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What you’ll learn in this episode:
What if the fastest way to grow your business this summer isn’t doing more – but focusing on less?
In this episode of It’s Your Offer, I’m continuing the Summer Shorts Series with episode three: a short, punchy, straight-to-the-point conversation about one of the most overlooked profit levers in your business – focus.
As entrepreneurs, we are often conditioned to believe that more creates more.
More offers. More strategies. More platforms. More marketing channels. More ideas. More opportunities. More ways to grow.
But the truth is, every time you split your attention, you dilute your power.
And while distraction can feel productive, it is often one of the most expensive things happening inside your business.
In this episode, I’m talking about why most business owners are not actually lacking opportunities – they are drowning in them. And why the next level of growth often comes from identifying the one growth lever that matters most, committing to it, and giving it your focused attention long enough for it to create real momentum.
Because focus does not limit your growth. Focus accelerates it.
In this episode, you will learn to:
- How fractured focus quietly slows your growth, dilutes your energy, and creates unnecessary overwhelm.
- Why more opportunities, more strategies, and more ideas are not always the answer.
- How distraction creates hidden costs inside your business, including lost time, scattered messaging, team confusion, and stalled revenue.
- Why focusing on one growth lever at a time can create more ease, profitability, and predictable growth.
- How two business owners created significant growth by narrowing their focus and doubling down on what was already working (and how you can too).
Mentioned in this episode:
Bradfield Accounting & Advisory – Main Website
Bradfield Accounting & Advisory on LinkedIn
Global Local – Sustainable Gifts ad Fair Trade Products – Main Website
Global Local – Sustainable Gifts ad Fair Trade Products on Instagram
Work/Connect with me:
Jessica Miller (00:01.23)
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to this week’s episode of the It’s Your Offer podcast. We are in episode three of our summer shorts series. Yes, I love that little, like, play on words: Summer Shorts. I think I’m so clever. But what it is is there is a series that we are doing for the summer that are short, punchy, like shot-in-the-arm episodes that are really gonna get you thinking about the most important things that you can do this summer to have an epic summer and grow at the same time.
And today we are on episode three. Before I jump into today’s topic, which is one of my favorite things to talk about, which I have probably talked about on this podcast many times, but I think it bears repeating because it’s so important, I want to just put a plug for all of you. If you have not listened to our episode 250, which was the impetus for this summer shorts series, I highly, highly recommend that you go back and check it out.
That episode really brings to the surface all the things that I have learned over 250 episodes of being on this podcast with all of you listeners, with all of the incredible guests that I’ve had on, with all of the many things around growth and ease and your hell yes offers and all the things that we have talked about over the span of almost four years. We’ve brought all those things together in that episode. And I talk about what I’ve come to really understand about growing a business with ease that brings you joy and makes you happy and is not a heavy lift, does not require grinding. So many of us grind in the name of growth, but in this corner of the internet, we do not do that. So that episode brings it all together. And it was really illuminating for me when I recorded it because I thought back to four years ago and what I would have said if somebody asked me, What have I learned about business or what do I think about business growth? And it would have been very different than what I know now, after helping hundreds of people, going through those trials and tribulations on my own and arriving here with so many sort of, you know, miles now, you know, covered and seeing what I know to really be true about growing a business that you love with ease and having it really give you the wealth and the freedom that so many of us as entrepreneurs want. So episode 250 is, I think, a gem. And it’s a very personal episode as well. So I would definitely recommend going and checking that out.
Jessica Miller (02:23.241)
From that episode came the things that we are talking about in the Summer Shorts series. And as I mentioned, we’re on episode three today, but episode one and episode two were also awesome. And if you missed them, just go back and check it out. You can even pause this now and go listen to those first, or listen to this one first. They don’t go in any specific order, but you don’t want to miss them. Episode one really talks about how complexity kills growth.
And how simplicity is the key to growing and to doing it in a way that flows and that is streamlined and that is powerful. So that was episode one. Episode two talks about the difference between revenue and wealth and how they are not the same thing. And that is also a really important episode as you think about growth and what does that mean for you? And what are we looking at and what are we measuring against? Because if true wealth is what we want, revenue is not always the full story. Not that it is not important, but it’s not the full story. And it’s really important to understand the distinctions of those things so that you can grow a business that not only makes you money, but makes you money that you keep in the form of profit. And profit is what I think really feeds into true wealth and a business that is made for you and is supporting you and not the other way around. So that brings us to episode three today of the Summer Shorts series. And today I want to talk to you about the idea of focus. We have talked about this on this podcast many, many, many times, but I think this is a topic that is really important, especially as we move into the summer months where routines shift and sometimes we feel like we’re all over the place and we have to do a million things to kind of keep going and not lose ground and not lose speed. And what ends up happening is we are like fracturing our focus all over the place.
And in the name of growth, we think the more things that we do, the more growth we will have, the faster we will go, the more we will create. But really, it’s the opposite. This idea of more is so ingrained in our brains as entrepreneurs. We really do equate more with success. But I’m here to say it over and over and over and over again that less really is more.
Jessica Miller (04:46.067)
Most business owners think that they need more opportunities. And what I mean by that is more all the things in their business: more offers, more strategies, more marketing channels, more shiny objects, more ways to grow, more, more, more. But often we don’t have to think about what if the reason that our growth starts to feel hard and like we’re pushing a boulder uphill or difficult is because we’re just adding more things instead of really looking at what is moving the needle for us and what do we enjoy and what creates the results that we want, and really thinking about where is our energy and our focus going? And is the heaviness and the quote unquote hardness because we actually have too many things that we’re trying to do at the same time.
What I have come to find out, both in my own journey and in working with many, many, many business owners, is that focus, your focus, is one of the most overlooked profit levers in your business. Every time you split your attention, you dilute your power. You slow yourself down. Every time you chase something new or it’s that next shiny object, you pull energy away from something that actually may be the most important thing in your business to get you to your goals. And even if you’re not sure exactly what that is, you cannot focus on two things at the same time. So, as one of my business mentors always affectionately said, when you say yes to something, you say no to something else. When you put your focus on something, you are always taking it away from something else. So today I want to dig into this a little bit and give you that shot in the arm to help you understand why focus really creates growth faster than almost anything else and what it’s really costing you when you don’t have it. Because we think we’re gaining something when we’re ping-ponging all over the place. But I’m here to suggest that it is often the exact opposite. Most business owners actually are not lacking opportunities. We think we’re missing something. We’re
Jessica Miller (07:08.151)
fracturing our focus and watching all these other things and being distracted because we think there’s something missing. The actual truth, though, is we are surrounded by opportunities all the time. Both within our business right now, we have many, many things, but there are also opportunities around us. There’s no lack of possibility. And we often think that we need new platforms or things like that. Like I said, new strategies, but the most important things are often in our business and we want to focus in on them rather than think we’re missing something and follow the bouncing ball all over the place. Our brain is telling us we don’t have what we need and we need to go out there and find it and we need to take our focus and put it someplace else. But actually, our problem often is that we have too many opportunities. We are considering too many things. We’re trying to keep our eye on a lot of stuff rather than focusing on the things that actually matter in our business, and we, like, slingshot to the other side where we are now drowning in opportunities. We have a laundry list of to-do things. We’re constantly like being triggered by these thoughts coming in or the pings on our phone or the thing popping up on our, you know, monitor or the Slack channel going off. There are so many things. Business owners do not need more ideas or opportunities. They need more focus and more robust execution on the things that really matter. The constant search for the next thing often prevents us from maximizing the current things that are sitting right in front of us in our business that are connected to the result that we want. And the other part of this is: the thing that you have and know will always be easier to optimize than the thing that you know nothing about, you haven’t done it, and you have no data on.
And this is a really important piece. The shiny object feels productive and it’s out there and it’s exciting. But in reality, it is a much bigger lift to make a decision on something that you have never done before than to take something that you have, learn from the data that you have, and use that to iterate on the next thing that we do. So every time we divide our attention among, like, the shiny objects, the opportunities, the things we think we’re missing, there is a hidden cost, and distraction
Jessica Miller (09:34.578)
is very, very expensive. In fact, it is much more expensive than you think. When you get distracted, when you’re trying to follow all the things, here’s what it eats up: it eats up your time, it eats up your energy, it eats up your momentum, it throws the people around you into a tizzy. Anyone ever had this experience? I don’t, you know, ask me how I know. I have totally been there, where you’re like switching gears.
And your team is trying to keep up with you, right? Your contractors are trying to keep up with you. So things are, you know, switching so often. They fall out of alignment. They’re like they have whiplash. And, you know, there’s just so much dysfunction that is created in that snafu of distraction. Not to mention the revenue that starts to tank when you don’t keep your eye on the ball of the things that matter. And then you actually, you know, start being very inefficient because you’re constantly sort of shape-shifting and moving all the things around. This can look in our businesses very much like switching priorities. Like, this was the priority today—just kidding—tomorrow, this is the next thing. We are bombarded with things in social media, in masterminds, in rooms that we hang out with. So there’s like constant shiny object syndrome and we’re watching what other people are doing and we’re constantly in that place where we’re second guessing ourselves and we are like going after all these different
Opportunities that we think are going to be the silver bullet. We have a lot of projects that we start that we don’t finish, so they’re kind of half baked. We get into this very reactive leadership type of a place where, instead of setting the course and the vision and charting the path, we are actually reacting to everything around us. And then it starts to seep outward from our company. So things start to feel really scattered. Our marketing feels scattered, our messaging feels scattered, you know.
I think we’ve all had this experience with certain businesses where we’re like, what are they doing now? Because it’s constantly changing. So every business has things that it could possibly improve, but not every improvement creates the same return. And that’s where we get into the danger of like, there’s just a laundry list of things that you need to do. Instead, we need to back up, slow down, and look critically at what is actually making you money in your business.
Jessica Miller (11:55.102)
Where would your focus be best served from the perspective of growth and return on investment in your business versus everything is created equal and we just need to do all the things? So, as I mentioned, everything in your business is not created equal. We’ve all heard of the 80-20 rule. It is a very real thing, which frankly means that the majority of things that most people are doing, if they are not careful, are not the things that are actually making them money.
The goal is not to be like, let’s do more. The goal is to become better at seeing and doing what actually matters. And when you dial in your focus, that is what happens. You become relentless at understanding number one, what you want and what the results are. Number two, what is going to get you there? And then number three is how to keep yourself in it.
And that is extremely important because sometimes staying in it can be difficult. And I think we all know this. And this is where the distraction comes in. It’s like it’s not that we don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing. It’s not that we haven’t connected those dots sometimes. Sometimes it just takes that special something to commit to doing the one or two things that actually matter. This brings me to the next point about focus. The power of a few growth levers is crucial. And when I say a few, I mean a few, but I also mean one growth lever at a time. This is where focus becomes your superpower. When you look at your business and you understand the one thing that is the most important opportunity in your business right now, and we talk about this all of the time in the work that I do with clients, whether it’s in my profit accelerator group or one-on-one with consulting clients.
We are looking for the next best thing. That next best thing is the one thing that we have identified that is going to move the needle for you the most. And when you identify that thing, and then you focus there, you channel all of your energy and your resources into that one thing because you can see very clearly where it’s sitting in your business, how it’s connected to the outcome, and how the amount of inputs is
Jessica Miller (14:21.685)
tiny compared to the output that you’re gonna get, that’s where it gets really good. I want to share with you two examples of what I mean by this. So the first example is a brick-and-mortar business that I work with in Virginia. The name of the business is The Global Local and I will link this in the show notes. The owner Tira is amazing. She has an amazing shop. We started working together about a year ago. And when I came into her business, she was doing all the things and she was doing an awesome job.
But she was doing a lot. A lot of it fell on her shoulders. She was trying to grow her business. She had a lot of different types of products in her store. She was also running experiences in the form of workshops—candle workshops—and she has vintage china workshops. She was running ads. She was doing a lot of different things. And her business was growing. But all of it sat on her shoulders. And she was constantly being pulled in a lot of different directions, like many of us business owners are. When we looked into her business, what we found was that most of her revenue was coming from her experiences. What we wanted to do was optimize that experience so that we were getting more people to it. But then we wanted to also optimize the customer journey on the back end so that when they were coming in for the experience, we had a very streamlined place for these clients to go. Like what did we want them to do next? When we dialed that up, that became Tira’s focus.
And she was so good about being lasered in on, okay, we are going to optimize this experience. We are going to look at these pieces of this customer journey and we are going to iterate on this till we get it to the place where we want it to be. After that, we’re going to take the information and then we’re going to figure out, well, what else that informs. Well, I’m here to tell you that Tira’s business has been going gangbusters. She has almost doubled in size in less than 12 months. And she is able to see and feel that ease that has come into her business and the way it’s being streamlined. All because she chose to focus on one thing at a time and optimize that lever for profit in her business and for growth. And everything has changed for her. She’s now on a track to take where she is now
Jessica Miller (16:46.667)
and double down on that in her business to double again. So she’s on track to double almost two times over in a span of 24 months. Not to mention the people that she has connected with, the lives that she has touched, the awards she has won. She is such an integral part of her community as well, which is so inspiring for so many people. And I am just cheering her on because she is now playing on a whole different field for her, for her team.
For her clients, it’s like again, it’s a beautiful love fest. That is the power of focus. And it really touches every part of your business. Another business that I work with, Bradfield Accounting, Nolan Bradbury, I will link his business as well. He is a CPA and accountant, but he is in the numbers for freedom business. What do I mean by this? Nolan is one of those accountants that has broken the mold. He has figured out and understands that, as business owners, one of our most powerful assets to drive wealth in our lives and to drive our dreams and the freedom that we want is our business. And what he actually does is he helps business owners get clear on what they want. What is their freedom number? What is the number that they need to hit in order to have the life that they love? And, P.S., as business owners, owning a business is one of the most powerful ways to make that dream and that freedom of the life that you want a reality. And so he doubled down on working with people, not on their accounting—of course, accounting is part of it—but actually on designing a life of freedom, a life of freedom that is clear to the business owner and that is fueled by a business that is intentionally built and is funded and is creating revenue and is going through its expenses and making decisions to fuel the life that you want. The business is working for you and ultimately for your dreams and not the other way around, which is like the chain that we often get into as business owners. Once Nolan figured out exactly how he helped his clients and the offers that he had in that offer stack
Jessica Miller (19:11.659)
and the services and how those were put together. Once he figured out exactly what that needed to look like and how those fit into his numbers of freedom, he just locked in. And because he is so good with numbers, you know, he crunched those numbers and he knew exactly how many people he needed to help in what ways to create big impacts in their life that ended up creating big impacts in his life and for his team. And here we are. He has grown like gangbusters over the last year.
He is actually on track to blow through his goals and his growth rate right now by doing less work better for the right people in a way that connects to his freedom and to theirs. And I’ve never met somebody who cares for their clients and is deeply invested in their success and their business and making sure that that business is funding their life more than Nolan. He is amazing.
So again, Tira, Nolan, check them out in the show notes. The moral of the story is when you get clear and focus on one thing, you break out of this cycle of constantly pivoting, having multiple marketing initiatives, gajillion priorities, being in this always busy, always frantic, always I have to be in motion feeling. And then that like two o’clock in the morning ping-ponging, where you’re like wondering if you forgot something and never quite feeling clear.
And instead of trying to improve everything at once, both of these individuals identified one growth lever. And for these clients, like that was really the key. It freed them up. It allowed them to be creative. It allowed them to streamline their business. And it allowed them to grow with ease and most importantly, be more profitable because their focus was creating that growth. So it was, you know, one offer stream, one channel, one client journey.
And really doubling down on that. And that resulted in, you know, a full roster, sold-out workshops, ease in their business, clarity, and also more customer traffic. I mean, we’re always in this place where we have to, like, bring in more people, bring in more people, and that really steals our focus a lot of the time. But when you start to create this flywheel and you’re doing great work and you know exactly who you’re talking to and you’re streamlining that funnel, people come. That’s how it happens. It’s a repeatable growth system.
Jessica Miller (21:33.882)
And then you can just iterate on that more and more. So focus really does create more assets. And that’s a really important piece of this. And distraction creates activity, but it doesn’t create easy growth. It feels productive, but it’s actually not. And there’s a difference between being busy and actually building momentum that, you know, pays off for, you know, what you want in your business.
And this brings me to the last point, which I think is one of the most important things, which I think is very counterintuitive to people because it sometimes feels constraining, but focus creates freedom. It really does. The biggest benefit of focusing isn’t just more revenue and more cash. It is relief. It is knowing where your business is going. It’s feeling like you have control because you do. You wake up in the middle of the night, you know what matters. You’re not gonna be spinning. You have the right priorities. You can see it. You can follow the bouncing ball. You also know what to say no to. I think this is one of the things a lot of people do not talk about, but it’s freedom in letting go of the stuff that you actually shouldn’t be focusing on. And doing that with confidence, not doing it when you’re not sure and it’s creating anxiety. The things that actually don’t matter start to just fall away and you are clear on what that is. Everything just becomes lighter.
Teams become more clear, decisions become easier for you, and growth becomes, dare I say, predictable. Because underneath all of this focus and what you’re doing is the data that you’re measuring, the results you are capturing. And it’s really, really, really powerful and it sets you free. So although some people get sort of cagey when we think about letting go of things, I promise you, focus does not limit your growth. It actually accelerates your growth.
One of my mentors, Eddie Yoon, says simplicity creates velocity. And it does. It really does. And there is nothing better than being able to like breathe and know that what you’re doing is creating what you want. So I want to leave you with this reflection and something to think about. So I want you to think about what things in your business may be distracting you from your number one
Jessica Miller (23:53.678)
priority. So taking a step back, do you know what your priorities are that you need to be focusing on? And I’m going to kind of go out on a limb here and say most people have a hunch about what they’re supposed to be doing. They may not be focusing on it all the time, but they know what it is. If you don’t, I implore you to go into your business and find out exactly where you’re making your money now.
You might be someone who’s in the multiple high six figures. Maybe you’re even in the millions of dollars, and you have been adding and adding and adding things. And so it may not really be clear because you haven’t paused for long enough. Like this is mid-year. It is time to pause and really understand what is going on there so that you know what your one next best opportunity is. From there, you need to identify what is distracting you from it, what is going on there. Because that is the stuff that we need to, like, untwine and figure out so you can focus on the one thing. And I’m going to give you this gift and tell you that I want you to choose one growth lever. Commit to it for the summer—the next 90 days. Stop dividing your attention. See what happens when you uncover your best priority and you actually choose it and you focus on it for the next 90 days. You are going to blow your own darn mind. So, in summary, the businesses that grow the fastest are rarely doing the most things. They are focusing on the right things for longer. They stay with it. They say no to the things that are not serving them. Those are not their best opportunities. They are just things that are crowding the space. Focus is not about limiting your ambition. Focus is actually about going for it. It’s about directing your ambition. Because every time you split your attention, you split your results. And that is the recipe for overwhelm. It’s like you’re working really hard, you’re like, you know, swimming on the top of the water, but your legs are going crazy underneath the surface. And yet you’re just like moving slowly because it’s very inefficient. When you know what matters, everything gets lighter. Growth gets a lot easier and the profit flows. And you enjoy it so much more. So take a moment.
Jessica Miller (26:20.16)
Identify your one focused growth lever, double down on that for the next 90 days and watch your business not only feel better, but also make a lot more money that you can keep. Until next week, everyone, stay tuned for the Summer Shorts episode number four. And I can’t wait to see you here then. Have an awesome, awesome week.
