Just after the start of the 20th Century, around 1910, a tall lanky cowboy from the city of Winston-Salem, North Carolina (USA), packed his bags and headed west for the Idaho Land Rush. For $4,000 USD you could stake your claim to 80 acres of rough land filled with rattle snakes, jackrabbits, and sagebrush. The only requirement stipulated you had to build a house on the property within one year.
After purchasing a complete pre-fabricated home from Sears and Roebuck, my grandfather dug a 12-foot deep, full-size basement using nothing but a “Fresno” – a large metal earth-moving scoop – pulled by a single horse.
Blowing up old tree stumps with a quarter-stick of dynamite and removing stubborn sagebrush roots with a “come-along” – that’s a hand-operated winch – were normal everyday activities.
Singlehandedly, my grandfather assembled this two-story, three-bedroom, one-bath home-kit. A few years after burying his first wife due to tuberculosis, he married my grandmother, an immigrant from Switzerland, and they raised four children, each one born in their large elegant mansion.
I remember sitting on the huge front porch in the heat of the summer as an eight-year-old boy, eating ice-cold, farm-grown watermelon and spitting the seeds over the wooden railing! So many great memories of that place!
Over the years, our family-owned spread became an apple orchard, apple-packing plant, and a productive farm that raised alfalfa, wheat, corn, and the world-famous Idaho potatoes.
One hot summer day while sitting and spitting (watermelon seeds), I asked my grandpa how he made the rows of corn so straight. They looked like they were drawn with a pencil and ruler! His reply was the seed thought for these closing comments.
You set your eye on yonder tree. Point the nose of your tractor at that tree and don’t look back.
—Julius Walter Wagoner, circa 1965
In other words, you need to keep your focus!
Focus your eyes on a point of reference beyond the borders of your field and never let them waver from that point. If you don’t do this, your rows will be as crooked as a dogs’ hind leg! (Ha! I experienced this last week when I mowed my yard!!)
How appropriate grandpa’s advice is when it comes to your online business! Those who excel and are successful in building their online enterprises remain constantly focused and tuned into their goals and dreams. Nothing distracts them from constantly seeing in their mind the end result – success. They do whatever it takes to keep their tractor in a straight line to yonder tree!
In T. Harv Eker’s book, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, he sheds more light on the subject of focus.
What you focus on expands. The rich focus on what they want, while the poor focus on what they don’t have. Rich people focus on the opportunities in everything, while poor people focus on the obstacles. For rich people, opportunities abound, for poor people obstacles are everywhere, and their biggest problem is handling all the incredible obstacles they see.
That’s great advice from Harv: by consistently focusing your efforts on building an online business, your internet business will grow and expand.
By focusing on creating a stable and residual income, your income will expand.
The negative flip side? By focusing on what you can’t do, what you can’t sell, or pages that won’t convert, these problems will expand and become bigger and harder to overcome.
Eker continues by saying that problems and challenges rise up for everyone, but those who stay focused don’t make their life only about solving their problems. They spend their time and energy constantly moving forward by focusing on their goals and dreams.
Is it easy? Not always. Is it worth it? Absolutely yes. Staying focused is an absolute necessity!
