I heard this F-O-C-U-S acronym mentioned on a free teleseminar by copywriting coach, Chris Marlow.
She’d invited her own coach, Gary Ryan Blair (The Goals Guy), to talk about his 100 days goal achieving challenge. Of course, this allows Gary to also pitch his product but I’m fine with that for two reasons:
a) Gary freely covered some good content on goal setting – enough for a student of copywriting to get and apply the basic idea to their own business / personal goals without having to buy anything. However, he also pre-sold his own program very effectively and that was a valid marketing lesson in itself!
b) Chris is sharing some of the resources she’s using to set and achieve goals. And since I’m ‘into’ copywriting, I make it a point to find out how the top people in that field are developing themselves. (Anyone can apply the same approach in a field that interests them.)
Here’s What I Got From This Call With The Goals Guy
I always aim to learn something from these calls (I listen to them on the train, when there’s not much else to do anyway), and this time I was reminded of two important ideas:
1) F-O-C-U-S
2) A ‘Sense of Urgency’
The practicalities of implementing a ‘Follow-One-Course-Until-Successful‘ FOCUS approach can be debated endlessly (hello procrastination, my old friend…!) and, in my experience, they vary from person to person.
However, let’s assume you’re committed to making a mid-career change.
That goal’s become your ‘focus’ for the next one, two, however many years you believe it will take to: a) make the change and b) achieve and savor the tangible and intangible goals that go with this new lifestyle.
Combining the ‘focus goal’ with a ‘sense of urgency’ is the tension that helps keep you moving forward. Sure, that tension will not always be present and there will be times where you may be ‘slacking’.
But, in the unknown time period that we call ‘our life’, inspired tension can be both your own motivator and reward generator.
That’s what I took from this teleclass.
- Mark McClure
