My good friend Juan Severo Mendoza, a veteran systems engineer, has always been passionate about hunting. His greatest dream since he started in the sport of princes was to hunt a "butterfly" tiger or a puma, typical species of the Venezuelan plains. Now, in addition to requiring a high dose of patience, the art of hunting tigers demands a good shotgun with appropriate ammunition cartridges and one or more dogs trained in the subject.
It turns out that Juan Severo, in his early years as a hunter, used to pride himself on the skills of “Chinita,” a Creole dog with a quarter Irish setter blood. She had a keen sense of smell, effective even at great distances, a temperamental and fiery character, as well as great speed and endurance.
Chinita could behave stealthily, and when she detected possible prey, she kept her head high, her neck upright, and her eyes fixed on the animal to indicate to her master the direction of the appropriate shot. Chinita enjoyed the hunting days as much as Juan Severo; His fine sense of smell easily distinguished the presence of a cachicamo, a rabbit or a deer, while his precise hearing warned of the imminence of a herd of wild báquiros or the gentle walk of a cunaguaro.
These interesting days allowed Juan Severo, at the end of the day, to return with a sample of hunted species of a wide range, including some feathered birds. Given his frustration as a potential tigress, our friend decided to import from Argentina a sober animal of the Dogo breed, specially trained to hunt pumas and other big cats. His name was “Bourbon.”
After a three-month campaign in the lower Orinoco, Juan Severo managed, with the help of Borbón, to hunt a superb butterfly tiger weighing 160 kilos. Over the years, he was able to proudly hang in his gallery another pair of heads of once fearsome felines. While Borbón hunted tigers, Chinita stayed to play in the patio of the hacienda, sniffing out picures, rabipelados and the occasional prowling rabbit.
With this anecdote, I wanted to exemplify one of the most common defects of new entrepreneurs: lack of focus on business objectives. In general, we Latin Americans come up with business ideas “in spurts,” and we tend to dedicate our attention to outlining different projects to satisfy our prolific business inspiration. We fall, therefore, into the mistake of "roasting several rabbits at the same time", with the consequent risk of burning some, or all of them...
When the entrepreneur dilutes his time and effort between different projects, he is likely to reach the point of feeling overwhelmed by the weight of responsibilities and a feeling of frustration and defeat will overcome him. This is the precise moment to reflect on the problem that afflicts you; the moment to establish a hierarchy and a schedule of actions and priorities to be executed. It's time to FOCUS.
Just as an aircraft pilot uses all the power of the engines to take off, the businessman who wants to be successful in a project must dedicate all his concentration to focusing his efforts towards achieving that objective. So that there are no doubts regarding his intention to focus on one or a few objectives, he writes down on paper the entire accumulation of ideas and projects that he has in mind. Assign an order of priority in time and money to each line and let the first three occupy your attention until their execution is completed in an orderly manner. Archive remaining projects and ideas until further notice.
Being focused is not only becoming convinced that activities must be prioritized, but also dedicating oneself “body and soul” to the implementation of the projects in the same stipulated order, one by one. Distractions make us lose focus on our line of work, so exercising our will to reject them is mandatory; The temptation of a good movie, a pleasant conversation, a game of solitaire or a "nap" sometimes takes us away from the required concentration.
Get fully involved in that one project and until you finish it, don't rest; You will find that the feeling of achievement is an extraordinary stimulant to move forward with the other commitments of business life. Now he knows that if at some point he were to falter, all he had to do was remember the profound difference that existed between the Chinita dog and the Bourbon dog and thus get back on track...
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Author: Alfredo González (Alfred@negociosenflorida.com)
Photo courtesy of Pixabay