MBA2725 How To Focus And Get Ahead Of 99% Of People

0:02Mazda has been named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand. It starts with our approach. Every Mazda comes standard with proactive safety features. So you're more aware of what's around you, more focused on the road ahead, and ready before problems ever start. Mazda. More of what matters most to you. Go to mazdausa.com to learn more. Consumer Reports does not endorse or promote any product. For small business, a high-speed fiber connection is only one piece of the puzzle. You need the Total Solutions Advantage from Comcast Business. It's a first-ever combination of the largest, fastest fiber-powered network, gig speeds with equipment and security included, plus a five-year price lock.

0:47Learn more, get started for$60 a month for 12 months when you add an advanced solution to a qualifying internet package. Limited time offer restrictions apply. New customers only requires 300 Mbps internet, security edge, and additional qualifying service. One year agreement, paperless billing, and auto pay with bank account required, taxes and fees extra. If you can learn how to focus, you will beat 99 % of people. Not because you're smarter, not because you're more talented, but because almost nobody can stay focused anymore. Today, I'm going to show you exactly why focus has become the ultimate competitive advantage.

1:22And this is not just my opinion. I'm going to show you what the research says about this and exactly how you can build it, build your focus and protect it so that you can leap ahead.

1:41Welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host, Omar Zinhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday to help you start, grow and scale your business. Before we jump in, can I get 30 seconds of your time? We love guiding you on your business journey, and we want to help even more people build their dream businesses and lives. So if you could hit the follow button on this podcast app, it would be greatly appreciated. It's completely free, and it helps us out more than you know. Thanks. All the major research on performance and productivity points to one conclusion.

2:18Focus is a superpower in the modern world. I've been absolutely obsessed with this topic for the last few years, and this is why I've gobbled up so many books on this topic. Some of them, I'll be mentioning them today. Books like Essentialism by Greg McKeown, 4 ,000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman, as well as Deep Work by Cal Newport. These books are essential reading. All these books are reiterating the same thing, which is divided attention destroys your results. Progress only compounds when effort is consistent. and that deep focused work outperforms shallow multitasking every day of the week. Cal Newport explains again and again and again in his book, Deep Work, that when you do deep work, it creates a disproportionate output.

3:06You literally produce more in less time when you eliminate distractions. Oliver Berkman in his book, 4 ,000 Weeks, reminds us that time is not infinite. it. It's actually finite. We only have 4 ,000 weeks to live. And if you scatter it across 15 different goals every single year, it's really just self-sabotage. I want to give you a visual, a metaphor, so that you can really understand the power of focus. Think of attention like credits. You start every year with 100 focus credits. Let's say you spread your 100 credits for seven new ideas you have that are cooking in your mind, or five business models, or 11 new habits that you pick up or 12 side projects.

3:47By February, you've used up all 100 credits, you're broke, and you have nothing to show for it. But let's say you used those 100 credits into one mission, one business, or one skill you want to build, one direction, one obsession. You will create momentum so strong it compounds every single day. This is the missing piece for 99 % of people. They don't have an idea problem. They really have a focus allocation problem. They don't know how to focus and really pick and stick to what they're supposed to be doing. Here's some info that might shock you. You can actually develop attention problems simply by living a distracted life.

4:28There's a landmark study that I dug up for you. It was done by Stanford, and it found that heavy digital multitaskers perform worse on attention tests. So things like working memory and information filtering or information retention was something that they really did poorly on. They literally became distraction prone over time. Another study that was done in UC Irving found that every time you are interrupted, you take about 23 minutes to return to full focus. Wow, you could see how expensive interruptions are to your daily life. Another study by the Journal of the American Medical Association followed thousands of young adults, and they found that when they were consuming a lot of digital media, they had high digital media use, it led to an increase of ADHD-like symptoms, even in people with no prior diagnosis.

5:24This is why so many people feel like they have ADHD today because their habits are creating ADHD-like patterns. And this is also why being someone who can focus instantly places you ahead of almost everyone else. So you could see the huge advantage you could have if you were someone who focused on a regular basis. Every major success I had in my life came from focus. When I started my first career as a teacher, I went all in. I didn't dabble. I became certified. I mastered classroom management. I managed teachers twice my age. I became the chair of department. At 25, I became the youngest department chair ever, managing 30 people.

6:05The reason why I was able to do that is because I really focused on being the best educator and manager I could be. In 2014, when Nicole and I were starting this podcast, The$100 MBA Show, we had to make some tough decisions. We had to say no to things so that we can focus on building a great show. So we had to fire our freelance clients. I used to build websites for my clients. Nicole did film work, but we wanted to put all our chips in the table. And we wanted to really bet on the fact that, hey, we got to focus on this podcast if it's going to be successful. Six months after we launched this podcast with full focus, we won Best of iTunes.

6:41Only about 12 podcasts get rewarded this every single year as the best podcast of the year. We became a top podcast, not just in business, across all Apple podcasts. That wasn't luck. That was extreme focus. When we started our software company, Webinar Ninja, we focused on building a great product. We built out a great team. We hired a coach that helped us along the way. We committed for a decade, 10 years. And the result, we were able to sell the company and get acquired for life-changing money, all because of focus. And even now, our new mission for 2026 and beyond, we're really trying to focus again and improve the quality of the show, improve how we show up on video and creating a brand through storytelling and YouTube and social media and mastering visual content.

7:27And this is going to require focus. I got to say no to things that I want to do if I'm going to have any success in what is important to me. Investing with Schwab is like spending a Saturday at a great farmer's market. You can fill your reusable tote with a bit of everything. Maybe you go for some free-range, self-directed investing. Or perhaps you pick up a few farm-fresh trades while you peruse. You can even get help from a dedicated advisor. That's full-service wealth management. Mix, match, and change your mind whenever you want. Because at Schwab, you can invest your way. No matter your goals or appetite for investing, Schwab has everything you need all in one place.

8:04Visit schwab.com to learn more. One of the biggest growth hacks is realizing you don't have to do it all yourself. That's how you can scale your business. This is why I'm so excited to have Upwork as a sponsor because I've been using Upwork for over a decade. Why? Because it makes it easy to bring in the right freelancer when you need them so you can stay focused on what you do best. Upwork is a one-stop shop platform to find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations, and more. I've made some of the best hires in our company through Upwork.

8:45I'm talking about people that changed the trajectory of our entire business. It's free to sign up to Upwork and posting a job is super simple and easy. Upwork helps grow your business by giving you fast access to specialized talent across 125 categories. It makes it simple for you to just fill in those skill gaps, to launch projects faster and scale your support up or down without committing to full-time headcount. And let me tell you about Business Plus. It's a game changer. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. And with AI-powered shortlisting, you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours.

9:25No endless searching required. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's Upwork.com to connect with Top Town ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, Upwork.com. Let's zoom out for a bit and see some examples of people or companies that focus versus those who don't focus. Apple focuses on simplicity and reliability, and they're a trillion-dollar company. In-N-Out Burger, three menu items, and insane profitability. It's one of the most profitable restaurants in the world. Patagonia, they focused on sustainability and built a global cult following. So if you focus your efforts, you're able to compound your efforts and get extraordinary outcomes.

10:11Let's look at a few companies that didn't focus. Yahoo, they tried to be everything. They tried to acquire a whole bunch of companies and they really became irrelevant. Blockbuster Video, they didn't focus on the future. They focused only on the present revenue and they didn't innovate and now they're dead. Serial entrepreneurs, you see these people all over the place on the internet. They have 10 half-baked products or projects with zero real wins. Focus is the dividing line between potential and progress. Here's the scary part. Most people today can't focus, not because they were born with ADHD, but because life has made them functionally ADHD.

10:51Now listen, ADHD is a real thing. People get diagnosed with it all the time, But there's a lot of people that are inducing ADHD-like habits and basically are functional ADHD people because of what they're doing. Content switching, notifications, short-form content, work interruptions, inbox dopamine hits, just trying to get that dopamine hit from validation, feeling like they're busy, feeling like they're important. These behaviors create what Cal Newport calls attention residue. do. Your mind gets stuck between tasks and never really enter into deep focused work. And the modern world is actively making people worse at concentration, at really focusing.

11:33This means that if you can train to focus, you can have an incredibly unfair advantage. You're running a race where like 99 % of the competitors have tied their shoes together, right? So they're tripping over themselves and they really can't gain ground. When you're focused, it's so much easier for you to actually make serious progress in a short period of time. So let's get practical. How do we focus? Well, I want to share with you a system that's simple, that's powerful and based on research. First step, pick one goal for the next 12 months. One goal, not three, not 10, one goal. and all your projects, all your efforts, all your tasks should support that one goal, should complement that one goal.

12:17And this is going to allow you to have laser focus and have clarity. Number two, ruthlessly eliminate everything else. So everything else that's not helping you get to that goal needs to be cut out. If it doesn't move you forward, if it doesn't move you towards or closer to your goal, it's a distraction. This is harder than it sounds because you have to say no to things that you enjoy. And remember, just because you're good at it doesn't mean that you should do it, that it's best for you or it's going to help you towards where you want to go. Number three, deep work daily. I want you right now to block out 90 minutes every workday to do deep work.

12:57Now listen, you don't have to like, this is not something additional or something new. You're going to do whatever work or tasks you got to do, but you're going to do it distraction free. No phone, no notifications, doors closed, all tabs closed. Only work on that thing for 90 minutes. Allow yourself to go really deep. This alone will put you in the top 5 % of performers in your field. Number four, reduce input. Less scrolling, less news, less screen time is going to help you tremendously. Try to always keep in mind, I should be creating more than I'm consuming. Number five, track hours of focus, not tasks done.

13:37It's easy to get caught up in like wanting cross off tasks and feeling productive. But really, the focused hours are really what are going to get you results. Your output will naturally increase, will naturally rise when you do more focused hours. Because focused work is work that takes a bit of time. You know, you might need four or five or six focused sessions to get an output. But that output is going to be significantly more important, more valuable than something that maybe takes you 20 minutes to do and you just cross it off your list. So try to lean towards focused hours and not just feeling great that you've crossed out a million tasks today.

14:14And lastly, number six, let compounding do the heavy lifting. Small daily focus equals massive yearly transformation. Every little thing you do today adds up, compounds, and makes this year an incredible year for you. The result that you'll see at the end is going to be incredible. You're going to be shocked how much you got done and how much of an impact you've made. I love to say that the big brother of focus is consistency. In order to be focused, you have to be consistent as well with your focus. So consistency with your focus is going to equal massive results. If there's anything you take away from today, it's this.

14:56Focus beats intelligence. It beats talent. It beats opportunity. It beats luck. In a world drowning in distractions, the people who can sustain attention become unstoppable. If you can hold your attention and just work deeply on something, you're going to have incredible results compared to other people. Focus is the ultimate competitive advantage. Why? Because almost nobody has it anymore. Almost nobody has any focus. It's like racing a race and you have a motorbike and they're on foot. If you could do one thing for a long period of time, you will get insanely good at it. You'll become world class at that thing and the world will bend towards you.

15:38It will find you. The opportunities will be there for you when you need them because you are the best of the best when it comes to that. And your work and your results will be the proof. If this episode has helped you think differently in any way, share it with someone you think needs to hear it. Use that share feature in the podcast app or whatever app you're using to consume this episode and let them know that you're thinking of them. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. We live in the most distracted era in human history. This is your opportunity. Focus is not only about discipline, it's about design.

16:13It's about choosing fewer things, prioritizing what's most important, and doing them better than anyone else. This skill alone will change your life, your income, your relationships, your confidence, your career. It will change pretty much everything. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start grow and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically, and it's the best way to support the show.

16:54It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed. I'll check you in the next episode.

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