Greetings Floor Dealers!
“I want a unicycle for Christmas,” I told my parents.
Actually, I probably told them several dozen times. That’s how it works when you are 11 with no viable means of earning a living. My friend who lived next door had just gotten a unicycle and was learning to ride it. It looked immensely fun, so I pestered my parents for one. Well, Christmas day came and I got my wish. I still had about a week of Christmas vacation left, so I began to practice riding it. If you’ve never tried a unicycle, they are fiendishly difficult to balance. With a two-wheeled bicycle there are only two directions the bike can tip over: right or left. So you only have to worry about balancing the bike in those two directions. Plus the gyroscopic action of the spinning wheels does a lot of the balancing work for you. A bicycle is also unlikely to shoot out from underneath you. If you feel yourself start to fall over, you can put your feet down and hold yourself up.
A unicycle requires a whole new world of coordination skills. It can tip in any direction; all 360-degrees of a circle are possible directions for a fall. You get absolutely no gyroscopic action from the wheels (they don’t spin fast enough), so balancing is done totally by the unicycle operator. And, like a skateboard, it can shoot out from underneath you, causing potentially nasty falls. When you start to fall, you can’t put your feet down the way you can with a bike. They are slow, require a lot of energy to ride, and are frankly dangerous.
Oh, and in 1978 bicycle helmets were simply not worn by kids on bikes. Same for knee and elbow pads, gloves, or any other protective gear.
But come Hell or high water I was going to learn to ride one. So I spent the one week left of my vacation practicing every day. We had a concrete front walk that was about 20 feet long; my goal was to make it to the end of the walk without falling. I’d grab one of the support pillars of our porch, climb onto the unicycle (holding on for dear life) and take off. At first I could only get a foot or so, but gradually that distance increased. When learning to ride a unicycle, every attempt—every one—ends in a fall. You learn to anticipate the falls so when they happen you can land on your feet most of the time. Most of the time.
I spent 5-6 hours a day practicing during that week of vacation. I’d launch myself from the support pillar, zig and zag as far as I could on the walk, then fall off. Over and over and over again. But it was fun and I kept at it. By the end of the week I could not only ride to the end of the walk without falling, but all up and down our long gravel driveway. I soon learned to turn a full 360-degree circle, and how to mount the unicycle without holding onto anything. Pretty soon my friend and I were riding all over the neighborhood together. One Saturday, not too long after that, we did a 6-8 mile ride way out into the country and back. I wore out two or three tires, one of them exploding and throwing me off. I was just learning to ride it backwards when the thing literally fell apart. It was kind of a cheap unicycle from Sears (we didn’t have a lot of money), not meant to take the kind of stress I was putting it under, like long-distance rides and going off small ramps.
I never got another unicycle after that. I’m not sure why, but it’s probably for the best. There aren’t a lot of career opportunities for highly-skilled unicyclists, and of the few that do exist, most involve traveling with the circus.
When it comes to preparing for the New Year, most advice centers on goal setting. Most people fail to reach their New Year’s goals, or even stick with them for more than a few weeks. I think the main problem is lack of focus, which can be caused by several things.
First, lack of focus can be caused by setting too many goals. I had one—and only one—goal for that single week of Christmas vacation: learn to ride the unicycle to the end of the 20 ft. walk without falling. (I actually surpassed my goal.) As an adult entrepreneur you must have more than one goal, but I would certainly limit the number of goals to a small handful, such as:
- Family (i.e. I will go on a date every Wednesday night with my spouse.)
- Health (i.e. I will jog for 30 minutes, four times weekly.)
- Business (i.e. Generate $3 million in revenue, with a 43% average margin)
- Personal (i.e. I will learn to ride a unicycle)
If you have dozens of goals, you lose focus. It’s better to zero in on two, three or four goals than spread yourself too thin. Some goals will break down into several “mini-goals” which support and facilitate the larger goal. In the business example (above) the goal is $3 million in gross revenue. This will require implementing marketing strategies, so you set several “mini-goals”: implement the Design Audit, the Home Advisor and the Referral program. But all of those mini-goals are directly related to the larger one.
Second, lack of focus can be caused by distractions. I’m a broken record on this, so I’ll keep it short. You must time-block appointments with yourself, and these appointments must be in your calendar and dedicated 100% to tasks that move you closer to your goal. During my unicycle practice I didn’t try to learn the yo-yo at the same time. I also didn’t try to talk on the phone, read mail, take phone calls, etc.
Third, lack of focus can be caused by setting goals that are not clearly defined. For example, “I want to make more money” vs. “I want to generate gross revenues of $2,300,000 with a 45% average gross margin within twelve months.”
Fourth, setting goals for which you are not passionate about can definitely cause a lack of focus. If you don’t really, truly want to do it, if you don’t have a fire burning in your chest, then you probably won’t dedicate the time, energy and money to accomplish it. Therefore you should set big, exciting goals. If the goal is monetary, don’t settle for a small, predictable, incremental increase. Set a goal that causes you to leap out of bed with excitement in the morning; set a goal that gets you and your spouse dreaming again; set a goal that keeps you awake at night, but awake in a good way.
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Jim Augustus Armstrong is The “Coach”
Jim Augustus Armstrong is the President of Flooring Success Systems, a program that equips dealers to double their profits, cut their work hours in half and beat the boxes! Many dealers have totally transformed their businesses and their lives for the better after joining Flooring Success Systems.
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