makes a bundle there–but without a good sense of what _women_ might like, I’d be doomed to failure unless I was *singularly* fortunate.
‘Nother words, tunnel vision works only when you have something that is already selling, ya know? The concept is good, but it requires some degree of previous success to be truly functional. ce vision has to work *before* you enter the tunnel.
Jason says: That’s a valid point. In business, any time I’ve attempted to dabble in numerous projects (or markets) simultaneously, my momentum slows down considerably. Yes, it helps if you already have a winning product/service or you are making money in a particular market before applying “tunnel vision” to expand. But, look at the comments here from people who have 20+ blogs in 20 markets, making little to no money. Why not pick a niche, focus on 1-2 blogs and work like crazy to make them content rich, 100% high quality blogs that have a better chance of dominating the web and making you money.
This is pretty much like saying to stick with a real tight niche i.e. instead of selling books on your site sell a certain type of book by a certain author. I have found this to be true on my blogs.
Although I have many blogs in different niches each blog is very tightly niched (if that’s even a word).
Very good advice.
Well, tunneling with a lucrative niche and product is always good. What if the business tunnel towards and the wrong niche or the wrong product? Hmm….
Jason,
Well written – great ideas!