#19 Million Dollar Distractions

I cost myself MILLIONS of dollars by focusing on unintentional distractions.

Some of you might call me a failure because of that.

However, failing at something doesn’t make you a failure.

Failing means you won half the battle: trying

But there’s a lesson to be learned in failure, isn’t there?

The times that I’ve failed I was almost certainly focused on unintentional ‘distractions’.

This get’s deep, do you mind if I give you an example that cost me millions?

Sounds good, here it is…

About 1 year ago Uptics made a shift to focus on selling software only.

We bootstrapped this baby, so we sold everything we had to in order to make it: services, coaching, consulting, etc.

But we were in a really good financial position and when you build a SaaS you really want to sell software and not get ‘distracted’ with the other stuff.

Turns out this was a huge mistake (keep reading).

You might be thinking: “But isn’t removing coaching and services to focus just on software eliminating distractions?”

On the surface, you would think so, but let’s play this out.

When we temporarily put everything except software on hold, here’s what happened:

1. We shut down profitable sales & marketing funnels

2. We turned away business we would have otherwise won

3. We had to start a new customer acquisition strategy from scratch

4. Our customer acquisition metrics changed drastically

5. Our growth went from 25% to 50% month-over-month to -5% to 10% (PS: 30%-50% growth momentum is hard to replicate).

This all setoff a chain reaction to try and turn the tide…

We (I) made an excuse that “It must be our pricing strategy”.

After obsessive pricing strategy, we tried 2-3 new pricing strategies, each taking weeks to implement.

Well, that didn’t seem to fix it.

Then we thought…“we need to build more 10x features in the software”.

So we obsessed over product feature after product feature.

That didn’t seem to fix it either.

So then we thought “we need to eradicate churn!”.

So we implemented a host of strategies to reduce churn.

Weird, that didn’t seem to fix it either!

Have you noticed what we weren’t focusing on?

Sales & Marketing!

The lifeblood of every single company in existence.

What started off as a well intentioned shift of focused, turned out to be a complete nightmare.

A distraction that cost us 6+ months of momentum.

Momentum that is hard to replicate.

When you build something from the ground up, like many of you have, it becomes your baby.

Your product, your service, etc.

We obsessively want it to be ‘PERFECT’.

I would argue that product perfection is a fools errand.

Whereas sales & marketing perfection is worthwhile, because the best products do not always win.

VHS vs. Betamax: Despite Betamax's higher quality, VHS won the video format war due to better marketing and a wider selection of movie titles.

Microsoft Windows vs. Apple Macintosh: Microsoft Windows dominated over Apple, not for being superior in design, but due to aggressive marketing and strategic licensing deals.

McDonald's vs. Local Burger Joints: McDonald's outshined local burger joints, not for better quality food, but through effective marketing and a vast global presence.

The moral of this story is this:

If you’re obsessing over anything except sales & marketing growth, delegate it to a team member.

Audit: what is 1 distraction holding you back right now from focusing on growth?

Now, take that 1 distraction and create 1 actionable INTENTION to eliminate it.

 👉 Example: let's say you're getting bogged down in operations or taking care of customers, instead of growing your topline sales.

 An intention could be:

"I need to hire a new employee, VA, freelancer, etc" 

Then do that and shift your focus back to sales. 

Outbound, Inbound sales, funnels....generating leads, deals, and sales.

It's really this simple.

And if you want to be more intentional about your sales & growth...

I created the Cold to Gold Challenge. 

And I guarantee you it's the best process to help you be INTENTIONAL about your outreach. 

Sky is the limit. 

You just need to be intentional.