Focus Is The Key To Profits

Does it pay to do more with less and focus more?

Focus is the key to your profits!

Look at one of my favorite examples: Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s.

Ray used to get asked, “When are you going to diversify?” He had a great answer for this question: “We will diversify into new businesses other than this one-pattern hamburger shop as soon as all of the restrooms in all of the McDonald’s are all working properly and are cleaned at the same time.”

He would go to a McDonalds every day with his wife, and his wife would come out of the lady’s room and say, “Dear, you can’t diversify yet.”

Speaking of restrooms, the ones in most gas stations are disgusting most of the time.

There was one gas station in Phoenix, Arizona, where the gas was more expensive than anywhere else in town and people were lined up six and eight blocks to get gas.

What was their secret?

The gas company turned around 180 degrees and used the 99/1 percent axiom. All you have to be is 1 percent different and it’s all the difference in the world.

What they did was make the bathrooms three times as big. They made them immaculate, they had art on the walls; they had nice-smelling toilet paper. They had a man on the outside inspect the restrooms after every customer to make sure that when you went in and out, the restroom was always immaculate—both the men’s and the women’s. Everybody went to this station not to get gas, because gas is a commodity, but because it had a clean restroom that was safe for you and your kids. People would line up and pay the most ever for gas. The focus was now on the customer, and a 1% difference changed their results 99%.

A change in focus can always make a difference.

The question is “What is your focus?” in that you have to be challenged to leverage your business 10 times, 100 times, 1,000 times, or a million times. It’s not just Ray Kroc doing McDonald’s; it is you.

You just need to choose one thing that you are going to do better than anybody else on the planet. You and everyone in your business are going to be completely focused on just one thing.

I have a good friend who moves big money in the venture capital space and he tells me that focus is the only reliable indicator of future profitability. The company that knows what business it is in and devotes more resources to that area than anyone else will have the highest profitability.

Focus is the only reliable predictor of future profitability!