For most of us, being so focused on what you are doing that you don’t realise you’ve just one almost a million dollars seems hard to imagine. 

But that’s just what happened to Ben Crane in 2010 at Torrey Pines, San Diego..

I shared this story on yesterday’s call for Flourish Lab members, and I thought that it might be useful for you too…

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Ben Crane was a professional golfer and his coach, Lanny Bassham had him focus on the process of his game for a year. That is, he was to focus purlely on his mental and technical systems for playing the game of golf.

Not winning.

Not where he was on the leader board.

Because winning can pull your focus off of proper execution.

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Torrey Pines was the fourth tournament of 2010. Ben Crane was just 30″ from the final hole on the final round. And the tournament was very close. 

Just about everyone knew that he needed to put the ball in the hole to win $954,000… except Ben Crane.
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When he sank the putt, his playing partner offered him a congratulatory handshake. Crane thought that it was just the customary handshake after the round! 
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It wasn’t until his wife ran onto the green that he realised that he had won…

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Can you imagine being that focused on the process of what you are doing?

And what does this have to do with business?

A lot!

We can only control so much in business. A lot of our “results” are dependent on external circumstances that we can’t control – like any one individual choosing to buy what you sell or not. 

We can’t actually control whether or not any one individual decides to purchase from us or not. 

What we can control is the processes we execute within our business. The things that we do that can influence the external circumstances – like someone choosing to buy from us or not.

We can focus on ensuring that we take consistent action, that we evolve and improve how we market our businesses. 

The results we are getting (leads, revenue sales etc) are great indicators as to whether or not we are on track so that we can make decisions but our primary focus should be on executing as well as we can, getting better at the doing so that the results can follow.
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They are also a good indicator of how good your systems and processes are… 

We might not think in these terms but just about everything we do over and over is a system. How we make a cup of tea is a system. Our routine for getting up in the morning and starting a day is a system. And of course there are our systems, our ways of doing things in our businesses.

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It has been said that every system is perfect… 

…perfect for the result it gets.

It you want to get a different result, then you need to do things diffrently. 

If you want consistently more leads, sales or profit in your business than you are getting then something needs to change. You need to do the things that get you the results that you want.
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And to find the right way of doing things for your business will take experimentation and iteration, in some ways business is like a big experiment to find what works for you, but if you focus on the process, consistently taking action, monitoring the results to measure your progress and direction you will make quicker progress than if you just focus on the numbers…